L.A. civic leaders urge LAUSD, union to revamp teacher evaluations

Jason Song

The group, including the presidents of the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce and United Way of Greater L.A., urges the use of student test score data and more access to information about instructors for families.

A group of business and civic leaders is urging the Los Angeles school district and teachers union to quickly develop a new evaluation system that incorporates student test score data and gives families more access to information about instructors.

"This system should be transparent and the results of the teacher evaluations should be made available to parents," said a letter signed by former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, as well as the presidents of both the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce and United Way of Greater L.A., and 18 other people.

The civic group also endorsed including value-added analysis -- a statistical method that links student test scores to their teachers -- in teacher performance reviews and cited a Times series on the subject as one reason they decided to weigh in.

Urban League president proposes Madison International Baccalaureate charter school geared toward minority boys

Susan Troller:

"In Madison, I can point to a long history of failure when it comes to educating African-American boys," says Caire, a Madison native and a graduate of West High School. He is blunt about the problems of many black students in Madison.

"We have one of the worst achievement gaps in the entire country. I'm not seeing a concrete plan to address that fact, even in a district that prides itself on innovative education. Well, here's a plan that's innovative, and that has elements that have been very successful elsewhere. I'd like to see it have a chance to change kids' lives here," says Caire, who is African-American and has extensive experience working on alternative educational models, particularly in Washington, D.C.

One of the most vexing problems in American education is the difference in how well minority students, especially African-American children, perform academically in comparison to their white peers. With standardized test scores for black children in Wisconsin trailing those from almost every other state in the nation, addressing the achievement gap is a top priority for educators in the Badger State. Although black students in Madison do slightly better academically than their counterparts in, say, Milwaukee, the comparison to their white peers locally creates a Madison achievement gap that is, as Caire points out, at the bottom of national rankings.

He's become a fan of same-sex education because it "eliminates a lot of distractions" and he says a supportive environment of high expectations has proven to be especially helpful for improving the academic performance of African-American boys.

Caire intends to bring the proposal for the boys-only charter prep school before the Madison School Board in October or November, then will seek a planning grant for the school from the state Department of Public Instruction in April, and if all goes according to the ambitious business plan, Madison Prep would open its doors in 2012 with 80 boys in grades 6 and 7.

Forty more sixth-graders would be accepted at the school in each subsequent year until all grades through senior high school are filled, with a total proposed enrollment of 280 students. A similar, same-sex school for girls would promptly follow, Caire says, opening in 2013.

Five things would make Madison Prep unique, Caire says, and he believes these options will intrigue parents and motivate students.

Fabulous.

It will be interesting to see how independent (from a governance and staffing perspective) this proposal is from the current Madison charter models. The more the better.

Clusty Search: Madison Preparatory Academy.

Madison School Board Priorities: Ethics, Achievement, or ?

TJ Mertz makes a great point here:

Last up, is "Next Steps for Future Board Development Meetings and Topics.' Board development is good and important, but with only 2/3 of the term left I hate to see too much time and energy devoted to Board Development.

I keep coming back to this. Every year about 1/3 of the time and energy is devoted to budget matters, that leaves 2/3 to try to make things better. Put it another way; it is September, budget season starts in January. Past time to get to work.

This just leaves the closed meeting on the Superintendent evaluation. Not much to add to what I wrote here. My big point is that almost all of this process should be public. I will repost the links to things that are public:

Charlie Mas continues to chronicle, in a similar manner to TJ, the Seattle School Board's activities.

In my view, the Madison School Board might spend time on:

• Public Superintendent Review, including oversight of the principal and teacher review process. Done properly, this should improve teaching effectiveness over time. This process should include full implementation of Infinite Campus. Infinite Campus is a potentially powerful tool to evaluate many activities within the District.
• Implement a 5 year budget.
• Evaluate ongoing MMSD Programs for their effectiveness, particularly from a spending and staffing perspective.

Voters will have another chance to weigh in on the Madison School Board during the spring, 2011 election, when seats currently occupied by Ed Hughes and Marj Passman will be on the ballot. Those interested in running should contact the City of Madison Clerk's office.

Update: I received the draft Madison School Board ethics documents via a Barbara Lehman email (thanks):

• Board Member Ed Hughes 241K PDF

  Presently we do not have a policy that describes expectations regarding the performance of School Board members. The Committee developed this list on the basis of similar policies adopted by other Boards as well as our own discussion of what our expectations are for each other. The Committee members were able to reach consensus on these expectations fairly quickly.

  Expectation No.4 refers to information requests. We realize that current MMSD Policy 1515 also refers to information requests, but our thinking was that the existing policy addresses the obligation of the superintendent to respond to information requests. We do not currently have a policy that addresses a Board member's obligation to exercise judgment in submitting information requests.

  Expectation No. 10 is meant to convey that School Board members hold their positions 24-hours a day and have a responsibility to the Board always to avoid behavior that would cast the Board or the District in a poor light.

  How might Number 10 affect an elected Board member's ability to disagree with District policies or activities?
• Outgoing Madison School District Counsel Dan Mallin 700K PDF.:

  These paragraphs are a modification from existing language. Although the overall intent appears to remain similar to existing policy, I recommend the existing language because I think it does a better job of expressly recognizing the competing interests between the "beliefstatements" and a Board Member's likely right, as an individual citizen (and perhaps as a candidate for office while simultaneously serving on the Board) to accept PAC contributions and or to make a statement regarding a candidate. Perhaps the langnage could make clear that no Board Member may purport to, or attempt to imply, that they are speaking for the School Board when making a statement in regard to a candidate for office. That is, they should be express that they are speaking in the individual capacity.

• Draft ethics policy 500K PDF:

  The Board functions most effectively when individual Board Members adhere to acceptable professional behavior. To promote acceptable conduct of the Board, Board Members should:

• Outgoing Counsel Dan Mallin's 7/15/2010 recommendations.

Superintendent Climate Locally and Elsewhere: Collier School Board candidates evaluate how to replace Dennis Thompson; An Update on the 2008 Madison Candidates?

Naples Daily News:

Now that Collier County schools Superintendent Dennis Thompson's contract isn't getting renewed, the nine Collier School Board candidates have to think about what the next superintendent will be like.

After all, three of them will be involved in the selection of the next superintendent, which current board members agreed shouldn't start until after the November election.

The primary election is Tuesday.

While the candidates believe a search should start and include community input, they differ on the approach to that search.

District 5 candidate Mary Ellen Cash was the only candidate to recommend saving the money from a nationwide search by hiring from within the district or area.

"We have a lot of home-grown people with a lot of talent," she said.

Locally, the Madison School Board has held three meetings during the past two months on the Superintendent's (Dan Nerad) evaluation:

6/29 Superintendent Evaluation, 7/12 Evaluation of the Superintendent, 8/9 Evaluation of the Superintendent.

The lack of Superintendent oversight was in issue in school board races a few years ago.

Steve Gallon (more) was a candidate for the Madison position in 2008, along with Jim McIntyre.

2008 Madison Superintendent candidate appearances: Steve Gallon, Jim McIntyre and Dan Nerad.

Seattle's Dysfunctional School Board

Charlie Mas:

The Board of Directors of Seattle Public Schools has four primary functions... and they fail to fulfill each of them.

The Board, first and foremost, are the elected representatives of the public, but this Board doesn't represent the public at all. This Board doesn't raise the public's concerns, doesn't relay the public's wishes, and doesn't voice the public perspective. I almost never hear the Board members talk about the public or their constituents saying "People are concerned about.." or "People want..." or "People see it this way...".

The Board doesn't voice the public perspective and certainly doesn't advocate for it. Worse, the Board doesn't advocate for the public to have a voice for themselves. The Board is no champion of community engagement. The Board regularly approves motions with inadequate community engagement and regularly approves motions with NO community engagement. The Board hasn't demanded improved engagement from anyone and hasn't even demanded that the staff provide the community engagement that they promised to do. The Board's own community engagement is just about the worst of any workgroup in the District. Their primary community engagement practice is testimony at Board meetings and they never respond to the people who come and speak to them there.

Elia rated 'above satisfactory' by Hillsborough, FL school board

Sherri Ackerman:

Hillsborough School Board members rated superintendent MaryEllen Elia's overall performance this past school year as "above satisfactory.''

In their annual review of the district leader, board members gave Elia high marks for her leadership, policy-making, organization, management, values and ethics.

Her total score was 282, just two points shy of outstanding and the same score as the previous school year.

Board members applauded Elia's efforts in landing a $100 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Board members also said Elia was "much more open minded to suggestions ... '' while adding, "she needs to listen more.''

Notes on Teacher Merit Pay

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:

Susan Troller had a typically good and very substantive article in the Capital Times this week about merit pay for teachers and other dimensions of teacher evaluations.

Merit pay is an issue that highlights the culture clash between the new breed of educational reformers and the traditional education establishment that finds its foundation in teachers and their unions.

Educational reformers nowadays frequently come to education as an avocation after successful business careers. These reformers, like Bill Gates and Eli Broad, believe that our approach to education can be improved if we import the sort of approaches to quality and innovation that have proved effective in the business world.

So, for example, let's figure out what's the single most important school-based variable in determining student achievement. Research indicates that it's the quality of the teacher. Well then, let's evaluate teachers in a way that lets us assess that quality, let's put in place professional development that will allow our teachers to enhance that quality, and let's have compensation systems that allow us to reward that quality.

Badger Rock Middle School Proposal

Badger Rock Middle School Planning Committee 1.8mb PDF:

Superintendent Nerad, President Cole and Members of the Board,

Please accept this detailed proposal for Badger Rock Middle School, a project based charter school proposed for South Madison, which focuses on cultural and environmental sustainability. As you know, our charter school concept is part of the larger Resilience Research Center project spearheaded by the Madison based Center for Resilient Cities (CRC), bringing urban agriculture, community wellness,sustainability and alternative energy education to South Madison and the MMSD community.

We are proud of the work we have been able to accomplish to date and the extraordinary encouragement and support we have gotten from the neighborhood, business and non-profit community, local and national funders, and MMSD staff and Board. We are confident that Badger Rock Middle School, with its small class size, collaborative approach, stewardship and civic engagement model, will increase student achievement, strengthen relationships and learning outcomes for all students who attend, while also offering unparalleled opportunities for all MMSD students and faculty to make use of the resources, curriculum and facility.

Our stellar team of educators, community supporters, funders and business leaders continues to expand. Our curriculum team has created models for best practices with new templates for core curriculum areas. Our building and design team has been working collaboratively with architects Hoffman LLC, the Center for Resilient Cities and MMSD staff on building and site plans. In addition, outreach teams have been working with neighborhood leaders and community members, and our governance team has been actively recruiting a terrific team for the governing board and our fundraising team has been working hard to bring local and national donors to the project. In short, we've got great momentum and have only begun to scratch the surface of what this school and project could become.

We are submitting the proposal with a budget neutral scenario for MMSD and also want to assure you that we are raising funds to cover any contingencies that might arise so that additional monies from MMSD will not be needed. Our planning grant from DP! has recently been approved, seeding the school $175,000 in planning grant monies immediately, with another $175, 000 to arrive before the school opens in August 2011.
We ask for your full support of this proposal and the creation of Badger Rock Middle School. BRMS will surely be a centerpiece and shining star of MMSD for years to come.

Thanks for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Badger Rock Middle School Planning Committee

Venture Philanthropy gives $5.5 million for expansion of KIPP DC charter schools

Susan Kinzie:

It's another sign of private money shaking up public education in the District: A $5.5 million gift will dramatically help expand a network of high-performing charter schools in the city, with a goal of more than doubling the number of students enrolled by 2015.

The grant by Venture Philanthropy Partners, a nonprofit organization using the principles of venture-capital investment to help children from low-income families in the Washington region, will fund Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) schools. The grant is to be announced Monday.

"VPP recognized our ability to impact not just the students we have, but the students throughout D.C.," said Allison Fansler, president and chief operating officer of KIPP DC. "We want to set a high bar for what's possible."

School boards need to hear all voices

Tina Hone:

I read with great interest Laura V. Berthiaume's July 25 Local Opinions commentary, "Who really controls the Montgomery schools," about the Montgomery County Board of Education's relationship with its superintendent and staff. While there are many differences between our systems, Ms. Berthiaume succinctly captured a core shared tension when she wrote: "In the balance of power between the board of education and the bureaucracy, the superintendent and his staff hold all the cards. They outwit, outlast and outplay."

Wednesday early release set for Madison middle, high schools

Susan Troller:

Hey Madison parents, teachers and students, get ready for some changes.

I wrote about a letter sent to teachers several weeks ago, but snags in transporation had the plan still tentative until today.

Now it's official: A plan for teacher collaboration at the Madison middle and high school levels beginning this fall will alter daily and weekly schedules for all eleven local middle schools and four high schools.

The most immediate change will be early release most Wednesdays for both high school and middle school students; middle school classes (except at Wright Middle School) will end on Wednesdays at 1:37 p.m. School will end at Wright at 2:15 p.m.

Gena Kittner has more.

Seattle Public Schools Administration Response to the Discovery Math Public Lawsuit Loss

602K PDF.

Respondents focus their brief on arguing that no reasonable school board would adopt "inquiry-based" high school mathematics textbooks instead of "direct instruction" textbooks. There are "dueling experts" and other conflicting evidence regarding the best available material for teaching high school math, and the Seattle School Board ("the Board") gave due consideration to both sides of the debate before reaching its quasi legislative decision to adopt the Discovering series and other textbooks on a 4-3 vote.

The trial court erred by substituting its judgment for the Board's in determining how much weight to place on the conflicting evidence. Several of the "facts" alleged in the Brief of Respondents ("BR") are inaccurate, misleading, or lack any citation to the record in violation of RAP l0.3(a)(4). The Court should have an accurate view of the facts in the record to decide the important legal issues in this case. The Board is, therefore, compelled to correct any misimpressions that could arise from an unwary reading of respondents' characterization of the facts.

Much more on the successful citizen lawsuit overturning the Seattle School District's use of Discovery Math, here. http://seattlemathgroup.blogspot.com/. Clusty Search: Discovery Math.

Local links: Math Task Force, Math Forum Audio/Video and West High School Math Teachers letter to Isthmus.

Seattle School District Citizen Lawsuit Update: New Student Assignment Plan

via a Dan Dempsey email, 7/25/2010 483K PDF

The first finding of the Audit Report is "The Seattle School District did not comply with state law on recording meeting minutes and making them available to the public". Id., p. 6. The auditor found: "We determined the Board did not record minutes at retreats and workshops in the 2008 - 2009 school year. Id. These retreats and workshops were held to discuss the budget, student assignment boundaries, school closures and strategic planning". [Emphasis Supplied] Id., p. 6. The school board's decisions regarding student assignment boundaries and school closures are the subject of the Commissioner's ruling denying review in the Briggs and Ovalles discretionary review proceedings and in this original action.

The Auditor described the effect of these violations to be: "When minutes of special meetings are not promptly recorded, information on Board discussions is not made available to the public". Id., p. 6. The Auditor recommended "the District establish procedures to ensure that meeting minutes are promptly recorded and made available to the public." Id., p. 6. The District's response was: "The District concurs with the finding and the requirement under OPMA that any meeting of the quorum of the board members to discuss district business is to be treated as a special or regular meeting of the OPMA." Id. p. 6. Thus, the school board admits the Transcripts of Evidence in the Ovalles and Briggs appeals contains no minutes of the discussions relating to student assignments and school closures, even though the law required otherwise. Additionally, there is no indication of what evidence the school board actually considered with regard to the school closures and the new student assignment plan at retreats and workshops devoted to these specific decisions.

The fifth finding of the Auditor's Report was: "5. The School Board and District Management have not implemented sufficient policies and controls to ensure the District complies with state laws, its own policies, or addresses concerns raised in prior audits". Id., p. 25. In a section entitled "description of the condition" the report states: "In all the
areas we examined we found lax or non-existent controls in District operations. ..." Id., p. 25. With regard to the Open Meetings Act the Auditor noted continuing violations of state law and that "the District did not develop policies and procedures to adequately address prior audit recommendations." Id, at p. 27.

Related: Recall drive for 5 of 7 Seattle School Board members.

Recall Drive for 5 of 7 Seattle School Board Members

Retired Teacher Dan Dempsey:

On Thursday at 10:30 AM an appeal of the Superintendent's one-year contract extension to June 30, 2013 will be filed at the King County Courthouse.

At 1:30 PM filings initiating the recall and discharge of each of five Seattle School Directors will be filed at the King County Elections Office. Directors Sundquist, Maier, Martin-Morris, Carr, and DeBell are the subjects of these five recalls. Directors Smith-Blum and Patu are not subjects of recall.

Each of these filings rely heavily on the Washington State Auditor's Audit issued on July 6, 2010 for evidence. See Seattle Weekly's coverage of the audit here.

If you wish to volunteer to collect signatures...
please contact: .. dempsey_dan@yahoo.com
using the subject line "RECALL".

We expect to receive authorization to begin collecting signatures within 30 days of initial filing. Signatures will be gathered from voters registered in the City of Seattle. We hope that most voters will choose to sign all 5 petitions. Approximately 32,000 valid signatures will be needed for each director to bring about a recall election. A 180 day maximum for signature gathering is allowed and the election is scheduled 45 to 60 days after the required number of signatures has been submitted and verified.

Related: Governance, or Potted Plant? Seattle School Board To Become More Involved In District Operations and a view from Madison.

On Budgets & Professional Development

Patricia Wasley and Stephanie Hirsch:

BUDGETS across the state and nation are being slashed, forcing education leaders to confront economic shortfalls unseen in recent memory and make do with less.

One area especially hard hit by the cuts is professional development -- the process by which we ensure our educators are well equipped to meet constantly evolving demands of helping students succeed. Often overlooked, high-quality professional learning is indispensable in generating the outcomes -- like better test scores and higher graduation rates -- that should be expected of our schools.

Absent high-quality professional learning and support for professional growth, the ability of teachers to meet new challenges becomes compromised and their practices habitual. This makes it more difficult to achieve higher outcomes and is not what we want for our teachers or students.

There has been an increasing emphasis on "adult to adult" expenditures within our public schools, as Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman noted last summer.

Helena school board gets earful on sex ed proposal

Matt Gouras:

A proposed sex education program that teaches fifth graders the different ways people have intercourse and first graders about gay love has infuriated parents and forced the school board to take a closer look at the issue.

Helena school trustees were swamped Tuesday night at a hearing that left many of the hundreds of parents in attendance standing outside a packed board room. They urged the school board in this city nestled in the Rocky Mountains to take the sex education program back to the drawing board.

The proposed 62-page document covers a broad health and nutrition education program and took two years to draft. But it is the small portion dealing with sexual education that has drawn the ire of many in the community who feel it is being pushed forward despite its obvious controversial nature.

Governance, or Potted Plant? Seattle School Board To Become More Involved In District Operations and a view from Madison

Phyllis Fletcher:

The Washington State Auditor told the district this week it has problems managing its money. They're the same problems he's told them about before. The school board oversees the district. And auditors for the state say it's time for board members to get more involved.

Carr: "To the State Auditors' point, we have work to do. And they're right: we do."

Sherry Carr chairs the audit and finance committee of the Seattle School Board. She says the board needs to do more to make sure problems that are found in audits don't pop up again.

Carr: "We haven't always had the check in prior to the start of the next audit. So, I think that's the key."

Washington State Auditor's Office:

The Washington State Auditor's Office released an audit report this week about the Seattle School District's accountability with public resources, laws and regulations.

We found the School Board and the District's executive management:

* Must improve oversight of District operations.
* Are not as familiar with state and federal law as the public would expect.

We identified instances of misappropriation and areas that are susceptible to misappropriation. We also found the School Board delegated authority to the Superintendent to create specific procedures to govern day-to-day District operations.

The Board does not evaluate these procedures to determine if they are effective and appropriate. Consequently, we identified 12 findings in this report and in our federal single audit and financial statement report.

Documents:

• Complete Report: 700K PDF
• Complete Report: 700K PDF
• Washington State Auditor's Office Accountability Audit Report 190K PDF
• The Seattle School District's response 37K PDF:

  Seattle Public Schools establishes rigorous process for addressing financial year 2008-09 audit findings.

  As part of the Washington State Auditor's Office annual audit process, an Accountability Audit of Seattle Public Schools was issued on July 6, 2010. The audit's emphasis on the need for continued improvement of internal controls and District policies for accountability is consistent with multi-year efforts under way at Seattle Public Schools to strengthen financial management.

  "Because we are deeply committed to being good stewards of the public's resources, we take the information in this audit very seriously," said Superintendent Maria L. Goodloe-Johnson, Ph.D. "We acknowledge the need to take specific corrective actions noted in the report. It is a key priority to implement appropriate control and accountability measures, with specific consequences, for situations in which policies are not followed."

  The School Board will work closely with the Superintendent to ensure corrections are made. "We understand and accept the State Auditor's findings," said School Board Director Sherry Carr, chair of the Board's Audit and Finance Committee. "We accept responsibility to ensure needed internal controls are established to improve accountability in Seattle Public Schools, and we will hold ourselves accountable to the public as the work progresses."

Much more on the Seattle School Board.

After reading this item, I sent this email to Madison Board of Education members a few days ago:

I hope this message finds you well.

The Seattle School Board is going to become more involved in District operations due to "problems managing its money".

http://kuow.org/program.php?id=20741

I'm going to post something on this in the next few days.

I recall a BOE discussion where Ed argued that there are things that should be left to the Administration (inferring limits on the BOE's oversight and ability to ask questions). I am writing to obtain your thoughts on this, particularly in light of:

a) ongoing budget and accounting issues (how many years has this been discussed?), and

b) the lack of substantive program review to date (is 6 years really appropriate, given reading and math requirements of many Madison students?).

I'd like to post your responses, particularly in light of the proposed Administrative re-org and how that may or may not address these and other matters.

I received the following from Lucy Mathiak:

A GENERAL NOTE: There is a cottage industry ginning up books and articles on board "best practices." The current wisdom, mostly generated by retired superintendents, is that boards should not trouble themselves with little things like financial management, human resources, or operations. Rather, they should focus on "student achievement." But what that means, and the assumption that financial, HR, and other decisions have NO impact on achievement, remain highly problematical.

At the end of the day, much of the "best practices" looks a lot like the role proposed for the Milwaukee School Board when the state proposed mayoral control last year. Under that scenario, the board would focus on public relations and, a distant second, expulsions. But that would be a violation of state statute on the roles and responsibilities of boards of education.

There are some resources that have interesting info on national trends in school board training here:
http://www.asbj.com/MainMenuCategory/Archive/2010/July/The-Importance-of-School-Board-Training.aspx

I tend to take my guidance from board policy, which refers back to state statute without providing details; I am a detail person so went back to the full text. When we are sworn into office, we swear to uphold these policies and statutes:

Board policy:

"The BOARD shall have the possession, care, control, and management of the property and affairs of the school district with the responsibilities and duties as detailed in Wisconsin Statutes 118.001, 120.12, 120.13, 120.14, 120.15, 120.16, 120.17, 120.18, 120.21, 120.40, 120.41, 120.42, 120.43, and 120.44."

Because board policy does not elaborate what is IN those statutes, the details can be lost unless one takes a look at "the rules." Here are some of the more interesting (to me) sections from WI Statute 120:

120.12 School board duties.
The school board of a common or union high school district shall:
(1)MANAGEMENT OF SCHOOL DISTRICT.
Subject to the authority vested in the annual meeting and to the authority and possession specifically given to other school district officers, have thepossession, care, control and management of the property andaffairs of the school district, except for property of the school dis-trict used for public library purposes under s. 43.52.

(2)GENERAL SUPERVISION. Visit and examine the schools ofthe school district, advise the school teachers and administrative staff regarding the instruction, government and progress of the pupils and exercise general supervision over such schools.

(3)TAX FOR OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE.

(a) On or before November 1, determine the amount necessary to be raised to operate and maintain the schools of the school district and public library facilities operated by the school district under s. 43.52, if the annual meeting has not voted a tax sufficient for such purposes for the school year.

(5)REPAIR OF SCHOOL BUILDINGS.
Keep the school buildings and grounds in good repair, suitably equipped and in safe and sanitary condition at all times. The school board shall establish an annual building maintenance schedule.

(14)COURSE OF STUDY.
Determine the school course of study.

(17)UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SYSTEM TUITION.
Pay the tuition of any pupil enrolled in the school district and attending an institution within the University of Wisconsin System if the pupil is not participating in the program under s. 118.55, the course the pupil is attending at the university is not offered in the school district and the pupil will receive high school credit for the course.

Ed Hughes:

Thanks for contacting us. Can you be a bit more specific about what you are looking for? A general statement about the appropriate line between administration and Board responsibilities? Something more specific about budgeting and accounting, or specific program reviews? And if so, what? I confess that I haven't followed whatever is going on with the Seatte school board.

My followup:

I am looking for your views on BOE responsibilities vis a vis the Administration, staff and the community.

Two timely specifics, certainly are:

a) ongoing budget problems, such as the maintenance referendum spending, and

b) curricular matters such as reading programs, which, despite decades of annual multi-million dollar expenditures have failed to "move the needle".

The Seattle District's "problems managing its money" matter apparently prompted more Board involvement.

Finally, I do recall a BOE discussion where you argued in favor of limits on Administrative oversight. Does my memory serve?

Best wishes,

Jim

Marj Passman:

Here is the answer to your question on Evaluation which also touches on the Board's ultimate role as the final arbiter on District Policy.

Part of the Strategic Plan, and, one of the Superintendants goals that he gave the Board last year, was the need to develop a "District Evaluation Protocol". The Board actually initiated this by asking for a Study of our Reading Program last February. This protocol was sent to the Board this week and seems to be a timely and much needed document.

Each curricular area would rotate through a seven year cycle of examination. In addition, the Board of Education would review annually a list of proposed evaluations. There will be routine reports and updates to the Board while the process continues and, of course, a final report. At any time the Board can make suggestions as to what should be evaluated and can make changes in the process as they see fit. In other words, the Board will certainly be working within its powers as Overseer of MMSD.

This Protocol should be on the MMSD web site and I recommend reading it in
depth.

I am particularly pleased with the inclusion of "perception" - interviews, surveys with parents and teachers. I have been leery of just masses of data analysis predetermining the success or failure of children. Our children must not be reduced to dots on a chart. Tests must be given but many of our students are succeeding in spite of their test scores.

I have a problem with a 7 year cycle and would prefer a shorter one. We need to know sooner rather than later if a program is working or failing. I will bring this up at Monday's Board meeting.

I will be voting for this Protocol but will spend more time this weekend studying it before my final vote.

Marj

Evaluation of the Madison School District Superintendent

Madison School Board. The Board of Education will evaluate Superintendent Dan Nerad Monday evening, during a closed session according to the online agenda.

Dan was hired in 2008, after a long tenure as Superintendent of the Green Bay public schools.

Another Madison Maintenance Referendum? District Administration Facility Assessment Report and Database

Erik Kass, Assistant Superintendent for Business Services 6.5mb pdf:

This project began when the Board of Education approved the contract with Durrant Engineering in April of2009. Durrant was hired to provide a full condition assessment of all school district buildings to identify long and short-term repair needs.

The vision of this project was to deliver to the school district a living database that would aid in the budgeting and planning process into the future.

The study focused primarily on all engineering systems and equipment, but also included an in-depth study of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) issues our school district faces. The study didn't include roofing projects, as that work has already been completed and is continually updated on an annual basis. For the assessment, trained professional engineers visited every site within the school district, evaluating systems and conditions, while also taking actual photographs to integrate into the report. This work transitioned into a grading system that has become part of the database delivered to the school district for future planning.

All of the information gathered and organized into the database format provides a lot of functionality for the school district moving forward.

Each item has actual digital photos attached for reference, cost ranges are summarized for each item, and the ability to sort the information in various ways are examples o f the functionality of the database.

Four individuals from Durrant Engineering will be present to provide a more in-depth review of the work that was completed. This presentation will also include a demonstration ofthe database that was created to show the functionality provided to the district with this tool.

D. Describe the action requested of the BOE - Administration is looking for the Board of Education to accept the maintenance project study with the database which is the planning tool to be used for future maintenance projects.

......

Next Steps - It is the intent of Administration to work toward creating a multi-year project plan, along with projected funds necessary to implement this plan each year. This work will begin upon approval by the Board ofthe information and data within the database, and will become important work of the new Director for the division of Building Services. Our goal is to return to the Board in May/June 2011 to present this multi-year plan with projected sources of funding.

Bold added.

The District has apparently been unable to account for $23,000,000 spent via the 2005 "maintenance referendum". Additional commentary here. Notes and links on the 2005 maintenance referendum (two out of three MMSD questions failed).

Somerset Board of Education hopes to not increase taxes

Dave Newman:

The preliminary budget for the 2010-11 school year was passed without any discussion by the Somerset Board of Education at its June 21 meeting.

In a discussion with District Administrator Randy Rosburg following the meeting, he said the board has good intentions with its next budget.

The preliminary budget that was passed included a tax levy that would increase from $8.049 million to $8.097 million, an increase of six-tenths of a percent. Rosburg said it is the board's intent to keep working on the budget.

"We should be able to go forward and maintain the same mil rate and same budget," Rosburg said.

There are several variables that have not been set yet that make it impossible for the board and administration to be more firm with their numbers.

The first of those unknowns is enrollment. State funding is based on each school district's enrollment on the third Friday in September.

Mandatory School Board "Professional Development"? Yes, in New Jersey. "They Need to be Educated"

Tom Mooney:

School committee members across the state will now also have to attend six hours of training each year on how to perform their community responsibilities.

Bill sponsor Sen. Hanna M. Gallo, D-Cranston, said the legislation's genesis came from "a lot of people expressing concern that not all school committee members are aware of all the [educational] issues they should."

Issues, such as how schools are financed, labor relations, teacher-performance evaluations, strategic planning and opening meetings laws that require members do their business in public, will be addressed.

"They need to be educated," said Gallo. "It's a big responsibility being on the school committee. It's our children, our students and our future, and we have to make sure we do the job to the best of our ability."

The school committee members will attend a program at Rhode Island College offered by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary education in cooperation with the Rhode Island Association of School Committees.

An obvious next step, given the growing "adult to adult" expenditures of our K-12 public schools, while, simultaneously, reducing "adult to child" time. Wow.

Related: Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman:

"Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk - the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It's as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands." Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI's vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the "impossibility" of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars ("Similar to GM"; "worry" about the children given this situation).

Charter group will run one of Boston's struggling schools

James Vaznis:

School Superintendent Carol R. Johnson will tap a charter school management organization to run one of the district's low-achieving middle schools, a first for the state, under a plan she will present tonight to the Boston School Committee.

Johnson has not decided which middle school would be overseen by Unlocking Potential Inc., a new Boston nonprofit management organization founded by a former charter school principal.

A key part of the proposal calls for converting the middle school into an in-district charter school, which would enable the management organization to operate under greater freedom from the teacher union's contract as it overhauls programs, dismisses teachers, and makes other changes.

Vicki McKenna on Reduced Class Time for Madison's Grade 6-12

25mb mp3 audio file. Much more on the increased adult to adult expenditures and staff time in the Madison School District here.

Vancouver School Board's Budget pain is not unique

Gary Mason:

Name-calling going on in the city belies reality that education budgets being slashed across Western Canada

For weeks now there has been an entertaining fight going on between the Vancouver School Board and the B.C. Education Ministry. It has often devolved into petty name-calling. There have been public tears, accusations and counter-accusations.

The public doesn't quite know who to believe.

Boards in B.C. have to balance their budgets by law. The Vancouver board says it has a $17-million shortfall, mostly because the province doesn't give it enough money to operate. Balancing its budget will mean closing schools, the board chair has said, which will be a blow to many parents and their children.

The government blames the problem on the incompetence of the board. It remains to be seen just how long Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid will allow the current group of trustees to continue running the show.

Such drama.

Reduced Grade 6-12 Class Time in the Madison School District?

Susan Troller:

What's one sure-fire way to stress out parents? Shorten the school day.

And that's exactly what the Madison school district is proposing, starting next year, for grades six to 12. According to a letter recently sent to middle school staff by Pam Nash, the district's assistant superintendent of secondary schools, ending school early on Wednesdays would allow time for teachers to meet to discuss professional practices and share ideas for helping students succeed in school.

"I am pleased to announce that as a result of your hard work, investment and commitment, as well as the support of central administration and Metro busing, together we will implement Professional Collaboration Time for the 10-11 school year!" Nash wrote enthusiastically.

Despite Nash's letter, district administrators appeared to backpedal on Monday on whether the plan is actually a done deal. Thus far there has not been public discussion of the proposal, and some teachers are expressing reservations.

Some middle school teachers, however, who also happen to be parents in the district, say they have some serious concerns about shortening the day for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders. Not only will there be less time spent on academics each week, they say, but the additional unsupervised hours will pose a problem for parents already struggling to keep tabs on their adolescent kids.

This expenditure appears to continue the trend of increased adult to adult expenditures, which, in this case, is at the expense of classroom (adult to student) time.

Related: Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman:

"Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk - the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It's as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands." Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI's vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the "impossibility" of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars ("Similar to GM"; "worry" about the children given this situation).

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes New Blog: A Number of Comments on Maintenance Spending & Budgeting

Ed Hughes:

I plan to write in more detail about why I dislike the tradition of explaining property tax levy changes in terms of the impact on the owner of a house assessed at a value of $250,000. The editorial in this morning's State Journal is evidence of how reliance on the $250,000 house trope can lead to mischief.

Here are the third and fourth paragraphs of the editorial:

"The Madison School Board just agreed to a preliminary budget that will increase the district's tax on a $250,000 home by about 9 percent to $2,770. The board was dealt a difficult hand by the state. But it didn't do nearly enough to trim spending.

"Madison Area Technical College is similarly poised to jack up its tax bite by about 8 percent to $348. MATC is at least dealing with higher enrollment. But the 8 percent jump follows a similar increase last year. And MATC is now laying the groundwork for a big building referendum."

Blog address: http://edhughesschoolblog.wordpress.com/, RSS Feed.

I'm glad Ed is writing online. Two Madison School Board seats are open during the spring, 2011 election: the two currently occupied by Ed and Marj Passman.

Detroit school board head quits after complaint alleging inappropriate behavior

Valerie Strauss:

In the you-can't-make-up-this-stuff category:

Otis Mathis, the president of the Detroit Board of Education, was accused of fondling himself for 20 minutes in a meeting with the system's superintendent and quit right after the incident, but now is seeking to take back his resignation, the Detroit Free Press reports.

In this article, the newspaper says that board Vice President Anthony Adams plans to move ahead and post the vacancy.

Superintendent Teresa N. Gueyser filed a detailed complaint addressed to Adams about Mathis, saying he used a handkerchief while masturbating in front of her the entire time she was speaking.

Her complaint says that she has witnessed other unacceptable acts by Mathis and that she had informed him some time ago to have no physical contact with her, including handshaking.

Minnesota School District School district ponders whether to get rid of class rank

Tom Weber:

School officials in Mounds View will decide next week whether to get rid of class rank for graduating seniors. If they do, they'll join a handful of other public school districts who have made the switch in recent years, and who say it might help some students get into college.

More than 400 seniors from Mounds View High School got their diplomas last week during commencement ceremonies. The school doesn't list a valedictorian -- but rather reconizes the top 10 ranking graduates during the ceremony.

That part of commencement might be gone next year, if the Mounds View School Board votes next Tuesday to ditch class rank. Class rank compares one student's grade point average with that of his or her classmates.

Principal Julie Wikelius says the top of each class at Mounds View is compacted. Plenty of students earn good grades in honors and advanced classes, which creates a tight battle for the top-ranking GPA.

Houston School District's Strategic Plan, an Update

Houston Board of Education:

HISD is working to develop a long-term strategic plan for the district that will build upon the Declaration of Beliefs and Visions and provide a road map for our future. The purpose of this strategic direction is to provide clarity around our priorities of Placing an Effective Teacher in Every Classroom, Supporting the Principal as the CEO, Developing Central Standards, Ensuring Accountability, and Cultivating Stakeholder Commitment. We believe these key, overarching strategies will help HISD achieve its goals and become the best school district in America.

To develop our long-term Strategic Direction, we are working with a in a six-month effort that started in February, 2010 and will culminate in August with the release of the final plan. The first step involved a diagnostic research effort to understand the current state of the district across a number of critical dimensions such as student achievement and organizational effectiveness. It also included analyzing other transformation efforts within HISD and across the country to ensure that the best ideas are being considered in our planning process. We have also started to gather input from members of Team HISD and we will continue to do so over the next several months. Click here to view the preliminary findings (.pdf)

True transformation does not happen overnight and cannot happen without the participation of every member of Team HISD. For this process to be authentic and meaningful, HISD needs all of you -parents, teachers, principals, students, the business community, nonprofit partners, and broader community members- to be fully engaged.

312K PDF

Ericka Mellon: Only 15 percent of HISD freshmen graduate college.

Related: Notes and links on Madison's Strategic Planning Process. More here.

Madison district got $23M from taxpayers for aging schools; where did it go?

Susan Troller:

A maintenance referendum may well be a tougher sell this time around than it was when back-to-back, five-year maintenance referendums were approved in 1999 and 2005. Not only do voters feel pinched by the ongoing recession, but taxpayers are facing a likely $225 hike in property taxes this year as part of the effort to balance the Madison schools budget, which took a heavy hit in reduced state aid.

Community support could also be compromised because a growing number of Madison School Board members have become frustrated by what they say is the district's reluctance to adequately account for how maintenance dollars have been spent.

As chair of the School Board's finance and operations committee, Lucy Mathiak has persistently asked for a complete accounting of maintenance jobs funded through the 2005 referendum. The minutes from a March 2009 committee meeting confirm that district administrators said they were working on such a report but Mathiak says the information she's received so far has been less than clear.

"Trying to get this information through two administrations, and then trying to figure it out, is exhausting. The whole thing is a mess. I'm not, by any means, the first board member to ask these kind of questions regarding accountability," Mathiak says. "You ask for straightforward documentation and you don't get it, or when it comes it's a data dump that's almost impossible to understand."

That lack of transparency might make it more difficult for other School Board members to get on board with another referendum.

"We have a responsibility to provide an accurate record of what happened with the funding," says board member Arlene Silveira, who has supported all other school referendums. "I think people understand that other projects may come up and there may be changes from the original plan, but you do need to tell them what was done and what wasn't done and why. It affects (the district's) credibility in the community."

Much more on the 2005 referendum and the District's 2010-2011 budget (including what appears to be a 10% property tax increase here.

Related: "Accountability is important, now more than ever".

It's the Public's Data: Democratizing School Board Records

J. H. Snider, via a kind reader:

Consider just a few of the questions whose answers might help a community's leaders and citizens make better decisions about how to improve their schools:

• What has been said and written about school start times in districts with comparable demographics and financial resources, but better student test scores?
• What is the relationship between student test scores and systems for electing school board members in comparable school districts?
• How do superintendent contracts vary in comparable districts?

Parents, teachers, administrators, and taxpayers have legitimate reasons to ask questions like these. But it has been incredibly hard for them to do so. One reason is that much public information remains locked in the file cabinets of America's more than 14,000 school districts. Another is that even if the information is posted to school websites, it may be posted in ways, such as a scanned document, that Internet search engines cannot read. Public information that should be available instantaneously and at no cost, like so much other information now available via search engines, instead takes hundreds of work-lifetimes and a fortune to gather--if it can be gathered at all.

Well worth reading.

Houston School District forces 162 teachers out of under-performing schools

Ericka Mellon:

More than 160 teachers in Houston ISD's under-performing middle and high schools weren't offered jobs at those campuses next year, the district announced Friday evening. The decision affects staffing at nine schools targeted in Superintendent Terry Grier's "Apollo 20" reform plan.

Of the 600 teachers at those schools last year, 358 -- or 60 percent -- learned on Friday that the district wants them to return to help with the improvement efforts. But the district is forcing 162 teachers, or 27 percent of the staff, out of those schools. The administration made the decisions based on "an exhaustive data-driven evaluation" of the teachers, according to the news release, which didn't specify what data were used.

An additional 80 teachers at the targeted schools previously had decided to retire, resign or transfer to other campuses, according to HISD. "In some cases, teachers opted not to stay due to a personal conflict with the longer school year and longer school day schedules of the Apollo schools," the news release said.

Evaluating Curricular Programs in the Madison School District

Madison School District Administration 2.8MB PDF:

I. Introduction
A. Title or topic - District Evaluation Protocol - The presentation is in response to the need to provide timely and prioritized information to the Board of Education around programs and interventions used within the District. The report describes a recommended approach to formalizing the program evaluation process within the District.

B. Presenters
Kurt Kiefer - Chief Information Office/Director of Research and Evaluation
Lisa Wachtel- Executive Director of Teaching & Learning
Steve Hartley - Chief of Staff

C. Background information - As part of the strategic plan it was determined that priority must be given to systematically collect data around programs and services provided within the district. The purposes for such information vary from determining program and intervention effectiveness for specific student outcomes, to customer satisfaction, to cost effectiveness analyses. In addition, at the December 2009 Board meeting the issue of conducting program evaluation in specific curricular areas was discussed. This report provides specific recommendations on how to coordinate such investigations and studies.

D. Action requested - The administration is requesting that the Board approve this protocol such that it becomes the model by which priority is established for conducting curricular, program, and intervention evaluations into the future.

II. Summary of Current Information

A. Synthesis of the topic· School districts are expected to continuously improve student achievement and ensure the effective use of resources. Evaluation is the means by which school systems determine the degree to which schools, programs, departments, and staff meet their goals as defined by their roles and responsibilities. It involves the collection of data that is then transformed into useful results to inform decisions. In particular, program evaluation is commonly defined as the systematic assessment of the operation and/or outcomes of a program, compared to a set of explicit or implicit standards as a means of contributing to the improvement of the program.

Program evaluation is a process. The first step to evaluating a program is to have a clear understanding of why the evaluation is being conducted in the first place. Focusing the evaluation helps an evaluator identify the most crucial questions and how those questions can be realistically answered given the context of the program and resources available. With a firm understanding of programs and/or activities that might be evaluated, evaluators consider who is affected by the program (stakeholders) and who might receive and or use information resulting from the evaluation (audiences). It is critical that the administration work with the

Evaluating the effectiveness of Madison School District expenditures on curriculum (such as math and reading recovery) along with professional development (adult to adult programs) has long been discussed by some Board and community members.

Madison School District Board of Education Progress Report--March through June 2010

Maya Cole, Board President & Beth Moss Board Vice-President, Via email:

The 2009-10 school year is over, and the Board is wrapping up a very busy spring 2010. After several months of hard work, the Board finalized the preliminary 2010-11 budget on June 1. For the second year in a row, the state legislature decreased the amount of per pupil state aid by 15%. This decrease in revenue, coupled with a decrease in property values in the Madison Metropolitan School District, created a much larger than usual budget shortfall. This year is different because unlike previous years when the Board of Education was not allowed to raise property taxes to cover the shortfall, this year the state gave the Board the authority to raise taxes by an extreme amount. The Board and administration have worked hard to mitigate the tax impact while preserving programs in our schools.

2010-11 Budget Details:

The Board approved a preliminary budget of $360,131,948 after creating savings of over $13 million across all departments in the district. This budget represents a decrease of over $10 million from 2009-10. The final tax impact on a home of average value ($250k) is $225. The Board made reductions that did not directly affect instruction in the classroom, avoiding mass teacher lay-offs as experienced by many districts around the country and state.

Other State action:

The School Age Guarantee for Education (SAGE) Act was changed from funding K-3 class sizes of 15:1 to 18:1. The Board is considering how to handle this change in state funding.

Race to the Top is a competitive grant program run through the federal government. The state of Wisconsin applied for Race to the Top funding in round 1 and was denied. The Board approved the application for the second round of funding. Federal money will be awarded to states that qualify and the MMSD could receive $8,239,396.

Board of Education Election:

Thank you for 6 years of service and good luck to Johnny Winston, Jr. Taking his seat is James Howard, an economist with the Forest Service and MMSD parent. New Board officers are Maya Cole, president, Beth Moss, vice president, Ed Hughes, clerk, and James Howard, treasurer.

Sarah Maslin, our student representative from West High School, will be off to Yale University in the fall. Thank you for your service and good luck, Sarah! Congratulations to Wyeth Jackson, also from West, who won the election for student representative to the Board of Education. Jessica Brooke from La Follette will return as Student Senate president and alternate to the BOE Student Representative.

Other news:

In April the board received the following reports:

The Facility Assessment Report, a compilation of district maintenance needs over the next 5 years.

The Board of Education/Superintendent Communication Plan, providing a template for reports to the Board.

The District Reorganization Plan, a plan to restructure the administration and professional development department of the district.

The Board held a public hearing on the proposed budget at UW Space Place. In addition, the School Food Initiative Committee and the 4-K Advisory Committee met.

In May the Strategic Planning Steering Committee met. Stakeholders reviewed accomplishments achieved thus far and discussed and reprioritized action steps for the next year. A second public hearing on the budget was also held in May.

In June the Board finalized the Preliminary Budget after a statutory public hearing. During committee meetings on June 7, the ReAL grant team presented action plans for each of the large high schools and gave the Board an update on the ReAL grant and the Wallace grant. The four high schools have collaborated for the past two years to improve engagement and achievement at our high schools. The Student Services and Code of Conduct/Expulsions Committee presented a proposal for a new code of conduct and abeyance, with an emphasis on restorative justice.

Congratulations and good luck to all graduates! Have a safe and restful summer break.

Google Apps (email, docs & calendar) for Madison School District Staff & Students Proposed by the Administration

550K PDF:

Technical Services has planned to replace our Eudora student email system since 2008 and identified this as Activity 50 in the June 2010 Technology Plan, approved by the Board of Education. Consideration has also been given to replacing our GroupWise staff email system since instability of the web version ofthis system became a problem beginning in October 2009. Demands on our staff email system have always been greater due to our need for highly secure, robust and reliable local and remote access, shared calendaring, and integration with an archival system allowing for a seven year retention. This has been a complicated system and is core to many critical business and legal functions ofthe District.

An request for proposals (RFP) for alternatives to replace our student email, with the caveat that our staff email might be considered as well, was released in fall 2009, generating responses from nine vendors, representing 11 products. Both Microsoft's Live@edu and Google's Gmail have been final contenders for student email and following product reviews in March by 13 teachers, six technical staffand four administrators, consensus built around migrating both student and staff email to Gmail. In addition to email, Google Apps for Education includes access to a wide variety ofGoogle tools including Docs (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, fonus) and Google calendar.
Financial considerations:

• Moving to Gmail for both students and staff will enable free email account hosting and cost $67,320/yr for the use ofPostini for staff email archiving. We will continue to use Novell's ZenWorks for desktop application maintenance, at a cost of $28,000/yr through the 2010-2011 fiscal year. This approach would cost $95,320/yr. Discussion around creating and maintaining Gmail accounts from Infinite Campus and Lawson, as well as migrating staff calendars and live email accounts has not concluded whether consulting help will be required, although discussions with other school districts suggest we may not need external assistance. Should technical assistance be required we would hire consulting support on a time and materials basis, for this help.
• If instead, the District stayed with GroupWise bundled with ZenWorks, Novell's annual maintenance would be $54,378/yr. Continuing use our current staff email archive product would cost $29,300/yr. This approach would cost $83,678/yr, an annual savings ofless than $12,000. However, this approach will continue to require growth in data storage and requires an estimated 0.5 FTE allocation to maintain.

Related: Yale delays switch to Gmail and Oregon educational system offers Google Apps.

Madison School District Student Code of Conduct Administration Update

727K PDF:

In response to the questions raised at the June 7 meeting of the Performance and Achievement Committee, the following information is shared in hopes ofclarifying proposed changes to the Student Code of Conduct:

Will there be a more specific definition ofbullying than the one that currently exists in the Explanation of Conduct Rules and Terms?

The following definition comes from the draft Anti-Bullying & Anti-Harassment Protocol and it, or a similar definition, will be brought forward with the version of the revised Code for which Board approval will be sought in July:

Bullying is the intentional action by an individual or group of individuals to infiict physical, emotional or mental suffering on another individual or group of individuals when there is an imbalance of real or perceived power. Harassing and bullying behavior includes any electronic, written, verbal or physical act or conduct toward an individual which creates an objectively hostile or offensive environment that meets one or more of the following conditions:

Places the individual in reasonable fear of harm to one self or one's property
Has a detrimental effect on the individual's personal, physical or mental health
Has a detrimental effect on the individual's academic performance
Has the effect of interfering with the individual's ability to participate in or benefit from any curricular, extracurricular, recreational, or any other activity provided by the school
Has the intent to intimidate, annoy or alarm another individual in a manner likely to cause annoyance or harm without legitimate purpose
Has personal contact with another individual with the intent to threaten, intimidate or alarm that individual without legitimate purpose

Seattle Board Work Sessions - Math and Advanced Learning

Charlie Mas:

The Board has two work sessions scheduled for this month.

The first, today, Thursday June 10 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm, will be on Math. No agenda details are available but there is sure to be a powerpoint and it is sure to appear on the District web site soon. I have to believe that the Board is looking for a report on the implementation of the curricular alignment, the implementation of the Theory of Action from the High School textbook adoption, and some update on student academic progress in math.

Next week, on Wednesday, June 16, from 4:00pm to 5:30pm, will be a Board Work Session on Advanced Learning. I honestly cannot imagine what the District staff will have to report

Madison School District 2009-2010 $416,060,561 Budget Update through 4/30/2010

2.2MB PDF. Estimated 2009-2010 spending is $416,060,561, up from 2008-2009's 408,558,511.

The Teaching & Learning Department's budget (page 10) is up 6% from 7,895,226 in 2008-2009 to 8,379,130 in the current 2009-2010 budget.

The Superintendent's budget (page 12) is up 25% from 14,520,867 in 2008-2009 to 18,218,072 in 2009-2010.

Madison School District Global Academy Resolution

236K PDF:

A consortium of school districts including: Belleville, Middelton Cross Plains, Mt. Horeb, Oregon, McFarland, Verona Area, Madison and Wisconsin Heights are actively and energetically seeking partnerships with business, academic and manufacturing sectors in the Dane County region in an effort to create and staff what is referred to as The Global Academy. The Global Academy will be a hybrid secondary / post-secondary learning environment designed primarily for high school juniors and seniors from the consortium districts. The Global Academy will provide specialized and advanced training in the following areas that culminate in two year or four year degrees: Architecture and Construction, HealthScience, InformationTechnology, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

Rationale:

Regional, national and global need for specialized and advanced skills, along with growing competition for jobs that require those skills from advanced and developing countries is changing the curriculum landscape for high schools in the United States. In Wisconsin, public high schools are making valiant efforts to respond to this need, but struggle to do so given revenue caps and shrinking budgets. Neighboring school districts produce similar programs that are barely sustainable and represent an inefficient duplication of programs and services. A consortium of school districts providing specialized and advanced programs, pooling resources, talent and students is a much more viable and sustainable method ofproviding educational programs that prepare students for 21st Century career opportunities. Additionally, partnering with business, manufacturing and academic sectors will add expertise, latest trend information and greatly increased opportunities for obtaining certifications, advanced standing and credits in institutions of higher learning.

Madison Metropolitan School District Student Conduct and Discipline Plan Part II:

1MB PDF:

The district has developed over time a very detailed Student Code of Conduct that clearly outlines student misbehavior and prescribes suspension and expulsion as the specific responses for some misbehavior. While the current code is clear regarding which misbehaviors require suspension and a recommendation for expulsion, it does not offer administrators a sufficient array of options that can be used to intervene in order to support behavior change in students when suspension and expulsion are not an appropriate consequence.

Current research shows that a reactive model in the absence of positive, proactive strategies is ineffective. As an evidence-based national model that has recently been adopted at the state level in Wisconsin, Positive Behavior Supports (PBS) provides the mechanism for schools to shift to data driven decision making and practices grounded in a tiered approach that emphasizes teaching, modeling and reinforcing pro-social skills and behavior. Many districts across the country are developing Codes of Conduct that align with the PBS Model.

As all elementary, middle and high schools move toward full implementation of Positive Behavior Supports (PBS), it is important that the Code of Conduct is aligned with the PBS model which is grounded in teaching appropriate behaviors to students and acknowledging students for learning and exhibiting positive behavior. PBS provides a framework for defining and teaching in positive terms what is expected from students as behavior expectations that are defined only by
Appendix LLL-12-11 June 14,2010
III.
rules and "what not to do" provide an inadequate understanding for students and families.
The proposed Code o f Conduct represents a step toward improved alignment with the PBS model and reflects a shift in thinking from an approach that relies heavily on rules, consequences and reactive practices to an approach that provides a multi-tiered, progressive continuum of interventions to address a wide range of student behavior. While the current code is used primarily by administrators to determine which misbehaviors are appropriate for suspension and expulsion, the proposed code would also be used by teachers and other staff to determine which behaviors they are expected to handle in the classroom and which behaviors should be referred to the administrator or designee. It will provide all staff with multiple options in three (3) categories of intervention: Education, Restoration and Restriction (see details in attached chart). In addition, the proposed code presented in 'chart form' would be used as a teaching tool to give students a visual picture o f the increasing severity o f behaviors and the increasing intensity of interventions and consequences that result from engaging in inappropriate behaviors.

Related: Disciplinary Alternatives: Abeyance Option Phoenix Program:

The District has developed overtime, an extensive and very clear expulsion process, that is compliant with state and federal law, that focuses on procedure and is based on zero tolerance for some behaviors, In the 2007/08 school year, 198 students were recommended for expulsion with 64 actually being expelled. In the 2008/09, 182 students were recommended for expulsion with 44 actually being expelled.

Students are expelled from two to three semesters depending on the violation with an option to apply for early readmission after one semester if conditions are met. Approximately 72% of the students meet early readmission conditions and retum after one semester. Currently, no services are provided to regular education students who are expelled, Expelled special education students are entitled to receive Disciplinary Free Appropriate Public Education services.

Concems have been raised by members of the Board of Education, MMSD staff and community about the zero tolerance model, lack of services to expelled students and the significant disruption caused in the lives of these students, families and neighborhoods when students are expelled.

Approval is being sought for the implementation of an abeyance option, the Phoenix Program, including the budget, to be implemented at the beginning of the 2010/11 school year,

Madison High School REal Grant Report to the School Board

Madison School District [4.6MB PDF]:

District administration, along with school leadership and school staff; have examined the research that shows thatfundamental change in education can only be accomplished by creating the opportunity for teachers to talk with one another regarding their instructional practice. The central theme and approach for REaL has heen to improve and enhance instructional practice through collaboration in order to increase student achievement. Special attention has been paid to ensure the work is done in a cross - district, interdepartmental and collaborative manner. Central to the work, are district and school based discussions focused on what skills and knowledge students need to know and be able to do, in order to be prepared for post-secondary education and work. Systemized discussions regarding curriculum aligmnent, course offerings, assessment systems, behavioral expectations and 21 st century skills are occurring across all four high schools and at the district level.

Collaborative professional development has been established to ensure that the work capitalizes on the expertise of current staff, furthers best practices that are already occurring within the MMSD high school classrooms, and enhances the skills of individuals at all levels from administration to classroom teachers needed. Our work to date has laid the foundation for further and more in-depth work to occur.

Since March of 2010, MMSD district and school staff has completed the following work to move the goals of the REaL Grant forward. Specific accomplishments aligning to REaL grant goals are listed below.

REaL Grant Goal 1: Improve Student Achievement for all students

• Accomplishment I: Completed year 2 of professional development for Department Chairpersons to become instructional leaders. The work will continue this summer with the first ever Department Chairperson and Assistant Principal Summer Institute to focus on leading and fostering teacher collaboration in order to improve student achievement.
• Accomplishment 2: Continued with planning for implementing the ACT Career and College Readiness Standards and the EP AS system. Visited with area districts to see the
  impact of effective implementation the EP AS system in order to ensure successful implementation within MMSD.
• Accomplishment 3: Piloted the implementation of the EXPLORE test at Memorial, Sherman and with 9th grade AVID students at all four comprehensive high schools.
• Accomplishment 4: This summer, in partnership with Monona Grove High School and Association of Wisconsin School Administrators (AWSA), MMSD will host the Aligned by Design: Aligning High School and Middle School English, Science, Math and Social Studies Courses to College/Career Readiness Skills. To be attended by teams of MMSD high school and middle school staff in July of 2010.
• Accomplishment 5: Continued focused planning and development of a master communication system for the possible implementation of early release Professional Collaboration Time at MMSD High Schools. Schools have developed plans for effective teaming structures and accountability measures.
• Accomplishment 6: District English leadership team developed recommendations for essential understandings in the areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening for 9th and 10th grades. Following this successful model, similar work will occur in Math, Science and Social studies.

Related: Small Learning Community and English 10.

Bruce King, who evaluated the West High's English 9 (one English class for all students) approach offers observations on the REal program beginning on page 20 of the PDF file.

How to help struggling schools in a budget crisis

Jay Matthews:

Daniel A. Domenech arrived in Fairfax County 13 years ago as the new schools superintendent.

He was a former elementary school teacher with a reputation for raising achievement for low-income students. But he had to prove himself, fast, in difficult circumstances. Many Fairfax schools, particularly in the Route 1 corridor, were doing worse than the county average in math and reading, and many parents did not want to hear about it.

Domenech launched Project Excel, identifying 20 elementary schools as low-performing and giving them more class time and money to improve. But at community forums, people asked him why he was stigmatizing schools full of good people trying their best. Domenech shook his head. "If you are satisfied with the education your kids are getting, this is fine," he said. "But I'm not."

When he left seven years later, many Excel schools had turned around, and Domenech was a national figure, eventually becoming executive director of the American Association of School Administrators. Now his successor, School Superintendent Jack D. Dale, faces his own crisis: deep budget cuts that have ended the Excel program that made Domenech's reputation. I asked the former superintendent how he felt about that.

Comments on the Madison School District's Budget

Susan Troller:

Madison's public school budget process is lurching to a preliminary close tonight -- final numbers will be available in October after the state revenue picture is clear and district enrollment will be set. Tonight there's a public meeting at 5 p.m. at the Doyle Building for last minute pleas and entreaties, 545 West Dayton St., followed by a School Board workshop session, which is likely to include some additional budget amendments from board members. Current projections suggest there will be an increase of about $225 property tax increase on the average $250,000 home.

It's been a particularly painful process this time around, as illustrated by a recent e-mail I got. It came from one of my favorite teachers and said that due to some of the recent budget amendments, the Madison school district's elementary school health offices would no longer be able to provide band-aids for teachers to use in their classrooms. Instead, children would be required to bring them from home with other supplies, like tissues or crayons.

Related: Madison Schools' 2010-2011 Budget Amendments: Task Force Spending Moratorium, Increase consulting, travel and Professional Development Spending.

A Madison School District Property Tax Increase Outlook (39% over the next 6 years) including 4 Year Old Kindergarten (4K).

Madison School District's 2009-2010 Citizen's Budget Released ($421,333,692 Gross Expenditures, $370,287,471 Net); an Increase of $2,917,912 from the preliminary $418,415,780 2009-2010 Budget.

Much more on the 2010-2011 Madison School District Budget here.

The Madison School District = General Motors?:

Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman spoke to the Madison Rotary Club on "What Wisconsin's Public Education Model Needs to Learn from General Motors Before it is too late." 7MB mp3 audio (the audio quality is not great, but you can hear the talk if you turn up the volume!).

Zimman's talk ranged far and wide. He discussed Wisconsin's K-12 funding formula (it is important to remember that school spending increases annually (from 1987 to 2005, spending grew by 5.10% annually in Wisconsin and 5.25% in the Madison School District), though perhaps not in areas some would prefer.

"Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk - the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It's as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands." Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI's vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the "impossibility" of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars ("Similar to GM"; "worry" about the children given this situation).

Zimman noted that the most recent State of Wisconsin Budget removed the requirement that arbitrators take into consideration revenue limits (a district's financial condition @17:30) when considering a District's ability to afford union negotiated compensation packages. The budget also added the amount of teacher preparation time to the list of items that must be negotiated..... "we need to breakthrough the concept that public schools are an expense, not an investment" and at the same time, we must stop looking at schools as a place for adults to work and start treating schools as a place for children to learn."

Madison Schools' 2010-2011 Budget Amendments: Task Force Spending Moratorium, Increase consulting, travel and Professional Development Spending

The Madison School Board meets Tuesday evening, June 1, 2010 to discuss the 2010-2011 budget. A few proposed budget amendments were posted recently:

• Lucy Mathiak: Task Force Funding Moratorium [57K PDF]:

  I recommend that we place a moratorium on all funding for implementation of task force recommendations, with two exceptions:
  1) Funding for middle school teachers to take UW-Madison courses designed to provide algebraic concepts, reasoning, and other content for middle school math teachers who are not proficient in upper level mathematics content. (up to $67,000) [Math Task Force]
  2) Funding for fine arts teachers to work over the summer to develop a curriculum guide that is aligned to the recommendations of the Fine Arts Task Force and with state standards. (up to $20,000)

  .....

  This is just one example. The recent correspondence from teachers and community members regarding the difficulties in producing a quality fine arts curriculum guide point to similar issues in that curricular area. It is impossible to produce change in an organization that is not willing to change. As such, it is hard to rationalize continued funding for initiatives with little or no relationship to the task forces' findings and recommendations at a time when resources are scarce.

• Superintendent Dan Nerad: Reinstate recruiter travel budget: $30,000
• Superintendent Dan Nerad: Reinstate the Administrative Professional Development funds to $112,351.

  The board decreased Administrative Professional Development (Conference Travel) to a total of $25,000 ($10,000 Elementary, $10,000 Secondary and $5,000 Doyle-based staff). This amendment would increase this dollar amount by $87,350 to a total of $112,351..

• Superintendent Dan Nerad: Reinstate $75,000 to consultant budget.

Much more on the 2010-2011 Madison School District budget here.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Easy Money, Hard Truths & Local Maintenance Referendum Audit?

David Einhorn:

Are you worried that we are passing our debt on to future generations? Well, you need not worry.

Before this recession it appeared that absent action, the government's long-term commitments would become a problem in a few decades. I believe the government response to the recession has created budgetary stress sufficient to bring about the crisis much sooner. Our generation -- not our grandchildren's -- will have to deal with the consequences.

According to the Bank for International Settlements, the United States' structural deficit -- the amount of our deficit adjusted for the economic cycle -- has increased from 3.1 percent of gross domestic product in 2007 to 9.2 percent in 2010. This does not take into account the very large liabilities the government has taken on by socializing losses in the housing market. We have not seen the bills for bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and even more so the Federal Housing Administration, which is issuing government-guaranteed loans to non-creditworthy borrowers on terms easier than anything offered during the housing bubble. Government accounting is done on a cash basis, so promises to pay in the future -- whether Social Security benefits or loan guarantees -- do not count in the budget until the money goes out the door.

A good percentage of the structural increase in the deficit is because last year's "stimulus" was not stimulus in the traditional sense. Rather than a one-time injection of spending to replace a cyclical reduction in private demand, the vast majority of the stimulus has been a permanent increase in the base level of government spending -- including spending on federal jobs. How different is the government today from what General Motors was a decade ago? Government employees are expensive and difficult to fire. Bloomberg News reported that from the last peak businesses have let go 8.5 million people, or 7.4 percent of the work force, while local governments have cut only 141,000 workers, or less than 1 percent.

Locally, the Madison School Board meets Tuesday evening, 6/1 to discuss the 2010-2011 budget, which looks like it will raise property taxes at least 10%. A number of issues have arisen around the District's numbers, including expenditures from the 2005 maintenance referendum.

I've not seen any updates on Susan Troller's April, 12, 2010 question: "Where did the money go?" It would seem that proper resolution of this matter would inform the public with respect to future spending and tax increases.

Some 2009 Email Messages to Comments @ the Madison School District

These two documents [1MB .txt or 2MB PDF] include some email messages sent to "comments@madison.k12.wi.us" from 1/1/2009 through September, 2009.

I requested the messages via an open records request out of concerns expressed to me that public communications to this email address were not always making their way to our elected representatives on the Madison Board of Education. Another email address has since been created for direct public communication to the Board of education: board@madison.k12.wi.us

There has been extensive back and forth on the scope of the District's response along with the time, effort and expense required to comply with this request. I am thankful for the extensive assistance I received with this request.

I finally am appreciative of Attorney Dan Mallin's fulfillment (a few items remain to be vetted) and response, included below:

As we last discussed, attached are several hundreds of pages of e-mails (with non-MMSD emails shortened for privacy purposes) that:

(1) Are not SPAM / commercial solicitations / organizational messages directed to "school districts" generally
(2) Are not Pupil Records
(3) Are not auto-generated system messages (out of office; undeliverable, etc.)
(4) Are not inquiries from MMSD employees about how to access their work email via the web when the web site changed (which e-mails typically contained their home email address)
(5) Are not technical web-site related inquiries (e.g., this link is broken, etc.)
(6) Are not random employment inquiries / applications from people who didn't know to contact the Human Resources department and instead used the comments address (e.g., I'm a teacher and will be moving to Madison, what job's are open?).
(7) Are not geneology-related inquiries about relatives and/or long-lost friends/teachers/etc.
(8) Are not messages that seek basic and routine information that would be handled clerically(e.g., please tell me where I can find this form; how do I get a flyer approved for distribution; what school is ____ address assigned to; when is summer school enrollment, etc.)

Some of the above may have still slipped in, but the goal was to keep copying costs as low as possible. Once all of the e-mails within your original request were read to determine content, it took over 2 hours to isolate the attached messages electronically from the larger pool that also included obvious pupil records, but you've been more than patient with this process and you have made reasonable concessions that saved time for the District in other ways, and there will be no additional copying charge assessed.

It would be good public policy to post all communications sent to the District. Such a simple effort may answer many questions and provide a useful look at our K-12 environment.

I am indebted to Chan Stroman Roll for her never ending assistance on this and other matters.

Related: Vivek Wadhwa: The Open Gov Initiative: Enabling Techies to Solve Government Problems

Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/22/the-open-government-initiative-enabling-techies-to-solve-problems/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29#ixzz0ohshEHIG

While grandma flips through photo albums on her sleek iPad, government agencies (and most corporations) process mission-critical transactions on cumbersome web-based front ends that function by tricking mainframes into thinking that they are connected to CRT terminals. These systems are written in computer languages like Assembler and COBOL, and cost a fortune to maintain. I've written about California's legacy systems and the billions of dollars that are wasted on maintaining these. Given the short tenure of government officials, lobbying by entrenched government contractors, and slow pace of change in the enterprise-computing world, I'm not optimistic that much will change - even in the next decade. But there is hope on another front: the Open Government Initiative. This provides entrepreneurs with the data and with the APIs they need to solve problems themselves. They don't need to wait for the government to modernize its legacy systems; they can simply build their own apps.

Don't lose sight of why we have public schools

Marj Passman:

The need to succeed at teaching children is at the basic core of everything we do in Madison schools.

So why did the very society that depends on us to educate their most precious beings, their children, come to be so apprehensive about us? How did this happen? When did our state Legislature and many of our fellow citizens decide that an increase and/or a change in public financing of education was not in their interest?

Perhaps we all need to calm down and ask ourselves the very basic question of why we have public schools. The following tenets are a good start:

1. To provide universal access to free education.

2. To guarantee equal opportunities for all children.

3. To unify a diverse population.

4. To prepare people for citizenship in a democratic society.

5. To prepare people to become economically self-sufficient.

6. To improve social conditions.

7. To pass knowledge from one generation to the next.

8. To share the accumulated wisdom of the ages.

9. To instill in our young people a love for a lifetime of learning.

10. To bring a richness and depth to life.

Many Americans have either forgotten, disregard, or no longer view public schools as needed to achieve the above. Some, not all, view the public schools in a much more narrow and self-indulgent way -- "What are the public schools going to do for me and my child?" -- and do not look at what the schools so richly provide for everyone in a democratic society.

There are many reasons that public education institutions face credibility challenges, including:

• An increasing focus on "adult employment" vs educating the children - via Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman's recent speech to the Madison Rotary Club.
• Ideology in certain spaces such as Reading Recovery, regardless of results.
• Poor communication and a lack of transparency on financial matters and safety matters.
• The ongoing question of whether more money makes a difference.

Having said that, there are certainly some remarkable people teaching our children, in many cases resisting curriculum reduction schemes and going the extra mile. In my view, our vital public school climate would be far richer and, overall, more effective with less bureaucracy, more charters (diffused governance) and a more open collaborative approach with nearby education institutions.

Madison taxpayers have long supported spending policies far above those of many other communities. The current economic situation requires a hard look at all expenditures, particularly those that cannot be seen as effective for the core school mission: educating our children. Reading scores would be a great place to start.

The two Madison School Board seats occupied by Marj Passman and Ed Hughes are up for election in April, 2011. Interested parties should contact the Madison City Clerk's office for nomination paper deadlines.

New Madison School Board Governance: Maya Cole is President & Beth Moss Vice President

Monday evening's Madison School Board meeting included a shifting of the chairs as Maya Cole succeeds Arlene Silveira as President and Beth Moss steps in for Lucy Mathiak as Vice President. Best wishes.

Teachers' contract awaits Anchorage School Board approval

Megan Holland:

Three-year contract likely to be accepted for $1,800 raise in first year.

The contract raises the school district's wage and benefit costs by:

• $12.7 million, or 4.1 percent, the first year.

• $10.4 million, or 3.2 percent, the second year.

• $11.7 million, or 3.4 percent, the third year.

The School District plans to decrease its budget next year by about 5 percent to $789 million and is expected to make more cuts the year after that.

Approving the contract gives the School District a better ability to budget for the next three years, Comeau said.

Anchorage Education Association.

Winona School Board's Budget Reductions

Jerome Christenson:

The district faced a $3 million revenue shortfall for the coming fiscal year when it began. The board elected to cover the shortage by taking $2 million out of the district's $5.5 million fund balance and the remaining $1 million through spending cuts.

"Every decision at this point is tougher than the last," superintendent Paul Durand told the board as it began weighing the fate of historically popular and successful programs and student activities.

Most of the cuts came $2,000 or $3,000 at a time from a list of programs prepared by district administrators.

Challenged to find a way to reduce the music budget without doing away with fourth-grade orchestra, music department staff and district principals managed to trim more than $13,000 by cutting travel and other expenses from the marching and pep band programs. The savings still put the marching bands on the street for local parades and the Minnesota State Fair and puts the pep band in the stands for sporting events.

Madison School board votes to save jobs, but doesn't finalize budget yet; $250,000 home to see a $224.46 increase in property taxes, above the $2186.35 paid in 2009 (roughly 10%)

Gayle Worland:

The owner of a $250,000 Madison home would pay $224.46 more in school property taxes next winter under a budget still under discussion by the Madison School Board.

In what many -- including three board members -- thought would be a wrap-up Tuesday night of the board's two-month process to close an initial $30 million budget gap, the board voted to save most of the district jobs still on the chopping block, largely with the help of $794,491 in employee health insurance savings.

But it left several items on the table until a final vote on the preliminary budget June 1, including:

A Madison home assessed at $257,000 paid 2186.35 in Madison School District taxes last year. A $224.46 increase is about 10%......

Much more on the 2010-2011 budget here.

The next school board election is in April, 2011, when the seats currently occupied by Ed Hughes and Marj Passman will be on the ballot.

November, 2010 elections that affect K-12 taxes & spending include the governor and assembly races.

Madison School District Maintenance Report estimates $3,000 cost to replace single school toilet! What?

Susan Troller:

At $2,000 to $3,000 to replace a single toilet, and the same to repair a leaky faucet, it's no surprise some Madison School Board members are suffering sticker shock when it comes to a new facility report on short- and long-term maintenance needs for Madison's public schools.

In fact, Lucy Mathiak, board vice president, wonders if the numbers can even be trusted. "It makes me feel like I'm channeling Bill Proxmire when he challenged the costs on Pentagon toilets," she says, referring to the late U.S. senator from Wisconsin. "Frankly, getting this information cost us a lot of money and, to say the least, I'm underwhelmed with the product."

The estimates, though, might not be entirely out of whack with commercial repairs.

While swapping out an old toilet or sink at home could cost $500 or less, such a repair in an institutional or industrial setting might run upward of a couple thousand dollars, particularly if there were hazardous materials involved, or extensive tile or plumbing rework, experts say.

Related: Madison School Board member may seek audit of how 2005 maintenance referendum dollars were spent.

Secret straw poll guided Madison School Board deliberations

Gayle Worland:

Madison School Board members used a secret straw poll, conducted via e-mail, to guide their deliberations over how to close a nearly $30 million budget hole for next year.

The move has raised questions about whether the board violated the state open meetings law by coming to agreement on decisions before taking a public vote.

"In my opinion it violates the spirit of the open-meeting procedures, if not the exact letter," said Peter Fox, executive director of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association.

But board president Arlene Silveira defended the process, saying the board sought to make its handling of the 2010-11 budget as transparent as possible. With more than 200 potential budget cuts proposed by district administrators, the board needed a way to streamline the process of reviewing the cuts, she said.

Madison School Board Votes 5-2 to Continue Reading Recovery (Howard, Hughes, Moss, Passman, Silveira: Yes; Cole & Mathiak Vote No)

Gayle Worland:

With Monday's actions, the board still has about $5.6 million to deal with - either through cuts, property tax increases, or a combination of the two - when it meets again next week to finalize the district's preliminary budget for 2010-11. So far, the board has made about $10.6 million in cuts and approved a levy increase of $12.7 million, a tax hike of $141.76 for the owner of a $250,000 Madison home.

In an evening of cost shifting, the board voted to apply $1,437,820 in overestimated health care insurance costs to save 17.8 positions for Reading Recovery teachers, who focus on the district's lowest-performing readers. That measure passed 5-2, with board members Maya Cole and Lucy Mathiak voting no. The district is undergoing a review of its reading programs and Cole questioned whether it makes sense to retain Reading Recovery, which she said has a 42 percent success rate.

Related: 60% to 42%: Madison School District's Reading Recovery Effectiveness Lags "National Average": Administration seeks to continue its use.

Surprising, in light of the ongoing poor low income reading scores here and around Wisconsin. How many more children will leave our schools with poor reading skills?

The Wisconsin State Journal advocates a teacher compensation freeze (annual increase plus the "step" increases).

Governance: Madison School Board Members Proposed 2010-2011 Budget Amendments: Cole, Hughes, Mathiak, Moss & Silveira. Reading Recovery, Teaching & Learning, "Value Added Assessment" based on WKCE on the Chopping Block

Well worth reading, particularly Maya Cole's suggestions on Reading Recovery (60% to 42%: Madison School District's Reading Recovery Effectiveness Lags "National Average": Administration seeks to continue its use) spending, Administrative compensation comparison, a proposal to eliminate the District's public information position, Ed Hughes suggestion to eliminate the District's lobbyist (Madison is the only District in the state with a lobbyist), trade salary increases for jobs, Lucy Mathiak's recommendations vis a vis Teaching & Learning, the elimination of the "expulsion navigator position", reduction of Administrative travel to fund Instructional Resource Teachers, Arlene Silveira's recommendation to reduce supply spending in an effort to fund elementary school coaches and a $200,000 reduction in consultant spending. Details via the following links:

Maya Cole: 36K PDF

Ed Hughes: 127K PDF

Lucy Mathiak: 114K PDF

Beth Moss: 10K PDF

Arlene Silveira: 114K PDF

The Madison School District Administration responded in the following pdf documents:

• AA-1LegislativeLiaisonRESPONSE.pdf
• AA-2CommunityEngagementandOutreachRESPONSE.pdf
• AA-3MSCRAdultParticipationFeesRESPONSE.pdf
• AA-6BuildingServicesReviewofOrgandOperations RESPONSE.pdf
• AA-10BoardofEducationSalariesRESPONSE.pdf
• AA-11SuppliesandMaterialsBudgetsRESPONSE.pdf
• AA-12ExpulsionNavigatorPositionRESPONSE.pdf
• AA-13ConferenceTravelBudgetsRESPONSE.pdf
• AA-17StrategicPlanSchoolForestRESPONSE.pdf
• AA-22AthleticsRESPONSE.pdf

Much more on the proposed 2010-2011 Madison School District Budget here.

Madison School Board to Discuss the Superintendent's Proposed Administrative Reorganization Monday Evening

Organization Chart 352K PDF

Reorgnanization Budget 180K PDF

February, 2010 background memo from Superintendent Dan Nerad.

I spoke with the Superintendent Friday regarding the proposed reorganization. The conversation occurred subsequent to an email I sent to the School Board regarding Administrative cost growth and the proposed reduction in Superintendent direct reports.

I inquired about the reduction in direct reports, the addition of a Chief Learning Officer, or Deputy Superintendent and the apparent increased costs of this change. Mr. Nerad said that he would email updated budget numbers Monday (he said Friday that there would be cost savings). With respect to the change in direct reports, he said that the District surveyed other large Wisconsin Schools and found that those Superintendents typically had 6 to 8, maybe 9 direct reports. He also reminded me that the District formerly had a Deputy Superintendent. Art Rainwater served in that position prior to his boss, Cheryl Wilhoyte's demise. He discussed a number of reasons for the proposed changes, largely to eliminate management silos and support the District's strategic plan. He also referenced a proposed reduction in Teaching & Learning staff.

I mentioned Administrative costs vis a vis the current financial climate.

I will post the budget numbers and any related information upon receipt.

Finally, I ran into a wonderful MMSD teacher this weekend. I mentioned my recent conversation with the Superintendent. This teacher asked if I "set him straight" on the "dumbing down of the Madison School District"?

That's a good question. This teacher believes that we should be learning from Geoffrey Canada's efforts with respect to the achievement gap, particularly his high expectations. Much more on the Harlem Children's Zone here.

Finally, TJ Mertz offers a bit of commentary on Monday evening's Madison School Board meeting.

Additional Discussion on the Madison School District's 2010-2011 Budget

Gayle Worland:

"We still have the big stuff ahead, some of the harder discussions," School Board President Arlene Silveira said. "So it's good to get some of these items off the table."

Superintendent Dan Nerad started the budget discussion Monday with the news that more than nine full-time jobs for bilingual resource specialists had been double-counted in budget estimates, allowing the board to remove $632,670 in expenses for those duplicate positions.

Also, the rise in employee health insurance costs for the 2010-11 school year had been overestimated, resulting in costs that are $1.4 million less than projected, Nerad said.

Much more on the 2010-2011 budget here.

Minnesota Governor Urges Changes in Teacher Licensing

Associated Press:

Minnesota was hoping for $330 million in grants, which go to states deemed innovative in their school policies. In the next round, Minnesota can't get more than $175 million.

Pawlenty wants more latitude to let experts become teachers without going through traditional routes, to reassign teachers based on effectiveness and to more closely link teacher pay to student performance.

Democratic state Rep. Mindy Greiling said the alternative licensure proposal has a better shot than the others.

Related: An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Math Teacher Hiring Criteria by Janet Mertz:

Part of our disagreement centers around differing views regarding the math content knowledge one needs to be a highly-qualified middle school math teacher. As a scientist married to a mathematician, I don't believe that taking a couple of math ed courses on how to teach the content of middle school mathematics provides sufficient knowledge of mathematics to be a truly effective teacher of the subject. Our middle school foreign language teachers didn't simply take a couple of ed courses in how to teach their subject at the middle school level; rather, most of them also MAJORED or, at least, minored in the subject in college. Why aren't we requiring the same breathe and depth of content knowledge for our middle school mathematics teachers? Do you really believe mastery of the middle school mathematics curriculum and how to teach it is sufficient content knowledge for teachers teaching math? What happens when students ask questions that aren't answered in the teachers' manual? What happens when students desire to know how the material they are studying relates to higher-level mathematics and other subjects such as science and engineering?

The MMSD has been waiting a long time already to have math-qualified teachers teaching mathematics in our middle schools. Many countries around the world whose students outperform US students in mathematics only hire teachers who majored in the subject to teach it. Other school districts in the US are taking advantage of the current recession with high unemployment to hire and train people who know and love mathematics, but don't yet know how to teach it to others.

Two Madison School Board Candidates on "Places to Cut the Budget"

The Capital Times.

Watch a recent Madison School Board Candidate Forum here. The spring election is tomorrow, April 6, 2010.

Mitch Henck & Don Severson on the Madison School District's Budget

13.1mb mp3.

Mitch Henck & Don Severson.

Much more on the 2010-2011 Madison School District budget here.

A New Maintenance Referendum? The latest Madison School District Facilities Review

Madison School District Administration [2.3MB PDF]:

The 2010 Facility Assessment identifies $85,753,506 of immediate maintenance needs. It does not address items that have been traditionally handled through our work order system and the annual operating budget. This includes items such as floor tile, carpeting, casework, ceilings tile, painting, wall treatments, minor fencing projects, grounds maintenance and window treatments. The Facility Assessment includes projects divided into specific areas

1. Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing, Building Envelope, gym floors, interior doors, high school athletic fields.
2. Roofing
3. Pavement
4. Playgrounds

In previous years, all projects were prioritized in order to insure life safety items took precedence over other items like parking lots. It is now necessary to spread funding over multiple trade areas in order to prevent one area from becoming excessively deteriorated. The 2010 Facility Assessment recommends funding all areas offacility needs annually, at varying levels, according to the condition assigned.

A Summary of Research that Supports the Instructional Resource Teacher Positions (IRTs) in Madison's Elementary Schools

Madison School District: [1.5MB PDF]

Professional development is the manner with which we all learn and grow in our profession. The needs of our students continue to grow and change. The expectations of teachers continue to develop. Larry Wilson once said, "Our options are to learn the new game, the rules, the roles of the participants, and how the rewards are distributed, or to continue practicing our present skills and become the best players in a game that is no longer being played." Just as we expect doctors, lawyers, and other professions to be current on the latest research and methods, our teachers need to continue developing their skills through professional development.

• "Professional development is the key to the success of a school." (Holler, Callender & Skinner, 2007)
• "One of the most cost-effective methods for making significant gains in student performance on standardized tests is providing teachers with better content knowledge and instructional methods to enhance the curriculum." (Holler, Callender & Skinner, 2007)
• "In the history of education, no improvement effort has ever succeeded in the absence of thoughtfully planned and well-implemented professional development." (Guskey & Yoon, 2009)
• 'A school culture that invites deep and sustained professional learning will have a powerful impact on student achievement." (Brandt, 2003)
• According to research, high-quality teaching has about five times more statistical effect than most feasible reductions in class size (Greenwald, Hedges, & Laine as cited in Frank & Miles, 2007).
• "We have a rich, untapped pool oftalent in the millions ofmediocre teachers that are currently in the classroom. Rather than dismiss them, we need to help them grow. If we could move two million teachers from 'mediocre talent' to even 'mediocre- strong', it would have an incredible effect on student outcomes... Rather than focusing on punishing bad schools and teachers, we need to develop a culture of development and growth." (Scott, 2010.)

Fascinating.

Clusty search: "Instructional Resource Teacher". Madison School District Instructional Resource Teacher Search.

Dealing with the (School) District

Charlie Mas:

In it, Catbert, the Evil Human Resources Director, explains that leadership is the art of trading imaginary things in the future for real things today.

This is precisely the art of leadership practiced by Seattle Public Schools. Think of all of the imaginary future things they have promised in exchange for real things in the present. Then remember how few (if any) of the imaginary future things ever materialized.

When dealing with the public, the real thing they want in the present is usually your willingness to accept a change that is unacceptable and the imaginary thing in the future is some action that will mitigate the damage done by the change.

For example, if the APP community won't kick up too much of a fuss over the split of the program, then the District will deliver an aligned, written, taught and tested curriculum concurrent with the split. The APP community didn't oppose the split, but the District never delivered - and now clearly never will deliver - the promised curriculum.

Madison School Board gives proposed marketing campaign the ax

Gayle Worland:

In an effort to save money and save face, the Madison School Board has nixed its plans to launch a "positive branding" effort for the school district.

Board members voted unanimously earlier this month to shelve the idea of hiring a marketing firm to help sing the district's praises at a budgeted cost of $43,000 per year for two years. The vote took place during a discusssion of the district's looming budget deficit for the 2010-11 school year, at the time estimated at close to $30 million.

"If we're looking at as many millions of dollars in cuts as we are, it's a little much to ask the community to pay more property tax so that we can publicize our school district," School Board member Marj Passman said during the meeting.

Madison School District Administration PR on Budget Tax & Spending Discussions

Madison School District, via a kind reader's email:

Video Answers to Budget Questions
Answers from Superintendent Dan Nerad and Asst. Supt. for Business Services Erik Kass
Recorded on March 24

At their meeting on March 22, the Board of Education took actions related to the 2010-11 budget. What did they do regarding their use of taxing authority?

Much more on the 2010-2011 budget here.

Tangentially related with respect to ongoing tax & spending growth during the "Great Recession": What Does Greece Mean to You by John Mauldin.

Performance Evaluations - School Board

Charlie Mas:

With all of this talk about Performance Management I thought it would be a good time to review the Performance of the Board Directors and the Board as a whole. I know that the Board does their own self-assessment, but I can't find it. Besides, it is impossible for anyone to hold themselves accountable. I simply have no faith in self-policing.

For accountability purposes we need some objectively measurable outcomes for the Board job.

The Board job, as I have often written, has three components.

First is to serve as the elected representatives of the public. This includes:

James Howard Endorsed for the Madison School Board

The Capital Times:

Across decades of interviewing candidates for the Madison School Board, the members of The Capital Times editorial board have talked with dozens of able contenders -- and a few not-so-able ones.

We have endorsed liberals and conservatives, friends and foes of the teachers union, veteran board members and newcomers -- always in response to a basic question: Which candidate would make the most valuable contribution to the seven-member board that sets the direction for what has been, is and we hope will always remain one of the finest urban school districts in the nation?

With this history providing a sense of perspective, we can say without a doubt that we have rarely if ever encountered a first-time candidate as impressive as James Howard.

Wisconsin State Journal:

James Howard is best prepared for the challenging job of serving on the Madison School Board.

Voters should support him in the April 6 election.

Howard, 56, a research economist, says he's trained and committed to analyzing data before making decisions. He'll bring that strong trait to a School Board that has sometimes let emotion get the best of it.

A good example is the difficult issue of consolidating schools with low enrollments to save money during tight times. The School Board backed down from its smart vote in 2007 to consolidate elementary schools on the Near East Side.

Madison's $30M Spending Increase & Tax Gap Rhetoric Dissected

School Board Vice President Lucy Mathiak:

So what does this mean? Well, assuming that the board will use its levying authority under the referendum and the state funding formula, the gap is smaller than the reported (and internalized) $30 million. It is probably more like the $17 million in state aid cuts plus the $1.2 million in budget items for which there is no funding source. Or, by higher math, c. $18.2 million BEFORE the board makes its budget adjustments and amendments. (This process will take place between now and the final vote on May 4, and will likely involve a combination of cuts recommended by administration and cuts proposed by the board.)

This means that the draconian school closings and massive staff layoffs reported earlier are unlikely to happen. Indeed, the board added one cut to the list at Monday's meeting when it voted to cut $43,000 in funding budgeted to produce a communication plan.

Grier has opened door to system of great Houston schools

Chris Barbic & Mike Feinberg:

In his 2010 State of the Schools address, Houston Independent School District Superintendent Terry Grier commented on the district's relationship with the public charter schools we founded more than a decade ago, YES Prep and KIPP. Grier referred to the relationship as a partnership as well as a competition, stating that HISD is ready to "get busy" in order to ensure parents are not leaving failing HISD schools to attend YES Prep, KIPP or other high-performing charters in Houston. We could not be more pleased to hear these comments from Grier. In fact, we've been hoping for many years that our existence would indeed result in this type of relationship with HISD and a superintendent ready to "get busy" and compete. The recent changes that Grier and the board have implemented regarding a longer calendar and focus on human capital show that they are committed to this idea.

YES Prep and KIPP were both born inside HISD in the mid-1990s when we were both classroom teachers in underserved communities in search of a better way to educate our students. We had a number of theories we wanted to test about what it would take to educate our students in a way that would allow them to compete with students from our city's very best schools. What we learned in those early years was that for us to have the freedom to be experimental, nimble and fleet-footed, for us to be able to make sometimes unorthodox decisions in the best interest of our students, we would need to leave HISD's political bureaucracy to operate as independent public charter schools.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Wisconsin's Lost Emoloyment Decade

Stateline Staff:

California has fewer people in its workforce today than it did in 1999. For Alabama and Indiana, 1993 is the last time the employment ranks were so thin. And for Michigan -- unquestionably the nation's hardest-hit state in terms of unemployment -- 4.1 million people have jobs today. That's the smallest total since August of 1987, when Ronald Reagan was president.
Those grim statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor are highlighted by The Christian Science Monitor in a notable item today (March 11) that takes a long-term look at the national unemployment crisis. In all, 12 states now have a smaller total workforce than they did a decade ago, The Monitor reports.

Kansas City Adopts Plan to Close Nearly Half Its Schools

Susan Saulny:

The Kansas City Board of Education voted Wednesday night to close almost half of the city's public schools, accepting a sweeping and contentious plan to shrink the system in the face of dwindling enrollment, budget cuts and a $50 million deficit.

In a 5-to-4 vote, the members endorsed the Right-Size plan, proposed by the schools superintendent, John Covington, to close 28 of the city's 61 schools and cut 700 of 3,000 jobs, including those of 285 teachers. The closings are expected to save $50 million, erasing the deficit from the $300 million budget.

"We must make sacrifices," said board member Joel Pelofsky, speaking in favor of the plan before the vote. "Unite in favor of our children."

Seattle Public Schools Appeal Discovery Math Implementation Court Loss

Martha McLaren:

Today we received notice of the Seattle School District's decision to appeal the Decision of Judge Spector which required the SPS board to reconsider its high school math text adoption vote.

I am deeply disappointed that SPS will funnel more resources into this appeal, which, I suspect, will be more costly than following the judge's instruction to reconsider.

Our attorney tells me: ".... I'll put in a notice of appearance, and then we wait for the District to complete the record by having the documents and transcripts transmitted to the Court of Appeals. They write the first brief, due 45 days after the record is complete.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate & Local Property Tax Increase Rhetoric

Walter Alarkon:

President Barack Obama's budget will lead to deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, the CBO estimated Friday.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said President Barack Obama's budget would lead to annual deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion for the next decade.

The estimates are for larger deficits than the budget shortfalls expected by the White House.

Annual deficits under Obama's budget plan would be about $976 billion from 2011 through 2020, according to a CBO analysis of Obama's plan released Friday.

Susan Troller:

Madison school 'budget gap' really a tax gap

Try "tax gap" or "revenue problem." These are terms that Superintendent Dan Nerad -- who is slated to offer his budget recommendations to the School Board on March 8 -- and other school district players are starting to use to describe the financial troubles the district is facing.

What's commonly been defined as the district's budget gap in the past -- the difference between the cost to continue existing programs and salaries and what the district is allowed to tax under state revenue caps -- is actually $1.2 million. That's the amount the district would still have to cut if the board were willing to tax to the maximum amount allowed under the state revenue limits. (And in past years, Madison and almost every other district in the state have taxed to the limit.) But if you add in the drop in revenue from the state -- about $17 million for the 2010-2011 budget -- the gap grows to $18.2 million.

It's fair to ask then, what makes up the other $11.6 million that the administration calls the $29.8 million 2010-2011 budget gap? In a rather unorthodox manner, Nerad and company are including two other figures: $4 million in levying authority the district was granted through the 2008 referendum and $7.6 million in levying authority within the revenue limit formula.

Confused? You're not alone. It's got many folks scratching their heads. But the bottom line is this: Although the district has the authority to raise property taxes up to $312 on an average $250,000 home, it's unlikely the board would want to reap that amount of revenue ($11.6 million) from increased taxes. Large property tax hikes -- never popular -- are particularly painful in the current economy.

The Madison School District has yet to release consistent total spending numbers for the current 2009/2010 budget or a total budget number for 2010-2011. Continuing to look at and emphasize in terms of public relations, only one part of the puzzle: property taxes seems ill advised.

The Madison School District Administration has posted 2010-2011 "Budget Gap" notes and links here, largely related to the property tax, again. only one part of the picture. For reference, here's a link to the now defunct 2007-2008 Citizen's Budget.

Doug Erickson has more:

Madison school administrators laid out a grim list of possible cuts big and small Friday that School Board members can use as a starting point to solve a nearly $30 million hole in next year's budget.

The options range from the politically painless -- restructuring debt, cutting postage costs -- to the always explosive teacher layoffs and school closings.

But the school-closing option, which would close Lake View, Lindbergh and Mendota elementary schools on the city's North Side as part of a consolidation plan, already appears to be a nonstarter. A majority of board members said they won't go there.

"It's dead in the water for me," said Lucy Mathiak, board vice president.

President Arlene Silveira said the option is not on the table for her, either. Ditto for board members Marj Passman and Maya Cole, who said she immediately crossed out the option with a red pen.

Board members could decide to raise taxes enough to cover almost all of the $30 million, or they could opt to not raise taxes at all and cut $30 million. Neither option is considered palatable to board members or most residents, so some combination of the two is expected.

More on the Madison School District High School's Use of Small Learning Communities & A Bit of Deja Vu - A Bruce King Brief Evaluation

Pam Nash 4.5MB PDF:

Introduction and Overview
1. Background and Overview Daniel A. Nerad, Superintendent of Schools

Prior to the fall of 2008, MMSD high schools functioned as four separate autonomous high schools, with minimal focus on working collaboratively across the district to address student educational needs.

In 2008 MMSD received a Federal Smaller Learning Communities for $5.3 million dollars over a five year period. The purpose of that grant is to support the large changes necessary to:

• Increase student achievement for all students.
• Increase and improve student to student relationships and student to adult relationships.
• Improve post-secondary outcomes for all students.

District administration, along with school leadership and school staff, have examined the research that shows that fundamental change in education can only be accomplished by creating the opportunity for teachers to talk with one another regarding their instructional practice. The central theme and approach for REaL has been to improve and enhance instructional practice through collaboration in order to increase stndent achievement. Special attention has been paid to ensure the work is done in a cross - district, interdepartmental and collaborative manner. Central to the work, are district and school based discussions focused on what skills and knowledge students need to know and be able to do, in order to be prepared for post-secondary education and work. Systemized discussions regarding curriculum aligll1nent, course offerings, assessment systems, behavioral expectations and 21 st century skills are occurring across all four high schools and at the district level.

Collaborative professional development has been established to ensure that the work capitalizes on the expertise of current staff, furthers best practices that are already occurring within the MMSD high school classrooms, and enhances the skills of individuals at all levels from administration to classroom teachers needed. Our work to date has laid the foundation for further and more in-depth work to occur.

While we are at the formative stages of our work, evidence shows that success is occurring at the school level. Feedback from principals indicates that district meetings, school buildings and classrooms are feeling more collaborative and positive, there is increased participation by teachers in school based decisions, and school climate has improved as evidenced by a significant reduction in behavior referrals.

This report provides a summary of the REaL Grant since fall of2008 and includes:
1. Work completed across all four high schools.
2. School specific work completed.
3. District work completed.
4. REaL evaluation
5. Future implications

In addition the following attachments are included:
1. Individual REaL School Action Plans for 09-10
2. REaL District Action for 09-10
3. ACT EP AS Overview and Implementation Plan
4. AVID Overview
5. Templates used for curriculum and course alignment
6. Individual Learning Plan summary and implementation plan
7. National Student Clearninghouse StudentTracker System
8. Student Action Research example questions

2. Presenters

• Pam Nash, Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Schools
• Darwin Hernandez, East High School AVID Student
• Jaquise Gardner, La Follette High School AVID Student
• Mary Kelley, East High School
• Joe Gothard, La Follette High School
• Bruce Dahmen, Memorial High School
• Ed Holmes, West High School
• Melody Marpohl, West High School ESL Teacher

3. Action requested of the BOE

The report is an update, providing information on progress of MMSD High Schools and district initiatives in meeting grant goals and outlines future directions for MMSD High schools and district initiatives based on work completed to date.

MMSD has contracted with an outside evaluator, Bruce King, UW-Madison. Below are the initial observations submitted by Mr. King:

The REaL evaluation will ultimately report on the extent of progress toward the three main grant goals. Yearly work focuses on major REaL activities at or across the high schools through both qualitative and quantitative methods and provides schools and the district with formative evaluation and feedback. During the first two years ofthe project, the evaluation is also collecting baseline data to inform summative reports in later years of the grant. We can make several observations about implementation ofthe grant goals across the district.

These include:

Observation 1: Professional development experiences have been goal oriented and focused. On a recent survey of the staff at the four high schools, 80% of responding teachers reported that their professional development experiences in 2009-10 were closely connected to the schools' improvement plans. In addition, the focus of these efforts is similar to the kinds of experiences that have led to changes in student achievement at other highly successful schools (e.g., Universal Design, instructional leadership, and literacy across the curriculum).

Observation 2: Teacher collaboration is a focal point for REaL grant professional development. However, teachers don't have enough time to meet together, and Professional Collaboration Time (PCT) will be an important structure to help sustain professional development over time.

Observation 3: School and district facilitators have increased their capacity to lead collaborative, site-based professional development. In order for teachers to collaborate better, skills in facilitation and group processes should continue to be enhanced.

Observation 4: Implementing EP AS is a positive step for increasing post-secondary access and creating a common assessment program for all students.

Observation 5: There has been improved attention to and focus on key initiatives. Over two- thirds ofteachers completing the survey believed that the focus of their current initiatives addresses the needs of students in their classroom. At the same time, a persisting dilemma is prioritizing and doing a few things well rather than implementing too many initiatives at once.

Observation 6: One of the important focus areas is building capacity for instructional leadership, work carried out in conjunction with the Wallace project's UW Educational Leadership faculty. Progress on this front has varied across the four schools.

Observation 7: District offices are working together more collaboratively than in the past, both with each other and the high schools, in support of the grant goals.

Is it likely that the four high schools will be significantly different in four more years?

Given the focus on cultivating teacher leadership that has guided the grant from the outset, the likelihood is strong that staff will embrace the work energetically as their capacity increases. At the same time, the ultimate success ofthe grant will depend on whether teachers, administrators, anddistrict personnel continue to focus on improving instruction and assessment practices to deliver a rigorous core curriculum for all and on nurturing truly smaller environments where students are known well.

Related:

• Bruce King's 2005 evaluation of the Small Learning Communities project at Madison West High School.
• 2007 Madison School District Small Learning Community Grant Application
• Jeff Henriques: Examining the Data from Earlier Small Learning Community Grants, Part 2 Part 3
• Notes and links on the 2008 Small Learning Community Grant Award

The Proposed Madison School District Administrative Reorganization Plan

Superintendent Dan Nerad, via an Arlene Silveira email 1.4MB PDF:

Processes of the Administration

The following administrative processes are currently being utilized to provide administrative leadership within the district:

1. Superintendent's Management Team Comprised of the Superintendent and department administrators, this team meets weekly and serves as the major decision making body of the administration.
2. Strategic Plan Monitoring and Support
   The Superintendent meets monthly with administrators with lead responsibility for the five priority strategies within the Strategic Plan.
3. Superintendents-Assistant Superintendents, Chief of Staff and Executive Director, Human Resources
   The Superintendent meets weekly with the Assistant Superintendents, Chief of Staff and Executive Director of Human Resources to discuss key operational issues.
4. Board Liaison Team
   The Board Liaison Team, consisting of designated administrators, meets three times a month to coordinate Board agenda planning and preparation. District Learning Council The District Learning Council consists of curriculum, instruction and assessment related administrators and teacher leaders. This council meets bi-weekly to discuss major instructional issues in the district and provides coordination across related departments.
5. Department Meetings Administrators assigned to each department meet as needed.
6. Principal Meetings Assistant Superintendents meet minimally one time per month with all principals
7. Committee Meetings
   There are numerous administrative/staff committees that meet as specific tasks require.

General Strengths of the Current Administrative Structure
The strengths of the current administrative structure within the district are as follows:

1. The basic structure of our district has been in place for many years. As a result, the current department structure is known by many and has predictable ways of operating.
   There exist needed checks and balances within the current system, given the relative equal status of the departments, with each department leader along with the Assistant Superintendents and Chief of Staff directly reporting to the Superintendent of Schools.

   General Weaknesses of the Current Administrative Structure
   The weaknesses of the current administrative structure within the district are as follows:

   1. The degree to which the mission-work of the district, teaching and learning, is central to the function of administration is of concern especially in the way professional development is addressed without a departmental focus.
   2. Traditional organizational structures, while having a degree of predictability, can become bureaucratically laden and can lack inventiveness and the means to encourage participation in decision making.
   Organizational Principles
   In addition to the mission, belief statements and parameters, the following organizational principles serve as a guide for reviewing and defining the administrative structure and administrative processes within the district.
   1. The district will be organized in a manner to best serve the mission of the district .and to support key district strategies to accomplish the mission.
   2. Leadership decisions will be filtered through the lens of our mission.
   3. Central service functions will be organized to support teaching and learning at the schools and should foster supportive relationships between schools and central service functions.
   4. The district's organizational structure must have coherence on a preK-12 basis and must address the successful transition of students within the district.
   5. The district will be structured to maximize inter-division and intra-division collaboration and cooperation.
   6. The district's organizational structure must have an orientation toward being of service to stakeholders, internally and externally.
   7. The district must be organized in a manner that allows for ongoing public engagement
      and stakeholder input.
   8. To meet the district's mission, the district will embrace the principles of learning organizations, effective schools, participative and distributive leadership and teamwork.
   9. The district will make better use of data for decision making, analyzing issues, improving district operations, developing improvement plans and evaluating district efforts.
   10. The need for continuous improvement will be emphasized in our leadership work.
   11. Ongoing development and annual evaluation of district leaders is essential.
   Leadership Needs
   Given these organizational principles, as well as a review of the current administrative structure and administrative processes within the district, the following needs exist. In addition, in the development of this plan, input was sought from all administrators during the annual leadership retreat, individual Management Team members and individual members of the Board of Education. These needs were specifically referenced in identifying the recommended changes in our administrative structure and related administrative processes that are found in this report.
   1. There is a need to better align the administrative structure to the district's mission and Strategic Plan and to place greater priority on the mission-work of our organization (improved achievement for all students and the elimination of achievement gaps).
   2. From an administrative perspective, the mission-work of our district is mainly delivered through teaching and learning and leadership work being done in our schools. Central service functions must act in support of this work. In addition, central service functions are needed to ensure constancy of focus and direction for the district.
   3. New processes are needed to allow for stakeholder engagement and input and to create greater inter-department and division collaboration and cooperation
   4. The mission of the district must be central to decisions made in the district.
   5. The organizational structure must support PreK -12 articulation and coordination needs within the district.
   6. Leadership work must embody principles of contemporary learning organizations, effective school practices, participative and distributive leadership and teamwork. Included in this will be a focus on the purposeful use ofteacher leadership, support for our schools and a focus on positive culture within the district.
   7. There must be an enhanced focus on the use of data in our improvement and related accountability efforts.
   8. There is a need to unifonnly implement school and department improvement plans and to change administrative supervision and evaluation plans based on research in the field and on the need for continuous improvement of all schools, departments and all individual administrators.
   In addition, as this plan was constructed there was a focus on ensuring, over the next couple of years, that the plan was sustainable from a financial point of view.

Thinking about the Cost of Educating Students via the Madison School District, Virtual Schools and a Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes email to State Senator Fred Risser

Susan Troller:

Madison School Board member Ed Hughes sent me an e-mail pointing out another vexing problem with Wisconsin's school funding system and how it penalizes the Madison district, which I've written about in the past. Hughes notes in his e-mail "This particular wrinkle of the state school financing system is truly nuts."
Hughes is incensed that the IQ Academy, a virtual school operated by the Waukesha district, gets over $6000 in state aid for poaching students from the Madison district while total state aid for educating a student in a real school here at home is $3400. Waukesha makes a profit of about $500 per student at the expense of taxpayers here, Hughes says. And that's including profits going to the national corporate IQ Academy that supplies the school's programming.

The complete text of Ed Hughes letter to Senator Risser:

Sen. Risser:

As if we needed one, here is another reason to be outraged by our state school financing system:

This week's issue of Isthmus carries a full page ad on page 2. It is sponsored by "IQ Academy Wisconsin," which is described as a "tuition-free, online middle and high school program of the School District of Waukesha, WI." The ad invites our Madison students to open-enroll in their "thriving learning community."

What's in it for Waukesha? A report on virtual charter schools by the State Fiscal Bureau, released this week, sheds some light on this. The Madison school district gets a little more than $2,000 in general state aid for each of our students. If you include categorical aids and everything else from the state, the amount goes up to about $3,400/student.
However, if Waukesha (or any other school district) is successful in poaching one of our students, it will qualify for an additional $6,007 in state aid. (That was actually the amount for the 2007-08 school year, that last year for which data was available for the Fiscal Bureau report.) As it was explained to me by the author of the Fiscal Bureau report, this $6,007 figure is made up of some combination of additional state aid and a transfer of property taxes paid by our district residents to Waukesha.

So the state financing system will provide nearly double the amount of aid to a virtual charter school associated with another school district to educate a Madison student than it will provide to the Madison school district to educate the same student in an actual school, with you know, bricks and mortar and a gym and cafeteria and the rest.

The report also states that the Waukesha virtual school spends about $5,500 per student. So for each additional student it enrolls, the Waukesha district makes at least a $500 profit. (It's actually more than that, since the incremental cost of educating one additional student is less than the average cost for the district.) This does not count the profit earned by the private corporation that sells the on-line programming to Waukesha.

The legislature has created a system that sets up very strong incentives for a school district to contract with some corporate on-line operation, open up a virtual charter school, and set about trying to poach other districts' students. Grantsburg, for example, has a virtual charter school that serves not a single resident of the Grantsburg school district. What a great policy.

By the way, Waukesha claims in its Isthmus ad that "Since 2004, IQ Academy Wisconsin students have consistently out-performed state-wide and district averages on the WKCE and ACT tests." I didn't check the WKCE scores, but last year 29.3% of the IQ Academy 12th graders took the ACT test and had an average composite score of 22.9. In the Madison school district, 56.6% of 12th graders took the test and the district average composite score was 24.0.

I understand that you are probably tired of hearing from local school board members complaining about the state's school funding system. But the enormous disparity between what the state will provide to a virtual charter school for enrolling a student living in Madison, as compared to what it will provide the Madison school district to educate the same student, is so utterly wrong-headed as to be almost beyond belief.
Ed Hughes

Madison School Board

Amy Hetzner noted this post on her blog:

An interesting side note: the Madison Metropolitan School District's current business manager, Erik Kass, was instrumental to helping to keep Waukesha's virtual high school open and collecting a surplus when he was the business manager for that district.

I found the following comments interesting:

An interesting note is that the complainers never talked about which system more effectively taught students.

Then again, it has never really been about the students.

Madison is spending $418,415,780 to educate 24,295 students ($17,222 each).

Related: Madison School District 2010-2011 Budget: Comments in a Vacuum? and a few comments on the recent "State of the Madison School District" presentation.

The "Great Recession" has pushed many organizations to seek more effective methods of accomplishing their goals. It would seem that virtual learning and cooperation with nearby higher education institutions would be ideal methods to provide more adult to student services at reduced cost, rather than emphasizing growing adult to adult spending.

Finally Richard Zimman's recent Madison Rotary talk is well worth revisiting with respect to the K-12 focus on adult employment.

Fascinating.

An exchange with the director of the Washington State Board of Education

Martha McLaren:

Here is an open letter which I sent last night to Edie Harding, Executive Director of the State Board of Education. Under the letter I have paraphrased her reply; below that is my response to her.

I am responding to your comment today in the Seattle Times:

' "It's long been established that in our state, the local board is always the prime decision-maker on curriculum." ....the Seattle decision was "a surprise, and if I were the Seattle School Board, I would -- well, I might take issue with the judge," she added.'

Having been one of the plaintiffs in the recent textbook appeal in Seattle, I'm well aware that School Boards make curriculum decisions. However, Ms. Harding, what recourse do you suggest to parents when School Boards abdicate their decision making power - refusing to consider voluminous, compelling, evidence from parents and community members, and instead give school administrators carte blanch to turn math education in directions that are unacceptable to informed parents and community members?

Madison Public Schools Face Tax & Spending Challenges: What is the budget?

Gayle Worland, via a kind reader's email:

The Madison School District is facing a $30 million budget hole for 2010-11, a dilemma that could force school board members this spring to order massive cuts in programs, dramatically raise property taxes, or impose a combination of both.

District officials will unveil a list of possible cuts -- which could include layoffs -- next month, with public hearings to follow.

"This is a big number," School Board President Arlene Silveira said. "So we have to look at how we do business, we have to look at efficiencies, we have to look at our overall budget, and we are going to have to make hard decisions. We are in a horrible situation right now, and we do have to look at all options."

Even with the maximum hike in school property taxes -- $28.6 million, or a jump of $312.50 for the owner of a $250,000 Madison home -- the district would have to close a $1.2 million budget gap, thanks in part to a 15 percent drop in state aid it had to swallow in 2009-10 and expects again for 2010-11.

The district, with a current budget of about $360 million, expects to receive $43.7 million from the state for 2010-11, which would be the lowest sum in 13 years, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, and down from a high of $60.7 million in 2008-09. The district is receiving $51.5 million from the state for the current school year.

I'm not sure where the $360 million number came from. Board member Ed Hughes mentioned a $432,764,707 2010-2011 budget number. The 2009-2010 budget, according to a an October, 2009 District document was $418,415,780. The last "Citizen's budget" number was $339,685,844 in 2007-2008 and $333,101,865 in 2006-2007.

The budget numbers remind me of current Madison School Board member Ed Hughes' very useful 2005 quote:

This points up one of the frustrating aspects of trying to follow school issues in Madison: the recurring feeling that a quoted speaker - and it can be someone from the administration, or MTI, or the occasional school board member - believes that the audience for an assertion is composed entirely of idiots.

Related: Madison School District & Madison Teachers Union Reach Tentative Agreement: 3.93% Increase Year 1, 3.99% Year 2; Base Rate $33,242 Year 1, $33,575 Year 2: Requires 50% MTI 4K Members and will "Review the content and frequency of report cards" and "Budget comments in a vacuum?"

Madison School District appears to be softening stance toward charter schools

Susan Troller, via a Chris Murphy email:

When teachers Bryan Grau and Debora Gil R. Casado pitched an idea in 2002 to start a charter school in Madison that would teach classes in both English and Spanish, they ran into resistance from school administrators and their own union. Grau and his cohorts were asked to come up with a detailed budget for their proposal, but he says they got little help with that complex task. He recalls one meeting in particular with Roger Price, the district's director of financial services.

"We asked for general help. He said he would provide answers to our specific questions. We asked where to begin and again he said he would answer our specific questions. That's the way it went."

Ruth Robarts, who was on the Madison School Board at the time, confirms that there was strong resistance from officials under the former administration to the creation of Nuestro Mundo, which finally got the green light and is now a successful program that is being replicated in schools around the district.

"First they would explain how the existing programs offered through the district were already doing a better job than this proposal, and then they would show how the proposal could never work," says Robarts. "There seemed to be a defensiveness towards these innovative ideas, as if they meant the district programs were somehow lacking."

The Madison School District "has historically been one of the most hostile environments in the state for charter schools, especially under Superintendent Rainwater," adds John Gee, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of Charter Schools.

Related: the now dead proposed Madison Studio Charter and Badger Rock Middle School.

Madison continues to lag other Districts in terms of innovative opportunities, such as Verona's new Chinese Mandarin immersion charter school.

Madison School District Budget Planning Calendar 2010-2011

20K PDF:

Contact the Seattle Public Schools' board and administrators, asks Where's the Math

Martha McLaren:

On February 4th, King County Superior Court Judge Julie Spector ruled that last year's Seattle School board decision to adopt the Discovering high school textbook series was arbitrary and capricious. Judge Spector's ruling was heard and hailed across the country by private citizens and math education advocacy groups.

This unprecedented finding shows school boards and district administration that they need to consider evidence when making decisions. The voice of the community has been upheld by law, but the Seattle School district indicated they plan to appeal, demonstrating the typical arrogant, wasteful practices which necessitated the lawsuit in the first place.

Concerned individuals in Seattle and across the country need to speak up now, and let Seattle administration know that it's time to move forward and refocus on the students, rather than defend a past mistake.

The ruling states:

"The court finds, based upon a review of the entire administrative record, that there is insufficient evidence for any reasonable Board member to approve the selection of the Discovering Series."

More on the Successful Seattle Lawsuit against Discovering Math

Laurie Rogers:

Decision favors plaintiffs in court challenge of Seattle math text adoption

Statement from Laurie Rogers:

Last year, Seattle Public Schools adopted the Discovering math series despite valiant opposition from parents and math professionals, despite poor assessments of the Discovering series' rigor and adherence to the new state math standards, and despite the fact that OSPI did NOT ultimately recommend the Discovering math series.
In response, three people filed a lawsuit, saying that Seattle didn't have sufficient supporting evidence for its adoption, and also that the Discovering series was associated with an INCREASE in achievement gaps.

Recently, a judge agreed with the plaintiffs and - while stopping short of telling Seattle to cease and desist in their adoption - told Seattle to revisit its adoption. The district can continue to use the Discovering series, and Seattle administrators have stated their clear intention to do so.

Nevertheless, the court decision is momentous. It sets a precedent for districts across the country. When board members can't justify their adoption decisions, the people now have legal recourse.

Districts turn to arbitration to settle teacher contracts

Amy Hetzner:

In an action that's likely to be repeated across the state, the West Bend School District is preparing to take contract negotiations with its teachers to arbitration, potentially among the first districts to do so since the Legislature removed teacher salary controls that held sway in Wisconsin for 16 years.

District negotiators and representatives for the West Bend Education Association have their first mediation session scheduled for next week, the first step they need to take before they can proceed to binding arbitration.

Administrators say they would prefer being able to resolve their issues with the teachers union by settling a contract through the mediation process. But they also say they are willing to go to arbitration if needed.

"We're not afraid of it," said Bill Bracken, labor relations coordinator for Davis & Kuelthau, which is representing the school district.

Other districts apparently aren't afraid either. At least a couple of school districts outside southeastern Wisconsin are getting ready to certify their final offers after already going through the mediation process, indicating binding arbitration is probable, said Scott Mikesh, a staff attorney with the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.

On Friday, the Elmbrook School District and its teachers union announced they were filing for mediation help in their contract negotiations, although Assistant Superintendent Christine Hedstrom said the two sides were not filing for help with the state and won't automatically go to arbitration if they reach deadlock.

Related: Madison School District & Madison Teachers Union Reach Tentative Agreement: 3.93% Increase Year 1, 3.99% Year 2; Base Rate $33,242 Year 1, $33,575 Year 2: Requires 50% MTI 4K Members and will "Review the content and frequency of report cards".

It would be interesting to compare contracts/proposals among similarly sized Districts.

Seattle Court Reverses School Board Decision to Implement Discovery Math

Judge Julie Spector's decision [69K PDF], via Martha McLaren:

THIS MATTER having come on for hearing, and the Court having considered the pleadings, administrative record, and argument in this matter, the Court hereby enters the following Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Order:

FINDINGS OF FACT
1. On May 6, 2009, in a 4-3 vote, the Seattle School District Board of Directors chose the Discovering Series as the District's high school basic math materials.

a. A recommendation from the District's Selection Committee;

b. A January, 2009 report from the Washington State Office of Public Instruction ranking High School math textbooks, listing a series by the Holt Company as number one, and the Discovering Series as number two;

c. A March 11, 2009, report from the Washington State Board of Education finding that the Discovering Series was "mathematically unsound";

d. An April 8, 2009 School Board Action Report authored by the Superintendent;

e. The May 6, 2009 recommendation of the OSPI recommending only the Holt Series, and not recommending the Discovering Series;

f. WASL scores showing an achievement gap between racial groups;

g. WASL scores from an experiment with a different inquiry-based math text at Cleveland and Garfield High Schools, showing that W ASL scores overall declined using the inquiry-based math texts, and dropped significantly for English Language Learners, including a 0% pass rate at one high school;

h. The National Math Achievement Panel (NMAP) Report;

1. Citizen comments and expert reports criticizing the effectiveness of inquiry-based math and the Discovering Series;

J. Parent reports of difficulty teaching their children using the Discovering Series and inquiry-based math;

k. Other evidence in the Administrative Record;

I. One Board member also considered the ability of her own child to learn math using the Discovering Series.

3. The court finds that the Discovering Series IS an inquiry-based math program.

4. The court finds, based upon a review of the entire administrative record, that there IS insufficient evidence for any reasonable Board member to approve the selection of the Discovering Series.

CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
I. The court has jurisdiction under RCW 28A.645.010 to evaluate the Board's decision for whether it is arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to law;

2. The Board's selection of the Discovering Series was arbitrary;

3. The Board's selection of the Discovering Series was capricious;

4. This court has the authority to remand the Board's decision for further review;

5. Any Conclusion of Law which is more appropriately characterized as a
Finding of Fact is adopted as such, and any Finding of Fact more appropriately
characterized as a Conclusion of Law is adopted as such.

ORDER

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED:
The decision of the Board to adopt the Discovering Series is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Dated this 4th day of February, 2010.

Melissa Westbrook has more.

Seattle Math Group Press Release:

Judge Julie Spector today announced her finding of "arbitrary and capricious" in the Seattle School Board's May 6 vote to adopt the Discovering Math series of high school texts despite insufficient evidence of the series' effectiveness.

Judge Spector's decision states, "The court finds, based upon a review of the entire administrative record, that there is insufficient evidence for any reasonable Board member to approve the selection of the Discovering series."

Plaintiffs DaZanne Porter, an African American and mother of a 9th-grade student in Seattle Public Schools, Martha McLaren, retired Seattle math teacher and grandparent of a Seattle Public Schools fifth grader, and Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Washington, had filed their appeal of the Board's controversial decision on June 5th, 2009. The hearing was held on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Madison School District 2010-2011 Budget: Comments in a Vacuum?

TJ Mertz comments on Monday evening's Madison School Board 2010-2011 budget discussion (video - the budget discussion begins about 170 minutes into the meeting). The discussion largely covered potential property tax increases. However and unfortunately, I've not seen a document that includes total revenue projections for 2010-2011.

The District's Administration's last public total 2009-2010 revenue disclosure ($418,415,780) was in October 2009.

Property tax revenue is one part of the MMSD's budget picture. State and Federal redistributed tax dollars are another big part. The now dead "citizens budget" was a useful effort to provide more transparency to the public. I hope that the Board pushes for a complete picture before any further substantive budget discussions. Finally, the Administration promised program reviews as part of the "Strategic Planning Process" and the recent referendum ("breathing room"). The documents released to date do not include any substantive program review budget items.

Ed Hughes (about 190 minutes): "it is worth noting that evening if we taxed to the max and I don't think we'll do that, the total expenditures for the school District will be less than we were projecting during the referendum". The documents published, as far as I can tell, on the school board's website do not reflect 2010-2011 total spending.

Links to Madison School District spending since 2007 (the referendum Ed mentioned was in 2008)

• 2009-2010 $418,415,780
• Proposed 2008-2009 $367,806,712 budget
• 2007-2008 $339,685,844 Citizen's Budget
• 2006-2007 $333,101,865 Citizen's Budget

It would be great to see a year over year spending comparison from the District, including future projections.

Further, the recent "State of the District" document [566K PDF] includes only the "instructional" portion of the District's budget. There are no references to the $418,415,780 total budget number provided in the October 26, 2009 "Budget Amendment and Tax Levy Adoption document [1.1MB PDF]. Given the organization's mission and the fact that it is a taxpayer supported and governed entity, the document should include a simple "citizen's budget" financial summary. The budget numbers remind me of current Madison School Board member Ed Hughes' very useful 2005 quote:

This points up one of the frustrating aspects of trying to follow school issues in Madison: the recurring feeling that a quoted speaker - and it can be someone from the administration, or MTI, or the occasional school board member - believes that the audience for an assertion is composed entirely of idiots.

In my view, while some things within our local public schools have become a bit more transparent (open enrollment, fine arts, math, TAG), others, unfortunately, like the budget, have become much less. This is not good.

Ed, Lucy and Arlene thankfully mentioned that the Board needs to have the full picture before proceeding.

Madison School District Infinite Campus Usage Report

Kurt Kiefer & Lisa Wachtel [1.4MB PDF]:

This report summarizes data on the use of Infinite Campus teacher tools and the Parent and Student Portal. Data come from a survey conducted among all teachers responsible for students within the Infinite Campus system and an analysis of the Infinite Campus data base. Below are highlights from the report.

• About half of all middle and high school teachers responsible for providing grades to students are using the grade book tool.
• Grade book use has declined over the past year at the middle school level due to the introduction of standards- based grading. In addition to the change in grading approach, the grade book tool in Infinite Campus does not handle standards-based grading as efficiently as traditional grading.
• Lesson Planner and Grade book use is most common among World Languages, Physical Education, and Science teachers and less common among fine arts and language arts/reading teachers.
• Grade book and other tool use is most common among teachers with less than three years of teaching experience.
• Seventy percent of teachers responding to the survey within these years of experience category report using the tools compared with about half of all other experience categories.
• Most of the other teacher tools within Infinite Campus, e.g., Messenger, Newsletters, reports, etc., are not being used due to a lack o!familiarity with them.
• Many teachers expressed interest in learning about how they can use other digital tools such as the Moodie leaming management system, blogs, wikis, and Drupal web pages.
• About one third of parents with high school stUdents use the Infinite Campus Parent Portal. Slightly less than 30 percent of parents of middle school students use the Portal. Having just been introduced to elementary schools this fall, slightly more that ten percent of parents of students at this level use the Portal.
• Parents of white students are more likely to use the Portal than are parents of students within other racial/ethnic subgroups.
• About half of all high school students have used the Portal at one time this school year. About one in five middle school students have used the Portal this year.
• Variation in student portal use is wide across the middle and high schools.

Follow up is planned during January 2010 with staff on how we can address some of the issues related to enhancing the use olthese tools among staff, parents, and stUdents. This report is scheduled to be provided to the Board of Education in February 2010.

Much more on Infinite Campus and the Madison School District here.

2010 Madison School Board Election: Madison Teachers, Inc. Candidate Questionnaire

Beth Moss (running for re-election unopposed) 311K PDF.

James Howard (running against Tom Farley) 432K PDF.

Audio: The 2010 State of the Madison School District

39MB mp3 audio. I recorded this from Monday evening's video stream. Unfortunately, the sound level was quite low. Notes and links on the 2010 State of the Madison School District here.

566K State of the District PDF.

A Few Comments on Monday's State of the Madison School District Presentation

Madison School District Superintendent Dan Nerad will present the "State of the Madison School District 2010" tomorrow night @ 5:30p.m. CST.

The timing and content are interesting, from my perspective because:

• The nearby Verona School District just approved a Mandarin immersion charter school on a 4-3 vote. (Watch the discussion here). Madison lags in such expanded "adult to student" learning opportunities. Madison seems to be expanding "adult to adult" spending on "coaches" and "professional development". I'd rather see an emphasis on hiring great teachers and eliminating the administrative overhead associated with growing "adult to adult" expenditures.
• I read with interest Alec Russell's recent lunch with FW de Klerk. de Klerk opened the door to South Africa's governance revolution by freeing Nelson Mandela in 1990:

  History is moving rather fast in South Africa. In June the country hosts football's World Cup, as if in ultimate endorsement of its post-apartheid progress. Yet on February 2 1990, when the recently inaugurated state President de Klerk stood up to deliver the annual opening address to the white-dominated parliament, such a prospect was unthinkable. The townships were in ferment; many apartheid laws were still on the books; and expectations of the balding, supposedly cautious Afrikaner were low.

  How wrong conventional wisdom was. De Klerk's address drew a line under 350 years of white rule in Africa, a narrative that began in the 17th century with the arrival of the first settlers in the Cape. Yet only a handful of senior party members knew of his intentions.

  I sense that the Madison School Board and the Community are ready for new, substantive adult to student initiatives, while eliminating those that simply consume cash in the District's $418,415,780 2009-2010 budget ($17,222 per student).
• The "State of the District" document [566K PDF] includes only the "instructional" portion of the District's budget. There are no references to the $418,415,780 total budget number provided in the October 26, 2009 "Budget Amendment and Tax Levy Adoption document [1.1MB PDF]. Given the organization's mission and the fact that it is a taxpayer supported and governed entity, the document should include a simple "citizen's budget" financial summary. The budget numbers remind me of current Madison School Board member Ed Hughes' very useful 2005 quote:

  This points up one of the frustrating aspects of trying to follow school issues in Madison: the recurring feeling that a quoted speaker - and it can be someone from the administration, or MTI, or the occasional school board member - believes that the audience for an assertion is composed entirely of idiots.

  In my view, while some things within our local public schools have become a bit more transparent (open enrollment, fine arts, math, TAG), others, unfortunately, like the budget, have become much less. This is not good.
• A new financial reality. I don't see significant new funds for K-12 given the exploding federal deficit, state spending and debt issues and Madison's property tax climate. Ideally, the District will operate like many organizations, families and individuals and try to most effectively use the resources it has. The recent Reading Recovery report is informative.

I think Dan Nerad sits on a wonderful opportunity. The community is incredibly supportive of our schools, spending far more per student than most school Districts (quite a bit more than his former Green Bay home) and providing a large base of volunteers. Madison enjoys access to an academic powerhouse: the University of Wisconsin and proximity to MATC and Edgewood College. Yet, District has long been quite insular (see Janet Mertz's never ending efforts to address this issue), taking a "we know best approach" to many topics via close ties to the UW-Madison School of Education and its own curriculum creation business, the Department of Teaching and Learning.

In summary, I'm hoping for a "de Klerk" moment Monday evening. What are the odds?

The State of the Madison School District, 2010

588K PDF, Dan Nerad, Superintendent:

Dear Members of Our Community, The mission of the Madison Metropolitan School District is as follows:

Our mission is to cultivate the potential in every student to thrive as a global citizen by inspiring a love of learning and civic engagement, by challenging and supporting every student to achieve academic excellence, and by embracing the full richness and diversity of our community.

A year ago, a group of community and school staff members committed time to develop a revised Strategic Plan for the school district. As part of this, our mission statement was revised. This plan was approved by the Board of Education in September 2009 and will be reviewed and updated annually. For the foreseeable future, the plan will serve as our road map to know if we are making a difference relative to important student learning outcomes and to the future of our community. To make the most difference, we must continue to partner with you, our community. We are indeed very fortunate to be able to educate our children in a very supportive, caring community.

As a school district, our highest priority must be on our work related to teaching and learning. For our students and the community's children to become proficient learners and caring and contributing members of society, we must remain steadfast in this commitment.

Related to our mission, we have also identified the following belief statements as a district:

1. We believe that excellent public education is necessary for ensuring a democratic society.
2. Webelieveintheabilitiesofeveryindividualinourcommunityandthevalueof their life experiences.
3. We believe in an inclusive community in which all have the right to contribute.
4. Webelievewehaveacollectiveresponsibilitytocreateandsustainasafe environment that is respectful, engaging, vibrant and culturally responsive.
5. Webelievethateveryindividualcanlearnandwillgrowasalearner.
6. We believe in continuous improvement in formed by critical evaluation and reflection.
7. We believe that resources are critical to education and we are responsible for their equitable and effective use.
8. Webelieveinculturallyrelevanteducationthatprovidestheknowledgeandskills to meet the global challenges and opportunities of the 21st Century.

Purpose of this report

The purpose of this State of the District Report is to provide important information about our District to our community and to share future priorities.

This report will be presented at Monday evening's Madison School Board meeting.

Verona, WI School Board Considers Chinese Immersion Charter School

Smart and timely. The Verona School Board will vote on the proposed Chinese immersion charter school Monday evening, 1/18/2010 - via a kind reader.

Documents:

• Chinese Immersion Charter School - review of the charter contract by Jon Anderson
• Draft Contract
• Sample Budget
• Update from the School's developers

Madison Charter "School pitch looks promising"

Wisconsin State Journal Editorial, via a kind reader's email:

Bold plans for a new kind of middle school in Madison deserve encouragement and strong consideration.

The proposed Badger Rock Middle School on the South Side would run year-round with green-themed lessons in hands-on gardens and orchards.

The unusual school would still teach core subjects such as English and math. But about 120 students would learn amid a working farm, local business and neighborhood sustainability center.

Money is tight in this difficult economy. And the Madison School Board just committed to launching an expensive 4-year-old kindergarten program in 2011.
But organizers say Badger Rock wouldn't cost the district additional dollars because private donors will pay for the school facility.

State of the Madison School District Presentation by Superintendent Dan Nerad 1/25/2010

via a kind reader's email:

A State of the District presentation will be made by Superintendent
Daniel Nerad to the community at a Board of Education meeting on Monday, January 25 at 5:30 p.m. in the library of Wright Middle School, 1717 Fish Hatchery Rd. The presentation will be the meeting's sole agenda item.

All community members are welcome to attend.

The presentation will provide an overview of important information and data regarding the Madison School District - including student achievement - and future areas of focus.

The visually-supported talk will be followed by a short period for questions from those in attendance.

The speech and Q&A period will be televised live on MMSD-TV Cable Channels 96/993 and streaming live on the web at www.mmsd.tv. It will
also be available for replay the following day at the same web site.

For more information, contact:
Ken Syke, 663-1903 or ksyke@madison.k12.wi.us , or
Joe Quick, 663-1902 or jquick@madison.k12.wi.us

Ken Syke
Public Information
Madison School District
voice 608 663 1903; cell 608 575 6682; fax 608 204 0342

Vicki McKenna and Don Severson Discuss Madison's 4K Plans

Click to listen or download this 27MB mp3 audio file. Much more on the Madison School District's 4K plans here.

Public Comments on a Sales Tax Increase For Schools and TAG Problems at the 1/11/2010 Madison School Board Meeting

19MB mp3 audio file. TJ Mertz spoke in favor of a .01 increase in the state sales tax, dedicated to schools. There were also a number of pointed parent comments on the District's Talented and Gifted program.

4K Inches Forward in Madison, Seeks Funding

Listen to the Madison School Board Discussion via this 32MB mp3 audio file (and via a kind reader's email).

Financing this initiative remains unsettled.

I recommend getting out of the curriculum creation business via the elimination of Teaching & Learning and using those proceeds to begin 4K - assuming the community and Board are convinced that it will be effective and can be managed successfully by the Administration.

I would also like to see the Administration's much discussed "program/curricular review" implemented prior to adding 4K.

Finally, I think it is likely that redistributed state tax programs to K-12 will decrease, given the State's spending growth and deficit problems. The financial crunch is an opportunity to rethink spending and determine where the dollars are best used for our children. I recommend a reduction in money spent for "adults to talk with other adults".

Board member Beth Moss proposed that 4K begin in 2010. This motion was supported by Marj Passman and Ed Hughes (Ed's spouse, Ann Brickson is on the Board of the Goodman Center, a possible 4K partner). Maya Cole, Lucy Mathiak and Arlene Silveira voted no on a 2010 start. The Board then voted 5-1 (with Ed Hughes voting no) for a 2011 launch pending further discussions on paying for it. Retiring Board member Johnny Winston, Jr. was absent.

I appreciate the thoughtful discussion on this topic, particularly the concern over how it will be financed. Our Federal Government, and perhaps, the State, would simply plow ahead and let our grandchildren continue to pay the growing bill.

Links:

• Gayle Worland:

  "I'm going to say it's the hardest decision I've made on the board," said board member Marj Passman, who along with board members Beth Moss and Ed Hughes voted to implement four-year-old kindergarten in 2010. "To me this is extremely difficult. We have to have 4K. I want it. The question is when."

  But board president Arlene Silveira argued the district's finances were too unclear to implement four-year-old kindergarten -- estimated to serve 1,573 students with a free, half-day educational program -- this fall.

  "I'm very supportive of four-year-old kindergarten," she said. "It's the financing that gives me the most unrest."

  Silveira voted against implementation in the fall, as did Lucy Mathiak and Maya Cole. Board member Johnny Winston, Jr. was absent.

  On a second vote the board voted 5-1 to approve 4K for 2011-12. Hughes voted against starting the program in 2011-12, saying it should begin as soon as possible.

• Channel3000:

  The plan will begin in September 2011. Initially, the board considered a measure to start in 2010, but a vote on that plan was deadlocked 3-3. A second motion to postpone the beginning until the 2011-2012 school year passed by a 5-1 vote.

  The board didn't outline any of the financing as yet. District spokesman Ken Syke said that they're working on 2010 budget first before planning for the 2011 one.

  The board's decision could have a large impact on the district and taxpayers as the new program would bring in federal funds.

• WKOW-TV:

  This is the first real commitment from MMSD to establish comprehensive early childhood education.

  What they don't have yet is a plan to pay for it.

  It would've cost about $12.2 million to start 4k this fall, according to Eric Kass, assistant superintendent for business services.

  About $4.5 million would come from existing educational service funds, $4.2 million from a loan, and about $3.5 million would be generated thru a property tax increase.

  Some board members said they were uncomfortable approving a funding plan for 4k, because there are still a lot of unanswered questions about the district's budget as a whole.

• NBC15:

  Members first deadlocked in a three-to-three tie on whether to start 4-K this fall, then voted five-to-one to implement it the following year.

  The cost this year would have been more than $12 million. The decision to delay implementation is due to serious budget problems facing the Madison District.

  Nearly 1600 4-year-old students are expected to participate in the half-day kindergarten program.

• Don Severson:

  The Board of Education is urged to vote NO on the proposal to implement 4-year old Kindergarten in the foreseeable future. In behalf of the public, we cite the following support for taking this action of reject the proposal:

  The Board and Administration Has failed to conduct complete due diligence with respect to recognizing the community delivery of programs and services. There are existing bona fide entities, and potential future entities, with capacities to conduct these programs

  Is not recognizing that the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Wisconsin authorizes the provision of public education for grades K-12, not including pre-K or 4-year old kindergarten

  Has not demonstrated the district capacity, or the responsibility, to manage effectively the funding support that it has been getting for existing K-12 programs and services. The district does not meet existing K-12 needs and it cannot get different results by continuing to do business as usual, with the 'same service' budget year-after-year-after-year

Johnny Winston Jr. to stay involved after school board tenure ends

Gayle Worland:

After two terms on the Madison School Board, Johnny Winston Jr. is moving on -- but you'll still see him involved in groups such as 100 Black Men of Madison and his annual Streetball and Block Party at Penn Park. Another goal for the father of three (No. 4 is due in May): Helping out in the classroom of daughter Jasmine, 6.

Why did you decide not to run?

I've been there six years. As a School Board member, I feel I've done what I can. I feel I still have a lot to contribute to this community, but at this time what I'd like to do is take a step back, focus on my professional career as an employee of the city of Madison Fire Department, and then look at any other political opportunities that might come up in the future.

ACE Urges MMSD Board NO Vote on 4k and RttT

DATE: January 11, 2010
TO: MMSD Board of Education
FROM: Active Citizens for Education
RE: 4-year old Kindergarten
Race to the Top

I am Don Severson representing Active Citizens for Education.

The Board of Education is urged to vote NO on the proposal to implement 4-year old Kindergarten in the foreseeable future. In behalf of the public, we cite the following support for taking this action of reject the proposal:

• The Board and Administration Has failed to conduct complete due diligence with respect to recognizing the community delivery of programs and services. There are existing bona fide entities, and potential future entities, with capacities to conduct these programs
• Is not recognizing that the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Wisconsin authorizes the provision of public education for grades K-12, not including pre-K or 4-year old kindergarten
• Has not demonstrated the district capacity, or the responsibility, to manage effectively the funding support that it has been getting for existing K-12 programs and services. The district does not meet existing K-12 needs and it cannot get different results by continuing to do business as usual, with the 'same service' budget year-after-year-after-year
• Will abrogate your fiduciary responsibility by violating the public trust and promises made to refrain from starting new programs in exchange for support of the "community partnership" urged for passing the recent referendum to raise the revenue caps

To reiterate, vote NO for District implementation of 4-K.

The Board of Education is urged to vote NO to signing the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the State of Wisconsin as part of an application for funding through the U.S. Department of Education ACT "Race to the Top" (RttT).

In behalf of the public we cite the following support for taking this action to reject the signing the RttT MOU: The Board and Administration

• Does not have complete information as to the requirements, criteria, expectations and definitions of terms of the MOU or its material Exhibits; therefore, there has been serious inhibitors in time, effort and due diligence to examine, understand and discuss the significant implications and consequences of pursuing such funding
• Does not have an understanding through the conduct of interactive discussions regarding the roles and relationships of the Board of Education, the Administration and the union regarding the requirements of the MOU as well as any subsequent implications for planning, implementation, evaluation and results for receiving the funding
• Must understand that the Board of Education, and the Board alone by a majority vote, is the only authority which can bind the District in any action regarding the MOU and subsequent work plan. District participation cannot be authorized by the Board if such participation is contingent on actual or implied approval, now or in the future, of any other parties (i.e., District Administration and/or union)
• Does not have an understanding of its personnel capacity or collective will to establish needs, priorities and accountabilities for undertaking such an enormous and complicated "sea change" in the ways in which the district conducts its business in the delivery of programs and services as appears to be expected for the use any RttT funding authorized for the District
• Must also understand and be prepared for the penalties and reimbursements due to the state and federal governments for failure to comply with the provisions attached to any authorized funding, including expected results

To reiterate, vote NO for District approval for the MOU and application for funding through the RttT.

Make Milwaukee Public Schools discussion about children, not politics

Eugene Kane:

My plan to attend the first public hearing on the controversial mayoral takeover plan for Milwaukee Public Schools was both simple and practical.

Get there late after all the speech-making and political posturing was over.

The hearing at MPS' central office at 5225 W. Vliet was scheduled to start at 10 a.m. Tuesday. As a veteran of countless public hearings during my career, I knew even if the room was packed with citizens, there would likely be a series of preliminary statements by various politicians and bureaucrats before members of the public got the chance at the microphone.

I figured arriving about an hour after the scheduled start would work just fine.

As it turned out, this was the kind of public hearing where most of the public had to wait for all of the elected officials in the room to have their say first.

Teachers contract raises pay only for continued service, education

Elliot Mann:

Rochester's teachers won't receive cost-of-living raises for two years but can still receive pay bumps for experience and continuing their education, under a two-year contract approved Tuesday.

The Rochester School Board ratified the 2009-2011 teachers contract Tuesday night. Nearly 60 percent of Rochester's 1,160 teachers approved the deal on Monday. The deal freezes the teacher's salary schedule for two years.

Rochester Education Association President Kit Hawkins said the teacher's union didn't want to approve raises, only to watch budget cuts take away more of their peers and more programming. The school district will need to cut $4.5 million next year, and the soft freeze will save the district some money compared to projections.

Rochester public schools cut more than $9 million last year.

"We need to feed our families and pay our bills like everyone else, but we also understand we're in a recession and the district is in grave financial (condition)," Hawkins said.

Related: Madison School District & Madison Teachers Union Reach Tentative Agreement: 3.93% Increase Year 1, 3.99% Year 2; Base Rate $33,242 Year 1, $33,575 Year 2: Requires 50% MTI 4K Members and will "Review the content and frequency of report cards".

Remarkable: Three Uncontested Madison School Board Seats for the April, 2010 Election

Gayle Worland:

Three uncontested candidates will run for three-year terms on the Madison school board in April.

Incumbents Beth Moss and Maya Cole are running for school board Seats 3 and 5, respectively. James Howard is running for Seat 4, currently held by Johnny Winston, Jr., who announced in November that he would not seek a third term.

Thomas Farley, director of the nonprofit Chris Farley Foundation and an expected candidate for Seat 4, filed two of the three necessary documents to get his name on the ballot, said Adam Gallagher, deputy clerk for the City Clerk's office. However, candidates also must file a minimum of 100 signatures of electors who reside in the Madison school district, and only 94 of signatures gathered by Farley by Tuesday's 5 p.m. deadline met that criteria, Gallagher said.

Wisconsin School Board power may change, due to legislation under consideration at the Capitol.

Preliminary Draft of the Milwaukee Mayoral Control Legislation:
LRB 3737/P2 Milwaukee Transforms Education for All Our Children (TEACH) Act

via a kind reader's email 180K PDF:

Milwaukee Public Schools Reading & Math Proficiency 15K PDF.


Related: Madison School District Reading and the Poverty Achievement Gap.

$4,431,115 Two Year Cost for 4K in Madison

Madison School District Superintendent Dan Nerad 650K PDF:

The Board ofEducation over the past two months has received information relative to the programdesignofa4-kprogramandsomebudgetscenariosrelativetothe4-kprogram. The budget scenarios showed the Community Model Option where the community providers provided to the district the amount necessary to support their programs and two concepts for allowing this fee to decrease.

Over the past month, administration and the community providers have met to discuss the amount to be brought forward as a fee per child for the community early childhood centers. The amount within your packet reflects that amount the early childhood community has asked ofthe district.

Information Contained in your packet: Budget Impact:

The budget impact sheet is reflective of all costs associated with the operation ofa community based model for four-year-old kindergarten. This model reflects the latest numbers proposed by the community for the per child reimbursement, along with an escalator of 3% each year. The model also reflects the latest information from the DPI, that shows we are currently not likely to be eligible to receive the 4-k startup grants with the State of Wisconsin budget. These numbers show a negative budget balance of $4,188,069 in year 1 and a negative budget balance of $243,046in year two, for a total two year negative balanceof $4,431,115. This becomes the target for further information within your packet relative to "Financing Options" for 4-k.

Madison School District Talented and Gifted Education Plan Update

Daniel Nerad, Superintendent of Schools Lisa Wachtel, Executive Director, Teaching and Learning Barbie Klawikowski, Interim Talented and Gifted Coordinator 260K PDF:

Identification Criteria - Several action steps within Goal 1 are based on the need for a clearly defined criteria and process to identify students as talented and gifted. The Talented and Gifted (TAG) Division staff has established and confirmed identification criteria including: 1) consideration of students' levels of academic performance; 2) grade level performance data employing the historical two-year above grade level as a marker; and 3) consideration of several student data sources, including input and information from teachers and family. Work will continue into the spring semester to incorporate these data sources to create a student profile and, pending individual student performance level indicators, a Differentiated Education Plan (DEP) for students.

Monitoring Model - TAG staff continues work with the Research and Evaluation Department to create a model for student data analysis to aid in identification. These models will be research- based and provide the information needed to make identification, programming, and additional diagnostic decisions pertaining to individual students. It has been determined that the Student Intervention Monitoring System (SIMS) can be used as the tracking and reporting system. It currently containing much of the student information needed, including assessment and other data from Infinite Campus, that will make up the student profile component of a TAG student report. T AG staff will use SIMS in the current form to develop student profiles and Differentiated Education Plans (DEPs). Next steps include customizing reports in SIMS to meet future documentation/Plan development needs=

Milwaukee school takeover is baffling political battle

Joel McNally:

Why would Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, running for governor, continue an apparently losing fight on a controversial local issue that doesn't gain him any votes statewide while tearing apart his political base at home?

Barrett's attempt to seize control of Milwaukee Public Schools from the elected School Board failed to muster enough support in the Legislature recently to even bring up the issue after Gov. Jim Doyle called a special session. The Legislature adjourned without discussing mayoral control.

Meanwhile, the Milwaukee School Board, under the leadership of President Michael Bonds, has narrowed its national search for a new superintendent down to three finalists -- two African-Americans and a Latino -- all with experience in urban school districts.

Extending an olive branch, Bonds invited Barrett to personally interview the three finalists and make a recommendation to the board.

He also named Barrett to a community panel advising the board on the selection. The diverse committee includes Alphonso Thurman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee dean of education, state Rep. Annette Polly Williams, former Mayor Marvin Pratt, private philanthropist Julia Uihlein and prominent Latino, Hmong, American Indian and union leaders.

Commentary on Charter Schools in the Madison School District

Madison School Board Vice President Lucy Mathiak:

On Monday, the Board of Education will have a presentation by the planning group that is proposing an environmentally-focused project-based charter middle school. The Badger Rock Middle School is the first charter proposal to come before the board since the Studio School debacle a few years back. From what we are hearing in the community, it is not likely to be the last (more on that later).

Proposed Charter: Badger Rock Middle School

What we will be deciding now: The board will be asked to approve the group's initial proposal, which will form the basis of a planning grant application to the Department of Public Instruction. If the planning grant is awarded, the group will carry out additional work necessary to develop and design the charter school in greater detail, and develop a proposal that would come before the board requesting approval of the creation of the school and its charter.

Reading Recovery: Effectiveness & Program Description

US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, via a kind reader's email:

No studies of Reading Recovery® that fall within the scope of the English Language Learners (ELL) review protocol meet What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards. The lack of studies meeting WWC evidence standards means that, at this time, the WWC is unable to draw any conclusions based on research about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of Reading Recovery® on ELL.

Reading Recovery® is a short-term tutoring intervention designed to serve the lowest-achieving (bottom 20%) first-grade students. The goals of Reading Recovery® include: promoting literacy skills; reducing the number of first-grade students who are struggling to read; and preventing long-term reading difficulties. Reading Recovery® supplements classroom teaching with one-to-one tutoring sessions, generally conducted as pull-out sessions during the school day. The tutoring, which is conducted by trained Reading Recovery® teachers, takes place for 30 minutes a day over a period of 12 to 20 weeks.

Related: 60% to 42%: Madison School District's Reading Recovery Effectiveness Lags "National Average": Administration seeks to continue its use.

Homework-tracking Web sites won't work without teacher input

Jay Matthews:

My former Post colleague Tracy Thompson has two daughters in a Washington area school district. I promised not to say which one. It doesn't matter, because the issue she raises involves all high-tech schools, of which we have many.

People aren't using the new Web features designed to help families. Is it because parents like me are technophobes? Not entirely. The reluctant participants who concern Thompson are teachers.

Both of Thompson's kids have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. They have trouble getting their work done. Her school district, like several in the area, has Web sites on which parents can see their children's assignments. That way, they cannot be fooled by sly evasions when they ask their children, sitting in front of the TV, whether they have any homework.

Thompson was delighted to discover the Web homework schedules when her older daughter was a sixth-grader. Disappointment followed, she said, when "I found out only about half of her teachers used it. Some teachers were weeks behind in updating the info. My older daughter is off to high school next year and has matured amazingly over the past three years, so I don't have to worry that much about her stuff anymore. But now my younger daughter is in third grade, and I am in my second year of trying to get her teachers to use the Web."

Related Infinite Campus and the Madison School District. Read the Middle School Report Card Report, which includes information on the District's use of Infinite Campus.

Milwaukee School Board Approves Condom Giveaways

Tom Kertscher:

Without discussion, the Milwaukee School Board voted 7-0 Thursday night to make condoms available at many of the city's high schools, paving the way to make Milwaukee Public Schools one of the relatively few districts in the nation to provide contraception to students.

The communicable disease prevention program, as the district calls it, could be in place as soon as the 2010-'11 school year.

The proposal sparked some opposition after being made public Dec. 2, but the board approved the condom distribution without much dissent. Comments from the public are not allowed at board meetings and a board committee had voted 5-0 on Dec. 9 to recommend adopting the program.

The condoms will be available free of charge, but only to students in high schools that have school nurses and only after students request them at the nurse's office, according to a fact sheet circulated by the school district. Up to two condoms will be distributed at a time.

Thursday's vote does not authorize funding for the program, but the district has said it will not use taxpayer money to buy condoms and instead will seek other sources of funding.

Somewhat related: biggovernment.com and mediamatters.org have been going back and forth on Obama Administration "safe school czar" Kevin Jenning's K-12 sex education activities.

Wisconsin Race to the Top: Governor/DPI Letter and "Memorandum of Understanding"

via a kind reader's email; Letter from Governor Doyle and Department of Public Instruction Superintendent Tony Evers [107K PDF]:

We are excited to invite you to participate in Wisconsin's Race to the Top application to the federal government. Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, President Obama and Congress provided $4 billion in competitive grant funding to states that move forward with innovations and reform in education.

Earlier this fall, at our request, the Wisconsin Legislature passed bills to make Wisconsin both eligible and more competitive for the Race to the Top grants. Now our local school district leaders - school board members, superintendents, principals, teachers, and other staff - need to prepare their district for participation in Wisconsin's grant application. Enclosed is the Race to the Top district memorandum of understanding (MOU) that the federal government requires participating districts to sign as part of the state's Race to the Top grant application. The MOU provides a framework of collaboration between districts and the state articulating the specific roles and responsibilities necessary to implement an approved Race to the Top district grant.

The MOU is divided into two parts - Exhibit I and Exhibit II. To receive any Race to the Top funding, a district must agree to the activities in Exhibit I. Districts that agree to Exhibit I are eligible, if they so choose, to participate in Exhibit II. In Exhibit II districts will receive additional funding for participating in the additional activities. Exhibit I is included in this information and Exhibit II will be forthcoming in the very near future.

"Memorandum of Understanding" [208K PDF]:

I'm told that Madison's potential intake of "Race to the Top" funds is less than 1% of the current $400MM budget.

Related: US National Debt Tops Debt Limit.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Public United States Debt Rose from 41 to 53% of the Gross Domestic Product in the Past Year

Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform PDF Report

Over the past year alone, the public debt of the United States rose sharply from 41 to 53 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Under reasonable assumptions, the debt is projected to grow steadily, reaching 85 percent of GDP by 2018, 100 percent by 2022, and 200 percent in 2038.

However, before the debt reached such high levels, the United States would almost certainly experience a debt- driven crisis--something previously viewed as almost unfathomable in the world's largest economy. The crisis could unfold gradually or it could happen suddenly, but with great costs either way. The tipping point is impossible to predict, but the United States is already hearing con- cerns about its fiscal management from some of its largest creditors, and the country is uncomfortably vulnerable to shifts in confidence around the world.

Wisconsin ranks 10th amongst the States in State-Local debt service. Exploding debt levels mean that it is highly unlikely school districts will see significant new revenues. Like many organizations, they must change and spend precious dollars where most needed and automate elsewhere (virtual learning tools are a natural, as this post demonstrates).

Reading Recovery Discussed at the 12/7/2009 Madison School Board Meeting and Administration Followup

Click for a Reading Recovery Data Summary from Madison's Elementary Schools. December 2009

Madison School Board 24MB mp3 audio file. Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad's December 10, 2009 memorandum [311K PDF] to the board in response to the 12/7/2009 meeting:

Attached to this memo are several items related to further explanation of the reason why full implementation is more effective for Reading Recovery and what will happen to the schools who would no longer receive Reading Recovery as part of the administrative recommendation. There are three options for your review:

• Option I: Continue serving the 23 schools with modifications.
• Option II: Reading Recovery Full Implementation at Title I schools and Non-Title I Schools.
• Option III: Serving some students in all or a majority of schools, not just the 23 schools who are currently served.

The first attachment is a one-page overview summary ofthe MMSD Comprehensive Literacy Model. It explains the Balanced Literacy Model used in all MMSD elementary schools. It also provides an explanation of the wrap around services to support each school through the use of an Instructional Resource Teacher as well as Tier II and Tier III interventions common in all schools.

The second attachment shows the detailed K-5 Title I Reading Curriculum Description in which MMSD uses four programs in Title I schools: Rock and Read, Reading Recovery, Apprenticeship, and Soar to Success. As part of our recommendation, professional development will be provided in all elementary schools to enable all teachers to use these programs. Beginning in Kindergarten, the four instructional interventions support and develop students' reading and writing skills in order to meet grade level proficiency with a focus on the most intensive and individualized wrap around support in Kindergarten and I" Grade with follow up support through fifth grade.

Currently these interventions are almost solely used in Title I schools.
The third attachment contains three sheets - the frrst for Reading Recovery Full Implementation at Title I schools, the second for No Reading Recovery - at Title I Schools, and the third for No Reading Recovery and No Title I eligibility. In this model we would intensify Reading Recovery in a limited number of schools (14 schools) and provide professional development to support teachers in providing small group interventions to struggling students.

The fourth attachment is a chart of all schools, students at risk and students with the highest probability of success in Reading Recovery for the 2009-10 school year. This chart may be used if Reading Recovery would be distributed based on student eligibility (districtwide lowest 20% of students in f rst grade) and school eligibility (based on the highest number of students in need per school).

Option I: Leave Reading Recovery as it currently is, in the 23 schools, but target students more strategically and make sure readiness is in place before the Reading Recovery intervention.

Related: 60% to 42%: Madison School District's Reading Recovery Effectiveness Lags "National Average": Administration seeks to continue its use.

Props to the Madison School Board for asking excellent, pointed questions on the most important matter: making sure students can read.

Verona, WI School Board Discussion of the New Century Charter School

via a kind reader's email, who notes that Verona's video archives include very helpful topic based navigation!

At the most recent meeting on Dec. 7, the school board heard a final presentation from New Century School's site council. Developments with New Century's charter renewal are reaching a critical point, since we need approval from the school board by early January to participate in kindergarten recruitment. New Century is one of Wisconsin's oldest charter schools (established in May 1995), and our school community is fighting for the charter's continued existence. It's been a challenging journey.

Click "video" for the December 7, 2009 meeting and look for "D", the New Century Presentation. Interestingly, "E" is a presentation on a proposed Chinese immersion charter school.

Unfortunately, Madison lacks significant charter activity, something which, in my view, would be very beneficial to the community, students and parents.

With Wisconsin's QEO Gone, schools bargain harder on teachers' contracts

Amy Hetzner:

So far this school year, the approximately 100 school districts that have reached agreements with their teachers have average settlements that increase salaries and benefits by 3.75%, according to Bob Butler, staff counsel for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards. That compares with an average total compensation increase of 4.11% for teachers in the 2008-'09 school year.

Given that settlements tend to go down the longer negotiations take, Butler said the average increases for 2009-'10 and 2010-'11 are likely to be below what they have been in the past and what was considered a minimum settlement under the QEO law.

The recession, even in growing and financially stable districts, is the main reason behind the settlement drops, Butler said. Even though the Legislature removed the QEO salary restrictions, it left revenue limits in place so that any increase in teacher compensation almost certainly means staff cuts, he said.

In addition, facing pressure from taxpayers, some school districts, such as Whitnall, refused to enact a tax levy up to their state-imposed revenue limits this year.

"We have seen such a drastic reduction in the amount of money we have coming in from the state, it would have been hard to settle at 3.8% even if the QEO still stood there," Whitnall School Board President Bill Osterndorf said.

Related, 9/25/2009: Madison School District & Madison Teachers Union Reach Tentative Agreement: 3.93% Increase Year 1, 3.99% Year 2; Base Rate $33,242 Year 1, $33,575 Year 2: Requires 50% MTI 4K Members and will "Review the content and frequency of report cards".

Pulaski teachers protest board vote against union

Chuck Bartels:

Union-represented teachers in the Pulaski County School District stayed home Thursday to protest a school board decision to end recognition of their union.
All 39 schools in the 18,000-student district remained open, with substitute teachers and parent volunteers filling in for the absent teachers, Acting Superintendent Rob McGill said.
"Our first priority was getting students in the classrooms, getting substitutes or volunteers in the classrooms and proper supervision for the students," McGill said.

"I've had no phone calls as far as schools saying (they are) overwhelmed and can't handle the situation," he added.

Of the district's 1,380 teachers, 690 were out Thursday, exactly half. About a dozen teachers are out on a typical day, McGill said.

Board of Education Progress Report, December, 2009

Madison School Board President Arlene Silveira, via email:

4-Year-Old Kindergarten (4K): The Board received updates from the community-based 4K planning committee in the areas of: 1) logistics; 2) curriculum; 3) public/community relations; 4) family outreach/involvement; 5) funding. The Board voted to have the District continue to work with the community in planning for 4K with an anticipated start date of September 2010, pending the determination of the availability of the resources necessary to support the new program. A presentation on financial resources will be made to the Board in December.

Financial Audit: As required by state statute, the MMSD hires an independent audit firm to perform an audit of our annual financial statements and review our compliance with federal program requirements. The audit looks at the financial operations of the District. This audit was completed by Clifton Gunderson LLP. The Board received the audit report and a summary from Clifton Gunderson.

When asked what the summary message was that we could share with the community, the response was that the District is in a very sound financial position. Results of operations for 2009 were very positive with $10M added to fund balance. The fund balance is critical to the operation of the District and the cash-flow of the District. We were pleased with the audit outcome.

Math Task Force: The Board approved the administrative response to the 13 recommendations listed in the MMSD Math Task Force Report. The recommendations focused on middle school math specialists; district-wide curricular consistency; achievement gap; assessment; teacher collaboration; parent/community communication; balanced math approach; addressing failing grades in algebra; and algebra in 8th grade. The Board also asked for regular updates on the progress of plan implementation. The Task Force Report is located on the District's web site.

Enrollment Data: The Board reviewed the enrollment data and projections for the District. One area that stood out was the overcrowding in some of the elementary schools in the La Follette attendance area. The Long Range Planning Committee is starting a series of meetings to study the overcrowding in this area and to develop recommendations for the Board on how to address this issue. It is anticipated that recommendations will be brought back to the Board in February. The Board will have the final say on how to deal with the overcrowding issues.

If you have any questions/comments, please let us know. board@madison.k12.wi.us

Arlene Silveira (516-8981)

The Perfect Example of Communalism

Andreal Davis - Madison School District Instructional Resource Teacher for Cultural Relevance, via a kind reader's email:

Communalism is the concept that the duty to one's family and social group is more important that individual rights and privileges. On November 4, 2009 I personally experienced this concept through President Barack Obama's visit to James Coleman Wright Middle School.

The experience began with my 12 year old son, Ari Davis, being selected to lead the Pledge of Allegiance during the ceremony. Minutes after being informed of this special occasion, I was invited to attend the event as a member of the Madison Metropolitan School District staff. Thus, I attended the ceremony wearing two hats, one as a parent and the other as an educator.

On the day of this event, several of us anxiously awaited - for more than four hours - the arrival of President Obama. During this period I experienced first hand the spirit of communalism. A recap of my educational career began to unfold in the parking lot as I held conversations with past and current MMSD colleagues. As I entered Wright Middle School I had the opportunity to interact with students I had taught at Lincoln Elementary. This allowed me to see some products of my work by listening to their thought provoking reactions to the President's impending visit.

Clusty Search: Communalism.

An Update from the Madison School Board's Student Member

Sarah Maslin:

4k is really exciting, since it provides a great opportunity for four year olds to get a head start with learning before they get to kindergarten. It's also a promising step towards eliminating the achievment gap. Right now, we're smooting out some rough edges-- deciding whether to start with all of the buildings and teachers, or whether to "phase in," starting with 1/3 or 2/3 the amount of resources, and then increase it in the next few years.

However, though there's still some negotiating to go, the 4k plan seems to be on its way. Another issue that involved a lot of intense discussion was the district's Reading Recovery Program.

Reading Recovery is a program for first grade students who are really struggling with reading. Targeted at the lowest 20% reading level students, Reading Recovery provides very intense one-on-one training every day which, when continued throughout the year, has very good national results of getting kids back on track.

However, in the last few years, RR in the MMSD has had less success than the national average (42% students finish the program versus around 60% nationally). This lead the district to worry and evaluate the program. At our meeting, we discussed schools that had experienced success with reading recoverey, and other ones that had not. The team that evaluated the program has recommended "full implementation" of reading recovery at schools with the most needy children, which would hopefully increase the success rate at those schools. However, due to limited resources, Reading Recovery can not be implemented at every school.

Detroit Teachers Loaning the District 10K over Two years, 1% Raise in the Third Year

Chastity Pratt Dawsey:

Boos and jeers filled Cobo Hall this afternoon as Detroit Public Schools teachers reacted to details in a proposed contract agreement with the district.

The tentative agreement [Master Settlement PDF] includes:

• Teachers loaning the district $10,000 each over two years with deductions taken from their paychecks.
• A base salary increase of 1% in the third year of the three-year contract.
• Increase in health insurance costs.
• Plus a plethora of school reforms that include a peer evaluation process.

Teachers union president Keith Johnson told the crowd that the contract may not be exactly what they want but the alternative is to have the district declare bankruptcy, possibly leaving many of them unemployed.

"I cannot, I will not gamble, play Russian roulette, call the bluff of the district," Johnson said.

An Update on the Madison School District's Proposed 4K Program

Superintendent Dan Nerad [600K PDF]:

Attached to this memorandum is detailed costing information relative to the implementation of four-year-old kindergarten. We have attempted to be as inclusive as possible in identifying the various costs involved in implementing this program.

Each of the identified options includes cost estimates involving all three program models that have previously been discussed. The first option includes the specific cost requests provided to us by representatives from the community providers. The remaining options include the same costing information for Model I programs (programs in district schools) but vary for Model II and III programs (programs in community-based early learning centers). These options vary in the following ways:

1. For District Option 1, we have used a 1:10 staffing ratio instead of a 1:8.5 staffing ratio that was submitted by representatives from the community providers.
2. For District Option 2, we have used a three-year phase-in for the reimbursement to local providers.
3. For District Option 3, we have used both a 1:10 ratio and a three-year phase-in for reimbursement to local providers.
4. For District Option 4, we have used both a 1:10 ratio and a two-year phase-in for the reimbursement to local providers.

The District options with a 1:10 ratio were created because this was the staffing ratio that was recommended by the 4K planning committee and is the ratio needed for local accreditation. All Modell costing(in District schools) is based on a 1:15 ratio with the understanding that additional special education and bilingual support to the classroom is provided. The District options employing a two- or three-year phase-in of the

Notes & Commentary on a Madison School Board & Wisconsin State Representative Mark Pocan Meeting

TJ Mertz:

State Representative Mark Pocan met with the Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education on Monday, November 30 to discuss "K-12 Funding in Wisconsin and the Impact of the State Budget on School District Finances." (State Senator Mark Miller, who was also expected, was ill, Liz Stevens from his office attended in his stead). The short version of what transpired is that although Pocan brought Bob Lang and Dave Loppnow from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau as support, they were unable to "shut the lions' mouths" and the Board got a few nips in. Beyond that, Pocan explained the intent and context of the budget "fix," emphasized the importance of addressing revenue issues, gave some thoughts on school finance reform, defended parts of his record and more-or-less split the blame for everything bad between Governor Jim Doyle and the economy.

I have to give Pocan some credit and respect for facing the lions and for being very forthright and forthcoming. I'll even go beyond that and say that when he was talking about what can and should be done and why, he showed understanding and that he cared. It was words, not actions, and I want action from my State Rep.. But at least he didn't shut the door on action. Let's help him open that door (more on that below, but think Penny for Kids).

Madison School District Talented & Gifted Plan Presentation Audio / Video

Madison School District Talented & Gifted Plan Presentation 11/17/2009 from SIS.

Click to listen or CTRL-Click to download this 32mb mp3 audio file. Much more on the Madison School District's new talented & gifted plan.

Thanks to Jeff Henriques and Laurie Frost for recording this event.

Blowback on Madison's "Talented & Gifted" Program: "TAG not a game Madison area schools need to play"

Sean Kittridge:

Bumper stickers are like tattoos for cars. They're gaudy, mighty tough to get off and, no matter how hard they try, rarely inspiring. We don't need goofy "coexist" decals to inform us that the person doing a mean 45 MPH in the passing lane is against religion-fueled hatred and wars. Of course that guy's against war. He's driving a Saturn Ion.

And we've just about had it up to here -- lower jaw area -- with those wretched honor roll notifications. "Oh really, Mrs. Johnson? Tommy's getting straight A's in middle school?" Somebody call NASA. Or, if nothing else, call B.S. Just wait 'til he starts listening to rap music.

But parents, as a species, aren't rational beings. After all, if they were, they would've put you up for adoption. Instead, they foolishly assume their child is The Great White Hope, with equal parts of Jim Brown, Barack Obama and Jesus Christ mixed in -- although, interestingly, none of them are white. In Madison, this wide-eyed parental belief that their genes will save the world is best represented by discussions surrounding programming for gifted youngsters.

As reported Monday in the Wisconsin State Journal, some area parents are becoming increasingly frustrated with the Madison school district's weak implementation of TAG programming. TAG, which stands for "talented and gifted," is class instruction designed to challenge more advanced students, and forever lost its credibility when it became loosely associated with a canned body spray. According to the article, the school district currently has eight and a half positions devoted to pushing TAG programming forward, and that's simply not enough to spawn effective change.

Fortunately, it's not necessary, especially when dealing with elementary and middle school students. Try and tell 9-year-olds they're gifted; they'll listen, but only after a good nose-picking and two minutes of straight laughter stemming from a joke that incorporated the word "butt."

Fascinating. The TAG initiative, from my perspective, ideally should lead to increased rigor for all students. That is obviously a contentious topic.....

Madison School Board Updates

via an Arlene Silveira email:

Board of Education Progress Report, November, 2009

BOE updates:

Dual Language Immersion (DLI): The Board approved the expansion of our DLI program into our 4 attendance areas at specified schools at the elementary/middle school levels. We are still studying high school models. DLI is a program where children are taught in both Spanish and English. DLI programs are currently at Nuestro Mundo and Leopold Elementary Schools. Next year our first middle school program will be at Sennett.

Cultural Relevance: The Board received an update on our Cultural Relevance initiatives. This is included in the strategic plan as a Strategic Objective in Curriculum. The District has a number of new/expanding projects in this area. Of note is a pilot created at Mendota and Falk Elementary Schools. Staff are collaborating with UW-Madison faculty for professional development in: African American language development; family involvement; black communications; classroom management; teaching from principles; culturally relevant literacy principles.

School Food Committee: This committee was formed to look at possible options for our food service operations. The district is bringing in an expert (Ann Cooper) in transitioning food service programs. Early next year she will come to Madison to look at our operations and provide a cost estimate for a feasibility study of the MMSD.

Budget: The Board approved our final budget and set the tax levy in October. Summary:

• Total levy: $234,240,964 (3.49% increase)
• Tax rate: $10.18 (3.77% increase)
• Impact on $250,000 home: $92.83

Going into the meeting, the proposed tax rate was $10.40 with the impact on a $250,000 home of $147.50. Aware of the difficult economic times facing our community, the Board approved 6 budget amendments designed to decrease these numbers to the approved numbers. As part of our effort to decrease property taxes, the Board voted to freeze "non-essential" maintenance spending by deferring or foregoing $3,080,000 in maintenance referendum tax levy spending in 2009-10. By doing so, we were able to decrease the tax impact on the average home by $33.16. What does this mean for the schools? We will continue to make essential repairs using existing maintenance funds or other existing district resources. We have already spent 91% of the maintenance referendum that passed 5 years ago. We will evaluate and prioritize the remaining "non-essential" maintenance projects on the list, and will make funding decisions on an as needed basis using a different source of funding.

Lighthouse Project: The Board and Superintendent are participating in the Lighthouse Project. A study focused on behavior of school boards/superintendents in high-achieving school districts. Our participation in this project over the next 6 months will focus on the 7 conditions of school renewal: 1) Shared leadership; 2) Continuous improvement and shared decision-making; 3) Ability to create/sustain initiatives; 4) Supportive workplace for staff; 5) Staff development; 6) Support for school sites through data/information; 7) Community involvement.

H1N1 Activities: We received a presentation on the district's H1N1 Pandemic Response Plan. The plan focused on 1) Education on H1N1; 2) Vaccination clinics; 3) Student/staff absences; 4) Supporting school operations; 5) Supporting students. An incredible amount of planning and communication went into the development of this plan and the district is now ready to deal with anything that comes our way as a result of H1N1.

If you have any questions/comments, please let us know.

board@madison.k12.wi.us

Arlene Silveira (516-8981)

Madison School Board Meeting 11/9/2009 Audio

65mb mp3 audio file recorded during Monday's meeting. Topics include: Strategic Plan benchmarks and the recent passage of Wisconsin education "reform" legislation.

Mayoral Control Coming Soon to Madison Schools?

via a kind readers email - The Milwaukee Drum:

TMD has obtained an internal memo sent from Sen. Taylor (1.5MB PDF) to other state representatives (dated 11/5/09 7:35 pm) seeking their co-sponsorship for the MPS Takeover legislation. This memo not only asks for co-sponsorship, but it provides specific details of the upcoming (draft) legislation. This is what the public has been waiting for... details!

Beloved, one thing you will continue to read from me is the mantra follow the money. This entire reform gets down to one thing, money... more specifically, Race To The Top federal grants. State governors must apply for the grant and that is where this all begins with Doyle. Did you know that 50% of any grant received must be given to local educational agencies (LEAs), including public charter schools identified as LEAs under State law? I guess you won't see many preachers in Milwaukee opposing this Takeover since their schools stand to benefit financially. Where did Doyle have that press conference in Milwaukee last week?

Let me back this thing up for you quickly. Some of you still are wondering what gives? Jump down the worm hole with me again just for a second... President Obama and Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) aka the Stimulus Package (2/17/09). Inside this legislation is approximately $4.3 billion set aside for states that implement education reform targeted to increase student achievement, closing achievement gaps, improving graduation rates and preparation for success in college/careers. Follow the money family...

A reader mentioned that the governance changes may apply to other Wisconsin Districts, perhaps rendering local boards as simple wallflowers....

More to come, I'm sure.

Madison School Board Members on President Obama and Education Secretary Duncan's 11/4/2009 Wright Middle School Visit

The elected Madison School Board will be present at Wednesday's visit and rightfully so. There will be plenty of other politicians, but these people truly deserve a bit of time in the spotlight.

Love them or loath them, we should all be thankful for the time and effort our board members devote to that most important public expenditure: public schools. It is truly an essential but thankless job. I believe boardmembers are paid $4,000 annually.

I emailed our board and asked for a quote prior to the President's arrival. Four responded thus far:

President Arlene Silveira:

"How exciting for our students at Wright. To meet the president of the United States is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I hope his visit awakens the civic responsibility in all who attend".

Ed Hughes:

We're honored by the President's visit. I'm pleased that the visit will shine a positive light on the great work the Principal Nancy Evans and her staff have been doing at Wright, and that we're able to provide Wright students with a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

If the President is able to find the time to visit one of our Madison schools, I hope that any Madison parents who have questions about what's best for their kids will similarly make the effort to visit their neighborhood schools and see for themselves what we have to offer.

Beth Moss:

The President's visit to a Madison school is an honor for our entire community. Nancy Evans, her staff, students, and the Wright Middle School families deserve to be recognized for their success in creating and maintaining a school community worthy of the President's attention. This is an experience that none of us will forget, and we should be extremely proud that we have been chosen to host a presidential speech on education.

Marj Passman:

President Obama and I may not always agree about what is best for education
but I am very grateful that he has returned the importance of education to
center stage. It is an honor to have been invited to meet him.

It will be interesting to observe the Board when and if President Obama discusses mayoral control of schools in Milwaukee, as Alexander Russo muses.

Madison School District Administration Response to the Math Task Force

The local school district's increasing use of reform math programs lead to the creation of a "Math Task Force". The District Administration's response is outlined in this 2.6MB PDF document:

The purpose of this report is to describe the recomrnendations in response to the Madison Metropolitan School District Mathematics Task Force Report: Review of Mathematics Curriculum and Related Issues, submitted to the Board of Education June, 2008.

Administrative Recommendations Summary The materials included in this packet update and replace those distributed to the Board of Education in April 2009. Included in the materials is a proposed budget.

Middle School Mathematics Specialists (see Recommendations 1-5)

The Superintendent and UW-Madison Deans of Letters and Sciences and the School of Education commissioned a representative and collaborative group to design a professional development plan for this initiative. The group was convened in June and has since met four times during the summer to research and design a professional development plan to support middle school mathematics teachers.

The Middle School Math Partnership committee has tentatively planned five courses for the professional development proposal. Those courses are Number and Generalization, Rational Number and Proportional Reasoning, Geometry, Measurement and Trigonometry, and Algebra and Functions. The courses would be spread out over two years and be co-facilitated by UW and MMSD staff.

Research, data gathering and design will continue through 2009-2010 with the initial cohort of middle school teachers beginning in summer 2010. Upon completion of an initial draft, the plan will be presented to district teachers for further input and refinement.

In collaboration with the above group, a National Science Foundation Targeted Partnership proposal, Professional Learning Partnership K-20 (PLP K-20), was submitted on August 20, 2009. A UW-Madison and MMSD team of nearly 30 members worked during the summer to craft a proposal focused on systemic and sustainable mathematics professional development. The vision described in the proposal creates "a lasting interface to coordinate material, human, social, and cyber resources" among the UW-Madison and District. The principal investigator of the NSF proposal is Eric Wilcots. Co-Pl's include Provost Deluca, Superintendent Nerad, Dean Sandefur and Dean Underwood.

Background notes and links:

• Math Forum audio & video links.
• West High School Math Teacher letter to Isthmus.
• UW-Madison Math Faculty (35 signatures) open letter to the Madison School District about the Math Coordinator Position.
• Madison School District 8th Grade Math Data.

Again, it will be interesting to see what, if any substantive changes occur in the local math programs.

Madison School District Strategic Plan: Nirvana by 2014/2015?

The Madison School Board recently passed the District's Strategic Plan. Superintendent Dan Nerad has now published a draft document outlining performance measures for the plan (this is positive). The 600K PDF document is well worth reading. Mr. Nerad's proposed performance measures rely on the oft criticized - for its lack of rigor - state exam, the WKCE. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction recently stated that "Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum".

A few highlights from the 600K PDF document:

• By 2014/2015 every Madison School District Student will be 100% proficient on the WKCE. "Flexible Instruction" is referenced for all students.
• The percentage of Madison School District high school students "participating in" advanced courses has declined over the past three years:

  Grade	2006/2007	2007/2008	2008/2009
  9	0.3%	0.4%	0.2%
  10	5.5%	7.3%	1.9%
  11	18.0%	18.1%	10.6%
  12	34.1%	34.3%	24.3%

  Related: WKCE Scores Document Decline in the Percentage of Madison's Advanced Students.
• The percentage of students scoring "C" or above for all courses will rise from 45 to 64% (6th to 12th grade; 2008/2009 school year) to all students (100%) in 2014-2015.

Related:

• Are MMSD Programs Effective, Who Knows?
• When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed...and not before.
• West High Math teachers on curriculum reduction.

Discussing these data is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, use of the WKCE does not instill much confidence, from my perspective.

via "Some States Drop Testing Bar" by John Hechinger.

Happy Halloween!

Madison School Board Revises Budget to Reduce the Upcoming Property Tax Increase

WKOW-TV, via a kind reader's email:

Madison school board leaders are revising a budget plan that lowers their property tax increase but defers millions of dollars in maintenance.

Leaders are looking to lower the previously agreed upon property tax hike by about $50 dollars per homeowner: from $147 on a $250,000 home, to $92.83 on a $250,000 home.

To accomplish that, members took from a few funds, and decided they would not levy the remaining balance on a 2005 maintenance referendum: that equaling out to almost $3 million dollars.

School board members had to compensate for the loss of $12-million dollars in state funding.

The loss of funding for the maintenance referendum didn't come without discussion. Board member Beth Moss hoped to levy just enough to pay for $1.4 million dollars of roof maintenance.

Moss says, "The maintenance doesn't go away... You can put it off, but putting it off usually only makes it worse."

On the list for repairs, a boiler at Marquette Elementary, and more efficient windows at Shorewood Elementary.

Most budget changes passed 7-0, with the exception of the deferred maintenance, which passed 5-2 with Beth Moss and Ed Hughes voting against it. Moss's school board seat is up for election on April 6, 2010. I emailed Beth last weekend, along with Maya Cole and Johnny Winston, Jr. to see if they plan to run for re-election.

Listen to Monday evening's Madison School Board discussion via this 1 hour, 50 minute mp3 audio file.

The budget changes were driven by reduced transfers of state tax dollars to school districts and the drop in assessed property values (via an April, 2009 memo). Interestingly, I don't believe this significant Board (mostly 7 votes, but some big dollar 5-2 as noted above) effort to hold down the local school property tax increase would have occurred with earlier Directors.

Community Background as the Madison School District Considers Further Property Tax Increases Monday Evening

The Monday, October 26, 2009 Madison School Board meeting agenda will include a discussion (and presumably a vote) on the upcoming property tax rate increases. The board approved a tax hike earlier this year to make up for a reduction in state income tax and fees redistributed to local school districts due to the "Great Recession". Reductions in property tax assessments ("Of the 73,024 parcels in the City, 53.6% are being changed (6,438 increases and 32,728 reductions") may further drive taxes upward, certainly a challenge given current conditions.

Superintendent Dan Nerad proposed - and passed - a three year referendum that authorized spending and tax increases while providing time for the Administration to, as Board member Ed Hughes stated "put into place the process we currently contemplate for reviewing our strategic priorities, establishing strategies and benchmarks, and aligning our resources." Ed's "Referendum News" is worth reading.

I've summarized a number of links from the 2008 referendum discussion and vote below.

• A transcript of the Madison School Board's July 28, 2008 referendum discussion. (including an mp3 audio file). The board approved the referendum on August 25, 2008 (minutes, many links)
• Public hearing links.
• The initial, public 2008/2009 budget contemplates a referendum decision.
• A July 25, 2008 Wisconsin State Journal Editorial on the local property tax "bite".
• August 19, 2008: Superintendent Dan Nerad recommends a three year recurring referendum. That same day, Vicki McKenna and Don Severson discuss the referendum. Many notes and links.
• Two forums set on the fall, 2008 referendum. Notes from those events.
• Madison School District & Madison Teachers Union Reach Tentative Agreement: 3.93% Increase Year 1, 3.99% Year 2; Base Rate $33,242 Year 1, $33,575 Year 2: Requires 50% MTI 4K Members and will "Review the content and frequency of report cards"

It will be interesting to see what, if anything happens with the recent math, fine arts, talented and gifted task forces and the full implementation of "infinite campus", which should reduce costs and improve services.

Pittsburgh's model of school governance reform

Milwaukee Public Policy Forum:

In the past few weeks Milwaukee has had numerous town hall meetings, panel discussions, and presentations regarding the idea of school district governance reform. At issue is whether the mayor of Milwaukee should be in charge of the Milwaukee Public Schools, rather than an independent board of directors.


At each of these meetings, accountability has been thrown about as both an argument for and against a mayoral take-over of the district. Perhaps a mayor elected in a higher turn-out citywide election would provide more accountability; or maybe losing the opportunity to elect a school board representative would disenfranchise certain voters, diluting accountability.


In Pittsburgh, civic leaders, parents, and citizens decided to stop talking about accountability and actually implement it. A local nonprofit group, A+ Schools: Pittsburgh’s Community Alliance for Public Education, started an initiative called "Board Watch" last winter. The idea is quite simple: send volunteers to attend every board and committee meeting and have them report to the public whether the board is being effective in meeting the district's strategic goals.

D.C.'s Braveheart: Can Michelle Rhee wrest control of the D.C. school system from decades of failure?

June Kronholz:

Michelle Rhee's senior staff meeting has all the ceremony of lunchtime in the teachers' lounge. News is exchanged. Ideas tumble around. Rhee sits at the head of the table but doesn't run the meeting or even take the conversational lead. Staffers talk over her as often as she talks over them. If consensus is the goal, the ball is far upfield.

But then, Rhee wades in with, "Here's what I think," or "What I don't want," or "This is crap," or "I want someone to figure this out," or "I'm gonna tell you what we're gonna do; we can talk about how we're gonna do it." And that is that. Next order of business, please.

Rhee's style--as steely as the sound of her peekaboo high heels on a linoleum-tile hallway--has angered much of Washington, D.C., and baffled the rest since she arrived as schools chancellor in June 2007. But it is also helping her gain control of a school system that has defied management for decades: that hasn't kept records, patched windows, met budgets, delivered books, returned phone calls, followed court orders, checked teachers' credentials, or, for years on end, opened school on schedule in the fall.

Palo Alto Schools Gifted & Talented Proposed Standards

Palo Alto Unified School District Gifted & Talented Program [219K PDF]:

Palo Alto Unified school district's Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) provides educational opportunities that recognize the performance capabilities of gifted students as well as addresses the unique needs and differences associated with having these abilities. The goals of Gifted and Talented Education can be defined as follows:

• To provide students with opportunities for learning that maximize each students' abilities.
• To assist and encourage students to acquire skills and understanding at advanced academic and creative levels.
• To aid students in expanding their abilities to communicate and apply their ideas effectively.
• To engender an enthusiasm for learning.

Program Model
In elementary and middle school, the program model for GATE is differentiation within the mainstream classroom. In 2001, new legislation called for a change in GATE education. Rather than pull children from class for a different curriculum, all differentiation takes place within the context of standards-based instruction in the regular classroom. Teachers enrich and extend the core curriculum for gifted students by differentiating instruction, content, and process. Through differentiated assignments developed to meet their academic and intellectual needs, GATE students are able to explore and expand to their maximum potential. These differentiated curricular opportunities are available to all students, not just those who are formally identified. In middle school, students also have access to the Renzulli Learning System to allow them to individualize their education based on their needs, interests and creative abilities and to explore the curriculum in greater depth and complexity. Advanced math courses are available for the first time in 7th grade and continue through 12th grade. In high school, gifted students are able to take advanced, honors, and advanced placement courses in a wide variety of subjects.

Palo Alto School District Strategic Plan [780K PDF]

Madison School District's Gifted & Talented Plan.

Seattle Public Schools Boundary/School Assignment Plan Comments

The Seattle Times:

FAMILIES chafe at the Seattle Public Schools' wild variability on student assignments. Proposed new school boundaries and a simplified assignment plan offer promising change. [Complete Assignment/Boundary Plan - 358K PDF]

A complex maze that used to determine what school students attended has been streamlined into an uncomplicated rule: students' addresses determine their school.

Students entering kindergarten, sixth grade and ninth grade in the 2010-11 year will be assigned to a school near their home. Students in other grades will remain at their current schools, an appropriate grandfathering that minimizes disruptions.

Many families won't notice a difference. For others, this plan is a huge change. Families living on Queen Anne and in Magnolia have long asked for a neighborhood high school so students weren't bused across the city. They're being assigned to one of the best: Ballard High School.

This shift is the correct route forward. After the district ended bussing for integration purposes, it veered into an expensive and convoluted open choice system. Families could choose any school they wanted but the result was a lack of predictability and stability. Most troubling, the system weighed heavily against less savvy families who were unable to navigate the application process.

Seattle Schools Strategic Plan

More on Singapore Math & The Madison School District

Next week's Madison School Board agenda includes a number of pages [PDF] regarding the purchase of Singapore Math materials for elementary schools. Recent activity on this front included the purchase of workbooks without textbooks.

Severson / McKenna on the Madison School District, Madison Teacher Union Agreement & Budget

24MB mp3. Notes and links on the recent, tentative agreement between the Madison School District and Madison Teachers, Inc.

Madison School District & Madison Teachers Union Reach Tentative Agreement: 3.93% Increase Year 1, 3.99% Year 2; Base Rate $33,242 Year 1, $33,575 Year 2: Requires 50% MTI 4K Members and will "Review the content and frequency of report cards"

via a kind reader's email (200K PDF):

The Madison Metropolitan School District and Madison Teachers Inc. reached a tentative agreement Tuesday evening on the terms and conditions of a new two-year Collective Bargaining Agreement for MTI's 2,600 member teacher bargaining unit. Negotiations began April 15.

The Contract, for July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2011, needs ratification from both the Board of Education and MTI. The Union will hold its ratification meeting on Wednesday, October 14, beginning at 7:00 p.m. at the Alliant Energy Center, Dane County Forum. The Board of Education will tentatively take up the proposal in a special meeting on October 19 at 5:00 p.m.

Terms of the Contract include:

2009-2010 2010-11

Base Salary Raise - 1.00% Base Salary Raise - 1.00%
Total Increase Including Benefits - 3.93% Total Increase Including Benefits - 3.99%
Bachelor's Degree Base Rate $33,242 Bachelor's Degree Base Rate $33,575

A key part of this bargain involved working with the providers of long term disability insurance and health insurance. Meetings between MTI Executive Director John Matthews and District Superintendent Dan Nerad and representatives of WPS and GHC, the insurance carriers agreed to a rate increase for the second year of the Contract not to exceed that of the first year. In return, the District and MTI agreed to add to the plans a voluntary health risk assessment for teachers. The long term disability insurance provider reduced its rates by nearly 25%. The insurance cost reductions over the two years of the contract term amount to roughly $1.88 million, were then applied to increase wages, thus reducing new funds to accomplish this.

The new salary schedule increase at 1% per cell, inclusive of Social Security and WRS, amount to roughly $3.04 million. Roughly 62% of the salary increase, including Social Security and WRS, was made possible by the referenced insurance savings.

Key contract provisions include:

Inclusion in the Contract of criteria to enable salary schedule progression by one working toward the newly created State teacher licensure, PI 34. Under the new Contract provision, one can earn professional advancement credits for work required by PI 34.
• Additive pay regarding National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, i.e. an alternative for bargaining unit professionals who are not teachers (nurses, social workers, psychologists, et al) by achieving the newly created Master Educator's License.

• Continuance of the Teacher Emeritus Retirement Program (TERP).

• The ability after retirement for one to use their Retirement Insurance Account for insurance plans other than those specified in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. This will enable one to purchase coverage specific to a geographic area, if they so choose, or they may continue coverage with GHC or WPS - the current health insurance providers.
  For elementary teachers, the frequency and duration of meetings has been clarified, as have several issues involving planning time. All elementary teachers and all elementary principals will receive a joint letter from Matthews and Nerad explaining these Contract provisions.

• For high school teachers who volunteer for building supervision, there is now an option to enable one to receive compensation, rather than compensatory time for the service. And there is a definition of what "class period" is for determining compensation or compensatory time.

• For elementary and middle school teachers, MTI and the District will appoint a joint committee for each to study and recommend the content and frequency of report cards.
  For elementary specials (e.g. art, music) teachers, the parties agreed to end the class and a half, which will mean that class sizes for specials will be similar to the class size for elementary classroom teachers.

• For coaches, and all others compensated on the extra duty compensation schedule, the additive percentage paid, which was frozen due to the State imposed revenue controls, will be restored.

• School year calendars were agreed to through 2012-2013.

• Also, MTI and the District agreed to a definite five-year exemption to the Contract work assignment clause to enable the District to assist with funding of a community-based 4-year-old kindergarten programs, provided the number of said 4-K teachers is no greater than the number of District employed 4-K teachers, and provided such does not cause bargaining unit members to be affected by adverse actions such as lay off, surplus and reduction of hours/contract percentage, due to the District's establishment of, and continuance of, community based [Model III] 4-K programs. (See note below.)

MTI Executive Director John Matthews said that he was glad that the parties were able to successfully resolve several matters which were raised in negotiations. In all, 67 Contract provisions were amended or created in this year's bargaining.

Superintendent Daniel Nerad said, "I am very pleased that we have reached this tentative agreement after an extensive period of bargaining. We have addressed a significant number of contract language related items. A key example lies in the area of elementary planning time. Of greatest significance to the District is an agreement over language that would allow for the implementation of a four-year-old kindergarten program."
"Also, in working with MTI we have been able to provide a salary increase, in part, as a result of reductions in health care costs. I appreciate working with John Matthews in accomplishing these insurance savings. I look forward to presenting this tentative agreement to the Board of Education in the near future."
John Matthews said, "But the economic provisions do not adequately reward those who have made the Madison schools among the best in the country. With the State usurping local control as regards to school funding, this is a matter that the State must fix; there is nothing local school boards can do, given the State's heavy hand. The State must realize that their funding formula for education is inadequate, and that it is causing the dissolution of the great education once available to Wisconsin children. That must be fixed and it is up to the Governor and the Legislators to do it."

For more information and to coordinate interviews, contact:
MMSD: Ken Syke, 663-1903 or Joe Quick, 663-1902
MTI: John Matthews, 257-0491

There are three models for how 4-K instruction is delivered, i.e., where and by whom:
Model I - in a school district site and by district-employed teachers
Model II - in preschool/child care centers and by district-employed teachers
Model III - in preschool/child care centers and by center-employed teachers

Deja vu: Report of the 1965 Madison School District Math 9 Textbook Committee

1.7MB PDF by Robert D. Gilberts, Superintendent Madison School District, Ted Losby and the Math 9 Textbook Committee:

The mathematics committee of the junior high schools of Madison has been meeting regularly for four rears with one intention in mind -- to improve the mathematics program of the junior high school. After experimenting with three programs in the 7th grade, the Seeing Through Mathematics series, Books 1 and 2, were recommended for adoption and approved in May of 1963.

The committee continued its leadership role in implementing the new program and began evaluation of the 9th grade textbooks available. The committee recommended the adoption of Seeing Through Mathematics, Book 3, published by Scott, Foresman and Company, and Algebra: Its Element and Structure, Book 1, published by Webster Division, McGraw-Hill Book Company, and the Board of Education adopted them on May 3, 1965.

A number of objections to the Seeing Through Mathematics textbooks were made by various University of Wisconsin professors. Dr. R. C. Buck, chairman of the University of Wisconsin Mathematics Department strongly criticized the series. A public objection to the adoption was made at the Board of Education meeting by Dr. Richard Askey of the University Mathematics Department. Later, a formal petition of protest against the adoption of Seeing Through Mathematics, Book 3, was sent to committee members. [related: 2006 Open Letter from 35 UW-Madison Math Professors about the Madison School District's Math Coordinator position]

The sincerity of the eminently qualified professional mathematicians under Dr. Buck's chairmanship was recognized by both the administration and the committee as calling for reconsideration of the committee's decisions over the past three years relative to the choice of Seeing Through Mathematics 1, 2 and 3.

Conversely, the support of the Scott, Foresman and. Company mathematics program and its instruction philosophy, as evidenced by numerous adoptions throughout the country and the pilot studies carried out in the Madison Public Schoolsvindicated that equitable treatment of those holding diametric viewpoints should be given. It was decided that the interests of the students to be taught would be best served through a hearing of both sides before reconsideration.

A special meeting of the Junior High School. Mathematics committee was held on June 10, 1965.

Meeting 1. Presentations were made by Dr. R. C. Buck, Dr. Richard Askey, and Dr. Walter Rudin of the University of Wisconsin Mathematics Department, and Dr. J. B. Rosen, chairman-elect of the University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Department.

The presentations emphasized the speakers' major criticism of the Seeing Through Mathematics series -- "that these books completely distort the ideas and spirit of modern mathematics, and do not give students a good preparation for future mathematics courses. Examples were used to show that from the speakers' points of view the emphasis in Seeing Through Mathematics is wrong. They indicated they felt the language overly pedantic, and the mathematics of the textbooks was described as pseudo-mathematics. However, it was pointed out that the choice of topics was good the content was acceptable (except for individual instances), and the treatment was consistent. A question and answer session tollowed the presentations.

..........

After careful consideration of all points of view, the committee unanimously recommended:

1. that the University of Wisconsin Mathematics and Education Departments be invited to participate with our Curriculum Department in developing end carrying out a program to evaluate the effectiveness of the Seeing Through Mathematics series and, if possible, other "modern" mathematics series in Madison and other school districts in Wisconsin;
2. that the committee reaffirm its decision to recommend the use of Seeing Through Mathematics, Book 3, and Algebra: Its Elements and structure, Book 1, in grade nine with Seeing Through Mathematics, Book 1 and 2 in grades seven and eight, and that the Department of Curriculum Developnent of the Madison Public Schools continue its study, its evaluation, and its revision of the mathematics curriculum; and
3. that en in-service program be requested for all junior high school mathematics teachers. (Details to follow in a later bulletin).

Related: The recent Madison School District Math Task Force.

Britannica on deja vu.

An Interesting Presentation (Race, Income) on Madison's Public Schools to the City's Housing Diversity Committee

Former Madison Alder Brenda Konkel summarized the meeting:

The Madison School District shared their data with the group and they decided when their next two meetings would be. Compton made some interesting/borderline comments and they have an interesting discussion about race and how housing patterns affect the schools. There was a powerpoint presentation with lots of information, without a handout, so I tried to capture it the best I could.

GETTING STARTED
The meeting was moved from the Mayor's office to Room 260 across the street. The meeting started 5 minutes late with Brian Munson, Marj Passman, Mark Clear, Judy Compton, Dave Porterfield, Brian Solomon and Marsha Rummel were the quorum. Judy Olson absent, but joined them later. City staff of Bill Clingan, Mark Olinger, Ray Harmon and Helen Dietzler. Kurt Keifer from the School District was here to present. (Bill Clingan is a former Madison School Board member. He was defeated a few years ago by Lawrie Kobza.

A few interesting notes:

Clear asks if this reflects white flight, or if this just reflects the communities changing demographics. He wants to know how much is in and out migration. Kiefer says they look more at private and parochial school attendance as portion of Dane County and MMSD. Our enrollment hasn't changed as a percentage. There has been an increased activity in open enrollment - and those numbers have gone up from 200 to 400 kids in the last 8 - 10 years. He says the bigger factor is that they manage their enrollment to their capacities in the private and parochial schools. Even with virtual schools, not much changes. The bigger factor is the housing transition in Metropolitan area. Prime development is happening in other districts
......
Kiefer says smaller learning communities is what they are striving for in high schools. Kiefer says the smaller learning initiative - there is a correlation in decrease in drop out rate with the program. Compton asks about minority and Caucasian level in free lunch. She would like to see that.
.......

Kiefer says that Midvale population is not going up despite the fact that they have the highest proportion of single detached units in Midvale - they are small houses and affordable, but also highest proportion of kids going to private and parochial schools. He says it was because of access because to parochial schools are located there. Kiefer says they think the area is changing, that the Hilldale area has been an attractor for families as well as Sequoya Commons. Family and school friendly areas and he tells the city to "Keep doing that". He is hopeful that Hill Farms changes will be good as well.

Fascinating. I wonder how all of this, particularly the high school "small learning community initiatives" fit with the District's strategic plan and recently passed Talented and Gifted initiative?

Madison School Board Talented & Gifted (TAG) Plan Discussion & Approval

There were several public appearances [4.1MB mp3 audio] Monday evening related to the Madison School District's Talented & Gifted plan. TJ Mertz, Kris Gomez-Schmidt, Janet Mertz (not related) and Shari Galitzer spoke during the public appearance segment of the meeting. Their comments begin at 3:13 into this mp3 audio file.

The School Board and Administration's discussion can be heard via this 6MB mp3 audio file. The previous week's discussion can be heard here. Madison United for Academic Excellence posted a number of useful links on this initiative here.

Finally, the recent Private/Parochial, Open Enrollment Leave, Open Enrollment Enter, Home Based Parent Surveys provides a useful background for the interested reader.

Madison School District Strategic Planning Update, with Links

Madison Board of Education President Arlene Silveira, via email:

TO: MMSD Strategic Planning Committee

Good afternoon,

I am writing to provide you with a Board update on the MMSD strategic plan. Before getting into details, I again want to thank you for all of the time and effort you put into development of the plan. It is appreciated.

On July 21, the Board of Education held our second meeting to review the strategic planning document that you, our community-based strategic planning committee, submitted. The Board unanimously approved the following components of the new strategic plan. The mission, beliefs and parameters were approved with no changes to the plan you submitted. Some language in the strategic objectives was modified for clarity and completeness.

• Mission (see below)
• Beliefs (http://drupal.madison.k12.wi.us/files/strategic%20plan%20complete%20doc%20REV%20june%209.pdf Page 4)
• Parameters (http://drupal.madison.k12.wi.us/files/strategic%20plan%20complete%20doc%20REV%20june%209.pdfPage 4)
• Strategic Objectives (see below)

We have not yet approved any of the action plans.

Much more on the Strategic Planning Process here.

WIBA's Mitch Henck Discusses the Madison School District's Budget with Don Severson

24MB mp3 audio file. Mitch and Don discuss the Madison School District's $12M budget deficit, caused by a decline in redistributed tax dollars from the State of Wisconsin and generally flat enrollment. Topics include: Fund 80, health care costs, four year old kindergarten, staffing, property taxes (which may increase to make up for the reduced state tax dollar funding).

Madison School District Board President Arlene Silveira sent this message to local Alders Saturday:

Good afternoon,

Below is an update of the MMSD budget situation.

As you know, the biennial budget was signed into law at the end of June. The budget had numerous provisions that will effect the future of public education that include:

• Repeal of the Qualified Economic Offer (QEO)
• Decrease in funding for public education by the state of approximately $14720million
• Decrease in the per pupil increase associated with revenue limits

The repeal of the QEO will potentially impact future settlements for salries and benefits. The decrease in funding for public education by the state creates the need for a tax increase conversation in order to sustain current programs. The decrease in the revenue limit formula will cause MMSD to face more reductions in programs and services for the next 2 years at a minimum.

EFFECT OF STATE BUDGET ON MMSD

• Decrease in state aid: $9.2 million
• Reduction in revenue: $2.8 million (decrease in the per pupil increase from $275 to $200/pupil)

Total decrease: projected to to be $12 million

Last May, the Madison Board of Education passed a preliminary 2009-10 budget that maintained programs and services with a modest property tax increase. The groundwork for our budget was laid last fall when the Board pledged our commitment to community partnership and the community responded by supporting a referendum that allowed us to exceed revenue caps to stabilize funding for our schools. Two months later, with programs and staff in place for next year, we find ourselves faced with State funding cuts far exceeding our worst fears.

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

We are in this position in part because Wisconsin's school funding formulas are so complicated that the legislature and supporting agencies did not accurately predict the budget's impact on school districts. State aid to Madison and many other districts was cut by 15%. In practical terms, coupled with additional State cuts of $2.8 million, MMSD is saddled with State budget reductions of $12 million this year.

This grim situation is a result of a poor economy, outdated information used by the legislature, and a Department of Public Instruction policy that penalizes the district for receiving one-time income (TIF closing in Madison). Federal stimulus funds will, at best, delay cuts for one year. We are left with a gaping budget deficit when many fiscal decisions for the upcoming school year cannot be reversed.

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?

We are working on strategies and options and are looking carefully at the numbers to ensure our solutions do not create new problems. We will evaluate options for dealing with the budget in early August.

To repair our budget, we are working with legislators and the DPI to appeal decisions that have placed us in this position. We continue to look for changes in resource management to find additional cost reductions. We are seeking ways to offset the impact of school property tax increases if we need to increase our levy.

At the same time, we pledge that we will not pass the full cost of the cuts along as increased property taxes. We will not resort to massive layoffs of teachers and support staff, t he deadline having passed to legally reduce our staff under union contracts.

I will be back in touch after our August meeting when we have made decisions on our path forward.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Arlene Silveira
Madison Board of Education
608-516-8981

Related: Sparks fly over Wisconsin Budget's Labor Related Provisions.

Charter schools need a shout-out in Madison action plans

Scott Milfred:

Yet try to find any mention of charter schools in the Madison School District's new strategic plan and you'll feel like you're reading a "Where's Waldo?" book. You almost need a magnifying lens to find the one fleeting reference in the entire 85-page document. And the words "charter school" are completely absent from the strategic plan's lengthy and important calls for action.

It's more evidence that much of liberal Madison clings to an outdated phobia of charter schools. And that attitude needs to change.

Nearly 10 percent of Wisconsin's public schools are charters. That ranks Wisconsin among the top five states. Yet Madison is below the national average of 5 percent.

Charter schools are public schools free from many regulations to try new things. Parents also tend to have more say.

Yet charters are held accountable for achievement and can easily be shut down by sponsoring districts if they don't produce results within a handful of years.

One well-known Madison charter school is Nuestro Mundo, meaning "Our World" in Spanish. It immerses kindergartners, no matter their native language, in Spanish. English is slowly added until, by fifth grade, all students are bilingual. My daughter attends Nuestro Mundo.

It was a battle to get this charter school approved. But Nuestro Mundo's popularity and success have led the district to replicate its dual-language curriculum at a second school without a charter.

The School Board has shot down at least two charter school proposals in recent years, including one for a "Studio School" emphasizing arts and technology.

Madison School Board President Arlene Silveira told me Friday she supports adding charter schools to the district's action plans in at least two places: under a call for more "innovative school structures," and as part of a similar goal seeking heightened attention to "diverse learning styles."

I agree. I believe that diffused governance, in other words a substantive move away from the current top down, largely "one size fits all" governance model within the Madison public schools is essential.

Madison School District Strategic Planning Update

On July 21, the Board unanimously approved the following components of the new strategic plan.

• Mission
• Beliefs
• Parameters
• Strategic Objectives

We have not yet approved any of the action plans.

New Mission: Our mission is to cultivate the potential in every student to thrive as a global citizen by inspiring a love of learning and civic engagement, by challenging and supporting every student to achieve academic excellence, and by embracing the full richness and diversity of our community.

Strategic Objectives:

Student
We will ensure that all students reach their highest potential and we will eliminate achievement gaps where they exist. To do this, we will prepare every student for kindergarten, raise the bar for all students, create meaningful student-adult relationships, and provide student-centered programs and supports that lead to prepared graduates.

Curriculum
To improve academic outcomes for all students and to ensure student engagement and student support, we will strengthen comprehensive curriculum, instruction and assessment systems in the District.

Staff
We will implement a formal system to support and inspire continuous development of effective teaching and leadership skills of all staff who serve to engage and support our diverse student body while furthering development of programs that target the recruitment and retention of staff members who reflect the cultural composition of our student body.

Resource/Capacity
We will rigorously evaluate programs, services and personnel through a collaborative, data-driven process to prioritize and allocate resources effectively and equitably, and rigorously pursue the resources necessary to achieve our mission.

Organization/Systems
We will promote, encourage, and maintain systems of practice that will create safe and productive learning and work environments that will unify and strengthen our schools, programs, departments and services as well as the District as a whole.

Next steps:

We did not approve any action plans. We went around the table and listed our priority areas and the Administration will develop action plans to support those areas and bring them back to the Board in August. There will be plenty of opportunity for discussion around the action plans brought forward. We have structured our process this way to ensure we keep moving forward as the plan is Important for setting the future direction of the District.

Arlene

Madison School Proposed Board Strategic Plan Discussion - Audio

The Madison School Board discussed the proposed Strategic Plan [PDF] last evening. Listen to this discussion via this 85MB mp3 audio file. Much more on the proposed Strategic Plan here. Some recent written questions from the Board to the Administration can be found here.

Singapore Math Workbook Only Purchase Discussion (No textbooks or teacher guides) at the Madison School Board

26MB mp3 audio file. Marj Passman, Lucy Mathiak and Maya Cole raised a number of questions regarding the purchase of $69K worth of Singapore Math Workbooks (using Federal tax dollars via "Title 1") without textbooks or teacher's guides at Monday evening's Board Meeting. The purchase proceeded, via a 5-2 vote. Ed Hughes and Beth Moss supported the Administration's request, along with three other board members.

Related Links:

• Math Task Force notes and links
• Math Forum audio / video
• West High School Teachers Letter to Isthmus on the Madison School District's Math Curriculum

The Madison Math Task Force Report [3.9MB PDF] found that local elementary school teachers used the following curricular materials (page 166):


What, if anything has the Math Task Force report addressed?

Madison School District Budget Update: Wisconsin K-12 State Budget Changes

Superintendent Dan Nerad [184K PDF]:

Every two years the State of Wisconsin goes through a process to finalize a two year budget for all governmental programs. This biennial budget process is the source of the State's commitment to public education here in Wisconsin, historically driven by legislative guidance to adhere to two-thirds funding.
The two-thirds funding has changed over recent years, but for the most part the State of Wisconsin was able to continue annual increases to public education in an attempt to keep up with rising costs within this sector.

The biennial budget was sigued into law near the end of June by Governor Jim Doyle after various proposals and with relatively few vetoes. This budget has numerous provisions that will effect the future of public education that include:

• Repeal of the Qualified Economic Offer (QEO)
• Decrease in funding for public education by the state of approximately $147 million
• Decrease in the per pupil increase associated with revenue limits

Each of these provisions can and Will have a very unique impact on :MMSD over the years to come. The repeal of the QEO will potentially impact future settlements for salaries and benefits. The decrease in funding for public education by the state is projected to create the need for a tax increase conversation in order to sustain current programs. The decrease in the revenue limit formula will cause MMSD to face more reductions in programs and services fur the next two years at a minimum.

Many public and private organizations are dealing with this issue. It is perhaps a time to make lemonade out of lemons. In the MMSD's case, getting out of the curriculum creation business (teaching & learning) and placing a renewed focus on hiring the most qualified teachers and letting them run.

Proposed Madison Schools' Strategic Plan: School Board Written Questions

Madison School Board 1.1MB PDF:

4) Curriculum Action Plan - Flexible Instruction (page 44)

Arlene Silveira Is "flexible Instruction" the latest term for differentiation or differentiated teaching/team teaching? If so, we have been doing this for a while in the district. Do we have any evaluation of how this is working?

Lucy Mathiak
Please define "flexible instruction (and in civilian terms vs. eduspeak, please).

Ed Hughes
To what extent, if at all, does the "flexible instruction" action plan contemplate less "pull out" instruction for special ed students?

Madison School District Administration's response:

Flexible instruction is similar to other terms, such as differentiation and universal design. All of these terms mean that teachers begin with explicit standards and/or curricular goals for a unit or course. Teachers then design multiple ways to teach and multiple learning experiences for students for all core standards and/or curricular goals. Flexible instruction is best planned in teams composed of regular education, special education, and ESL teachers so that many aspects of diverse learners, including options for students abovelbelow grade level, are addressed in the original design of lessons. In classrooms with flexible instruction, various groups of students can work together, share and leam from each other even when the different groups of students might be working on slightly different types of experiences.

Although there is no explicit evaluation of how this is currently working, one of the highest priorities of teachers is the time to engage in this type of collaborative professional work.

The last paragraph states "Although there is no explicit evaluation of how this is currently working" gets to the heart of curricular issues raised by a number of board members, parents and those discussed in the recent outbound parent survey.

This document is a must read for all public school stakeholders. It provides a detailed window into School Board governance and the current state of our public school Administration.

Related Links:

• The proposed strategic plan document (PDF)
• Links and commentary on the Strategic Planning Process.

UPDATE: Lucy Mathiak posted her full set of questions here.

Madison School Board Discussion: Private/Parochial, Open Enrollment Leave, Open Enrollment Enter, Home Based Parent Surveys

22MB mp3 audio file. A summary of the survey can be seen here. The Board and Administration are to be commended for this effort. It will be interesting to see how this initiative plays out.

Fine Arts Task Force Report Discussion - Audio

The Madison School Board's discussion last evening via a 42MB mp3 audio file. An interesting discussion, particularly with respect to the School District's interaction with the community and the Teaching & Learning Department. Much more on the Fine Arts Task Force here.

School committee model questioned

Jonathan Braden:

The service of school board members on district committees generally does not work well, a state education consultant told school officials yesterday during the Columbia Board of Education's retreat.

But board members and administrators agreed that it has worked well for Columbia Public Schools.

"This district has moved this way, and it's had some successes," Superintendent Chris Belcher said.

David Lineberry is the associate executive director for education and training for the Missouri School Boards' Association. He presented to the school board yesterday afternoon during its three-hour retreat.

Lineberry and officials talked about the board's overall role, the school district's upcoming Comprehensive School Improvement Plan, or CSIP [PDF], and the role of board members on committees.

Madison School District: Private/Parochial, Open Enrollment Leave, Open Enrollment Enter, Home Based Parent Surveys

Kurt Kiefer, MMSD Chief Information Officer [1.3MB PDF]:

This memo is a summary of the results from the surveys completed during the past school year with various parent groups whose children reside within the MMSD attendance area but receive certain alternative education options. Also included are results of the survey conducted with non-residents who attend MMSD schools via the Open Enrollment program (Le., Open Enrollment Enter).

Background
Groups were surveys representing households whose students were enrolled in one of four different educational settings: MMSD resident students attending private/parochial schools, MMSD resident students attending other public schools via the Open Enrollment program, non-resident students attending MMSD schools via the Open Enrollment program, and MMSD resident students provided home based instruction.

The surveys were conducted between December 2008 and February 2009. The surveys were mailed to households or they could complete the survey online. Two mailings were conducted - the initial mailing to all households and a second to non-respondents as a reminder request. Total group sizes and responses are provided below.

This document will be discussed at Monday evening's Madison School Board meeting. UPDATE:

• Complete survey results can be found here [250K PDF]
• Madison School Board discussion of this survey (mp3 audio)

Barb Thompson takes Montgomery (AL) Superintendent Post

Adrienne Nettles via a kind reader's email:

In a vote preceded by outbursts from board members, the Montgomery County Board of Education on Wednesday selected Barbara Thompson as Montgomery's new superintendent.

The board voted 4-3 along racial lines to offer the job to Thompson, who currently serves as superintendent of New Glarus Public Schools in Wisconsin.

Black board members Mary Briers, Eleanor Dawkins, Robert Porterfield and Beverly Ross voted for Thompson. Voting against her were white members Charlotte Meadows, Heather Sellers and Melissa Snowden, who all wanted to continue the search process.

Thompson was the lone finalist for the job after Samantha Ingram, superintendent of Fairfield County Schools in South Carolina, withdrew on Monday.

Ross, chairwoman of the school board, said she called Thompson shortly after the vote and Thompson accepted the job.

"I am excited that she's excited about coming here," Ross said. "She was already talking about how to get our test scores up."

Thompson, in a phone interview from her house in Wisconsin, said she and the board in the next few days should begin working out the details of her contract, which include salary negotiations.

Thompson was formerly principal at Lapham Elementary in the Madison School District. The Montgromery School District, with 31,000 students, is nearly 1/3 larger than the Madison Schools.

Evanston Township High School Board Stresses Rigor in School Improvement Plan

This is an interesting read (688K PDF).

RACE AND ACHIEVEMENT
Rigor Recommendation: Develop a clear, consistent operational/working definition of rigor to be used at ETHS.

Supporting Detail:

• Communicate the definition of rigor to all ETHS stakeholders. (Means of communication to include, e.g., ETHS website/newsletters and displaying definition of rigor in every classroom and in other locations.)
• Ensure a common understanding of rigor by other means, including providing opportunities for all ETHS stakeholders to discuss and better understand the meaning of rigor and what it entails in different ETHS departments, the different expectations associated with rigor by different ETHS stakeholders, and the varying responsibilities of ETHS stakeholders to ensure that rigor is experience by students.
• Identify the components of a rigorous classroom and provide illustrations thereof for each ETHS department, including curriculum/assignments, instructional techniques, behavioral expectations, and classroom dynamics/interaction.
• Ensure that rigor is provided and experienced in ETHS classrooms by means of classroom observations conducted by outside experts andlor by other appropriate means.
• Create and utilize diagnostics to monitor/assess the extent to which rigor actually is being provided at ETHS, to enable teachers to improve the rigor of their classes, and to identify areas where other improvement(s) may be needed. Such diagnostics should include, e. g., assessments that teachers can use in their classrooms to evaluate students' experience of rigor and other questionnaires to be completed by students.

The Madison School District's Strategic Plan, By the Numbers

Via a kind reader's email:

Culturally Relevant/Cultural Relevance 40

Standards 24

Content 21

Measure (including measurement) 28

DPI 2

TAG 17

Special Education 8

ELL 2 (it comes up 45 times, but the other 43 were things like ZELLmer)

inclusion 0

differentiation 0

science 2

mathematics 0

literacy 4

reading 7 (of these, three were in the appendix with the existing 'plan')

African American 7

Hmong 1 (and not in any of the action plans)

Latino or Latina 0

Hispanic 0

Spanish speaking or Spanish speakers 0

Anyone see a problem here?????

The free Adobe Reader includes a text search field. Simply open the proposed document (773K PDF) and start searching.

The Proposed Strategic Plan, along with some comments, can be viewed here.

Interested readers might have a look at this Fall, 2005 Forum on Poverty organized by Rafael Gomez (audio/video). Former Madison School Board member Ray Allen participated. Ray mentioned that his daughter was repeatedly offered free breakfasts, even though she was fed at home prior to being dropped off at school. The event is worth checking out.

I had an opportunity to have lunch with Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad last summer. Prior to that meeting, I asked a number of teachers and principals what I should pass along. One of the comments I received is particularly relevant to Madison's proposed Strategic Plan:

1. Curriculum: greater rigor
2. Discipline: a higher bar, much higher bar, consistent expectations district wide, a willingness to wrestle with the negative impact of poverty on the habits of mind of our students and favor pragmatic over ideological solutions
3. Teacher inservice: at present these are insultingly infantile
4. Leadership: attract smart principals that are more entrepreneurial and less bureaucratic, mindful of the superintendent's "inner circle" and their closeness to or distance from the front lines (the classrooms)

I know these are general, but they are each so glaringly needy of our attention and problem solving efforts.

Notes and links on Madison's Strategic Planning Process.

Madison School Board OK's 1 More Year of Infinite Campus, with More Oversite

Monday evening's Madison School Board meeting included approval of another year of Infinite Campus along with (and this is quite important) a motion requiring that within six months, administration document use of IC and identify barriers to use where they exist, with the purpose of achieving 100% implementation by the end of 2012 or sooner.

Successful implementation of this student and parent information portal across all schools and teachers should be job one before any additional initiatives are attempted.

Madison School Board Infinite Campus Discussion

Watch the discussion here. I've not had a chance to watch or listen to this yet, but I plan to. Much more on Infinite Campus here.

Via a kind reader's email.

The Proposed Madison School District Strategic Plan; School Board Discussion on June 15, 2009

Madison Metropolitan School District, via an Ann Wilson email.

Attached to this e-mail is the Proposed Strategic Plan and a cover memorandum to the Board of Education. We invite all of you to the June 15 Special Board of Education meeting at 6:00 p.m. The Plan, along with a way to respond, is on the district's website (www.mmsd.org) on the home page, under Hot Topics. This is the direct link:

http://drupal.madison.k12.wi.us/node/2246

Thanks to all of you for your hard work and willingness to participate.

Dan Nerad's memorandum to the Madison School Board [PDF] and the most recent revision of the Strategic Plan [PDF].

Much more on the Madison School District's Strategic Planning Process here.

2009-2010 MMSD Budget

We passed the 2009-2010 Madison public school district budget last night. This was the second year in a row that we were able to reallocate to avoid ugly ugly cuts.

This was the first year that we moved to undo damage by reallocating money to put back beginning of the year "Ready Set Goal" parent-teacher conferences AND stop doubling up our art, music, gym, and computer classes through "class and a half." Both items were cuts from past years that were absolute disasters for elementary students.

We expect to receive the strategic planning report in June, and it will inform planning for the 2010-11 budget as we move forward this coming year. In the meantime, we are waiting to hear how the state budget will impact school finance. And we are continuing work to modernize and refine the ways that we work with resources to find additional ways to strengthen our schools.

Madison School District 2009-2010 Budget Discussion

44MB mp3 audio file. The April 30, 2009 meeting discussed:

1. undo class and a half for SAGE schools
2. not extend class and a half for non-SAGE schools
3. restore funding for Ready Set Go conferences

The board also discussed member compensation, future proposals from task forces such as the fine arts and math along with the strategic plan.

Via a kind reader's email.

Madison School Board Rejects Teaching & Learning Expansion; an Interesting Discussion

One of the most interesting things I've observed in my years of local school interaction is the extensive amount of pedagogical and content development that taxpayers fund within the Madison School District. I've always found this unusual, given the proximity of the University of Wisconsin, MATC and Edgewood College, among other, nearby Institutions of Higher Education.

The recent Math Task Force, a process set in motion by several school board elections, has succeeded in bringing more attention to the District's math curriculum. Math rigor has long been a simmering issue, as evidenced by this April, 2004 letter from West High School Math Teachers to Isthmus:

Moreover, parents of future West High students should take notice: As you read this, our department is under pressure from the administration and the math coordinator's office to phase out our "accelerated" course offerings beginning next year. Rather than addressing the problems of equity and closing the gap by identifying minority math talent earlier, and fostering minority participation in the accelerated programs, our administration wants to take the cheaper way out by forcing all kids into a one-size-fits-all curriculum.

It seems the administration and our school board have re-defined "success" as merely producing "fewer failures." Astonishingly, excellence in student achievement is visited by some school district administrators with apathy at best, and with contempt at worst. But, while raising low achievers is a laudable goal, it is woefully short-sighted and, ironically, racist in the most insidious way. Somehow, limiting opportunities for excellence has become the definition of providing equity! Could there be a greater insult to the minority community?

The fact the Madison's Teaching & Learning Department did not get what they want tonight is significant, perhaps the first time this has ever happened with respect to Math. I appreciate and am proud of the Madison School Board's willingness to consider and discuss these important issues. Each Board member offered comments on this matter including: Lucy Mathiak, who pointed out that it would be far less expensive to simply take courses at the UW-Madison (about 1000 for three credits plus books) than spend $150K annually in Teaching & Learning. Marj Passman noted that the Math Task Force report emphasized content knowledge improvement and that is where the focus should be while Maya Cole noted that teacher participation is voluntary. Voluntary participation is a problem, as we've seen with the deployment of an online grading and scheduling system for teachers, students and parents.

Much more on math here, including a 2006 Forum (audio / video).

Several years ago, the late Ted Widerski introduced himself at an event. He mentioned that he learned something every week from this site and the weekly eNewsletter. I was (and am) surprised at Ted's comments. I asked if the MMSD had an internal "Knowledge Network", like www.schoolinfosystem.org, but oriented around curriculum for teachers? "No".

It would seem that, given the tremendous local and online resources available today, Teaching & Learning's sole reason for existence should be to organize and communicate information and opportunities for our teaching staff via the web, email, sms, videoconference, blogs, newsletters and the like. There is certainly no need to spend money on curriculum creation.

"Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed."

Listen to tonight's nearly 50 minute Madison School Board math discussion via this 22MB mp3 audio file.

Madison School District Superintendent Dan Nerad on Local Stimulus / Splurge Spending

4.6MB mp3 audio file. Roughly 11M over two years plus grant opportunities. Much more on the stimulus / splurge here.

Gabriele Meyer on the Madison School District's Math Program

University of Wisconsin-Madison math lecturer Gabriele Meyer advocates the use of Singapore math in this 3 minute mp3 audio file. Much more on Madison's math program here.

Related: the politics (and spin) of calculator use.

Tonight's Madison School Board Meeting at O'Keefe Middle School

The meeting, which will discuss math (TJ Mertz comments), non-SAG