School Information System

School Funding's Tragic Flaw

Kevin Carey:

Public education costs a lot of money -- over $500 billion per year. Over the last century, there have been huge changes in where that money comes from and how it's spent. In 1930, only 17 percent of school funding came from state sources, and virtually none came from the federal government. Today, the state / local / federal split is roughly 50/40/10 (individual states vary). People still say all the time that "most" school funding comes from local property taxes, but that hasn't actually been true since the mid-1970s.

On the whole, this change has been of tremendous benefit to disadvantaged students. As states have assumed the primary role in funding education, they've tended to distribute money in ways that are, on the whole, more equitable. The same is true for federal funding, most of which is spent on behalf of poor students and students with disabilities. (This works because taxpayers have a weird psychological relationship with their tax dollars. Rationally, people should view every dollar they pay in taxes and receive in services as equal, regardless of the basis of taxation or the source of the services. But they don't. People feel very strongly that locally-generated property taxes should be spent locally, while they feel less ownership over state taxes and even less over federal dollars. As a result, they'll tear their hair out if you propose transferring 10 percent of their local property tax dollars to a low-income district across the state, but they're far more sanguine if you propose a state school funding formula with precisely the same net result in terms of the taxes they pay and the dollars their local school district receives. It doesn't make sense, but that's okay, because this irrational jurisdiction-dependent selflessness is what allows for the redistributionist school funding policies that poor students depend on to get a decent education.)

Madison's revenue sources are a bit different than Carey's example: 65.1% from local property taxes, 17.2% redistributed state taxes and the rest from grants, contributions and other sources.

Related links:

• K-12 Tax & Spending Climate
• The Wisconsin Department of Revenue noted recently that Wisconsin state tax collections are up 2.3% year to date [136K PDF].
• Madison's general fund spending will increase about 4.53% for the 2008/2009 school year (this will change when the final budget is adopted in the fall).
• Wisconsin's structural deficit = $1,700,000,000.
• Madison's K-12 spending history, from 1995 ($217,110,831) to 2008 ($367,806,712) can be found here.

Finally, Patrick McIlheran notes that Wisconsin's tax burden continues to rise:

Wisconsin's entwined state and local governments taxed a sum equal to 12.3% of Wisconsinites' income last year. That was up from 12.2% the year before and 12.1% the year before that. This biennium, the state is spending 10.5% more than last. Ever, the numbers rise.

They rise because the state's costs do. But taxpayers, too, pay more for gasoline, food, power and practically everything else. Times are tough. You'd think the least government could do would be to avoid piling on.

Pennsylvania Charter Schools Growth

Eleanor Chute:

More than a decade after charter schools became legal in Pennsylvania, it is safe to say the schools, once considered experimental and still sometimes controversial, are here to stay.

About 64,000 students are enrolled in 126 charter schools statewide, and about 20,000 are on charter school waiting lists, according to the Pennsylvania Coalition of Charter Schools.

Nearly half of the schools are in Philadelphia. But parents of Western Pennsylvania students -- including 2,355 children living in Pittsburgh -- also have chosen charter schools, which can be bricks-and-mortar buildings or cyber schools.

Their staying power will be in evident this week as the Pennsylvania Coalition of Charter Schools, a statewide advocacy and support organization, conducts its state convention at the Pittsburgh Marriott City Center, Uptown. The meeting, which began yesterday, runs through tomorrow and is expected to attract more than 1,000 people.

Waukesha begins looking at an operating referendum

Amy Hetzner:

District officials blame the financial troubles on the discrepancy between what they can raise under revenue caps, which increase roughly 2% a year, and expenditures that grow about 4% a year.

A $4.9 million annual addition to the district's operating revenue that was approved by voters in an April 2001 referendum gave the district only a few years free from cutting programs and services. Another referendum attempt in April 2005 that would have raised taxes to help avoid further staff reductions failed by a substantial margin.

Board member Patrick McCaffery warned that the board risked another referendum setback if it proceeds without searching for additional efficiencies, including closing a school and realigning attendance boundaries

Waukesha's Executive Director of Business Services, Erik Kass will soon join the Madison School District in a similar capacity. K-12 Tax & Spending Climate.

Psychiatric Help 5c

Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
15 May 2008

In Peanuts, when we see Lucy offering Psychiatric Help for a nickel, we know it is a joke: ("The Psychiatrist is IN"), but when English teachers in the schools insist that students write about the most intimate details of their private lives for school assignments, that is not a joke, it is an unwarranted intrusion.

There are a couple of major problems with the "personal writing" that has taken over so many of the writing assignments for the English classes in our schools.

First, the teachers are asking students to share information about their personal lives that is none of the teachers' business. The vast majority of English teachers are not qualified as psychologists, much less as psychiatrists, and they should not pretend that they are.

Second, the time spent by students writing assignments for their teachers in their personal diaries is subtracted from time they need to spend learning how to do the academic expository writing they will need to be able to do when they leave school, for college and for work.

I will leave it to others to explain why English teachers have gone down this road in so many of our schools. I have written a number of articles about Creative Nonfiction and Contentless Writing, and the like, to try to encourage some attention to the retreat (or flight) from academic writing in our schools.

But I urge parents and others concerned about the preparation their children are receiving in reading and writing to find out why so many students are being assigned this personal writing which does not belong in the school, and the information in which is, or should be, of no concern of their English teachers, who need instead to focus on reading, grammar, literature and academic writing, instead of setting themselves up as nickel psychiatrists without either the training or the permission to practice on our children.

Our students are doing poorly in NAEP examinations of reading and writing, and having their teachers spend time as untrained therapists is no help with that at all.

"Teach by Example"
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
Consortium for Varsity Academics® [2007]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®

Foundation for Madison Public Schools Celebrates Carol Carstensen's School Board Tenure

Samara Kalk Derby:

More than 100 friends, colleagues, family members and parents showed up at a farewell party Wednesday at Olbrich Gardens to say goodbye and thank you to Carol Carstensen, who served six terms on the Madison School Board and stepped down after the spring elections.

"There will never be another Carol Carstensen. I will predict that," said School Board member Johnny Winston Jr. "There will never be another School Board member in this community that will serve 18 years. I miss her already."

Winston called it a wonderful experience to work with Carstensen.

"She really not only knew the material and had a grasp of the issues going on, but she also had her pulse on the community as well," he said.

Former board member Nan Brien, who served with Carstensen in the early 1990s, said that for 18 years Carstensen was the spokesperson on the board for all the kids in the district.

"She was particularly adamant that all kids, no matter their background, have an opportunity for the best education. That is the heart and soul of who Carol Carstensen is," Brien said.

Carol reflects on her tenure, including three accomplishments she takes personal pride in: Wright Middle School, renaming 5 middle schools to reflect the diversity of our community and establishment of the Joe Thomas award.

Much more on Carol Carstensen here. Watch a brief video interview with Carol during her most recent campaign.

More on the Foundation for Madison Public Schools here. John Taylor's 2003 challenge grants energized the formation of FMPS.

Assistant LA Superintendent Sounds Off

Mitchell Landsberg interviews Ramon Cortines:

"I’ve tackled some of the sacred cows in my recommendations, such as the issues of contracts, how much money we could receive from that. Such as the issue of health benefits, and how much money we could receive by capping that. And increasing the co-pay."

Cortines was at times unsparing of LAUSD's failures, saying that the district is organized for the benefit of the adults who work there, not the children they are hired to serve. He said the school board passes too many resolutions that "aren't worth the paper [they're] printed on." And he said the district had "abdicated our responsibility" for Locke High School, which is about to be turned over to Green Dot Public Schools, the big charter operator. Students didn't get a pass, though: He said the district needs to enforce "a code of behavior" based on the idea that they don't just have rights -- they also have responsibilities.

Clusty Search: Ramon Cortines.

Leapold Elementary's Population Again Rises to the Top

Channel3000:

Dozens of parents and staff members attended Monday night's Madison Metropolitan School District's Board of Education meeting to shed new light on an old problem: overcrowding at a local elementary school.

The issue of overcrowding at Aldo Leopold Elementary School is prompting some parents and teachers to tell the board solutions they'd like to see to relieve the problem.

Some said that the obvious solution would be to build a new Leopold Elementary or perhaps to adjust the school's boundaries. The group presenting the board with the findings of a parent-teacher survey about the challenges at the school, WISC-TV reported.

The school is at 99 percent attendance with 718 students and can only handle eight more students, officials said.

Monday evening's Board meeting included a brief discussion of a much larger Leapold School - perhaps similar to the failed 2005 referendum that would have created a building suitable for 1100+students.

No Small Plan: Public Boarding Schools for Chicago

Carlos Sadovi and Stephanie Banchero, via a kind reader's email:

Public boarding schools where homeless children and those from troubled homes could find the safety and stability to learn are being pursued by Chicago Public Schools officials.

Under the plan, still in the nascent stages, the first pilot residential program could open as soon as fall 2009. District officials hope to launch as many as six such schools in the following years, including at least one that would operate as a year-round school.

The proposal puts Chicago at the forefront of urban school reform, as cities struggle to raise the academic achievement of students hampered by dysfunctional homes and other obstacles outside school.

Some districts, including Chicago, have looked for solutions from small schools to single-sex campuses. But residential schools are a bolder -- and far more expensive -- proposition. Long an option for the affluent, boarding schools are virtually unheard of for the disadvantaged.

Chicago Public Schools chief Arne Duncan said he does not want to be in the "parenting" business, but he worries that some homes and some neighborhoods are unsafe, making education an afterthought.

"Some children should not go home at night; some of them we need 24-7," he told the Tribune. "We want to serve children who are really not getting enough structure at home. There's a certain point where dad is in jail or has disappeared and mom is on crack ... where there isn't a stable grandmother, that child is being raised by the streets."

Chicago school officials are still working through details of the plan, and it's not clear whether the schools would be run by the district, outside agencies or some combination of the two.

It's also not certain how the schools would be funded, who would shoulder the liability of keeping students overnight or how students would be selected.

In April, as part of its Renaissance 2010 new schools program, the district will put out a formal request for boarding school proposals. Officials have already met with interested groups in Chicago.

Officials have also visited several public and private boarding schools across the country and asked some to submit proposals.

Duncan said he has dreamed for years about opening boarding schools, but only last year, when he hired Josh Edelman, son of Children's Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman, did the idea take off.

The younger Edelman served for four years as the principal of The SEED School, the nation's oldest and most successful urban boarding school. Located in Washington, D.C., the public, college preparatory campus serves 300 students from 7th through 12th grades.

Nearly 72 percent of SEED students, who hail from low-income and sometimes troubled backgrounds, go on to four-year colleges.

Edelman said Chicago Public Schools officials are interested in several models, including SEED, in which students live and attend school in the same building. Other options would include an arrangement in which students live in one building and ride the bus to a nearby school or a large central dormitory in which students live in one building but attend several schools.

All of these settings could allow students to go home on weekends, or stay at the facility 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Officials said they would look at both options or a combination.

Edelman said his experience at The SEED School proved to him that family and community involvement are paramount to making a boarding school successful.

In Chicago, children would attend the school only after the parents or guardian choose the option. Schools would then work with parents to ensure that the students' academic and social needs are being met.

"This is not about doing something to parents because parents are bad," Edelman said. "This is about doing something in conjunction with parents and the community."

Chicago flirted briefly with the idea of public school residential facilities in the mid-1990s, when a private group proposed transforming a 16-story unit at the Robert Taylor Homes into a dormitory for 800 students. The proposal died when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development took over the CHA.

A few years later, then-schools chief Paul Vallas floated the idea of opening a boarding school for neglected and homeless children. Students would live at the school until the Department of Children and Family Services was able to place them in foster care or with relatives. The plan collapsed because of the high price tag.

Now the district is hoping to launch a pilot program in September 2009, operated by North Lawndale College Prep. The charter group, which runs two Chicago high schools, is working on a proposal to create an off-site dormitory, initially for about 15 to 20 of its homeless students.

The teenagers would live in the building 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Teen Living Program, which works with federal, state and city government to provide shelter and support for homeless teens, would run the residential units.

John Horan, director of expansion for the charter group, said officials are looking for a building that could house the students and are working through funding and liability issues that go along with operating a residential facility.

The charter group and Teen Living plan to present the proposal to their respective boards of directors in the summer. The proposal then would have to go before the Chicago Board of Education for final approval.

Horan said between 6 and 8 percent of North Lawndale's 400 students are homeless, either because their parents are in prison or have disappeared. Some teachers have stepped in as parents, allowing students to bunk at their homes or, in some cases, taking temporary guardianship of the students.

"It's not sustainable; you can't really depend on your staff to do that," Horan said. "Our notion now is if you are going to be serious about providing college prep for kids who are from [poor] communities you have to deal with the housing."

But housing is an expensive proposition.

Illinois already has one residential school, the Illinois Math and Science Academy, a state-funded 10th through 12th-grade college prep high school that enrolls about 650 gifted students. The price tag: about $23,000 per student each year.

Providing the same services for low-income urban students who face more significant life problems is certain to be most costly. The SEED School is opening a second school in Baltimore. The cost per student: $34,000.

Chicago spends about $7,000 per pupil in operating costs.

"This is a big idea that has residual effect beyond the kids," said Cheye Calvo, director of expansion for The SEED School. "In the long term, this is better for society because the economic impact of failure affects us all. But opening a boarding school requires political leadership to step forward and provide the resources."

---

SEED success

72%

of students at The SEED School go on to four-year colleges. The school, the nation's oldest urban boarding school, serves students from 7th through 12th grades in Washington, D.C.

Philadelphia safe-schools advocate say the lack of discipline violates the law

Kristen Graham:

Philadelphia public schools are unsafe places where students who commit violent crimes are rarely punished and rehabilitated and with a disciplinary system that is "dysfunctional and unjust," according to a report by the district's safe-schools advocate.

In a blistering 72-page document obtained by The Inquirer, Jack Stollsteimer describes a district where students who assault teachers or come to school with guns are not removed from classrooms, a violation of federal and state law.

School crime, he says, has been historically underreported, victims do not receive proper rights, and the increasing violence against teachers and employees is not taken seriously.

Prompted by questions from The Inquirer and two months after receiving Stollsteimer's report - which he is required by law to complete - the state blasted the safe-schools advocate's document and said it would release its own version next week.

"The draft report has serious problems - some of the data analysis is inaccurate, the legal analysis is flawed. We are releasing the official report on Monday," said Sheila Ballen, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

General Vang Pao's Last War

Early in 2007, the Madison School Board decided to name a new far west side elementary school after Vang Pao. This decision became ingreasingly controversial after Pao was arrested as part of a plot to overthrow the Laos Government (the school has since been named Olson Elementary). Tim Weiner, author of Legacy of Ashes digs into this latest chapter in the Hmong / US Government relationship:

The case against Vang Pao grew out of a sting operation, a crime created in part by the government itself. What evidence there is rests largely on secretly recorded conversations led by an undercover federal agent, and while the transcripts implicating some of the co-defendants in the case seem damning, the agent barely met Vang Pao. The talk between them was brief; though Vang Pao may have dreamed aloud of a glorious revolution in Laos in years gone by, his role in the conspiracy charged by the government may be hard to prove. The government presents the case as a clear-cut gunrunning conspiracy in violation of the Neutrality Act, which outlaws military expeditions against nations with which the United States is at peace. But the old general’s defenders contend that the case against him is the consequence of a misguided post-9/11 zeal. If convicted in a trial, the former American ally could face the rest of his life in prison. And already his indictment has apparently emboldened Laotian and Thai authorities to crack down on the beleaguered Hmong who remain in refugee camps or in hiding in the jungles of Laos.

The government has a checkered record of late in its sting operations against people subsequently charged with planning acts of political terror. In 2006, to take one example, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced that a joint terrorism task force had broken up a plot to “levy war” and to blow up the 110-story Sears Tower in Chicago. In that case, as two trials have shown, an F.B.I. informant known to the defendants as Brother Mohammed created some of the key evidence — leading the group in an oath of loyalty to Al Qaeda, for instance. He provided them with plans and plots and gave them military gear like combat boots. The defendants never had contact with actual terrorists, never obtained weapons or explosives. Two juries have failed to see the logic of the case; a federal judge has had to declare two mistrials. (The government plans to try the case a third time.)

The sting operation against Vang Pao exhibits some similar traits. It has also dismayed a number of American intelligence officers who worked with the Hmong against the army of North Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s. “We taught him how to do these things — to fight political warfare, to try to defeat the enemy,” I was told by Larry Devlin, a former C.I.A. station chief who worked with the general in Laos. “We helped Vang Pao learn to do some of the things that he and his troops are now charged with.”

Britannica on the Hmong.

School turnaround projects are enormously difficult propositions. They must be guided by four basic realities.

Frederick M. Hess:

Across the nation, educators are struggling to turn around troubled schools. In the District of Columbia, Chancellor Michelle Rhee has teams seeking to overhaul 27 schools targeted for “restructuring” by the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

This is hardly uncharted territory. Reformers have spent decades proposing new remedies for low-performing schools. Magnet programs, schools without walls, block scheduling, site-based management, and a litany of other popular ideas have emerged, only to disappoint.

Today, NCLB’s mandated restructuring of schools that fail to make “adequate yearly progress” for five consecutive years has fueled extensive new efforts. NCLB spells out five options for such schools: reopening as a public charter school; replacing most staff; contracting out operations to a new organization; turning the keys over to the state; or adopting “any other major restructuring of the school’s governance.” Modest variations of the amorphous fifth option have proven the most popular, by far.

More than 2,000 schools across the United States are currently in the process of restructuring, which has given rise to a nascent “turnaround” industry. The Louisiana School Turnaround Specialist Program is recruiting and grooming a cadre of school leaders. In New York, the Rensselaerville Institute runs a school turnaround program. At the University of Virginia, the graduate schools of education and business have partnered to train “turnaround specialists.” In Chicago, the Chicago International Charter School has launched ChicagoRise to provide management expertise and support for turnaround projects.

Charter Schools are Great, but Not Why You Think

Kevin Carey:

Charter schools allowed Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin to create the burgeoning and phenomenally successful KIPP network of middle schools serving almost exclusively poor, minority, and previously low-achieving children. Charter schools allowed veteran labor organizer Steve Barr to create Green Dot Public Schools as an alternative to the terrible high schools in Los Angeles. Charter schools gave a couple of young management consultants the ability to create the nation's first, and very successful, urban public boarding school in impoverished Southeast DC. And so on.

Given the opportunity, the best charter schools (and to be clear, there are certainly bad ones) haven't tried to reinvent the wheel. They've just balanced the wheel, fine-tuned it, reinforced the parts that were weak, and made sure it was in maximum working order. Charter school laws opened a conduit for talent, energy, and philanthropic money directed toward public education, resources that previously had no way to break into a bureaucratized monopoly state school system. Even if that's all they did, that's way more than enough.

Carey is spot on. Cracking the legacy public school governance monolith is essential to progress. "Progress requires conflict".

UK Reading Recovery Study

Institute of Education:

New research into the progress of 500 children published today shows that young children who were the poorest readers - and the very lowest-achieving in their class - can go on to outperform the national average within two years. They must be given four to five months of one-to-one tuition by specially trained Reading Recovery teachers for about 30 minutes a day while the children are aged six.

The research by the Institute of Education into the Every Child a Reader project shows that boys benefit to the same extent as girls and that one-to-one tuition helps to reduce the gender gap. The presence of Reading Recovery teachers also helps the other children in the school who do not attend the Reading Recovery lessons.

The two-year research project looked at the reading and writing progress of the lowest achieving children in 42 schools in ten inner London boroughs with the biggest social problems. The eight poorest readers in each class, then aged six, were selected. Eighty-seven of these children had the benefit of the Reading Recovery special tuition programme and their progress was compared to a group of children of similar ability and backgrounds, who did not receive the same tuition.

After one year children who had received the tuition had reading ages that matched their chronological age, and were 14 months ahead of the children in the comparison group.

Complete report here.

Much more on Reading Recovery here.

"No Surprises in School Budget, but Referendum Looms"

Tamira Madsen:

Facing a possible referendum and $9.2 million hole for the 2009-10 school year, no major alterations are anticipated to the school 2008-09 budget that will be finalized Monday by Madison School Board members.

When new superintendent Dan Nerad starts in July, referendum discussion will come to the forefront for the Madison Metropolitan School District. If Board members decide to propose a referendum, which could occur as early as November, they will request taxpayers consider overriding state-imposed revenue gaps so that services and programs won't have to be severely slashed from the district's budget.

In the meantime, only one administrative amendment and two Board amendments are on the agenda and approval is expected at the School Board meeting as superintendent Art Rainwater presents plans for the final budget of his tenure. Rainwater, who has worked with the district for 14 years -- including the last 10 as superintendent -- will retire this summer. Nerad will take over on July 1.

School Board members are well aware of the multi-million budget cuts looming for the 2009-10 school year, and Rainwater said he wasn't surprised with short list of amendments.

"I think the overall intention for the Board from day one was really and truly to work to preserve exactly what we have," Rainwater said during a telephone interview Friday.

Notes and links on the proposed $367,806,712 2008/2009 budget.

Three proposed budget amendments:

• Limit Fund 80 spending to a 4% increase [19K PDF]
• Limit Fund 80 spending to a 4% increase [19K PDF]
• Increase technology purchases by $100,000 and reduced the reserve for contingency
• Limit Fund 80 spending to a 4% increase [9K PDF]
• Increase the Fund 80 tax levy by $60,000 for the Madison Family Literacy / Even Start Literacy Program [9K PDF]

Much more on Fund 80 here.

On Madison's Lack of a 4K Program

Andy Hall:

In Madison, where schools Superintendent Art Rainwater in a 2004 memo described 4K as potentially "the next best tool" for raising students' performance and narrowing the racial achievement gap, years of study and talks with leaders of early childhood education centers have failed to produce results.

"It's one of the things that I regret the most, that I think would have made a big impact, that I was not able to do," said Rainwater, who is retiring next month after leading the district for a decade.

"We've never been able to get around the money," said Rainwater, whose tenure was marked by annual multimillion-dollar budget cuts to conform to the state's limits on how much money districts can raise from local property taxpayers.

A complicating factor was the opposition of Madison Teachers Inc., the teachers union, to the idea that the 4K program would include preschool teachers not employed by the School District. However, Rainwater said he's "always believed that those things could have been resolved" if money had been available.

Starting a 4K program for an estimated 1,700 students would cost Madison $5 million the first year and $2.5 million the second year before it would get full state funding in the third year under the state's school-funding system.

In comparison, the entire state grant available to defray Wisconsin districts' startup costs next year is $3 million — and that amount is being shared by 32 eligible districts.

One of those districts, Green Bay, is headed by Daniel Nerad, who has been hired to succeed Rainwater in Madison.

"I am excited about it," said Madison School Board President Arlene Silveira, who is envious of the 4K sign-up information that appears on the Green Bay district's Web site. "He's gone out and he's made it work in Green Bay. That will certainly help us here as we start taking the message forward again.

Madison's inability to start 4K has gained the attention of national advocates of 4K programs, who hail Wisconsin's approach as a model during the current national economic downturn. Milwaukee, the state's largest district, long has offered 4K.

"It's been disappointing that Madison has been very slow to step up to provide for its children," said Libby Doggett, executive director of Pre-K Now, a national nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., that campaigns for kindergarten programs for children ages 3 and 4.

"The way 4K is being done in your state is the right way."

Related:

• Marc Eisen: Missed Opportunity for 4K and High School Redesign
• MMSD Budget History: Madison's spending has grown about 50% from 1998 ($245,131,022) to 2008 ($367,806,712) while enrollment has declined slightly from 25,132 to 24,268 ($13,997/student).

Student Tests and Teacher Grades

John Merrow:

Suppose a swimming instructor told his 10-year-old students to swim the length of the pool to demonstrate what he'd taught them, and half of them nearly drowned? Would it be reasonable to make a judgment about his teaching ability?

Or suppose nearly all the 10-year-old students in a particular clarinet class learned to play five or six pieces well in a semester? Would it be reasonable to consider their achievement when deciding whether to rehire the music teacher?

These questions answer themselves. Only an idiot would overlook student performance, be it dismal or outstanding.

However, suppose test results indicated that most students in a particular class don't have a clue about how to multiply with fractions, or master other material in the curriculum? Should that be considered when the math teacher comes up for tenure?

Whoops, the obvious answer is wrong. That's because public education lives in an upside-down universe where student outcomes are not allowed to be connected to teaching.

Clusty search: John Merrow.

Media Education Coverage: An Oxymoron?

Lucy Mathiak's recent comments regarding the lack of substantive local media education coverage inspired a Mitch Henck discussion (actually rant) [15MB mp3 audio file]. Henck notes that the fault lies with us, the (mostly non) voting public. Apathy certainly reigns. A useful example is Monday's School Board's 56 minute $367,806,712 2008/2009 budget discussion. The brief chat included these topics:

• Retiring Superintendent Art Rainwater's view on the District's structural deficit and the decline in it's equity (Assets - Liabilities = Equity; Britannica on the The Balance Sheet) from $48,000,000 in the year 2000 to $24,000,000 in 2006 (it is now about 8% of the budget or $20M). (See Lawrie Kobza's discussion of this issue in November, 2006. Lawrie spent a great deal of time digging into and disclosing the structural deficits.) Art also mentioned the resulting downgrade in the District's bond rating (results in somewhat higher interest rates).
• Marj asked an interesting question about the K-1 combination and staff scheduling vis a vis the present Teacher Union Contract.
• Lucy asked about specials scheduling (about 17 minutes).
• Maya asked about the combined K-1 Art classes ("Class and a half" art and music) and whether we are losing instructional minutes. She advocated for being "open and honest with the public" about this change. Art responded (23 minutes) vociferously about the reduction in services, the necessity for the community to vote yes on operating referendums, ACT scores and National Merit Scholars.
• Beth mentioned (about 30 minutes) that "the district has done amazing things with less resources". She also discussed teacher tools, curriculum and information sharing.
• Ed Hughes (about 37 minutes) asked about the Madison Family Literacy initiative at Leopold and Northport. Lucy inquired about Fund 80 support for this project.
• Maya later inquired (45 minutes) about a possible increase in Wisconsin DPI's common school fund for libraries and left over Title 1 funds supporting future staff costs rather than professional development.
• Beth (about 48 minutes) advocated accelerated computer deployments to the schools. Lucy followed up and asked about the District's installation schedule. Johnny followed up on this matter with a question regarding the most recent maintenance referendum which included $500,000 annually for technology.
• Lucy discussed (52 minutes) contingency funds for energy costs as well as providing some discretion for incoming superintendent Dan Nerad.

Rick Berg notes that some homes are selling below assessed value, which will affect the local tax base (property taxes for schools) and potential referendums:

But the marketplace will ultimately expose any gaps between assessment and true market value. And that could force local governments to choose between reducing spending (not likely) and hiking the mill rate (more likely) to make up for the decreasing value of real estate.

Pity the poor homeowners who see the value of their home fall 10%, 20% or even 30% with no corresponding savings in their property tax bill, or, worse yet, their tax bill goes up! Therein lie the seeds of a genuine taxpayer revolt. Brace yourselves. It's gonna be a rough ride.

The Wisconsin Department of Revenue noted recently that Wisconsin state tax collections are up 2.3% year to date [136K PDF]. Redistributed state tax dollars represented 17.2% of the District's revenues in 2005 (via the Citizen's Budget).

Daniel de Vise dives into Montgomery County, Maryland's school budget:

The budget for Montgomery County's public schools has doubled in 10 years, a massive investment in smaller classes, better-paid teachers and specialized programs to serve growing ranks of low-income and immigrant children.

That era might be coming to an end. The County Council will adopt an education budget this month that provides the smallest year-to-year increase in a decade for public schools. County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) has recommended trimming $51 million from the $2.11 billion spending plan submitted by the Board of Education.

County leaders say the budget can no longer keep up with the spending pace of Superintendent Jerry D. Weast, who has overseen a billion-dollar expansion since his arrival in 1999. Weast has reduced elementary class sizes, expanded preschool and kindergarten programs and invested heavily in the high-poverty area of the county known around his office as the Red Zone.

"Laudable goals, objectives, nobody's going to argue with that," Leggett said in a recent interview at his Rockville office. "But is it affordable?"

It's a question being asked of every department in a county whose overall budget has swelled from $2.1 billion in fiscal 1998 to $4.3 billion this year, a growth rate Leggett terms "unacceptable."

Montgomery County enrolls 137,745 students and spent $2,100,000,000 this year ($15,245/student). Madison's spending has grown about 50% from 1998 ($245,131,022) to 2008 ($367,806,712) while enrollment has declined slightly from 25,132 to 24,268 ($13,997/student).

I've not seen any local media coverage of the District's budget this week.

Thanks to a reader for sending this in.

Oxymoron

Teacher Content Knowledge Exams: Connecticut's Reading Requirement

Arielle Levin Becker:

Aspiring early childhood and elementary school teachers will have to prove they know how to teach reading on a test the State Board of Education has added to Connecticut's teacher certification requirements. The change, which was made Wednesday, comes amid worries about stagnating or declining student reading scores statewide and concerns that not all state teachers know the mechanics of teaching reading.

"This sends a message to teacher preparation institutions that they need to make sure they have a focus on the art and science of teaching reading," state Department of Education spokesman Tom Murphy said.

Introducing a test on teaching reading was among the recommendations offered by educators at a reading summit the state education department held last fall. Legislators also have pushed for adding a test on reading instruction to certification requirements.

Related by Jason Kottke regarding Malcolm Gladwell's forthcoming book:

A more material example is teachers. Gladwell says that while we evaluate teachers on the basis of high standardized test scores and whether they have degrees and credentialed training, that makes little difference in how well people actually teach.

Red ties and boys' pride: Sowing the seeds of good schools in the Midwest

The Economist:

EVERY weekday, 300 boys gather in a gym on Chicago's South Side. They are all black. More than 80% are poor. Over the past few weeks Chicago has seen a surge in gang violence. But here boys stand in straight lines. Each wears a blazer and a red tie. And in unison they begin to shout their creed: “We believe. We are the young men of Urban Prep. We are college-bound.”

Urban Prep Charter Academy opened in 2006, part of an effort to bring 100 new schools to Chicago's bleakest areas by 2010. Richard Daley, the city's mayor, announced Renaissance 2010 (“Ren 10”) in 2004; Chicago's business leaders created the Renaissance Schools Fund (RSF) to help support it. Backers of this ambitious scheme hope it will spur competition across the school district. On May 6th RSF held a conference to discuss the “new market of public education”.

At the core of Ren 10 is the desire to welcome “education entrepreneurs”, as RSF calls them. Ren 10 lets them start schools and run them mostly as they choose (for example, with longer days and, in some cases, their own salary structure); it also sets the standards they must meet. Schools receive money on a per pupil basis, and may raise private funds as well.

Student Representatives on the Madison School Board

MMSD: The Student Liaison to the Madison Board of Education next year will be Sarah Maslin, while the Alternate Student Liaison and the Student Senate President will be Chelli Riddiough.

Both were elected last week by high school students in the Madison School District and will take their one year positions in July.

Six Books a Week: Harlem parents are voting for charter schools with their feet

The Economist:

THOSE who had won whooped with joy and punched their fists. The disappointed shed tears. Some 5,000 people attended April 17th's Harlem Success Academy Charter School lottery, the largest ever held for charter schools in the history of New York state. About 3,600 applied for 600 available places, and 900 applied for the 11 open slots in the second grade.

The desperation of these parents is hardly surprising. In one Harlem school district, not one public elementary school has more than 55% of its pupils reading at the level expected for their grade. And 75% of 14-year-olds are unable to read at their grade level. So Harlem parents are beginning to leave the public school system in crowds.

Madison La Follette Principal Joe Gothard helped turn around his alma mater

Tamira Madsen:

John Broome lasted just four months as principal of La Follette High School.

Under pressure due to escalating fighting at the 1,710-student east side school and hearing far-reaching complaints from parents and staff over his management style, Broome resigned in December 2006. Veteran district administrator Loren Rathert came out of retirement to finish the school year as interim principal.

So when Joe Gothard took over as principal last September, it was no secret that he was entering a difficult situation.

"Actually it was really bad," says Jamison Vacek, a member of a Lancer senior class that has had four principals in four years. "There were fights almost every day at the school when we had those other principals."

But ask students, staff and observers about La Follette now, and there seems a consensus that Gothard has helped put the school on the right path.

Much more on La Follette here.

Video: Madison School Board Discusses the Proposed $367,806,712 2008/2009 Budget

Watch the 56 minute video. Budget links and notes.

Fatal Accidents Erode Perk of Off-Campus Lunches

Winnie Hu:

The students used to overflow the wooden booths and green tables at Don Jono’s Pizzeria, racing through pepperoni slices and large sodas before driving the quarter-mile back to Smithtown High School West in time for their next class.

But now the pizzas pile up behind the counter. Pete Crescimanno, a compact man with a neat black mustache who co-owns the place, estimates that he has lost more than $500 a week in sales since the school district ended its longstanding policy of allowing seniors to go off-campus for lunch. One recent morning, Mr. Crescimanno and an assistant pounded and tossed dough in a nearly empty storefront, with only the radio to break the silence.

"It’s not the same, and you miss that because you used to prepare for the kids and now you don’t see them," he said. “Of course, you miss the business, but you also miss the fact that they’re not here anymore.”

50 State Charter School Law Comparison (Wisconsin Ranks "B")

The Center for Education Reform (1.1MB PDF):

In their recent report analyzing the politics of charter school laws, Christiana Stoddard and Sean P. Corcoran of Education Nextrelied upon The Center for Education Reform’s (CER) Charter School Law Rankings and Profiles to study the success of the charter school movement.

As they recognized, the strength of a law could impact the way in which healthy charter schools grow and how they serve students. Having laws with certain components is critical.

CER welcomes this scrutiny and the dozens of other research reports, which utilize its rankings as a guide for assessing policy. We also recognize that not all researchers find the work we have done for ten years on law strength compelling. Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder find our data and conclusions a bit hard to swallow. They argue that what CER considers strong components of a law – flexibility, autonomy, equitable funding – are actually weaknesses. Despite their claims that the weakest are actually the strongest, the data do not lie. States with strong laws by our standards (and those shared almost universally by the research community whether friend or foe) create strong schools.

Put another way, strong laws matter.

Making Teacher Hiring Less Comfortable

Jay Matthews:

For those who still think helping children learn is everybody's top priority in our schools, let me cite a disturbing dispute over where to send several hundred teachers at 23 D.C. schools that are about to be closed for inadequate enrollment.

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee wants the principals of her remaining schools to decide which of those excess teachers they will hire, within the limits of a contract that guarantees them jobs somewhere in the system. Urban schools don't work if all adults in each building don't agree on what must be done to make them work. There is no chance of that shared vision if each principal is not allowed to pick the players on his or her team.

Unfortunately, many kind and well-intentioned teachers and parents in the District and other cities have a different view. Their first priority is not so much that children learn, but that they feel secure and comfortable. They want those excess teachers to accompany the students they know at their current school to whichever school the children are transferred to. That way, they say, the kids will have an easier and more comfortable transition.

Some members of the Washington Teachers' Union, which is in the midst of a leadership fight, also say they fear Rhee is resisting this more genial approach because she wants to get rid of any teachers who can't find principals who want them.

Online Education Cast as "Disruptive Innovation"

Andrew Trotter:

Technology-based forces of "disruptive innovation" are gathering around public education and will overhaul the way K-12 students learn—with potentially dramatic consequences for established public schools, according to an upcoming book that draws parallels to disruptions in other industries.

Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns predicts that the growth in computer-based delivery of education will accelerate swiftly until, by 2019, half of all high school classes will be taught over the Internet.

Clayton M. Christensen, the book's lead author and a business professor at Harvard University, is well respected in the business world for his best-sellers The Innovator’s Dilemma, published in 1997, and The Innovator’s Solution, published in 2003.

Those books analyze why leading companies in various industries—computers, electronics, retail, and others—were knocked off by upstarts that were better able to take advantage of innovations based on new technology and changing conditions.

School organizations are similarly vulnerable, Mr. Christensen contends.

"The schools as they are now structured cannot do it," he said in an interview, referring to adapting successfully to coming computer-based innovations. "Even the best managers in the world, if they were heads of departments in schools and the administrators of schools, could not do it."
Under Mr. Christensen’s analytical model, the tables typically turn in an industry even when the dominant companies are well aware of a disruptive innovation and try to use it to transform themselves

There's no doubt that a revolution is underway in education. LIke other industries, it is doubtful that many of the current players will make the turn, which is likely why issues such as credit for non MMSD courses is evidently such a problem. Two related articles by Cringely provide useful background.

More:

Like the leaders in other industries, the education establishment has crammed down technology onto its existing architecture, which is dominated by the "monolithic" processes of textbook creation and adoption, teaching practices and training, and standardized assessment—which, despite some efforts at individualization, by and large treat students the same, the book says.

But new providers are stepping forward to serve students that mainline education does not serve, or serve well, the authors write. Those students, which the book describes as K-12 education’s version of "nonconsumers," include those lacking access to Advanced Placement courses, needing alternatives to standard classroom instruction, homebound or home-schooled students, those needing to make up course credits to graduate—and even prekindergarten children.

By addressing those groups, providers such as charter schools, companies catering to home schoolers, private tutoring companies, and online-curriculum companies have developed their methods and tapped networks of students, parents, and teachers for ideas.

Those providers will gradually improve their tools to offer instruction that is more student-centered, in part by breaking courses into modules that can be recombined specifically for each student, the authors predict.
Such providers’ approaches, the authors argue, will also become more affordable, and they will start attracting more and more students from regular schools.

Firing Back on "When Policy Trumps Results"

TJ Mertz:

Marc Eisen of the Isthmus has checked in again on the Madison Schools with a column titled "When Policy Trumps Results." This time the target of his ill informed scribblings is the equity work of the district, particularly the Equity Task Force, of which I was a member. It is a hatchet job.

Mr. Eisen gets his facts wrong, misreads or misrepresents task force documents and at no point engages with the content of the task force’s work. We offered the Board ideas for policies and practices that we thought would help produce and assess results. You would never know that reading Mr. Eisen's column. Despite the title, all he seems to care about is style.

In return, I’m going to wield the axe. I'm going to go paragraph by paragraph to highlight the low level of knowledge and effort Eisen displays and the ultimate emptiness of his critique, hitting some other things along the way (quotes from Mr. Eisen in italics). Mr. Eisen's column probably does not deserve this much attention. However the power of the press is such that often when uncorrected, "the legend becomes fact." I believe equity work in our school district is too important to allow that to happen. Let’s get started.

Comments on "When Policy Trumps Results".

Making the Grade:
International testing that is used to predict the grim future of US science and technology is being vastly misinterpreted

Obviously, the US population 301,139,947 is much, much larger than the countries included on this graph. Japan: 127,433,494, United Kingdom: 60,776,238 and Germany: 82,400,996.
Via a kind reader's email: Hal Salzman & Lindsay Lowell:

The future educational path for the United States should come from looking within the country rather than lionizing faraway test-score champions. Our analysis3 of the data suggests two fundamental problems that require different approaches. First, pedagogies must address science literacy for the large numbers of low-performing students. Second, education policy for our highest-performing students needs to meet actual labour-market demand.

In the United States, a decade's worth of international test rankings based on slender measures of academic achievement in science and maths have been stretched far beyond their usefulness. Perhaps policy-makers feel it is better to motivate policy by pointing to high-scoring Czechs with fear, instead of noting our high-scoring Minnesotans as examples to emulate. But looking within the United States may be the best way to learn about effective education. As the PISA authors emphasize in their report, 90% of the variance in the scores is within countries rather than between countries. Therefore, most of what one can learn about high performance is due to the variation in factors within the nation's borders. It would seem far more effective to transfer best practices across city and state lines than over oceans.

PISA website.

Clusty search: Hal Salzman and Lindsay Lowell.

Same-sex classes tried in Janesville

Melanie Conklin:

At Marshall Middle School in Janesville, Mike Tollefsrud 's sixth-grade science class sits in straight rows reviewing for an upcoming test. "Do electrons have a positive charge? " he asks. Hands quickly shoot up. Tollefsrud then tells them to do the first 10 questions on the review paper in front of them. Another student asks, "Can we do all of them tonight if we want to? "

"Of course," he replies as students quietly begin scribbling.

In a classroom next door, Mike Morgan 's students are reviewing for the same test on atoms. They are divided into two teams, desks facing their opponents. Some kids spin the white erase boards they use to write answers to Morgan 's barrage of questions. A student from each team comes up front, squaring off to see who gets the answer right first, so they can roll dice to earn points for their team. Correct answers are greeted with whopping cheers and high-fives. "In your face! " hollers a kid at the other side of the room after a teammate scores big points.

2008-2009 Madison School Board Budget Discussion

Monday evening's (5/5/2008) meeting agenda (PDF) includes a discussion of the proposed $367,806,712 budget. It will be interesting to see what type of changes to retiring Superintendent Art Rainwater's last budget are discussed. Perhaps, a place to start would be the report card initiative from the District's curriculum creation department (Teaching & Learning). Watch a presentation on the proposed "Standards Based" report cards. Contact the Madison School Board here comments@madison.k12.wi.us

From High School to the Future

Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab:

With loads of financial support from both CPS (Arnie Duncan) and the Gates Foundation (among others) CCSR and the school system built a tracking system that allows them to follow kids out of high school and into college & work, to see how they do-- and even more importantly, to figure out how to help them do better.

It's so unusual for a school district, especially one as large as Chicago's (130+ high schools!) to have the data capacity to do this. The vast majority of high schools in the U.S. rely on a student exit questionnaire administered in the spring of senior year, which asks kids "What are your plans for the fall" (choices include 4 yr college, 2yr college, work, etc) and their responses are used as a proxy for the real destination. In other words, the college-going rate for a high school or district is based on a student's self-report in May of senior year. This is a highly inaccurate measure, as several different data sources have proven-- plenty of kids who say they are going to college do not (or do not go to the kind of school they said they were going to, even if they were admitted and accepted) because they realize they cannot afford it, or get side-tracked during the summer, and many who say they aren't going, do decide to show up at a community college. Clearly districts need a much more reliable source of information if they are to learn about their high school graduates, and use that information to inform and change their educational practices.

Useful.

When Policy Trumps Results

Marc Eisen makes sense:

Much to its credit, the Madison school board has mostly ignored the March 2007 recommendations of the district's Equity Task Force. This earnest but unhelpful committee delved into the abstractions of what distinguishes "equity" from "equality," how the board might commit to equity and what esoteric guidelines could measure that commitment.

.............

This point needs to be emphasized. Madisonians aren't afraid to tax themselves. They just want good services in return and know that their money isn't being wasted.

But I can't for the life of me see them rallying around a pompous and abstruse equity policy, especially one that reads like it was formulated by the UW Department of Leftwing Social Engineering. (Example: "Equity will come about when we raise a generation of children tolerant of differences and engaged in their democracy to stop the processes leading to inequity.")

The school board, after a suitable 14-month delay, should politely shelve the task force's recommendations when it finally gets around to voting on them in May.

Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron provides a timely read after Marc's article.

Introduction to a standards-based system . . . assessment

Madison School District Department of Teaching & Learning:

The Wisconsin Model Academic Standards (WMAS) articulate what students should know and be able to do in each curricular area. Community leaders and staff in the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) elaborated upon these state standards to frame district curriculum and instruction.

Curriculum can be thought of as the planned educational experiences taught in each subject area at each grade level. Standards-based instruction focuses on teaching the knowledge and skills which support students' continual progress toward meeting the standards.

This article focuses on assessment, the process of using multiple strategies to measure student learning.

The remainder of this article will use mathematics as an example of a content area to demonstrate the use of standards-based assessment. MMSD teachers assess the content standards (i.e., number and algebra) as well as the process standards (i.e., communication, problem solving, and reasoning).

Research indicates that in addition to quizzes and tests, a variety of daily assessment tools (i.e., questioning, observations, discussions, and presentations) are needed to create a more thorough picture of what a student understands.

Three New Madison Principals

The Capital Times:

Deborah Ptak, an assistant principal for the past five years at Sennett Middle School, has been selected to take over as principal at Whitehorse Middle School. She replaces Anne Nolan, who is retiring after a nine-year tenure.

Ptak is one of three people expected to receive a new position as principal within the Madison Metropolitan School District when the School Board holds its meeting Monday.

In addition, Javier Bolivar was named principal at Nuestro Mundo Community School, and Sarah Galanter will shed her interim principal title at Stephens Elementary School and assume the principal position

This announcement, along with a number of other recent items have not appeared on the MMSD's press release page.

Black Kids on Milwaukee Buses May Slip into School Lore

Eugene Kane:

It could be the end of an era.

Black children and yellow school buses long have been inextricably linked in the history of education in America. It started with the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that allowed for school desegregation in cities like Milwaukee. That led to widespread busing movements that allowed black students to attend classes outside their neighborhoods at predominantly white schools.

A decision by the Milwaukee School Board last week to drastically reduce the amount of busing in the district will alter a fundamental relationship that has existed in this city for generations of students.

But what the Milwaukee School Board did was not a statement about the racial makeup of the city's public schools, many of which are predominantly African-American. School Board member Michael Bonds, the architect of the plan, says busing isn't about desegregation anymore.

"When the district is 88% minority, it's not about race," Bonds told me. "It's about the fact we've spent $57 million on a failed policy."

Related by Alan Borsuk: Busing Change Won't Be Easy. Madison Mayor Dave's proposed low income housing expansion throughout Dane County may require more busing.

Counting High School Graduates

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Editorial:

A proposal to standardize the way states calculate high school graduation rates makes sense.

A report earlier this month examining America's 50 largest school districts found that Milwaukee Public Schools had a graduation rate of only 46.1%. The report by America's Promise Alliance, an advocacy group, reported that Detroit was at the bottom of that list with a graduation rate of 24.9%.

Wait a minute, MPS officials countered. Our graduation rate is 66%.

Who's right?

Both probably are. That's the problem U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings hopes to solve by changing some of the rules under the No Child Left Behind Act, which Congress is considering reauthorizing.

Under the proposal, states would be required to use a uniform method of calculating high school graduation rates by the 2012-'13 school year. As it stands now, comparing graduation rates is difficult. Under the proposal, only students who complete school on time with a regular degree can be counted as graduates. Students who take longer than four years or who earn an alternative diploma, such as a GED certificate, would not be counted.

Rainwater (Nerad) Adds 2 to Madison Staff

The Capital Times:

Superintendent Art Rainwater will add a longtime Madison-area educator and a staff member new to the district to his Madison Metropolitan School District staff, pending approval at next week's School Board meeting.

Ann Yehle will assume the post of executive director of educational services and Erik Kass will take over as assistant superintendent for business services. If these major positions are approved by the Board, Yehle and Kass are expected to be named to the jobs May 5 and will begin their jobs July 1.

Yehle, who currently works as an administrator in the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction's Division of Reading and Student Achievement, was the principal at Sherman Middle School for six years.

Clusty Search: Ann Yehle / Erik Kass

Edweek Chat: The Use of International Data to Improve US Schools

4/30/2008 @ 2:30p.m. CST:

Join us for a live Web chat about the impact of A Nation at Risk and the potential for using international comparison data to improve academic standards and student achievement in U.S. schools.

Twenty-five years ago, a federal commission issued the landmark report that declared a "rising tide of mediocrity" in U.S. education posed a threat to America's prosperity and status in the world. Today, many policymakers and members of the business and education communities are sounding the same alarm bells.

Some experts are recommending that the United States put more stock in measuring itself against other countries, including having individual states benchmark their progress against those countries to get a clear and true picture of the status of American education. Would that help improve education in America? What can the United States do to improve education and continue to compete globally? Are the problems with the U.S. education system, compared with those of other industrialized countries', overblown? Join us for this discussion.

About the guests:

• Dane Linn, is the director of the education division of the National Governors Association, a Washington-based research and advocacy organization that has taken an active role in examining how states might align their academic standards and practices to those of top-performing nations

• Iris C. Rotberg, is the co-director of the Center for Curriculum, Standards, and Technology at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C.

Submit questions in advance.

Related: Fordham Foundation - Wisconsin DPI's Academic Standards = D-. The Madison School District is implementing "value added assessment" based on the DPI standards.

Watch the Madison School Board's most recent discussion of "Value Added Assessment".

Madison School Board Discusses Discipline, Safety, Cell Phones and Code of Conduct

Watch the discussion via this video

Channel3000:

The Madison School Board met on Monday night to discuss a new positive behavior support plan as well as a new code of conduct for students who attend Madison public schools.

The code of conduct has been under review for months by a committee who made recommendations to the board in a special meeting on Monday.

The meeting is especially timely after the highly publicized recordings of students fighting at Toki Middle School came to light last week.

Committee members will recommend making a few major revisions or additions to the code, including specifically banning voice or image recording.

Board members discussed safety, discipline and cell phones, which were all topics of importance that applied to the Toki situation, reported WISC-TV.

Madison's new student code of conduct targets cell phones. Secret or hidden recordings are a serious offense that could get a student suspended or expelled.

"Cell phones and video cameras are being used in very wrong ways, to take pictures of tests, to film fighting, to record kids in the locker room, that's just not acceptable," said school board president Arlene Silviera. "I think we have to be very specific in the use of these types of devices -- what can and what cannot be done."

Tamira Madsen:

In an effort to give principals and administrators a chance to exercise discretion to expel a student who brings a weapon besides a gun to school, Madison school district officials are considering alterations to the language in the student codes of conduct.

Recommended revisions were discussed at Monday night's School Board meeting.

The current rule for a first offense states that a student who has a weapon on school grounds besides a firearm, pellet gun or BB gun and isn't carrying the weapon with an "intent to cause harm to another" will receive a five-day suspension. After a second offense, a student could face an expulsion recommendation.

The rule revision would give principals and administrators the option to expel the student for a first-time offense.

Dan Mallin, who works in legal services with the Madison Metropolitan School District and is a member of the committee drafting changes to the codes of conduct, said the rule change is meant to take into account a variety of circumstances.

The Mayor & Madison Schools

Jason Joyce publishes a useful summary of Madison Mayor Dave's weekly schedule. Tomorrow, Cieslewicz meets with retiring Superintendent Art Rainwater, after recently meeting with incoming super Dan Nerad.

I don't recall such frequent meetings (if any) in my years observing Joyce's weekly posts.

Related: Madison Mayor Proposes Expansion of Low Income Housing Throughout Dane County in an Effort to Reduce the MMSD's Low Income Population.

Madison's Two New School Board Members

Andy Hall:

Marj Passman is so excited she 's having trouble sleeping.

Ed Hughes is sleeping just fine -- so far, he adds with a chuckle.

Monday evening, Passman and Hughes will be sworn in as members of the Madison School Board. It will mark the first time either has held public office.

Their path to the board was easier than expected -- both ran unopposed -- and their arrival comes at an unusually quiet moment in Madison 's public school system. Thanks to a one-time windfall from special city of Madison taxing districts, the schools are averting budget cuts for the first time in 14 years.

But Passman, 66, a retired teacher, and Hughes, 55, a lawyer, know that by summer 's end the board will be deep into discussions about asking voters to approve millions of dollars in extra taxes to avoid budget cuts for coming years.

They 've been doing their homework to join the board -- an act that will become official with a ceremony at the board 's 5 p.m. meeting at the district 's headquarters, 545 W. Dayton St.

Passman and Hughes fill the seats held by retiring board members Carol Carstensen, the board 's senior member who gained detailed knowledge of issues while serving since 1990, and Lawrie Kobza, who developed a reputation for carefully scrutinizing the district 's operations during her single three-year term.

Related Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

Few jobs are as difficult and thankless as serving on a local school board.

Just ask Lawrie Kobza and Carol Carstensen.

The two Madison School Board members chose not to seek re-election this spring after years of honorable and energetic service.

Their replacements -- Ed Hughes and Marj Passman -- were sworn in Monday evening.

The fact that no one in Madison, a city steeped in political activism, chose to challenge Hughes or Passman for the two open board seats suggests increasing wariness toward the rigors of the task.

The job comes with token pay, a slew of long meetings, frequent controversy and angry calls at home. On top of that, the state has put public schools into a vise of mandates and caps that virtually require unpopular board decisions.

More on Saying Goodbye to Madison West High School's Writing Lab

Susan Troller:

A venerable and valued West High School academic institution has been cut from next year's schedule, and this time the immediate blame lies with dwindling enrollment projections for Madison high schools and middle schools, not the perennial budget cuts caused by state-imposed revenue caps.

The Writing Lab, a 30-year tradition at West which provides students with one-on-one help for writing papers and college essays, will be cut next year, Principal Ed Holmes confirmed.

John Howe, chair of West's English department, said the Writing Lab gets about 900 visits a year from students seeking help for everything from developing early ideas or themes to preparing final drafts.

Students get help, he said, with English papers, but also with writing assignments from virtually every other class that has a written component.

"Every year, we have students who have graduated that come back to West, telling us how well they were prepared for college writing assignments because of the Writing Lab," Howe said.

Much more on the demise of West's writing lab here.

Study Suggests Math Teachers Scrap Balls and Slices; "The Researchers Did Something Rare in Education Research"

Kenneth Chang:

One train leaves Station A at 6 p.m. traveling at 40 miles per hour toward Station B. A second train leaves Station B at 7 p.m. traveling on parallel tracks at 50 m.p.h. toward Station A. The stations are 400 miles apart. When do the trains pass each other?

Entranced, perhaps, by those infamous hypothetical trains, many educators in recent years have incorporated more and more examples from the real world to teach abstract concepts. The idea is that making math more relevant makes it easier to learn.

That idea may be wrong, if researchers at Ohio State University are correct. An experiment by the researchers suggests that it might be better to let the apples, oranges and locomotives stay in the real world and, in the classroom, to focus on abstract equations, in this case 40 (t + 1) = 400 - 50t, where t is the travel time in hours of the second train. (The answer is below.)

“The motivation behind this research was to examine a very widespread belief about the teaching of mathematics, namely that teaching students multiple concrete examples will benefit learning,” said Jennifer A. Kaminski, a research scientist at the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State. “It was really just that, a belief.”

Dr. Kaminski and her colleagues Vladimir M. Sloutsky and Andrew F. Heckler did something relatively rare in education research: they performed a randomized, controlled experiment. Their results appear in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

The Advantage of Abstract Examples in Learning Math by Jennifer A. Kaminski, Vladimir M. Sloutsky, Andrew F. Heckler.

I wonder what has become of the Madison School District's Math Task Force?

Math Forum audio, video, notes and links.

Milwaukee School Board Approves Large Busing Cut, Shift Funds to Classroom

Alan Borsuk:

A unanimous Milwaukee School Board agreed Thursday night "to reduce massive busing" in Milwaukee Public Schools, but to soften a proposed timetable for achieving ambitious cuts.

But while all nine members generally agreed on the goal of getting more kids off buses and into improved neighborhood schools, what will actually result will not be clear for perhaps several years.

The board action, in effect, fired the starting gun on a process that will require balancing the desire of thousands of parents to send their children to schools somewhere other than their neighborhood with the desire to see more money spent in classrooms and less on buses.

Board member Michael Bonds, who proposed the resolution, said, "This is an opportunity for us to put millions of dollars back into the classroom, to provide our students with a quality, comprehensive education."

A bold, green move. More here.

MPS Parentnet:

Last night MPS board members moved to reduce voluntary busing, for a potential savings of millions of dollars. In our recent meeting with Directors Spence and Thompson, busing has been identified as a source of tremendous savings. Despite the Neighborhood Schools Initiative, students are still being bused all over city to schools that are not citywide.

All members seem to support the idea of reducing busing, but several are concerned about options for parents who use the bus as child care. It's important for the district to keep in mind that its main mission is to educate children, first and foremost. It can't be in the position of sacrificing the academic goals of the district in order to provide services for parents that it can no longer afford.

Waukesha Superintendent Search Survey

School District of Waukesha:

As you are aware, the Waukesha Board of Education has initiated its search for a new superintendent. To provide counsel to us in this important process, we have retained the services of Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, Ltd. (HYA), a search firm that specializes in ass