School Information System

Character Counts, But Not by Race

Mona Charen:

The public schools, perhaps more than any other institution in American life, are afflicted with "sounds good" syndrome. Let's teach kids about the dangers of smoking. Sounds good. Let's improve math scores with a new curriculum called "whole math." Sounds good. Let's reduce teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases by teaching sex ed. Sounds good. Let's have cooperative learning where kids help one another. And so on.

The Fairfax County, Va., schools (where my children attend) recently joined a nationwide "sounds good" trend by introducing a character education curriculum. Students were exhorted to demonstrate a number of ethical traits like (I quote from my son's elementary school's website) "compassion, respect, responsibility, honesty." It would be easy to mock the program -- each trait, for example, is linked to a shape (respect is a triangle, honesty is a star). The intention to help mold character is a laudable one. But this program, like so much else about the public schools in the "sounds good" era, has foundered.

The curriculum made news recently when a report ordered by the school board evaluated student conduct for "sound moral character and ethical judgment" and then grouped the results by race. Oh, dear. It seems that among third graders, 95 percent of white students received a grade of "good" or better, whereas only 86 percent of Hispanic kids did that well and only 80 percent of black and special education students were so rated.

Martina A. "Tina" Hone, an African-American member of the school board, told the Washington Post that the decision to aggregate the evaluations by race was "potentially damaging and hurtful."

Wisconsin Bill Proposes to Grant Awards to add World Language Instruction in Grades One to Six

Lauren Rosen, via email:

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to share that Senators Lassa, Schultz and Risser have introduced Senate Bill 466 cosponsored by Representatives Hebl, Musser, Hixson, Sheridan, Berceau, Cullen and Schneider. This bill, currently referred to the Committee on Education, proposes grant awards to school districts to add instruction in world languages other than English in grades one to six. This bill can be viewed at http://www.legis.state.wi.us/2007/data/SB-466.pdf. Please consider reviewing the bill, sharing this proposed legislation with others, and contacting your legislators to share your perspective and assess their position.
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I believe this is the golden opportunity for Madison to start keeping up with creating global citzens by supporting a bill that would allow us to request funds to start elementary school language programs. If MMSD doesn't that too is a message from the school board that they really aren't so interested in global citizens.

I can only hope that MMSD is willing to act on behalf of the interest of its community members with children in the schools.

Oregon and Monona Grove Add Elementary Spanish

Gena Kittner:

wo Dane County school districts will be saying "hola " to new language programs at the elementary level this fall.

In the Oregon School District, Spanish will be taught in kindergarten through fourth grades starting this fall, with fifth and sixth grades added in the fall of 2009, said Courtney Odorico, Oregon School Board member.

Teaching only Spanish is a scaled-down version of what the district originally considered -- teaching a different language such as Japanese, Chinese or German -- at each of its three elementary schools.

"I think parents were a little worried about not having a choice, " Odorico said. Also, "there were very few certified teachers in Chinese and some of the other languages we were looking at in the state. "

The School Board approved the program at a meeting Monday.

Spanish also is the language of choice for elementary students in Monona Grove, where the School Board approved the program earlier this month.

The parent response was overwhelmingly for Spanish, said Bill Breisch, curriculum director for the Monona Grove School District.

Dane County, WI AP High School Course Comparison

A quick summary of Dane County, WI High School 2007-2008 AP Course Offerings (source - AP Course Audit):

• Abundant Life Christian School (3 Courses)
• Cambridge (1)
• DeForest (7)
• Madison Country Day (International Baccalaureate - IB. However, Madison Country Day is not listed on the approved IB World website.)
• Madison East (11)
• Madison Edgewood (11)
• Madison LaFollette (10)
• Madison Memorial (17)
• Madison West (5)
• Marshall (5)
• McFarland (6)
• Middleton - Cross Plains (7)
• Monona Grove (7)
• Mount Horeb (5)
• Oregon (9)
• Sauk Prairie (10)
• Stoughton (6)
• Sun Prairie (13)
• Verona (10)
• Waunakee (6)
• Wisconsin Heights (6)

Links and course details are available here.

Related: Dual Enrollment, Small Learning Communities and Part and Full Time Wisconsin Open Enrollment.

Via a kind reader's email.

Not to Worry: Neal Gleason Responds to Marc Eisen's "Brave New World"

Neal Gleason in a letter to the Isthmus Editor:

I have long admired Marc Eisen's thoughtful prose. But his recent struggle to come to grips with a mutli-ethnic world vvers from xenophobia to hysteria ("Brave New World", 6/23/06). His "unsettling" contact with "stylish" Chinese and "turbaned Sikhs" at a summer program for gifted children precipitated first worry (are my kids prepared to compete?), And then a villain (incompetent public schools).

Although he proclaims himself "a fan" of Madison public schools, he launches a fusillade of complaints: doubting that academic excellence is high on the list of school district pirorities and lamentin tis "dubious maht and reading pedagogy." The accuracy of these concerns is hard to assess, because he offers no evidence.

His main target is heterogeneous (mixed-ability) classes. He speculates that Madison schools, having failed to improve the skills of black and Hispanic kids, are now jeopardizing the education of academically promising kids (read: his kids) for the sake of politically correct equality. The edict from school district headquarters: "Embrace heterogeneous classrooms. Reject tracking of brighter kids. Suppress dissent in the ranks." Whew, that is one serious rant for a fan of public schools.

Eisen correctly observes that "being multilingual" will be a powerful advantage in the business world; familiarity and ease with other cultures will be a plus." Mare than 20 years ago, my kids began to taste this new world in the diverse classrooms of Midvale-Lincoln Elementary, and continued on through West High with its 50-plus nationalitities and a mix of heterogeneous and advanced classes.

They did just fine in college and grad school, emerged bi-and tri-lingual with well worn passorts, and started interesting careers at high tech internationl companies. How will Eisen's kids acquire modern cultural skills if they are cloistered in honors classes, sheltered from daily contact with kids of varied ability?

Neal Gleason

Background:

• Flat MMSD enrollment and growth in the suburbs
  
  
• This is Not Your Grandchild's Madison School District - Lucy Mathiak's response
  
  
• CARE posted some useful numbers on the Madison School District's budget, staffing and enrollment changes over the past decade.
  
  
• Extensive discussion on heterogeneous groupings in West High School's one size fits all English 9/10 curriculum
  
  
• Jason Shephard's "The Fate of the Schools" is a must read.
  
  
• Gleason coaches West High's Chess Club
  
  
• Ongoing, mandatory heterogenous curriculum controversy comments, including those from Neal. Google has more.

Madison Schools Make Effort to Close the Achievement Gap

Sandy Cullen:

Working in conjunction with the Schools of Hope project led by the United Way of Dane County, the district has made progress in third-grade reading scores at the lowest achievement levels. But racial and income gaps persist among third-graders reading at proficient and advanced levels.

Other initiatives are taking place in the middle and high schools. There, the district has eliminated "dead-end classes" that have less rigorous expectations to eliminate the chance that students will be put on a path of lower achievement because they are perceived as not being able to succeed in higher-level classes.

In the past, high school students were able to take classes such as general or consumer math. Now, all students are required to take algebra and geometry - or two credits of integrated mathematics, combining algebra, statistics and probability, geometry and trigonometry - in order to graduate.

One of the district's more controversial efforts has been a move toward "heterogeneous" classes that include students of all achievement levels, eliminating classes that group students of similar achievement levels together.

Advocates of heterogeneous classes say students who are achieving at lower levels benefit from being in classes with their higher-achieving peers. But others say the needs of higher-achieving students aren't met in such classes.

And in addition to what schools are already doing, Superintendent Art Rainwater said he would like to put learning coaches for math and reading in each of the district's elementary schools to improve teachers' ability to teach all students effectively.

The first part of Cullen's series is here.

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due: A Look at the Educational Histories of the 29 West HS National Merit Semi-Finalists

Earlier this semester, 60 MMSD students -- including 29 from West HS -- were named 2006 National Merit Semifinalists. In a 10/12/05 press release, MMSD Superintendent Art Rainwater said, "I am proud of the many staff members who taught and guided these students all the way from elementary school, and of this district's overall guidance and focus that has led to these successes."

A closer examination of the facts, however, reveals that only 12 (41%) of West High School's 29 National Merit Semifinalists attended the Madison public schools continuously from first grade on (meaning that 59% received some portion of their K-8 schooling in either private schools or non-MMSD public schools). Here's the raw data:

NMSF #1: Wingra K-5th; Hamilton

NMSF #2: Franklin-Randall K-5th; Wright for 6th; Hamilton 7th-8th

NMSF #3: Midvale-Lincoln, K-5th; Cherokee

NMSF #4: Denver public schools (magnet Montessori school) K-6th; Hamilton 7th-8th

NMSF #5: New Orleans parochial school K-8th; New Orleans public high school through 11th

NMSF #6: Libertyville, IL, public schools ("extremely rigorous") through first semester 10th

NMSF #7: Franklin-Randall, K-5th; Hamilton

NMSF #8: Van Hise, K-5th; Hamilton

NMSF #9: Van Hise, K-5th; Hamilton

NMSF #10: Starkville, MS, public schools K-8th

NMSF #11: Japanese school for K; Glenn Stephens 1st-4th; Van Hise for 5th; Hamilton

NMSF #12: Franklin-Randall, K-5th; Hamilton

NMSF #13: Madison Central Montessori through 3rd; Shorewood 3rd-5th; Hamilton

NMSF #14: Lincoln-Midvale through 4th; Eagle 5th-8th

NMSF #15: Eagle K-8th

NMSF #16: MMSD through 9th; home schooled beginning in 10th

NMSF #17: Leopold though 4th; Eagle 5th-8th

NMSF #18: Lapham K-2nd; Randall 3rd-5th; Hamilton

NMSF #19: California private school through 5th; Hamilton

NMSF #20: Midvale and Van Hise; Hamilton

NMSF #21: Seattle public schools (TAG pullout program) through 7th; Hamilton for 8th

NMSF #22: Unknown private school K-1st; Eagle 2nd-8th

NMSF #23: Lincoln-Midvale K-5th; Cherokee

NMSF #24: Madison Central Montessori through 4th; Eagle 5th-8th

NMSF #25: Shorewood K-5th; Hamilton

NMSF #26: Queen of Peace through 5th; Hamilton

NMSF #27: West Middleton through 4th; Eagle 5th-8th

NMSF #28: Montessori pre-K through 2nd; Shorewood 4th-5th; Eagle 5th-8th

NMSF #29: Shorewood K-5th; Hamilton

Looking at the sample in a little more detail, we find the following:

• Elementary school (K-5) history: 31% attended private school for three or more years (an additional 21% attended non-MMSD public schools for three or more years -- total: 52%).
  
  
• Middle school (6-8) history: 28% attended private school for two or more years (an additional 14% attended non-MMSD public schools for two or more years -- total: 42%).
  
  
• K-8 schooling history: 28% attended private school for five or more of their K-8 school years (an additional 17% attended non-MMSD public schools for five or more of their K-8 school years -- total: 45%)

Although we do not have K-8 attendance data for the entire class, it seems unlikely to think that almost 30% of current West seniors attended private school for five or more of their pre-high school years. Thus on this single demographic variable, the 29 West National Merit Semifinalists are probably different from their classmates, generally.

Descriptive data like these are certainly interesting, though they often raise more questions than they answer. And of course, they don't prove anything. Nevertheless, with 45% of the West HS National Merit Semifinalist sample attending non-MMSD schools for over half of their K-8 years, it is recommended that the District temper its sense of pride in and ownership of these very accomplished students.

Many thanks to each of these fine young people for speaking with us on the telephone. Congratulations and good luck to each and every one of them!

Nuestro Mundo: muy bueno

Doug Erickson, WI State Journal reporter, writes about Nuesstro Mundo, MMSD's bi-lingual charter school - Two-language school is seen as muy bueno

Teachers fight possible bilingual education cuts

Capital Times April 15, 2005
Full article at: http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/local//index.php?ntid=36209&nt_adsect=edit

Teachers fight possible bilingual education cuts

By Lee Sensenbrenner
April 15, 2005
Bilingual teachers who are helping students in the Madison Metropolitan School District to learn English are organizing against a proposed cut to their department.

Threatened with losing eight positions if a May 24 operating budget referendum for $7.4 million is unsuccessful, the teachers said in an open letter Thursday that the cut would take away much of their ability to help mainly Spanish speaking elementary students who are struggling to keep up.

As laid out in the administration's $7.4 million list of proposed cuts, dropping 8.4 bilingual resource teachers would save $425,880. This would take away one of two teachers in the elementary classrooms where the positions would be lost.

Latino Parents Decry Bilingual Programs

Samuel Freedman writes:

ON a sultry night in late June, when the school term was nearly over, two dozen parents gathered in a church basement in Brooklyn to talk about what a waste the year had been. Immigrants from Mexico and the Dominican Republic, raising their children in the battered neighborhood of Bushwick, they were the people bilingual education supposedly serves. Instead, one after the other, they condemned a system that consigned their children to a linguistic ghetto, cut off from the United States of integration and upward mobility.

These parents were not gadflies and chronic complainers. Patient and quiet, the women clad in faded shifts, the men shod in oil-stained work boots, they exuded the aura of people reluctant to challenge authority, perhaps because they ascribed wisdom to people with titles, or perhaps because they feared retribution.