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How would you like to go to MIT - for free? You can now. Starting this spring, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will be offering free online courses to anyone, anywhere in the world, through its new digital arm, MITx. These courses will be much more than lectures on videotape. Students will be able to interact with other students online and have access to online labs and self-assessment tools. And here's the really revolutionary part: If you can show you've learned the material, for a small fee, MITx will give you a credential to prove it. No, it's not a full-blown MIT degree. But employers will probably be impressed.
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Madison school superintendent Dan Nerad unveiled his long awaited, and much anticipated plan (mp3 audio) to close the district's more than 40-year-old racial achievement gap Monday night before the full school board and around 75 citizens who packed into a room inside the Fitchburg library.Ideally, substantive program review in necessities such as reading and math would occur prior to the addition of new spending.The 109-page plan, titled "Building Our Future: The Preliminary Plan for Eliminating Gaps in MMSD Student Achievement," makes about 40 recommendations at a cost of $60.3 million over the next five years.
Several recommendations called for building on existing programs, like AVID/TOPS, an acclaimed program that focuses on students in the academic middle.
Others, like a "parent university," a model school for culturally relevant teaching, career academies within the high schools and a student-run youth court, would be new to the district.
Matthew DeFour helpfully puts dollars ($105,600,000 over 5 years, about 5.6% of the roughly $1,860,000,000 that the District will spend over the same period) to the proposal. How does that compare with current programs and the proposed the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school?
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Los Angeles Unified School District is embroiled in negotiations over teacher evaluations, and will now face pressure from outside the district intended to force counter-productive teacher evaluation methods into use. Yesterday, I read this Los Angeles Times article about a lawsuit to be filed by an unnamed "group of parents and education advocates." The article notes that, "The lawsuit was drafted in consultation with EdVoice, a Sacramento-based group. Its board includes arts and education philanthropist Eli Broad, former ambassador Frank Baxter and healthcare company executive Richard Merkin." While the defendant in the suit is technically LAUSD, the real reason a lawsuit is necessary according to the article is that "United Teachers Los Angeles leaders say tests scores are too unreliable and narrowly focused to use for high-stakes personnel decisions." Note that, once again, we see a journalist telling us what the unions say and think, without ever, ever bothering to mention why, offering no acknowledgment that the bulk of the research and the three leading organizations for education research and measurement (AERA, NCME, and APA) say the same thing as the union (or rather, the union is saying the same thing as the testing expert). Upon what research does the other side base arguments in favor of using test scores and "value-added" measurement (VAM) as a legitimate measurement of teacher effectiveness? They never answer, but the debate somehow continues ad nauseum.Much more on "value added assessment", here.It's not that the plaintiffs in this case are wrong about the need to improve teacher evaluations. Accomplished California Teachers has published a teacher evaluation report that has concrete suggestions for improving evaluations as well, and we are similarly disappointed in the implementation of the Stull Act, which has been allowed to become an empty exercise in too many schools and districts.
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Altogether, Nerad makes about 40 recommendations in six categories -- instruction, college and career readiness, culturally relevant practices, school environment, family engagement and staff diversity.Related:"The plan is based on the view that there isn't one thing alone the school district can do to eliminate achievement gaps," Nerad said. "We're attempting to be comprehensive with the proposal."
The plan's projected cost for next year is $12.4 million, which Nerad is recommending come from the district's untapped property taxing authority under state-imposed limits. The amount includes adding about 67.5 positions, including behavioral support staff, reading specialists and parent liaisons.
Some recommendations wouldn't take effect until future years. The district estimates they will cost $20.9 million in 2013-14 and $26.6 million by 2016-17. The district doesn't have the authority to raise property taxes by that amount, though Nerad said part of the discussion in coming months will involve whether the private and nonprofit sectors can help fund the strategies.
"We're going to have to struggle through the conversation of how to get it done," Nerad said.
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Kaleem Caire, via email:
February 6, 2011
Greetings Community Member.
This evening, at 6pm at the Fitchburg Library, Madison Metropolitan School District Superintendent Daniel Nerad will present his plan for eliminating the racial achievement gap in our public schools to the Board of Education. We anticipate there will be many citizens in the audience listening in.
While we are pleased that our advocacy over the last 19 months has resulted in the District developing a plan to address the gap, we are also mindful of history. Our organization has pushed hard for our public school system to embrace change, address the gap and expand educational opportunity many times before.
In the 1960s, Madison learned that a wide gap existed between black and white students in reading, math and high school completion in Madison's public schools. In the 1970s, the Urban League of Greater Madison reported that just 60% of black students were graduating from the city's public high schools. In the 1980s, ULGM released a widely reported study that found the average GPA for a black high school student attending the city's public high schools was 1.58 on a 4.00 scale, with 61% scoring below a 2.0 GPA. It also found that a disproportionate number of black students were enrolled in remedial math and science classes, and that black students were significantly over-represented in special education and school suspensions. Then, in the 1990s, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute issued a report that stated there were two school districts in MMSD, one that poorly served black children and one that served everyone else.
Today, just 48% of black and 56% of Latino students are graduating from high school. Just 1% of black and 7% of Latino high school seniors are academically ready for college. Nearly 40% of all black boys in middle school are enrolled in special education, and more than 60% of black and 50% of Latino high school students earn below a 2.0 GPA.
Over the years, several district-wide efforts have been tried. Unfortunately, many of these efforts have either been discontinued, unevenly implemented, ineffective, lacked the support of parents/community/teachers, or failed to go far enough to address the myriad needs of students, families, teachers and schools. Madison also has a well-documented history of not heeding the advice of leaders and educators of color or educational experts, and not investing in efforts to codify and replicate successful strategies employed by its most effective educators. MMSD also has not acted fast enough to address its challenges and rarely looks beyond its borders for strategies that have proven effective elsewhere in the country.
The stakes are higher now; too high to continue on our present course of incrementalism rooted in our fear of the unknown, fear of significant change, and fear of admitting that our view of Madison being the utopic experience of the Midwest and #1 city in the U.S. doesn't apply to everyone who lives here. We no longer have the luxury of time to figure out how to address the gap. We cannot afford to lose nearly 300 black, 200 Latino and an untold number of Southeast Asian and underprivileged white students each year from our public schools. And we cannot afford to see hundreds of students leave our school system each year for public and private schools outside of the Madison Metropolitan School District.
We must embrace strategies that work. We must also behave differently than we have in the past, and can no longer afford to be afraid of addressing intersection or race and poverty, and how they are playing out in our schools, social relationships and community, and impacting the educational success of our kids.
Furthermore, we need all hands on deck. Everyone in our community must play a role in shaping the self-image, expectations and outcomes of our children - in school, in the community and at home. Some children have parents who spend more quality time with their career and coworkers than with their family. Some children have a parent or relative who struggles to raise them alone. Some have parents who are out of work, under stress and struggling to find a job to provide for their family. And unfortunately, some children have parents who make bad decisions and/or don't care about their well-being. Regardless of the situation, we cannot allow the lack of quality parenting to be the excuse why we don't reach, teach, or hold children accountable and prepare them for the future.
As we prepare to review the Superintendent's plan, we have developed a rubric that will allow for an objective review of his proposal(s). The attached rubric, which you can access by clicking here, was developed and informed by members of the staff and Board of Director of ULGM, business and community leaders, and teachers and leading experts in the field of K-12 and higher education. The tool will be used by an independent Community Review Panel, organized by the Urban League. pver the next several weeks to vet the plan. The intent of this review is to ensure MMSD has an optimal plan for ensuring that all of the children it serves succeed academically and graduate from high school prepared for college and work.
Specifically, our reasons for establishing this rubric and a Community Review Panel are four-fold:We have high expectations of the Superintendent's plan. We hope for a bold, transformational, aggressive and concise plan, and stand ready to assist the Superintendent and his team in any way we can. We hope you will be standing their with us, with your arms outstretched and ready to uplift or babies - the next generation.
- Develop an objective and comprehensive understanding of the plan and its many elements;
- Objectively review the efficacy of the plan, its goals and objectives, and desired outcomes;
- Formally communicate thoughts, concerns and ideas for supporting and/or improving the plan; and
- Effectively engage the Madison community in supporting and strengthening its public schools.
All Hands on Deck!
Onward.
Team Urban League of Greater Madison
Phone: 608-729-1200
Fax: 608-729-1205
www.ulgm.org
www.madison-prep.org
Urban League of Greater Madison 2012 Agenda
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This is my third and (I hope) last column in a series on education. If things work as planned this is where I'll make some broad generalizations that piss-off a lot of people, incite a small riot in the comments section, after which we'll all feel better and switch to discussing the Facebook IPO. So let's get to it. I believe that education is broken in the U.S. and probably everywhere else, that it is incapable of fixing itself, and our only significant hope is to be found in the wisdom of Sharon Osbourne.These conclusions are based on my experiences as a teacher, a parent, on the content of those two previous columns, one visit to OzzFest, and on my having this week read a couple books:
The Learning Edge: what technology can do to educate all children, by Alan Bain and Mark E. Weston.
Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools, by Roger Schank.
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Mary Battaglia kindly forwarded this email sent to the Madison School Board:
The high school graduation racial gap has been in the Madison news as though it only affects our fair city. It does not require much research, something the local media has failed to do, to see this is a national concern. According to an analysis called "Schott 50 State Report on Black Males in Public Education," nationally only 47% of black males graduated from high school in 2007. (1) It has been reported that Madison's graduation rate for black males is 50%. Obviously a pathetic rate compared to the 87% for whites, but what has not been a part of the local conversation is how Madison compares in relationship to the rest of the nation, and perhaps figure out where black males are graduating at a higher rate, and why. The Schott's report, revealed two communities with large minority populations with much better graduation outcomes than the rest of the nation, Baltimore and Fort Bend, Texas. What MMSD should be looking into is what are these cities doing, and what curricula or community effort has made them successful? One interesting part of the gap for Madison and the state of Wisconsin is the high rate of whites graduating. While Wisconsin is the worst defender in the racial gap, the states total graduation rate is one the highest in the nation.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.When you read various assessments of the "reason" for the gap nationally, the theories include the lack of financial investment, lack of good teachers, and the lack of community structure. While I find these proposals reasonable, I fail to understand how in this community they are relevant. MMSD spends well over $13,000 per student, lack the overwhelming urban problems of Milwaukee and Chicago, and have many fine teachers that somehow get non-minority students educated. These excuses ring hallow as to why MMSD has such a poor rate. What does ring true is we are not educating the population as it exist today. In the last 25 years the MMSD's minority rate has increased from 20% to one closer to 48%. (2) In the last 25 years MMSD has changed from a district of less than 25% free and reduced lunch to one that is closer to 50%. (3)Madison is still teaching to the population of 25 years ago, the students have changed, but the curriculum has not.
Perhaps, MMSD could improve the graduation rate for all students, with a significant change of focus. For example, MMSD's high school's emphasize 4 year college candidates when many of the students would do better in a 2 year or technology school focus. There has been an increased coordination with MATC, but what would be beneficial is to offer a dual graduation for students, so as they graduate from MMSD, they also have a 2 year degree or a certificate from MATC. This is a system that has been successful in a high school in North Carolina. (4) A student that wants to head to college still has that opportunity and perhaps a chance to make some money to support the effort. Perhaps, another way to improve graduation outcomes would include an overhaul of the summer school program. Currently, MMSD summer school staff are paid poorly, the programs focus is mostly on students that have flunked their classes and need a recovery grade, and the programs poor reputation have lead many staff to discourage students from participating. (5) Why not invest in a comprehensive retooling of the summer program that provides a better salary for staff, and includes enrichment, regular classes, as well as recovery options. Let's find a creative summer program with smaller class sizes and build a program that is the envy of the country and one that works. If summer school is going to be provided, then make it an awesome program, not just a warehouse for failing kids. Perhaps, as most research reveals, early education is a key component to better graduation outcomes, and the district finally is getting a 4K program up and running after a decade long battle with the union.
Madison Prep was an idea, but it is a unique group of students that would select to participate in such a rigorous program, which means an already motivated student or parents with very high expectations, both factors that frequently mean a student would do well anyway. MMSD needs to look at students that may not be that motivated or academically talented and assess what works to keep them engaged. The one thing MMSD has no control over is probably the most important issue for a students outcome. Research concludes the number one predictor of a students academic success is parental expectations. (6) Our schools cannot change parental expectations, however, they can change what a student expects. MMSD students need to expect a positive future, a purpose and a reason to stay in school. Not all kids will succeed but more than half of the black male students should. Let's develop a district that gives all the students the opportunity to succeed.
blackboysreport.org
http://legistar.cityofmadison.com/attachments/3b609f41-9099-4e75-b894-06f56ab57ca5.pdf
DPI.wi.gov Public school data
http://www.durhamtech.edu/admissions/highschoolstudent.htm
This statement is based on personal experience of having many staff, from middle school up to high school, discourage my daughter who struggles in math from attending summer school. I have also spoke to many parents with the same experience.
http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/?q=node/366*** Of note the data of graduation rate is debated in academic circles as the data is not always standardized. Some data includes GED and 5 year rates others include only 4 year rates.
Thanks,
Mary Kay Battaglia
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Metro Denver Promotion of Letters:
We envision a writing community for students in Denver where they can enjoy writing. More often than not, schools cannot provide a place in which creativity and discovery receive one-on-one attention. Students too often view writing as yet another task for which they will be assessed and graded. We hope to help them understand that writing is a vehicle for expression and communication, for publication and storytelling.Great.
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Arizonans cannot afford to wait for better education. Although Arizona is one of the fastest improving states in education, at the current rate, it would take decades for our students to catch up with those in the number one state in the country, Massachusetts.Pearl Chang Esau is President/CEO of Expect More Arizona.Arizona students continue to lag their national and international peers in academic performance, high school graduation rates and degree attainment. With 74 percent of Arizona fourth graders below proficient in reading and 69 percent of our eighth graders below proficient in math, the gap is only widening between the preparedness of our graduates and the skills and knowledge Arizona employers require.
Fortunately, Tucson has many examples of bright spots that show all of us the potential for Arizona education. Tucson Unified School District's University High School was recently named a 2011 Higher Performing School by the National Center for Education Achievement; Vail Unified School District is nationally recognized for its use of technology to engage students and raise student achievement; BASIS Charter School, which started in Tucson and has grown to other parts of the state, was named a top high school by Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report; and the University of Arizona is ranked among the top public research universities in the nation. All of them embrace a culture of high expectations and are working to ensure all students graduate ready to compete and succeed in the 21st century global economy.
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The dangers which Peter Wilby points out (Does Gove realise he is empowering future dictators?, 31 January) were recognised 70 years ago. Unfortunately secretaries of state know very little history. The Oxford historian Dr Marjorie Reeves, when invited to be on the Central Advisory Council For Education (England) in 1946, was told by the permanent secretary, John Redcliffe-Maud, that the main duty of council members was "to be prepared to die at the first ditch as soon as politicians try to get their hands on education".A war had been fought to prevent the consequences of such concentrated power. The 1944 Education Act, hammered out during the war years, created a "maintained system" of education as a balance of power between central government, local government responsibility, the voluntary bodies (mainly the churches) and the teachers. That balance is now disappearing fast, without the public debate it needs and with hardly a squeak from Labour. The existing education legislation refers to the fast-disappearing "maintained schools", leaving academies and free schools exposed, without the protection of the law, to whatever whimsical ideas are dreamt up by the present or future secretaries of state, to whom they are contracted with minimal accountability to parliament.
Professor Richard Pring
Green Templeton College, Oxford• The removal of 3,100 vocational subjects from the school performance tables from 2014 (Report, 31 January) has major implications. It is certainly the case that "perverse incentives" were created by the league tables to use soft options to boost school league table positions - the phenomenon known as gaming. However, the cull to 70 accepted vocational subjects, with 55 allowed on the margins, essentially destroys vocational and technical education. Given that the old basis is the one for the current (2012 and 2013) tables, a whole raft of students are on worthless courses.
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I am running for the Madison School Board because I care about the state of our public schools and this community.The 2012 Madison School Board Contest:The facts are: I am employed at the Urban League of Greater Madison and spoke in support of Madison Prep as a parent and citizen. Am I running because Madison Prep was voted down? No. My focus is broader than the charter school proposal, but the Madison Prep vote was a defining moment in my decision to declare candidacy.
It became apparent to me as I sat in the auditorium that night that we can no longer afford to wait for our district to take the casual approach to the urgent matter of minority under-achievement. Our entire community is affected by the failure to do so.
Every child in this district -- from the at-risk, the middle-of-the-road student, to the most academically talented -- should have an equal opportunity to thrive in our school system. And here's the reality, Madison -- we are not delivering.
It's been hard for us to accept that we are a different community than we were 10 years ago, but we are. If we move beyond politically correct conversations about race and poverty, we'd readily realize that we cannot go about "business as usual."
Seat 1 Candidates:
Nichele Nichols
www.nichols4schoolboard.org
email: nnichols4mmsd@gmail.com
Arlene Silveira (incumbent)
www.arleneforschoolboard.com
email: arlene_Silveira@yahoo.com
Seat 2 Candidates:
Mary Burke
www.maryburkeforschoolboard.net
email: maryburkewi@gmail.com
Michael Flores
www.floresforschoolboard.org
email: floresm1977@gmail.com
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The U.S. Education Department is probing complaints that Harvard University and Princeton University discriminate against Asian-Americans in undergraduate admissions.Steve Hsu on Transparency in college admissions:The department's Office for Civil Rights is investigating a complaint it received in August that Harvard rejected an Asian- American candidate for the current freshman class based on race or national origin, a department spokesman said. The agency is looking into a similar August 2011 allegation against Princeton as part of a review begun in 2008 of that school's handling of Asian-American candidates, said the spokesman, who declined to be identified, citing department policy.
Both complaints involve the same applicant, who was among the top students in his California high school class and whose family originally came from India, according to the applicant's father, who declined to be identified.
Today we learned from Bloomberg that the U.S. Education Department is investigating complaints that Harvard University and Princeton University discriminate against Asian-Americans in undergraduate admissions. It is a common belief among Asian-American families that their children are held to higher academic standards than applicants from other ethnic groups, including whites. Such practices were openly acknowledged as a result of internal investigations at universities like Berkeley and Stanford in the 1980s and 1990s. Have they now been corrected?Statistics seem to support a claim of widespread discrimination across most of elite higher education. For example, in comprehensive statistics compiled as part of Duke University's Campus Life and Learning project (as reported in a recent analysis by Duke economist Peter Arcidiacono and collaborators), Asian-American students averaged 1457 out of 1600 on the math and reading portion of the SAT, compared to 1416 for whites, 1347 for Hispanics and 1275 for blacks. There is every reason to believe that a similar pattern holds at nearly all elite universities in America, with some notable exceptions such as Caltech. In fact, Duke may be one of the mildest offenders when it comes to Asian-American admissions: with the goal of increasing its overall student quality, Duke has reportedly been more friendly recently to Asian-American applicants than traditional powers such as Harvard and Princeton.
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Question 23 has implications for the future of our public schools, along with the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school:
Given Act 10's negative Impact on Collective Bargaining Agreements, will you introduce and vote for a motion to adopt the Collective Bargaining Agreements (182 page PDF Document) negotiated between MTI and The Madison Metropolitan School District as MMSD policy?Both Silveira and Flores answered Yes.
Seat 1 Candidates:
Nichele Nichols
www.nichols4schoolboard.org
email: nnichols4mmsd@gmail.com
Arlene Silveira (incumbent)
www.arleneforschoolboard.com
email: arlene_Silveira@yahoo.com
Seat 2 Candidates:
Mary Burke
www.maryburkeforschoolboard.net
email: maryburkewi@gmail.com
Michael Flores
www.floresforschoolboard.org
email: floresm1977@gmail.com
Listen to the event via this 77MB mp3 audio file.
I suspect that at least 60% of Wisconsn school districts will adopt their current teacher contracts as "handbooks". The remainder will try different approaches. Some will likely offer a very different environment for teachers.
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lot is riding on Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad's upcoming plan for improving low-income, minority student achievement.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.The plan is billed as a blueprint for addressing an intractable, divisive issue in Madison, and it could also factor into the upcoming School Board discussion of Nerad's future in Madison.
The United Way of Dane County has made closing the achievement gap one of its primary issues for more than 15 years through the Schools of Hope tutoring program. But president Leslie Howard said the recent debate over the proposed Madison Prepatory Academy charter school has drawn more public attention to the issue than ever before.
"I don't want to say something so grandiose that everything's at stake, but in some ways it feels like that," Howard said.
Related links:
"They're all rich, white kids and they'll do just fine" -- NOT!
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Wisconsin is fortunate to have many fine K-12 schools educating our young people. The quality of this state's educational system is among the best in the United States, and the same can be said for Wisconsin teachers.Wisconsin 25th in 2011 NAEP Reading, Comparing Rhetoric Regarding Texas (10th) & Wisconsin NAEP Scores: Texas Hispanic and African-American students rank second on eighth-grade NAEP math test.Those accolades notwithstanding, there is one area in which Wisconsin schools should consider focusing some of their educational muscle: personal financial literacy.
More than ever before, our children -- by the time they graduate from high school -- need to be able to cope in the increasingly fast-paced world of financial services.
Today, many young people rarely handle cash, opting instead for the use of debit cards, credit cards and smartphones to make purchases. Those who have jobs probably never see a paycheck because most employers use direct deposit for their payrolls. And, most teens probably have never read the fine print of the contract for their mobile telecommunications devices.
Fascinating. Tony Evers is Superintendent of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Much more at www.wisconsin2.org.
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My son says his teacher shouts a lot, especially at the naughty members of the class. Although this does not include him, he is quite sensitive and does not like this type of discipline. It is putting him off going to school. Can I broach this with the teacher, or should I just accept that this is her style of teaching?Different teachers have different teaching styles. Some like to use a loud voice for effect or to make a particular impact. They may actually need to raise their voices on some occasions, depending on the classroom location and the environment. But if this style of interaction or discipline with the children is constant and consistent, it is usually not appropriate.
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James Encinas, Kyle Hunsberger and Michael Stryer:
We're teachers who believe that teacher evaluation, including the use of reliable test data, can be good for students and for teachers. Yes, yes, we know we're not supposed to exist. But we do, and there are a lot more of us.In February the membership of United Teachers Los Angeles will vote on a teacher-led initiative urging union leaders to negotiate a new teacher evaluation system for L.A. Unified. The vote will allow teachers' voices to be heard above the din of warring political figures.
Although LAUSD and UTLA reached a contract agreement in December that embraced important school reforms, they haven't yet addressed teacher evaluation. Good teaching is enormously complex, and no evaluation system will capture it perfectly. But a substantive teacher-led evaluation system will be far better for students and teachers than what we have now, a system in which virtually all teachers receive merely "satisfactory" ratings from administrators.
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For the first time this year, LAUSD has prepared reports for teachers that rate their effectiveness. When I received an email saying I could now view my own personal "Average Growth over Time" report, I opened it with a combination of trepidation, resignation and indignation.First, the indignation. It is, I think, the key factor that has kept me teaching past the five-year mark, when most new teachers quit the profession. I am in my sixth year of teaching after a nearly 20-year career as a professional writer. I know that I am smart, hardworking and competent, and despite the many frustrations of teaching in the Los Angeles Unified School District, I have refused to throw in the towel -- as so many do.
Indignation is also what fueled my reaction when I saw the rating the school district sent. It showed me to be on the low side of average for high school English teachers in the district.
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As state after state rewrites their education laws in line with the mandates from Race to the Top and the NCLB waiver process, the teaching profession is being redefined. Teachers will now pay the price - be declared successes or failures, depending on the rise or fall of their students' test scores. Under NCLB it was schools that were declared failures. In states being granted waivers to NCLB, it is teachers who will be subjected to this ignominy. Of course we will still be required to label the bottom 5% of our schools as failures, but if the Department of Education has its way, soon every single teacher in the profession will be at risk for the label.This revelation came to me as I read the Score Card on Education prepared by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), authored by Dr. Matthew Ladner and Dan Lips. This is a remarkable document. It provides their report on where each of the states stands on the education "reform" that has become the hallmark of corporate philanthropies, the Obama administration and governors across the nation.
It begins with a histrionic comparison between the struggle over our schools and the Battle of Britain in the Second World War. The authors write:
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First of a series180K PDF version.The recent controversy over the Urban League of Greater Madison's proposal for a Madison Preparatory Academy has been framed primarily as a local story pitting contending interests within the city. The charter school's promoters, supporters and mainstream media have portrayed the ULGM's CEO and President, Kaleem Caire as the Prep's public champion and native son returned home on a mission to help "close the achievement gap," the racial disparities in Madison's schools.
But Caire's well-established national ties, spanning more than a decade, to numbers of conservative foundations, think tanks and individuals bent on privatizing public school coffers, creating for-profit schools, and destroying teachers' unions, certainly suggest that there is more to the story.
Caire has consistently dismissed any suggestion of his links to various right-wing efforts. On occasion he has admitted some distant connections but asserted his independence by saying, "They have their agenda, but we have ours." Lately, he has taken to waving off critic's references to such ties as nothing more than "guilt-by-association crap" or part of a "conspiracy" and "whisper campaign" coming from those trying to discredit the Mad Prep Academy project. However, a readily traceable history reveals some truth to the charges.
Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.
Clusty Search: Allen Ruff, Blekko, google, bing.
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Hartford Business, via a kind Doug Newman email:
First Niagara Bank has pledged $3 million to support a nonprofit group that is representing business interests in Connecticut's education reform debate.The money will go to Hartford's Connecticut Council for Education Reform (CCER), which is led by a group of prominent Connecticut business leaders including former Hartford Financial Services Group CEO Ramani Ayer, and Peyton Patterson, the former chief executive of NewAllinace Bank, which was acquired by First Niagara Bank last year.
The Connecticut Council for Education Reform also unveiled Thursday its education agenda for the upcoming legislative session, which includes urging the state to adopt:
--Teacher and leader employment and retention policies that attract the highest quality professionals and insist upon effectiveness as defined by their ability to demonstrate improvement in student performance, not seniority, as the measure of success defined by redesigned evaluation systems.
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Posted by Julia Steiny Columnist EducationNews.org on January 25, 2012
Back in December 2009, excited 4th graders at Westerly's State Street School (http://sss.westerly.k12.ri.us/) sat down to take a practice science test. Like little sports jocks, the kids approached the task as if it were training for the big game coming in the spring, the statewide science NECAP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NECAP).Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at EducationViews.org and GoLocalProv.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.In 2008, the whole Westerly district had performed so poorly on that test that teachers actually volunteered their time to form a K-12 Science Task Force focused on redeeming their sullied academic reputation. (See last week's column about this Task Force (link to my column from last week) .)
Then, insult to injury, in 2009 State Street's scores tanked again.
The heat was on. State Street had already started implementing the Task Force's recommendations, including its strong emphasis on teaching writing.
Wait. Writing? That's English, not science. But more on this in a moment.
Westerly's students had struggled particularly with the "inquiry" part of the NECAP, where kids to do a hands-on task and draw conclusions from what they see in front of them.
State Street's Principal Audrey Faubert says, "Science (NECAP) is only given at the 4th grade (and later at 8th and 11th), so K-3 weren't exposed to the rigors of testing. We decided to give all the kids an inquiry task to complete. And the faculty also took some of the released test items from the RIDE website. (http://www.ride.ri.gov/assessment/necap_releaseditems.aspx) Even though they'd been teaching inquiry with the science kits (http://www.uri.edu/hss/education/GEMSNET-URI/index.html) , it was interesting for the teachers to be on the other side of a test."
But the spotlight's glare was on those 4th graders.
Faubert smiled sadly, "The room was buzzing. The kids thought they did fantastic."
Working in pairs, the school's entire teaching staff scored the kids' work. The results were enough to induce clinical depression.
But as it turns out, the school's good efforts hadn't quite paid off yet. The Task Force was onto a good thing when they decided writing was key to learning science. State Street's instruction had only just started to take root.
Here's the problem: Old science was about answers. When a test asks a question like: "How does wind change sand dunes?" somewhere in the science textbook was an answer that the kid was supposed to have memorized.
New science is about thinking and reasoning. The way Faubert puts it is: "The (NECAP) science test is a thinking test, not a knowledge test. Science isn't about recall any more, but about synthesizing information." New science poses essential questions, such as the sand dunes example, but now the kids need to derive the answer themselves, by sorting through data. Teachers provide techniques, tools, research methods, and experiences. But like scientists themselves, students must do their own research and figure out what their discoveries mean.
Writing is always the product of thinking. Writing forces a kid to organize her thoughts to be expressive and communicate clearly.
Middle-school principal Paula Fusco says "Prior to the work of the Task Force, we'd left writing up to the English teacher. But whatever the kids did or didn't know, they weren't able to communicate their understanding of science."
To work on that understanding, Fusco says, "we've been taking the vocabulary out of NECAP--infer, predict, explain. So the kids aren't afraid of the words they're encountering."
The ability to define "predict" doesn't help at all if the ability to MAKE a prediction isn't also a familiar habit. Kids need to demonstrate, by their writing, that they understand what they need to DO when the test asks them to predict, infer or explain.
Similarly, Fusco's teachers began to work with the kids on "sentence starters" to guide their thinking--However, In conclusion, Whereas, Therefore.
Fortunately, Westerly's students were in the habit of writing in science journals. But they had used them mainly to record observations. Faubert says, "Every teacher brought in examples of their students' science journals. Oh, here are the strengths and weaknesses right in our own notebooks. We'd never had the kids prove their thinking in their journals. Think like a scientist, based on what's in front of you. Prove your thinking. Prove your thinking. We said that so many times."
At the end of the day, teaching the kids to EXPLAIN their predictions and reasoning was the clearest way to teach them habits of scientific thinking. And those explanations also helped the teachers assess kids' understanding and misunderstanding.
By February, State Street dared to try another practice test with the 4th graders. Again, the staff scored it together. Ahhh, much better. So much so, Faubert felt more confident about improving on the 49 percent proficiency they'd managed in the prior year's test.
In fact, when the results were released last Fall, State Street kids hit 80 percent proficiency, 8th highest in the state, out of over 150 schools that take that test. (And Westerly is the 8th lowest-income community in the state.)
Superintendent Roy Seitsinger's take on the situation is this: "Nobody (meaning veteran educators) signed up for what we're doing now. Most of the people weren't trained to bring students through a thinking process. Now the educators' job is to teach kids how to sift through all that information and to be critical, reflective and make decisions. We have too much information and not nearly enough sorting skills."
Therefore, in conclusion, learning to write promotes scientific thinking. Other districts would do well to take notice.
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The most important domestic subject that I FAIL to adequately cover is K-12 education. It's potentially the most effective tool we have for increasing vertical mobility in our society -- and hence is currently misused as the best single method to repress disadvantaged minorities.
What the education unions and their bought-and-paid-for Democrat allies have done to inner city black and Hispanic kids would warm the cockles of any KKK Grand Dragon. The Progressives' steadfast opposition to improving education angers me every time I think about it.
Thus I include intact below an excellent op-ed on the topic from the LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS. It's upbeat -- giving the growing success of the school choice movement in all its many flavors.
Sadly, California is one of the least successful states in this effort to improve education. All we hear from CA liberals is that we don't spend enough. But the growing popularity and acceptance of school choice in other states is going to make it more and more difficult for our voters to ignore this innovation.
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Seat 1 Candidates:
Nichele Nichols
www.nichols4schoolboard.org
email: nnichols4mmsd@gmail.com
Arlene Silveira (incumbent)
www.arleneforschoolboard.com
email: arlene_Silveira@yahoo.com
Seat 2 Candidates:
Mary Burke
www.maryburkeforschoolboard.net
email: maryburkewi@gmail.com
Michael Flores
www.floresforschoolboard.org
email: floresm1977@gmail.com
via a kind reader. It is great to see competitive races.
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Laurie Rogers, via a kind email:
Last week, I went to a Spokane Public Schools math presentation at Indian Trail Elementary School. It was billed as a forum in the school newsletter and on the reader board outside of the school. It was not, in any way, a forum. It was a tightly controlled 20-minute presentation that offered no data, little information, allowed for no parent input and was patronizing in tone.Related: Math Forum audio & video.At one point, parents were asked to define math to the person next to us. (The principal said he would not offer his definition.) We also were told to describe to our neighbor a math experience we'd had. These conversations ended right there, thus being pointless. We watched a video of several small children talking about the importance of math. The kids were cute, but the video was long. It was made clear to us that math is hard, parents don't get it (see slide 7 of the presentation), "traditional math" is no longer useful, and math is intimidating to all. Printed materials reinforced the idea of parent incompetence, with students supposedly "taking the lead" and teaching their parents.
Parents were warned to stay positive about math, however, despite our supposed fear and lack of skill, and we also were told what a "balanced" program looks like - as if that's what Spokane actually has.
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Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes
Value added" or "VA" refers to the use of statistical techniques to measure teachers' impacts on their students' standardized test scores, controlling for such student characteristics as prior years' scores, gender, ethnicity, disability, and low-income status.Much more on value added assessment, here.Reports on a massive new study that seem to affirm the use of the technique have recently been splashed across the media and chewed over in the blogosphere. Further from the limelight, developments in Wisconsin seem to ensure that in the coming years value-added analyses will play an increasingly important role in teacher evaluations across the state. Assuming the analyses are performed and applied sensibly, this is a positive development for student learning.
The Chetty Study
Since the first article touting its findings was published on the front page of the January 6 New York Times, a new research study by three economists assessing the value-added contributions of elementary school teachers and their long-term impact on their students' lives - referred to as the Chetty article after the lead author - has created as much of a stir as could ever be expected for a dense academic study.
It is important to note that the Madison School District's value added assessment initiative is based on the oft-criticized WKCE.
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Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, via a kind reader's email:
MADISON -- Wisconsin's request for waivers from several provisions of federal education law creates the expectation that every child will graduate ready for college and careers by setting higher standards for students, educators, and schools."Education for today's world requires increased rigor and higher expectations," said State Superintendent Tony Evers. "The federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has shackled schools by being overly prescriptive and prohibiting creative reforms that would help more students gain the skills needed for further education and the workforce. Wisconsin's request for flexibility from NCLB is driven by the belief that increasing rigor across the standards, assessment, and accountability system will result in improved instruction and improved student outcomes."
To receive waivers, state education agencies must demonstrate how they will use flexibility from NCLB requirements to address four principles: transitioning to college- and career-ready standards and assessments; developing systems of differentiated recognition, accountability, and support; evaluating and supporting teacher and principal effectiveness; and reducing duplication. The Department of Public Instruction has posted its draft waiver request online and is asking for public comment through a survey. After the two-week comment period, the agency will revise the waiver request and submit it to the U.S. Department of Education by Feb. 21.
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In the world outside public education, people apply for a job they want, interview with their potential boss, compete against other applicants and are ultimately selected if they look like a good fit for the position.It doesn't work that way in public education.
In schools, teachers do all the normal things to get hired, but when it comes to placement, seniority is what counts, not the perfect fit. The teacher with the longest tenure in a district gets first dibs on any available job at a school, with the principal - the school's boss - getting little or no input.
School district officials in Oakland want to change that, believing that it's in the best interests of students when a teacher - new, veteran or in between - wants to work at a school and the school wants that teacher.
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Keith Bradsher & Charles Duhigg:
Companies like Apple "say the challenge in setting up U.S. plants is finding a technical work force," said Martin Schmidt, associate provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In particular, companies say they need engineers with more than high school, but not necessarily a bachelor's degree. Americans at that skill level are hard to find, executives contend. "They're good jobs, but the country doesn't have enough to feed the demand," Mr. Schmidt said.Well worth considering from a curricular, finance and social perspective.Some aspects of the iPhone are uniquely American. The device's software, for instance, and its innovative marketing campaigns were largely created in the United States. Apple recently built a $500 million data center in North Carolina. Crucial semiconductors inside the iPhone 4 and 4S are manufactured in an Austin, Tex., factory by Samsung, of South Korea.
But even those facilities are not enormous sources of jobs. Apple's North Carolina center, for instance, has only 100 full-time employees. The Samsung plant has an estimated 2,400 workers.
....
"We shouldn't be criticized for using Chinese workers," a current Apple executive said. "The U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need."
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Just when all signs indicated that supporters of Madison Preparatory Academy were abandoning hope of joining forces with the Madison school district, they've decided to give it one more shot. They're seeking another vote on the controversial charter-school proposal in late February.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.Urban League of Greater Madison CEO and president Kaleem Caire says Madison Prep will open this fall as a private entity, but hopes it will transition into the district in 2013, once the district's union contract expires.
Board members who voted against the charter school in December expressed concerns that it would put the district in breach of its contract with Madison Teachers Inc., due to a provision requiring district schools to hire union staff.
School board president James Howard, who voted for Madison Prep, says the board may not have time to address the proposal in February.
Whether the Urban League -- which proposed Madison Prep as an ambitious step toward closing the district's decades-old achievement gap -- can recapture its earlier momentum is uncertain, considering that Superintendent Dan Nerad and school board members seem particularly excited about their own plans to address the issue.
"We're going at it from so many different angles right now," says board member Beth Moss. "I can't see how we can't make some improvement."
Fascinating.
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Wolfram has long been a trusted name in education--as the makers of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha, and the Wolfram Demonstrations Project, we've created some of the most dynamic teaching and learning tools available. We are pleased to offer the best of all of our technologies to you here in the Wolfram Education Portal, organized by course. In the portal you'll find a dynamic textbook, lesson plans, widgets, interactive Demonstrations, and more built by Wolfram education experts. You can take a look at the types of materials we offer below, but to get full access to all materials, you need to sign up for a free account.
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Almost all of us say that as a nation we should work out our differences and unite to solve our problems. But we don't mean it.Exhibit A is the bad blood between the National Education Association, the nation's largest teacher's union, and Teach for America, the most popular public-service option for graduates of selective colleges.
The NEA has been at odds with TFA since the teacher recruitment program began. NEA leaders dislike the idea, conceived in 1989 by 22-year-old Princeton undergraduate Wendy Kopp, of giving young people selected for academic achievement and ambition just five weeks of summer training before having them teach in some of our lowest-performing urban and rural public schools. TFA's steady growth and rising status at prestigious universities has not soothed NEA's distress.
This is both a national and a local issue. The NEA's national headquarters is in the District. One of the largest contingents of TFA teachers works in the District and Prince George's County.
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Rafael Gomez, via a kind email: Dear Cherokee Staff:
We have an opportunity to have Emergent Spanish for Educators (Jan. to April 2012) The class will take place at Cherokee every Mondays starting Jan. 23 at 3:30 to 5:45 except the session it will be from 3:45 to 4:45.
Calender:1/30, 2/6, 2/13, 2/20 2/27 3/5 3/12 3/ 19 3/26. 4/4 4/11 4/16 4/23 4/30
All participants will get 3 PAC credits. It is 30 hours of instruction.
Description of the course:
This course will provide participants with skills needed to make an easy transition from English only into Emergent Spanish and have fun while doing it. Participants will be assisted to become more comfortable using their Spanish pronunciation, construction of basic statements and conversing in Spanish with instructor and/or participants.All participants will end up with a learning center to continue learning Spanish.
Objectives:
1. Acquire a repertoire o Spanish vocabulary
2. Increase comfort level to use Spanish
3. Increase awareness of culture and language
4. Gain skill to use their learning center.
Ritual:Participants will interact with parents and students who are native Spanish speakers.
If you have any questions, please contact me.
Rafael Gomez
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It took nearly a year for Dale Kleinert to negotiate his first teachers' contract. When Kleinert started his job as schools superintendent in Moscow, Idaho, the talks were already underway. Then, discussions reached an impasse. There were disagreements over pay and health care costs, and the pace slowed further when first an outside mediator and later a fact-finder didn't render a decision. It wasn't until May of 2011 that Kleinert and his union counterparts finally reached an agreement.Just before then, while Kleinert and the teachers were still stuck, Republican lawmakers in Boise were finishing work on plans to take away much of the leverage that Idaho teachers had long enjoyed in these kinds of negotiations. So for Kleinert's next round of talks with Moscow's teachers, which began pretty much right after the previous ones wrapped up, the rules were very different.
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Eva Moskowitz with Maria Bartiromo, via a kind Doug Newman email.
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School principals then would have discretion over how to use those funds, as long as they go to teachers. Those dollars could be spent on one-time teacher bonuses, teacher development projects or however the principal sees fit. "The idea is to give principals more power and to help them create a culture of success," says Ford.To be eligible to participate in the program, schools also would have to agree to eliminate the traditional teacher pay schedules that mainly reward longevity on the job.
"The No. 1 goal of public education in everything we do is raising academic achievement," says Ford. "So in the report I propose a framework that takes into account the views of teachers and the existing research on what motivates teachers."
It's certainly an interesting concept. But would it work?
Adam Gamoran, a UW-Madison professor of sociology and educational policy studies, says that while research clearly shows some teachers are much more effective than others, what's not so clear is which attributes these top educators share and whether or not it's even possible to lead them to teaching more effectively with incentives.
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When asked why he didn't second Ed Hughes' motion at the Dec. 19 meeting to delay the schools' opening until 2013, Howard replied, "We had not discussed the implications of what that means. I think we have time if we're talking about 2013, to make sure we do it correctly, because we don't know what the rules of the game will be in 2013."Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.Superintendent Dan Nerad said, "Whether it will move forward I don't know. That depends on whether the motion gets on the floor. I don't have a read on it at this point."
Others aren't as diplomatic. "This is a waste of time and money for all involved," said TJ Mertz, an Edgewood College professor and district watchdog who is among Madison Prep's most ardent critics.
"The votes are not there and will not be there," he continued. "It distracts from the essential work of addressing the real issues of the district, including issues of achievement for students in poverty."
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Our faltering education system may be the most important threat to our economy and well-being, writes Nicholas D. Kristof, so it's frustrating that the presidential campaign is mostly ignoring the issue. The obvious policy solution is more pay for good teachers, more dismissals for weak teachers.Suppose your child is about to enter the fourth grade and has been assigned to an excellent teacher. Then the teacher decides to quit. What should you do?
The correct answer? Panic!
Well, not exactly. But a landmark new research paper underscores that the difference between a strong teacher and a weak teacher lasts a lifetime. Having a good fourth-grade teacher makes a student 1.25 percent more likely to go to college, the research suggests, and 1.25 percent less likely to get pregnant as a teenager. Each of the students will go on as an adult to earn, on average, $25,000 more over a lifetime -- or about $700,000 in gains for an average size class -- all attributable to that ace teacher back in the fourth grade. That's right: A great teacher is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to each year's students, just in the extra income they will earn
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Joel Klein, via a kind reader's email:
Barack Obama has been accused of "class warfare" because he favors closing several tax loopholes -- socialism for the wealthy -- as part of the deficit-cutting process. This is a curious charge: class warfare seems to be a one-way street in American politics. Over the past 30 years, the superwealthy have waged far more effective warfare against the poor and the middle class, via their tools in Congress, than the other way around. How else can one explain the fact that the oil companies, despite elephantine profits, are still subsidized by the federal government? How else can one explain the fact that hedge-fund managers pay lower tax rates than their file clerks? Or that farm subsidies originally meant for family farmers go to huge corporations that hardly need the help?Actually, there is an additional explanation. Conservatives, like liberals, routinely take advantage of a structural flaw in the modern welfare state: there is no creative destruction when it comes to government programs. Both "liberal" and "conservative" subsidies linger in perpetuity, sometimes metastasizing into embarrassing giveaways. Even the best-intentioned programs are allowed to languish in waste and incompetence. Take, for example, the famed early-education program called Head Start. (See more about the Head Start reform process.)
The idea is, as Newt Gingrich might say, simple liberal social engineering. You take the million or so poorest 3- and 4-year-old children and give them a leg up on socialization and education by providing preschool for them; if it works, it saves money in the long run by producing fewer criminals and welfare recipients -- and more productive citizens. Indeed, Head Start did work well in several pilot programs carefully run by professionals in the 1960s. And so it was "taken to scale," as the wonks say, as part of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.
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This article is third in a series of articles regarding media coverage of public education. This article and its predecessors in the series articulate part of the reason we need a new and better news source.Instead of discussing the myriad legal and academic issues currently surrounding Spokane Public Schools, the editors for the daily newspaper The Spokesman-Review and the weekly publication The Inlander seem determined to drum up stray rumors and unsupported accusations against AP English teacher Jennifer Walther, who perhaps was caught TWC (Teaching While Conservative).
In October 2011, Walther's Leadership Class at Ferris High School put on the annual political forum "Face-Off at Ferris." Writers for The Spokesman-Review (SR) and The Inlander have since accused Walther of allowing her political views to sway the Ferris forum in favor of mayoral and school board candidates who are thought to be politically conservative.
The accusers have not been able to support their claim by pointing at actual questions that were asked. Sitting at the Ferris forum last October, I heard people all around me saying, "Those are great questions." What does a conservative question even look like? Are only conservatives concerned about accountability, transparency, outcomes, Otto Zehm's death, water rates, union clout and misspent finances? I know plenty of Democrats and progressives who are concerned about these issues.
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In the private sector, people with SAT and GRE scores comparable to those of education majors earn less than teachers do. Does that mean teachers are overpaid? Or that public schools should pay more to attract top applicants who tend to go into higher-paying professions?
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In the early 20th century Helen Todd, a factory inspector in Chicago, interviewed 500 children working in factories, often in dangerous and unpleasant conditions. She asked children the question: "If your father had a good job and you didn't have to work, which would you rather do--go to school or work in a factory?" 412 said they would choose factory work. One fourteen year old girl, who was interviewed lacquering canes in an attic working with both intense heat and the constant smell of turpentine, said "School is the fiercest thing you can come up against. Factories ain't no cinch, but schools is worst."The recent expansion of the "ASER-like" simple assessments of literacy and numeracy skills of all children in a village based approach provides an accurate, and chilling, picture of just how little learning is going on inside schools in many poor countries. The ASER data can show the learning profile, the association of measured skills and grade completion, by showing what fraction of children who have completed which grade can read a simple story (expected of a child in grade 2) or do simple arithmetic operations. Take Uttar Pradesh in 2010. By the end of lower primary school (grade 5) only one in four children could divide. Even by grade 8, the end of upper primary only 56 percent could. Similarly, by grade 5 only 44 percent could read a level 2 paragraph and by grade 8 still only 77.6 could. A large plurality of children, even of those that had persisted and been promoted through eight full grades or primary school--roughly 8000 hours of available total instruction--were either illiterate or innumerate or both.
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At universities, educational software largely means enterprise-scale, expensive, feature-stuffed "learning management systems." Blackboard has the majority of the market, but professors and students are about as enthusiastic about its various updates, crashes, and bugs as people are with the latest version of Windows (Blackboard scores a whopping 93% "hated" rating on website Amplicate).Last week, a new alternative was launched--built by students--that looks and works a lot more like the social platforms people actually choose to use in their spare time. The core of the site is a constantly updated social Stream where instructors and students can conduct discussions or easily post rich media. Picture a cleaner-looking Facebook news feed, centered on a single academic theme, or a group Tumblr blog where each picture, question, or video can accumulate its own discussion in the attached comment thread.
"We wanted to create a simple, elegant LMS that covers 95% of instructors' needs, like grading, file management, calendaring, submitting assignments, and emailing with the class," says Joseph Cohen, 19, who left Wharton after his sophomore year when he scored $1 million in seed funding this past June to start Coursekit. "Blackboard covers 100%-- that's why it's such a cluttered platform."
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The Wisconsin adoption of teacher content knowledge requirements, on the form of MTEL 90 (Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure) by 2013-2014 would (will?) be a significant step forward via the Wisconsin Read to Lead Report), assuming it is not watered down like the oft criticized (and rightfully so) WKCE.
There are significant implications for :Education School preparation/curriculum with the addition of content knowledge to teacher licensing requirements.
Much more on Read to Lead, here and a presentation on Florida's Reading Reforms.
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When I was young, I read popular physics books such as Richard Feynman's QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. I knew that light was waves, sound was waves, matter was waves. I took pride in my scientific literacy, when I was nine years old.When I was older, and I began to read the Feynman Lectures on Physics, I ran across a gem called "the wave equation". I could follow the equation's derivation, but, looking back, I couldn't see its truth at a glance. So I thought about the wave equation for three days, on and off, until I saw that it was embarrassingly obvious. And when I finally understood, I realized that the whole time I had accepted the honest assurance of physicists that light was waves, sound was waves, matter was waves, I had not had the vaguest idea of what the word "wave" meant to a physicist.
There is an instinctive tendency to think that if a physicist says "light is made of waves", and the teacher says "What is light made of?", and the student says "Waves!", the student has made a true statement. That's only fair, right? We accept "waves" as a correct answer from the physicist; wouldn't it be unfair to reject it from the student? Surely, the answer "Waves!" is either true or false, right?
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Summary of the Wisconsin Read to Lead Task Force Recommendations, January, 2012Related: Erin Richards' summary (and Google News aggregation) and many SIS links.
Teacher Preparation and Professional Development
All teachers and administrators should receive more instruction in reading pedagogy that focuses on evidence-based practices and the five components of reading as defined by the National Reading Panel (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension).
There must be more accountability at the state level and a commitment by institutions of higher education to improving teacher preparation.Licensure requirements should be strengthened to include the Massachusetts Foundations of Reading exam by 2013.
Teacher preparation programs should expand partnerships with local school districts and early childhood programs.
Information on the performance of graduates of teacher preparation programs should be available to the public.
A professional development conference should be convened for reading specialists and elementary school principals.
DPI should make high quality, science-based, online professional development in reading available to all teachers.
Professional development plans for all initial educators should include a component on instructional strategies for reading and writing.
Professional development in reading instruction should be required for all teachers whose students continually show low levels of achievement and/or growth in reading.
- Screening, Assessment, and Intervention
Wisconsin should use a universal statewide screening tool in pre-kindergarten through second grade to ensure that struggling readers are identified as early as possible.
Proper accommodations should be given to English language learners and special education students.Formal assessments should not replace informal assessments, and schools should assess for formative and summative purposes.
Educators should be given the knowledge to interpret assessments in a way that guides instruction.
Student data should be shared among early childhood programs, K-12 schools, teachers, parents, reading specialists, and administrators.
Wisconsin should explore the creation of a program similar to the Minnesota Reading Corps in 2013.
- Early Childhood
DPI and the Department of Children and Families should work together to share data, allowing for evaluation of early childhood practices.
All 4K programs should have an adequate literacy component.
DPI will update the Wisconsin Model Early Learning Standards to ensure accuracy and alignment with the Common Core State Standards, and place more emphasis on fidelity of implementation of the WMELS.
The YoungStar rating system for early childhood programs should include more specific early literacy criteria.
- Accountability
The Educator Effectiveness Design Team should consider reading outcomes in its evaluation systems.
The Wisconsin School Accountability Design Team should emphasize early reading proficiency as a key measure for schools and districts. Struggling schools and districts should be given ongoing quality professional development and required to implement scientific research-based screening, assessment, curriculum, and intervention.
Educators and administrators should receive training on best practices in order to provide effective instruction for struggling readers.
The state should enforce the federal definition for scientific research-based practices, encourage the use of What Works Clearinghouse, and facilitate communication about effective strategies.
In addition to effective intervention throughout the school year, Wisconsin should consider mandatory evidence-based summer school programs for struggling readers, especially in the lower grades, and hold the programs accountable for results.
- Family Involvement
Support should be given to programs such as Reach Out and Read that reach low-income families in settings that are well-attended by parents, provide books to low-income children, and encourage adults to read to children.The state should support programs that show families and caregivers how to foster oral language and reading skill development in children.
Adult literacy agencies and K-12 schools should collaborate at the community level so that parents can improve their own literacy skills.
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Editor's note: This is the first of three parts.It has been a great "trip," so to speak, and it isn't over yet. It was 61 years ago when I stepped into my first classroom as the teacher. During these past 61 years, I have thoroughly enjoyed my work as an educator, every day ... well, nearly every day.
Much has happened in education over that period of time. I have seen schools from nearly all levels: from that of a classroom teacher, university demonstration teacher, school administrator, professor of educational administration, and university administrator. I have seen schools from the standpoint of a school board member, a school board trainer, and a parent and grandparent. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I have seen education vicariously: as many of my readers know, my wife is a retired teacher of 34 years, and my son and daughter-in-law are teachers.
This columnist has a great respect for education and learning. A well known Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher Jean Piaget said it well: "the principal goal of education is to develop within people the capability of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done." Piaget's statement is smartly relevant and applicable as applied to all levels of education.
My entry into the field of teaching had its beginning in September, 1951. It was preceded by generations of some of the most conscientious, dedicated, and competent of teachers, many of whom, received little honor or aggrandizement, but whose influence was monumental. The strength of America's school and of America's teachers is seen in the annals of American Exceptionalism.
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Among the "open courseware" projects at elite U.S. institutions, MITx will be the first to offer an institutional credential -- albeit not from MIT proper but from MITx, which will exist as a nonprofit apart from the university. (The Stanford professors who offered an interactive open course in artificial intelligence to all comers in the fall plan to send each non-enrolled student a certifying letter with their cumulative grade and class rank, but Stanford itself is not recognizing them.)But MIT stamp or no, that is still a big step, says Kevin Carey, policy director at Education Sector, a D.C. think tank.
"I think this is the future," says Carey, who has written on the emerging relevance of nontraditional credentials. "It's just the logical next step for the ethic behind the [open educational resources] movement," he says.
In interviews, MIT officials took care to emphasize that MITx is not meant to supplant the traditional "residential education" that the university cultivates in its Cambridge, Mass., enclave.
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New York State's education commissioner threatened on Tuesday to withhold tens of millions of dollars in federal grants to struggling schools in New York City and nine other districts statewide if they do not prove by Saturday that they will carry out new evaluation systems for teachers and principals.Officials and union leaders in each district must first agree on the details of the evaluation systems, like how much weight students' standardized test scores will have on the annual ratings that teachers and principals receive. Compromise has thus far proved elusive.
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CARDINAL MEZZOFANTI of Bologna was a secular saint. Though he never performed the kind of miracle needed to be officially canonised, his power was close to unearthly. Mezzofanti was said to speak 72 languages. Or 50. Or to have fully mastered 30. No one was certain of the true figure, but it was a lot. Visitors flocked from all corners of Europe to test him and came away stunned. He could switch between languages with ease. Two condemned prisoners were due to be executed, but no one knew their language to hear their confession. Mezzofanti learned it in a night, heard their sins the next morning and saved them from hell.Or so the legend goes. In "Babel No More", Michael Erard has written the first serious book about the people who master vast numbers of languages--or claim to. A journalist with some linguistics training, Mr Erard is not a hyperpolyglot himself (he speaks some Spanish and Chinese), but he approaches his topic with both wonder and a healthy dash of scepticism.
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THE SPORTING SCENE about the football program at Don Bosco Preparatory School in Ramsey, New Jersey. Don Bosco, which belongs to the Salesian order of Roman Catholicism, was founded in 1915, as a boarding school for Polish boys, and shut its dormitories for good in 1969. Its reinvention as a football factory began in 1999, with the arrival of a new principal, Father John Talamo.) Talamo, who was thirty-four, had grown up on the outskirts of New Orleans, and brought with him the football-centric values of his native Louisiana.
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Laurie Rogers, via a kind email:
It's dangerous to be away. I briefly left the country a few weeks ago, and while I was gone, the district superintendent announced her retirement and The Spokesman-Review (SR) launched what I see as a media "lynching" of a local high school teacher.Did you read about the attack on Jennifer Walther, an Advanced Placement English teacher (news.google.com search) at Ferris High School in Spokane, WA? Are you shocked by the newspaper's biased coverage? I'm not shocked. Nowadays, the SR doesn't bear much resemblance to the newspapers I've enjoyed reading. Smaller, thinner and nastier, it contains less content, less local news and more ads. Often biased, incomplete or hypocritical, the paper tolerates questionable material that fits an editorial agenda.
I'm an avid newspaper reader, but I canceled the SR in 2008 when it kept quoting unsubstantiated rumors from the ex-boyfriend of the daughter of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Things have not improved since then.
Now, the SR is using its bully pulpit to accuse Walther of doing something the SR appears to do nearly every day of the week - pursue a biased political agenda. Evidence suggests that, rather than stand up for this teacher, the school district and teachers union initiated or are assisting with the pile-on.
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African-American students whose primary language is English perform significantly worse in math and reading than black students who speak another language at home -- typically immigrants or refugees -- according to new numbers released by Seattle Public Schools.District officials, who presented the finding at a recent community meeting at Rainier Beach High School, noted the results come with caveats, but called the potential trend troubling and pledged to study what might be causing it.
Michael Tolley, an executive director overseeing Southeast Seattle schools, said at the meeting that the data exposed a new achievement gap that is "extremely, extremely alarming."
The administration has for years analyzed test scores by race. It has never before broken down student-achievement data by specific home language or country of origin -- it is rare for school districts to examine test scores at that level -- but it is unlikely that the phenomenon the data suggest is actually new.
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National Education Association Research via a kind reader's email:
The data presented in this combined report―Rankings & Estimates―provide facts about the extent to which local, state, and national governments commit resources to public education. As one might expect in a nation as diverse as the United States--with respect to economics, geography, and politics--the level of commitment to education varies on a state-by-state basis. Regardless of these variations, improvements in public education can be measured by summary statistics. Thus, NEA Research offers this report to its state and local affiliates as well as to researchers, policymakers, and the public as a tool to examine public education programs and services.Wisconsin ranks 21st in average teacher salaries (page 35), 10th in property tax revenue as a percentage of total tax revenue (page 52), 16th in per capita state individual income tax revenue (page 53) and 15th in public school revenue per student.
Part I of this combined report--Rankings 2010--provides state-level data on an array of topics relevant to the com- plex enterprise of public education. Since the 1960s, Rankings has presented facts and figures useful in determining how states differ from one another--or from national averages--on selected statistics. In addition to identifying emerging trends in key economic, political, and social areas, the state-by-state figures on government financing, state demographics, and public schools permit a statistical assessment of the scope of public education. Of course, no set of tables tells the entire story of a state's education offerings. Consideration of factors such as a state's tax system, pro- visions for other public services, and population characteristics also are needed. Therefore, it is unwise to draw con- clusions based solely on individual statistics in this report. Readers are urged to supplement the ranked data with specific information about state and local service activities related to public education.Part II of this combined report--Estimates 2011--is in its 67th year of production. This report provides projections of public school enrollment, employment and compensation of personnel, and finances, as reported by individual state departments of education. Not surprisingly, interest in the improvement and renewal of public education continues to capture the attention of the nation. The state-level data featured in Estimates permit broad assessments of trends in staff salaries, sources of school funding, and levels of educational expenditures. The data should be used with the un- derstanding that the reported statewide totals and averages may not reflect the varying conditions that exist among school districts and schools within the state.
Public education in the United States is a joint enterprise between local, state, and federal governments. Yet, progress in improving public education stems primarily from the efforts of state education agencies, local districts, and indi- vidual schools. These public organizations deserve credit for recognizing that spending for education needs to be ac- knowledged as an investment in our nation's most valuable resource--children. Similarly, this publication represents a collective effort that goes well beyond the staff of the National Education Association. Individual state departments of education and the NEA's state affiliates participate in collecting and assembling the data shown here. As a result, the NEA appreciates and acknowledges the cooperation it receives from all those whose efforts make this publication possible.
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AFRICAN-American students are lagging behind other students, including other black ethnic students whose home language is not English, according to new numbers released by Seattle Public Schools. ["'Alarming' new test-score gap discovered in Seattle schools," page one, Dec. 19.]This is an important problem that other cities have confronted head-on. First, they have admitted they really don't know how to solve the problem. Second, they acknowledge that the normal remedies school districts use to solve achievement problems are too weak to work.
These admissions have led other cities to open themselves up to experimentation in schools serving the most disadvantaged: longer school days and years; no-excuses instructional models; new sources of teachers; partnerships with businesses and cultural institutions that can provide enrichment and role models; use of online instruction to teach subjects like science where school staff are often not qualified; new schools run by national institutions with track records of improving achievement for the most disadvantaged.
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Jacob Rainey is inspiring people all across the sports world - and no more so than giants from the NFL.The Virginia prep quarterback who had to have part of his right leg amputated has moved the likes of Alabama coach Nick Saban, Green Bay Packers linebacker Clay Matthews and Denver quarterback Tim Tebow.
A highlight film of Rainey on YouTube shows why college coaches had taken notice.
It shows the once-promising quarterback at Woodberry Forest School throwing a 40-yard dart for a touchdown, running into the line on a quarterback sneak, then emerging from the pile and sprinting 40 yards for a TD. There is also of clip of him running a draw for another 35-yard score.
All that was taken away, without warning when he was tackled during a scrimmage on September 3. He suffered a severe knee injury and a severed artery and part of his right leg had to be amputated.
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Two of our overriding efforts in Lower Education in recent years have been: 1) raising the low math and reading scores of black and Hispanic students, and 2) increasing the number of our high school and college graduates capable of employment in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics [STEM}.
Very recently evidence has been allowed to surface pointing out that while students in the bottom 10% of academic performance have indeed improved, students in the top ten percent of academic performance have stagnated, where they have not dropped out from boredom. Related evidence now suggests that complacency with secondary public education in our more affluent suburbs may have been quite misplaced as well.
As Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum point out in their recent book, That Used To Be Us, "average is over." That is to say, students in other cities (Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai) and countries (Finland, South Korea, Japan) take their educations so much more seriously than our students (and teachers) do that their economies are achieving gains on our own that are truly startling, if we take the time to notice.
If we are to retain good jobs, restart our manufacturing, and otherwise decide to compete seriously with others who seem to take both education and work more seriously than we have come to do, it might be wise to increase the interest of our students in STEM fields. According to the Kaiser Foundation, our students aged 8-18 are spending, on average, more than seven hours a day with electronic entertainment media.
Now of course we want our young people to buy our electronic entertainment hardware and software and we definitely want them to have a good time and be happy, but probably we would like them to be employable some day as well. Friedman and Mandelbaum point out that not only blue collar jobs and white collar jobs, but increasingly sophisticated professional work can be done to a high standard at a much lower cost in other countries than it can be done here.
Having our students spend 53 hours a week on their electronic entertainment media, while their high school homework tops out, in many cases, according to ACT, at three to four hours a week, is not a plan that will enable us to resume our competitive position in the world's economies.
So perhaps we should assign students in high school 15 hours a week of homework (which would reduce their media time to a mere 38 hours a week) and pass on to them the information that if they don't start working to a much much higher academic standard they will probably face a more depressing future in a greatly diminished nation than they currently imagine they will have.
But, is STEM enough? I remember the story told about a visit Sir Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, made to the gleaming new Salk Laboratory in La Jolla. A young biologist, thrilled to be a guide to the Nobel Prize-winner, was very proud to be able to show off all the bright new spotless expensive state-of-the-art research equipment. When they finished the tour, the young man could not stop himself from saying, "Just think, Sir Alexander, with all this equipment, what you could have discovered!" And Sir Alexander said, "not penicillin."
Because the discovery of penicillin relied on serendipity and curiosity. Fleming found some petri dishes contaminated by something that had come in, probably, through one of the dirty old badly-closed windows in his lab in England. Instead of washing the dishes so he could start over with them, as most scientists would have done, he asked himself what could have killed off those bacteria in the dishes. And a major breakthrough was made possible.
Just in passing, amid the rush for more STEM, I would like to put in a word for serendipity, which often fuels creativity of many kinds, by making possible the association of previously unrelated ideas and memories when in contact with a new fact or situation not deliberately sought out.
I argue that serendipity is more likely to occur and to be fruitful if our students also have a lot of experience with the ROOTS of civilization, that is, the history, literature, art, music, architecture and other fields which have provided the background and inspiration for so much that we find worthwhile in human life. Steve Jobs found his course in calligraphy useful when he came to think about Macintosh software, but there are countless examples of important discoveries and contributions that have been, at least in part, grounded in the ROOTS of civilized life. So let us push for more STEM, by all means, but if, in the process we neglect those ROOTS, our achievements will be fewer, and our lives will be the poorer as a result, IMHO.
Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
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Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:
I can't shake the feeling that something important was going on at our School Board meeting last Monday night to consider the Madison Prep charter school proposal, and that the actual School Board vote wasn't it.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.The bare-bone facts are that, after about 90 public speakers, the Board voted 2-5 to reject the Madison Prep proposal. I reluctantly voted against the motion because I was unwilling to violate the terms of our collective bargaining agreement with our teachers.
After the motion failed, I moved that the Board approve Madison Prep, but delay its opening until the fall of 2013. My motion failed for lack of a second. (And no, I don't have an explanation for why neither James Howard nor Lucy Mathiak, who voted in favor of the first motion, was willing to second my motion.)
Probably like most who attended Monday night's meeting, I have thought a lot about it since. People who know I voted against the proposal have come up to me and congratulated me for what they say was the right decision. I have felt like shaking them and saying, "No, you don't understand. We blew it Monday night, we blew it big time. I just hope that we only crippled Madison Prep and didn't kill it."
I appreciate that that's an odd and surprising place for me to have ended up. To echo the Talking Heads, "Well, how did I get here?" I'll try to explain.
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In a bold move that is generating controversy within its own ranks, the California Charter School Association is urging that 10 of the 145 charter schools up for renewal this year be denied their charters because they failed to meet academic performance benchmarks set by the association.U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan hailed the association for its "courageous leadership" in attempting to "hold schools accountable." "This is an important conversation for California to have, and one that we need to have across the country," Duncan said, echoing remarks made by several charter school leaders.
But the association's action has also provoked fierce criticism from schools it has recommended for closure, as well as from some long-time supporters of the charter movement.
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Academic Questions, the journal of the
National Association of Scholars: 90K PDF:
As concerns mount over the costs and benefits of higher education, it may be worthwhile to glance at the benefits of high school education at present as well. Of course, high school costs, while high, are borne by the taxpayers in general, but it is reasonable to hope that there are sufficient benefits for such an outlay.
In fact, 30 percent of ninth-grade students do not graduate with their class, so there is a major loss right there. In addition, it appears that a large fraction of our high school graduates who go on to college leave without taking any credential or degree within eight years. On November 17, 2008, the Boston Globe reported, "About two-thirds of the city's high school graduates in 2000 who enrolled in college have failed to earn degrees, according to a first-of- its-kind study being released today."1 The fact that this is a new study shows that the days of taking not just college, but high school education for granted may be ending as well. If public high schools were preparing their graduates (the 70 percent) adequately, they should be able to read and write in college.
Alternatives to high school are coming only slowly. Charter schools, some good and some bad, are being tried. Homeschooling serves some 1.5 million students, and some edupundits (and computer salesmen) are pushing for ever more use of virtual distance learning at the high school level.
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At Dugsi Academy, a public school in St. Paul, Minnesota, girls wearing traditional Muslim headscarves and flowing ankle-length skirts study Arabic and Somali. The charter school educates "East African children in the Twin Cities," its website says. Every student is black.At Twin Cities German Immersion School, another St. Paul charter, children gather under a map of "Deutschland," study with interns from Germany, Austria and Switzerland and learn to dance the waltz. Ninety percent of its students are white.
Six decades after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down "separate but equal" schools for blacks and whites, segregation is growing because of charter schools, privately run public schools that educate 1.8 million U.S. children. While charter-school leaders say programs targeting ethnic groups enrich education, they are isolating low-achievers and damaging diversity, said Myron Orfield, a lawyer and demographer.
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The most straightforward, clear and dispassionate vote taken on the Madison Preparatory Academy charter school proposal at last Monday's Madison Metropolitan School District Board meeting didn't even count. It was the advisory vote cast by the student representative, Philippo Bulgarelli.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.The School Board turned down the controversial proposal on a 5-2 vote, and after nearly five hours of public testimony, all the school board members gave speeches explaining how they arrived at their decisions. In addition to being the most succinct, Bulgarelli's statement penetrated all of the intense emotions and wildly divergent interpretations of data and personal anecdotes used to argue both for and against the proposal. Bulgarelli said that the students for whom he speaks did not have enough information to make a reasonably good decision, so he voted to abstain.
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The school would have offered a longer school day and year, higher standards and expectations, uniforms, mandatory extracurricular activities, same-sex classrooms, more minority teachers as role models, and stepped-up pressure on parents to get involved in their children's education.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.Madison Prep represented a huge opportunity -- with unprecedented community support, including millions in private donations -- to attack the stubborn achievement gap for low-income and minority students.
But a majority of the School Board rejected Madison Prep, citing excuses that include a disputed clause in its teachers union contract and a supposed lack of accountability.
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Wracked with frustration over the state's legions of unprepared high school graduates, the California State University system next summer will force freshmen with remedial needs to brush up on math or English before arriving on campus.Related: Madison's Math Task Force and K-12 Literacy Program Evaluation.But many professors at the 23-campus university, which has spent the past 13 years dismissing students who fail remedial classes, doubt the Early Start program will do much to help students unable to handle college math or English.
"I'm not at all optimistic that it's going to help," said Sally Murphy, a communications professor who directs general education at Cal State East Bay, where 73 percent of this year's freshmen were not ready for college math. Nearly 60 percent were not prepared for college English.
"A 15-hour intervention is just not enough intervention when it comes to skills that should have been developed over 12 years," Murphy said.
The remedial numbers are staggering, given that the Cal State system admits only freshmen who graduated in the top one-third of their high-school class. About 27,300 freshmen in the 2010 entering class of about 42,700 needed remedial work in math, English or both.
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Madison Urban League President Kaleem Caire fought hard to win approval of his Madison Prep project. But the Madison School Board ultimately rejected a plan that would have steered tens of millions of taxpayer dollars into a project that board members felt lacked sufficient oversight and accountability.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.The response of Caire and his fellow Madison Prep advocates was to suggest a variety of moves: the filing of a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice, or perhaps a request for state intervention to allow the project to go forward without state approval.
We would suggest another approach.
Caire has succeeded in garnering a good deal of support for Madison Prep. He could capitalize on that support and make a run for the School Board.
Changing the school board would either require: patience (just two of seven seats: Lucy Mathiak, who is not running after two terms and Arlene Silveira, who apparently is seeking a third term) are up in April, 2012 or a more radical approach via the current Wisconsin method (and Oakland): recalls. Winning the two seats may not be sufficient to change the Board, given the 5-2 no vote. Perhaps the "momentum", if realized, might sway a vote or two?
Perhaps the TAG complaint illustrates another approach, via the courts and/or different government agencies.
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I am ambivalent. My state, Tennessee, is the first state that has implemented the annual teacher and principal evaluations as required by Race to the Top (RTT). In 2010, I was involved with writing Tennessee's successful RTT application, especially the section on "great teachers and leaders." In my state role, I celebrated the RTT requirement for annual teacher and principal evaluations based substantially on student growth as one of the most important levers to accelerate student achievement.Now, in 2011, I am at the local level watching the fall-out. Although I still support annual teacher evaluations that include student achievement growth and regular teacher observation scores, it is clear that the initiative is off to a rocky start. And this has implications for more than just the educators and students in Tennessee. As noted in Education Week, many policymakers are concerned that the rocky implementation of Tennessee's new teacher evaluation system may hinder efforts in other states.
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Supporters of a controversial charter school proposal geared toward low-income, minority students said Tuesday they will continue to fight to establish it next fall -- including possibly as a private school.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.Their comments came Tuesday after the Madison School Board voted 5-2 early that day to reject a proposal for Madison Preparatory Academy, which would offer single-sex classrooms and a college preparatory curriculum.
The board didn't vote on an alternate proposal to approve the school but delay its opening until 2013.
David Cagigal, president of the Madison Prep board, said a private school would be expensive because the school's target low-income population wouldn't be able to afford tuition. Instead, the board would ask private donors to replace the roughly $9,300 per pupil it had sought from the School District.
"Maybe money is not the issue if we want to go ahead and prove our point," Cagigal said. "I can assure you we will persist with this idea of closing the achievement gap."
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The proposed Madison Prep Charter School was voted down by the Madison school board on Monday. A bold proposal to address the achievement gap in Madison, Madison Prep supporters have a very good point- the status quo is not working for minority students.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.There wasn't any magic to the Madison Prep proposal: longer school year, extended school days, smaller class ratios, additional support services, we know these things work, and taken together these things would likely make a significant impact on student achievement. But all these things cost significant amounts of money which is ultimately the problem. What distribution of resources is the most effective and fair?
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Kaleem Caire, via email:
Dear Madison Prep,Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.First, thank you to all of you who have supported the Madison Prep effort to this point. Your volunteer hours, work on Design Teams, attendance at meetings, letters to the district and media, and many other acts of support have not gone unnoticed by the Urban League and Madison Prep.
In earlier morning hours today, the MMSD Board of Education voted 5-2 AGAINST Madison Prep. This outcome came after hours of testimony by members of the public, with Madison Prep supporters outnumbering opponents 2:1. Lucy Mathiak and James Howard voted YES for Madison Prep; Ed Hughes, Arlene Silviera, Beth Moss, Maya Cole, and Marj Passman voted NO. After the vote was taken, Ed Hughes made an amendment to the motion to establish Madison Prep in 2013 (rather than 2012) in order to avoid what some see as a conflict between Madison Prep and the teachers' union contract. Mr. Hughes' motion was not seconded; therefore there was no vote on establishing Madison Prep one year later.
While the Urban League and Madison Prep are shocked by last night's outcome, both organizations are committed to ensuring that Madison Prep becomes a reality for children in Madison. We will continue to press for change and innovation in the Madison Metropolitan School District and Dane County to ensure that the racial achievement gap is eliminated and that all children receive a high quality education that adequately prepares them for their future.
We will advance a number of next steps:
1.We will pursue different avenues, both public and private, to launch Madison Prep. We are still hopeful for an opening in 2012. There will be much the community will learn from Madison Prep and our children need this option now.
2.We will continue to coordinate community support and action to ensure that the Madison Metropolitan School District is accountable for eliminating the racial achievement gap. We will consider several strategies, such as implementing a Citizen Review Board that will hold the school board and district administration accountable for good governance, planning, implementation, execution, community engagement and student achievement results. We will also consider legal avenues to ensure MMSD understands and responds to the community's sense of urgency to address the sizable and decades-long failure rates of Black and Latino children.
3.We must also address the leadership vacuum in K-12 education in Madison. Because of this, we will ensure that parents, students and community members are informed of their rights and responsibilities, and have a better understanding of promising educational strategies to close the achievement gap. We will also work to ensure that they have opportunities to be fully engaged in planning, working and deciding what's best for the children educated in our public schools.
4.We will continue to work in collaboration with MMSD through our existing partnerships, and hope to grow these partnerships in the future.
Thank you for everything you have done and continue to do to ensure that children in our schools and families in our community have hope, inspiration, support and opportunity to manifest their dreams and make a difference in their own lives and the lives of others.
Onward.
Kaleem
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There's nothing like standing in the schoolhouse door.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.For me, the Madison School Board's 5-2 vote to shoot down Madison Preparatory Academy, a proposed charter school specifically designed for low-income minority students, brings to mind images of George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door to block the integration of the University of Alabama, or state officials blocking James Meredith's enrollment at the University of Mississippi.
If you think that's harsh, remember that those pieces of history were not only about Civil Rights and desegregation, they were about every person's right to pursue a quality education.
In the Madison Metropolitan School District, a 48% graduation rate among African American students indicates that quality has not been achieved. Not even close.
Fortunately, this is one dream that's not going to be allowed to die. Kaleem Caire, president of the Urban League of Greater Madison, is the driving force behind Madison Prep, and he isn't ready to wave the surrender flag.
Following the school board vote, Caire vowed to file a racial discrimination lawsuit with the U.S. Department of Justice, and he also urged supporters of Madison Prep to run for school board.
Love it, love it, love it.
At one point in the development of Madison Prep, Caire sounded optimistic that the school district was a real partner, but the majority of board members had other ideas. Caire and the Urban League did their best to address every objection critics put in their way, and now it's clear that the intent all along was to scuttle the project with a gauntlet of hurdles.
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Q. What were some early management challenges for you?A. At a school in Massachusetts where I once worked, we managed early on through consensus. Which sounds wonderful, but it was just a very, very difficult way to sort of manage anything, because convincing everybody to do one particular thing, especially if it was hard, was almost impossible.
Q. How big a group was this?
A. There were about 25 teachers and instructors and others. And very quickly I went from being this wonderful person, "Geoff is just so nice, he's just such a great guy," to: "I cannot stand that guy. He just thinks he's in charge and he wants to do things his way." And it was a real eye-opener for me because I was trying to change something that everybody was comfortable with. I don't think we were doing a great job with the kids, and I thought we could perform at a higher level.
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Educators from across the state made a last-ditch effort Thursday to sway the state Education Board toward adopting their favorite of three teacher evaluation systems that next year will be used to evaluate every teacher in Oklahoma.In the end, the board decided not to decide.
After an almost equal amount of support was expressed for two of the three systems, the board voted to adopt all three models for a one-year pilot.
School districts will be able to select any of the three models and will receive a portion of approximately $1.5 million in funding for the evaluation system based on student enrollment numbers.
"When I hear the dialogue back and forth about the strengths and weaknesses of these systems, I wonder if it's really about the strengths and weaknesses of these systems or if it's about who gets the money to further develop their model," said state Education Board Member Lee Baxter, of Lawton. "I'd like to find a way to not make this decision. I'd like to find a way to go through the pilot program and allow the districts to be involved with the evaluation system that they want to over a year's period of time."
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The donor whose $350 million gift will be critical in building Cornell University's new high-tech graduate school on Roosevelt Island is Atlantic Philanthropies, whose founder, Charles F. Feeney, is a Cornell alumnus who made billions of dollars through the Duty Free Shoppers Group.Mr. Feeney, 80, has spent much of the last three decades giving away his fortune, with large gifts to universities all over the world and an unusual degree of anonymity. Cornell officials revealed in 2007 that he had given some $600 million to the university over the years, yet nothing on its Ithaca campus, where he graduated from the School of Hotel Management in 1956.
The $350 million gift, the largest in the university's history, was announced on Friday, but the donor was not named. Officials at Atlantic Philanthropies confirmed on Monday evening that it was Mr. Feeney, a native of Elizabeth, N.J., who is known for his frugality -- he flies coach, owns neither a home nor a car, and wears a $15 watch -- as well as his philanthropic generosity, particularly to medical research.
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The Madison School Board voted early Tuesday morning against a charter school geared toward low-income minority students.Nathan Comp:Moments later, Urban League of Greater Madison President Kaleem Caire announced to a crowd of emotional supporters that he planned to file a racial discrimination lawsuit with the U.S. Justice Department. He also urged the supporters to run for School Board.
"We are going to challenge this school district like they've never been challenged before, I swear to God," Caire said.
The School Board voted against the plan 5-2, as expected, just after midnight. In the hours leading up to the vote, however, hundreds of Madison Preparatory Academy supporters urged them to change their minds.
More than 450 people gathered at Memorial High School for public comments, which lasted more than four hours.
It was the first School Board meeting moved to Memorial since a 2001 debate over the Pledge of Allegiance in schools.
But the night's harshest criticism was leveled not at the proposal but at the board itself, over a perceived lack of leadership "from the superintendent on down."Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here."You meet every need of the unions, but keep minority student achievement a low priority," said one parent.
Others suggested the same.
"This vote is not about Madison Prep," said Jan O'Neill, a citizen who came out to speak. "It's about this community, who we are and what we stand for -- and who we stand up for."
Among the issues raised by opponents, the one that seemed to weigh heaviest on the minds of board members was the non-instrumentality issue, which would've allowed Madison Prep to hire non-union staff.
A work preservation clause in the district's collective bargaining agreement with the teacher's union requires the district to hire union staff. Board member Ed Hughes said he wanted to approve Madison Prep, but feared that approving a non-instrumentality school would put the district in breach of its contract with Madison Teachers, Inc.
"It's undeniable that Madison school district hasn't done very well by its African American students," he said. "But I think it's incumbent upon us to honor the contract."
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Clark Street Community Charter School, via a kind reader's email:
(new charter school being opened in the MASH [Middleton Alternative Senior High School] building. This proposal got started less than a year ago, got a planning grant from DPI in August, and will open in the fall.)Middleton High School Black Students Find A Voice
It's Thursday morning and a group of students are seated around an oblong table in a classroom at Middleton High School.Much more on the Clark Street Community Charter School.Most of the students are black. A few are white. Together they make up the school's Black Student Union (BSU), which was founded last year thanks in large part to the work of a few dedicated teen-agers. Today they are passing around a small toy, a black and white Holstein cow (the student holding the cow has the floor), and talking candidly about issues of race.
"I don't want us to be a joke," said one student. "I don't see other student organizations treated like a joke, and I want this one taken seriously, too."
Another turns her criticism inward, saying she feels it is important that African-American students not perpetuate negative stereotypes about themselves in the school's corridors.
Yet another suggests holding more public events and charitable activities, prompting one young woman to volunteer to prepare food for a bake sale.
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In a casual conversation between an upper-middle-class parent and a senior faculty member at a four-year institution of higher education, the parent bemoaned the steep increase in the cost of sending his youngest daughter to college, compared to that of her eldest sibling. Clearly intimating that the substantial monetary difference went into the faculty member's pocket, the parent quipped, "I hope you are enjoying the car that I bought for you."This parent's conclusion raises two questions -- one about rising costs and the other about faculty salaries. Addressing these questions must take into consideration various factors. First, for example, institutions of higher education vary widely. The answers here are limited to four-year public and private, nonprofit colleges and universities. Second, the sources of data vary in their objectivity and in their time periods. These answers identify the sources, which are reputable as not particularly skewed. Similarly, although not uniformly available for the same long-term period, the cited data cover at least 8-10 years so as not to rely on short-term changes.
Question 1: Have college prices to parents really risen steeply, when inflation, institutional financial aid grants, and other sources of "tuition discounting" are taken into account?
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Carolyn Bucior now has greater respect for classroom teachers.She also has a greater sense of annoyance at some teachers.
And she has a grasp on a generally ignored issue in education that has led to her voice being heard nationally.
Substitute teaching is usually looked at somewhat benignly as one of those things that is part of school life. Like everyone else, teachers get sick sometimes or have other reasons to be absent. So someone gets called in to fill in.
I suspect everyone knows this is unlikely to be productive. Goofing off (or worse) when a sub is in the classroom has been a staple of student life since schools were invented.
You have to have an adult keep an eye on what kids are doing, but to expect education to move forward when someone steps in cold is rarely realistic. Well, maybe to watch a video the teacher left behind.
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A majority of the Madison School Board won't support opening next fall a controversial, single-sex charter school geared toward low-income minority students.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.But it's unclear whether a compromise proposal to start Madison Preparatory Academy in 2013 will gain enough votes Tuesday night when the board meets.
School Board members Beth Moss and Arlene Silveira were the latest to publicly express their opposition to the current proposal for the school.
Moss said Monday in a letter to the State Journal published on madison.com that she doesn't believe the school will help the neediest students. Silveira confirmed her opposition in an interview.
The seven-member board is scheduled to vote Tuesday night on the proposal.
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For the last 17 months, I have followed the commentary and misinformation shared about our organization's proposal to establish Madison Preparatory Academy.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.Some who have written and commented about our proposal have been very supportive; others don't think Madison Prep should exist. With less than 24 hours until the Madison School Board votes on the school, we would like to bring the public back to the central reasons why we proposed Madison Prep in August 2010.
First, hundreds of black and Latino children are failing to complete high school each year. In 2009, the Madison School District reported that 59 percent of black and 61 percent of Latino students graduated. In 2010, the percentage of graduates dropped to 48 percent for Black and 56 percent for Latino students. This not only has an adverse impact on our young people, their families and our community, it results in millions in lost revenue to the Madison district every year.
Second, in 2010, just 20 percent of the 387 black and 37 percent of the 191 Latino seniors enrolled in the district completed the ACT college entrance exam. The ACT is required for admission by all public colleges and universities in Wisconsin. Unfortunately, just 7 percent of black and 18 percent of Latino student who completed the ACT were "ready for college." This means that only 5 of 387 black and 13 of 191 Latino students were academically ready for college.
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The main principle of the Harlem Children's Zone is simple: When failure is not allowed, success prevails."Are your kids graduating high school? No. Are your kids going to college? No. That's not success," Geoffrey Canada, president and chief executive officer of the Harlem Children's Zone, asked a Buffalo audience Friday.
Canada, nationally recognized as an advocate for education reform, was the keynote speaker at the first Education Summit presented by the Community Action Organization of Erie County's Education Task Force.
Entitled "Power of Education -- Children First," the summit was held at the Adam's Mark Hotel in downtown Buffalo. The purpose was to advance the cause of educational reform in the interests of children across Western New York and explore how to create those opportunities. About 300 people attended.
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Public employee union leaders Mary Bell and Marty Beil say the collective bargaining restrictions on their members enacted this year have galvanized the state's labor movement and paved the way for victory in potential recall elections in 2012.But even if Dems are swept into the governor's office and the Senate majority, the union heads say they aren't necessarily seeking a complete return to the way things were before February.
"There has to be some changes ... has to be some tweaking there," said Beil (left), executive director of the Wisconsin State Employees Union. "But certainly not tweaking in the areas of the unions being able to bargain collectively for wages, hours and working conditions."
Bell, leader of the Wisconsin Education Association Council -- the state's largest teachers union -- added she's simply hoping for a collective bargaining environment that ensures the voice of workers and "whether that is the law we had or the law that we needed even then, I think, is the question."
"But the most important piece of this is that if you're going to make that kind of significant change, you do not do it without a conversation among the people that are affected," Bell told a WisPolitics.com luncheon. "That's what's been so offensive about the last year."
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The state has threatened to withhold $2.5 million in federal funding from the Brandywine School District because it believes it is not giving teachers enough time to plan how to best educate students.State Department of Education officials decided to put the school district on notice after it was discovered it failed to properly implement required 90-minute common planning times for high school teachers.
The state has offered to help the school find a way to incorporate the program properly. But if that's not accomplished by next school year, the district stands to lose its portion of the state's Race to the Top grant.
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Yesterday, the California Charter Schools Association caused a stir. The pro-charter group came out with a list of 10 independently-run schools it deemed underperforming -- and encouraged their respective school districts to close them when their 5-year contracts expire!That list included West County Community High in Richmond, as my colleague Hannah Dreier reported in today's paper. Leadership High in San Francisco was also on it.
The complete list included 31 schools, but the association only published the names of those that are nearing the end of their 5-year terms and seeking a charter renewal.
Here's the reasoning behind the mov, from the news release:
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Madison School Board Member, Ed Hughes:
I want to support the Urban League's Madison Prep charter school proposal. It is undeniable that the Madison School District has not done well by its African-American students. We need to accept that fact and be willing to step back and give our friends at the Urban League an opportunity to show us a better way.One wonders what additional hurdles will appear between now and 2013, should the District follow Ed's proposal. Kaleem Caire:The issue is far more complicated than this, however. There are a number of roadblocks on the path to saying yes. I discuss these issues below. Some are more of an obstacle than others.
The biggest challenge is that a vote in favor of Madison Prep as it is currently proposed amounts to a vote to violate our collective bargaining agreement with our teachers. I see no way around this. I believe in honoring the terms of our contracts with our employees. For me, this means that I have to condition my support for Madison Prep on a one-year delay in its opening.
Most other obstacles and risks can be addressed by including reasonable provisions in the charter school contract between the school district and Urban League.
For the last 16 months, we have been on an arduous journey to develop a public school that would effectively address the educational needs of children who have under-performed or failed to succeed in Madison's public schools for at least the last 40 years. If you have followed the news stories, it's not hard to see how many mountains have been erected in our way during the process.Monday's vote will certainly reflect the District's priorities.Some days, it has felt like we're desperately looking at our children standing dangerously close to the edge of a cliff, some already fallen over while others dangling by their thumbs waiting to be rescued; but before we can get close enough to save them, we have to walk across one million razor blades and through thousands of rose bushes with our bare feet. As we make our way to them and get closer, the razor blades get sharper and the rose bushes grow more dense.
Fortunately, our Board members and team at the Urban League and Madison Preparatory Academy, and the scores of supporters who've been plowing through the fields with us for the last year believe that our children's education, their emotional, social and personal development, and their futures are far more important than any pain we might endure.
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The public debate about the success and expansion of charter schools often seems to gravitate toward a tiny handful of empirical studies, when there is, in fact, a relatively well-developed literature focused on whether these schools generate larger testing gains among their students relative to their counterparts in comparable regular public schools. This brief reviews this body of evidence, with a focus on high-quality state- and district-level analyses that address, directly or indirectly, three questions:Download the "Policy Brief here (PDF).Do charter schools produce larger testing gains overall?
What policies and practices seem to be associated with better performance?Can charter schools expand successfully within the same location?
The available research suggests that charter schools' effects on test score gains vary by location, school/student characteristics and other factors. When there are differences, they tend to be modest. There is tentative evidence suggesting that high-performing charter schools share certain key features, especially private donations, large expansions of school time, tutoring programs and strong discipline policies. Finally, while there may be a role for state/local policies in ensuring quality as charters proliferate, scaling up proven approaches is constrained by the lack of adequate funding, and the few places where charter sectors as a whole have been shown to get very strong results seem to be those in which their presence is more limited. Overall, after more than 20 years of proliferation, charter schools face the same challenges as regular public schools in boosting student achievement, and future research should continue to focus on identifying the policies, practices and other characteristics that help explain the wide variation in their results.
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The Michigan House of Representatives voted Wednesday night to approve Senate Bill 618, which will lift the state's various caps on charter schools, House sources have confirmed. If and when the bill is signed by Governor Rick Snyder, it will go into law. The bill was passed 58-49, according to the Michigan Information & Resource Service (MIRS).SB 618 had been tie-barred to a group of other Senate bills in the so-called "parent empowerment package," which means they all would've had to pass for any to take effect. But that tie-bar was broken when the House Education Committee approved SB 618 at its Nov. 30 meeting.
Some 35 amendments were offered, according to a House source. Several were approved. Perhaps the most consequential among the amendments phases in the lifting of the cap on charter schools, allowing up to 300 to be established through the end of 2012, 500 through 2014, and starting in 2015, no cap at all.
State Rep. Jeff Irwin, who represents Ann Arbor in Lansing, said that the "huge, gaping problem" in the bill, lifting the cap all at once, was addressed but he still wasn't happy with the way the bill turned out. None of the amendments proposed by Democrats passed, Irwin said; they weren't even brought to a vote.
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George W. Bush is writing a sequel to his big education act. The No Child Left Behind law was signed almost a decade ago, with overwhelming approval from Congress (384 to 45 in the House and 91 to 8 in the Senate). Now, amid a bipartisan effort to gut its accountability measures, the former President is quietly pushing new education-reform initiatives aimed at improving and empowering school principals, who too often lack the training or authority to effectively run their schools. And once again, he's approaching this massive education problem by blurring political lines.I was invited in my role as TIME's education columnist to sit in on a small meeting this week that Bush organized in New York City, and I was struck by the roster of advisers he had assembled to guide the George W. Bush Institute's education work. The group included some big names in the education non-profit world as well as leaders of traditional public schools and charter schools. But by my informal count, most of the 10 people around the table were Democrats, including Clinton and Obama administration alums. "He cares about education deeply, and he gets it," one staunchly Democratic education consultant, who now works with the institute, told me. The former President has already recruited officials from his administration as well as liberal stalwarts like Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust and Democratic education leaders like former North Carolina Governor James Hunt.
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Don Severson, via a kind email:
The Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education will vote December 19, 2011, on the Madison Preparatory Academy proposal for non-instrumentality charter school authorization. Active Citizens for Education endorses and supports the approval of the proposal.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.In addition to the rationale and data cited by the Urban League of Greater Madison, and significant others throughout the Madison community, supporting the curricular, instructional, parental and behavioral strategies and rigor of the school, ACE cites the following financial and accountability support for approval of the Academy as a non-instrumentality charter school.
The MMSD Board of Education is urged to approve the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy non-instrumentality charter school proposal; thereby, relieving the bondage which grips students and sentences them to a future lifetime of under-performance and lack of opportunities. Thank you.
- Financial: Should the Board deny approval of the proposal as a non-instrumentality the District stands to lose significant means of financial support from state aids and property tax revenue. The District is allowed $10,538.54 per student enrolled in the District the 2011-12 school year. With the possibility of Madison Prep becoming a private school if denied charter school status, the 120 boys and girls would not be enrolled in MMSD; therefore the District would not be the beneficiary of the state and local revenue. The following chart shows the cumulative affect of this reduction using current dollars:
2012-2013 6th grade 120 students @10,538.54 = $1,264,624.80
2013-2014 2 grades 240 students @10,538.54 = $2.529,249.60
2014-2015 3 grades 360 students @10,538.54 = $3,793,874.40
2015-2016 4 grades 480 students @10,538.54 = $5,058,499.20
2016-2017 5 grades 600 students @10,538.54 = $6.323.124.00
2017-2018 6 grades 720 students @10,538.54 = $7,587,748.80
2018-2019 7 grades 840 students @10,538.54 = $8,852,373.60
This lost revenue does not include increases in revenue that would be generated from improved completion/graduation rates (currently in the 50% range) of Black and Hispanic students resulting from enrollees in a charter school arrangement.- Accountability: The MMSD Administration and Board have been demonstrating a misunderstanding of the terms 'accountability' and 'control'. The State charter school law allows for the creation of charter schools to provide learning experiences for identified student groups with innovative and results-oriented strategies, exempt from the encumbrances of many existing state and local school rules, policies and practices. Charter schools are authorized and designed to operate without the 'controls' which are the very smothering conditions causing many of the problems in our public schools. The resulting different charter school environment has been proven to provide improved academic and personal development growth for learners from the traditional school environment. Decreasing impediments and controls inhibiting learning increases the requirements for 'accountability' to achieve improved learner outcomes on the part of the charter school. Should the charter school not meet its stated and measurable goals, objectives and results then it is not accountable and therefore should be dissolved. This is the 'control' for which the Board of Education has the authority to hold a charter school accountable.
Let us describe an analogy. Private for-profit business and not-for-profit organizations are established to provide a product and/or service to customers, members and the public. The accountability of the business or organization for its continued existence depends on providing a quality product/services that customers/members want or need. If, for whatever reasons, the business or organization does not provide the quality and service expected and the customer/member does not obtain the results/satisfaction expected, the very existence of the business/organization is jeopardized and may ultimately go 'out of business'. This scenario is also absolutely true with a charter school. It appears that the significant fears for the MMSD Administration and Board of Education to overcome for the approval of the proposed non-instrumentality Madison Prep charter school are: 1) the fear of loss of 'control' instead of accepting responsibility for 'accountability', and 2) the fear that 'some other organization' will be successful with solutions and results for a problem not addressed by themselves.
Contact: Don Severson, President, 608 577-0851, donleader@aol.com
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Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:
Here's a quote from an on-line comment of a Madison Prep opponent responding to one of the several op-ed pieces posted in the Cap Times in recent days: "There are barriers to students with special education needs, barriers to students with behavioral needs, and barriers to kids who rely on public transportation. These children are simply not the 'right fit'. It is Madison Prep's proposal to leave these kids in their neighborhood schools."Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.The notion seems to be that Madison Prep may not be welcoming for students from all points along the spectrum of educational needs, even though our neighborhood schools are obligated to serve everyone.
I think the self-selection process for Madison Prep should be taken into account in assessing how its students perform. But it does not trouble me that the school is not designed to meet the needs of all our students. No one need apply to attend and no student will be denied current services or programs if Madison Prep is authorized.
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Rachael Wettenstein and Ted Bauer, via a kind email:
Welcome to the third edition of the relaunched Learning Matters podcast. In this episode, Learning Matters web producer Ted Bauer speaks with UPenn vice dean and professor Doug Lynch about various issues in education, including his business plan competition. Lynch draws pointed contrasts between corporate education and public education, and is candid about the notion of success and failure within the field. Enjoy the conversation.
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There's a longstanding myth of a gender gap between boys' and girls' math performance, suggesting some basic biological difference in how the two genders approach math. It's deeply controversial and widely discredited. And now, a new study has completely debunked it.Until now, there was maybe a sliver of statistical data to support the existence of this gender gap -- nothing remotely convincing, mind you, but just enough that the idea couldn't be entirely dismissed out of hand. While most who studied the issue pointed for cultural or social reasons why girls might lag behind boys in math performance, there was still room for biological theories to be proposed.
The best-known of these is the "greater male variability hypothesis", which basically says ability among males varies more widely than that of females, which means you'll see more males at the extreme ends of the spectrum, good and bad. Then-Harvard president Larry Summers infamously put forward this idea back in 2005 as a way to explain the lack of great female mathematicians, and this was one of about a dozen different factors that ultimately cost him his job.
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Appearances suggest Madisonians would be sympathetic to Madison Preparatory Academy.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School, here.Here is a citizenry known for its progressivism, inclusiveness and embrace of the disenfranchised.
And here is a five-year educational experiment aimed at helping students of darker skin and lesser means who are sometimes only a couple of years removed from failing schools in Chicago and Milwaukee.
I guess appearances can be deceiving.
On Monday, the Madison School Board is likely to go along with district administrators' recommendation to vote down a five-year charter for Madison Prep, a project of the Urban League of Greater Madison that would aim to improve the performance and life prospects of students the district has so far failed to reach.
I suspect Madison Prep's future wouldn't be so dire if over the last year Madison's supposedly liberal power structure had been willing to take up its cause.
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My decision to vote against the Madison Prep proposal is very difficult. I pushed for the planning grant over a year ago when only one other School Board member would sponsor the proposal.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School, here.I raised many questions because of the complex scope of the Urban League's proposal for a charter school that aims to reduce the achievement gap between white and minority students. My concerns come down to this: Will this proposal be the best investment for the most students? Is this college-prep program the area of focus that would best serve the many struggling students in our district?
The fundamental conclusion I came to over the course of a year is that this proposal would put the district at risk legally and would challenge our district philosophy pertaining to special education students. Perhaps more importantly, the proposal constructs undue barriers such as mandatory information meetings, fundraising and parent contracts. These admission policies would have the effect of excluding students based on language background, prior academic performance, or parental self-selection.
My decision has nothing to do with defending the status quo or protecting the union. However, as a School Board member, parent and neighbor to many children in our district, I believe we have some of the most dedicated and knowledgeable staff in education today.
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Lucy Mathiak:
The Urban League's proposal to create a Madison Preparatory charter school is, at its heart, a proposal about public education in our community. Although the discussions often boil down to overly simplistic assertions about whether one position or the other is supportive of or hostile toward public education, it is not that simple. What we are facing is a larger and more fundamental question about our values when it comes to the purpose of public education and who it is supposed to serve.Also posted at the Capital Times.I am voting "yes" because I believe that strong public education for all is the foundation for a strong society. While our schools do a very good job with many students who are white and/or living above the poverty line, the same cannot be said for students of color and/or students living in poverty. The record is most dismal for African American students.
The Madison Prep proposal is born of over 40 years of advocacy for schools that engage and hold high academic expectations for African American and other students of color. That advocacy has produced minor changes in rhetoric without changes in culture, practice, or outcome. Yes, some African American students are succeeding. But for the overwhelming majority, there are two Madison public school systems. The one where the students have a great experience and go on to top colleges, and the one that graduates only 48% of African American males.
The individual stories are heartbreaking, but the numbers underscore that individual cases add up to data that is not in keeping with our self-image as a cutting edge modern community. We ALL play a role in the problem, and we ALL must be part creating a sound, systemic, solution to our failure to educate ALL of our public school students. In the meantime, the African American community cannot wait, and the Madison Prep proposal came from that urgent, dire, need.
Our track record with students and families of color is not improving and, in some cases, is going backward rather than forward as we create more plans and PR campaigns designed to dismiss concerns about academic equality as misunderstandings. To be sure, there are excellent principals, teachers, and staff who do make a difference every day; some African American students excel each year. But overall, when presented with opportunities to change and to find the academic potential in each student, the district has failed to act and has been allowed to do so by the complicit silence of board members and the community at large.A few turning points from the past year alone:
The single most serious issue this year, however, came in May when MMSD administration was informed that we are a District Identified for Improvement (DIFI) due to test scores for African American students along with students from low income families and those with learning disabilities. This puts Madison on an elite list with Madison (Milwaukee?) and Racine. The superintendent mentioned DIFI status in passing to the board, and the WI State Journal reported on the possible sanctions without using the term DIFI.
- The Urban League - not MMSD administration or the board - pointed out the dismal graduation rates for African American students (48% for males)
- Less than 5% of African American students are college ready.
- AVID/TOPs does a terrific job with underrepresented students IF they can get in. AVID/TOPs serves 134 (2.6%) of MMSD's 4,977 African American secondary students.
- The number of African American students entering AVID/TOPs is lower this year after MMSD administration changed the criteria for participation away from the original focus on students of color, low income, and first generation college students.
- Of almost 300 teachers hired in 2011-12, less than 10 are African American. There are fewer African American teachers in MMSD today than there were five years ago.
- Over 50 African Americans applied for custodian positions since January 1, 2011. 1 was hired; close to 30 custodians were hired in that time.
- 4K - which is presented as a means to address the achievement gap - is predominantly attended by students who are not African American or low-income.
- In June, the board approved a Parent Engagement Coordinator to help the district improve its relations with African American families. That position remains unfilled. The district has engagement coordinators working with Hmong and Latino families.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with NCLB, DIFI status is a serious matter because of the ladder of increasing sanctions that come with poor performance. In an ideal world, the district would have articulated the improvement plan required by DPI over the summer for implementation on the first day of school. Such a plan would include clear action steps, goals, and timelines to improve African American achievement. Such a plan does not exist as of mid-December 2011, and in the most recent discussion it was asserted that the improvement plan is "just paper that doesn't mean much." I would argue that, to the African American community, such a plan would mean a great deal if it was sincerely formulated and implemented.
At the same time, we have been able to come up with task forces and reports - with goals and timelines - that are devoted to Talented and Gifted Programing, Direct Language Instruction, Fine Arts Programing, and Mathematics Education to name a few.Under the circumstances, it is hard to see why the African American community would believe that the outcomes will improve if they are 'just patient' and 'work within the existing public school structures to make things better.' Perhaps more accurately, I cannot look people in the face and ask them to hope that we will do a better job if they just give up on the vision of a school structure that does what the MMSD has failed to do for the African American community since the advocacy began some 40 years ago.
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The JCC in Manhattan via a kind Ted Bauer email:
Join us for an evening with one of the country's most notable figures in public education. Labor lawyer, former President of the United Teachers Federation and current President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten discusses the challenging terrain of our public education system.334 amsterdam ave at 76th st, new york, ny 10023 | 646.505.4444
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Burke, who made headlines recently for pledging $2.5 million to Madison Preparatory Academy, a controversial charter school proposal, plans to run for the seat being vacated by Lucy Mathiak.Burke also served as president of the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County for nine years and along with the Burke Foundation has donated about $2.6 million to the AVID/TOPS program, which has shown promising results in improving achievement among low-income, minority students.
Burke emphasized closing the district's racial achievement gap as a motivation for her decision to run.
Several others have expressed interest in running for the seat, including Joan Eggert, a Madison schools parent and reading specialist in the McFarland School District, who issued an official announcement last week.
Others who said they are considering a run include parents Jill Jokela and Mark Stokosa. Tom Farley, who ran unsuccessfully in 2010 against James Howard, said Monday he is no longer interested in running and Burke's entry in the race makes him confident in that decision.
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750K PDF - Kaleem Caire, via email
December 11, 2011Related: Who Runs the Madison Schools?Mr. Ed Hughes
Board of Education
Madison Metropolitan School District 545 West Dayton Street
Madison, WI 53713
Dear Mr. Hughes:This letter is intended to respond to your December 4, 2011 blog post regarding the Madison Preparatory Academy initiative. Specifically, this letter is intended to address what you referred as "a fairly half-hearted argument [advanced by the Urban League] that the state statute authorizing school districts to enter into contracts for non-instrumentality charter schools trumps or pre-empts any language in collective bargaining agreements that restricts school districts along these lines." Continuing on, you wrote the following:
I say the argument is half-hearted because no authority is cited in support and itjust isn't much ofan argument. School districts aren't required to authorize non-instrumentality charter schools, and so there is no conflict with state statutesfor a school district to, in effect, agree that it would not do so. Without that kind of a direct conflict, there is no basis for arguing that the CBA language is somehow pre-empted.We respectfully disagree with your assessment. The intent of this letter is to provide you with the authority for this position and to more fully explain the nature of our concern regarding a contract provision that appears to be illegal in this situation and in direct conflict with public policy.Background
As you are aware, the collective bargaining agreement (the "CBA") between MMSD and MTI Iprovides "that instructional duties where the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction requires that such be performed by a certificated teacher, shall be performed only by 'teachers."' See Article I, Section B.3.a. In addition, "the term 'teacher' refers to anyone in the collective bargaining unit." See Article I, Section B.2. You have previously suggested that "all teachers in MMSD schools-- including non-instrumentality charter schools- must be members of the MTI bargaining unit." As we indicated in our December 3, 2011 correspondence to you, under a non-instrumentality charter, the school board may not be the employer of the charter school's staff. See§ 118.40(7)(a).
Under Wisconsin's charter school law, the MMSD School Board (the "Board") has the exclusive authority to determine whether a school is an instrumentality or not an instrumentality of the school district. See§ 118.40(7)(a). That decisio n is an important decision reserved to the Board alone. The effect of that decision drives whether teachers and staff must be, or cannot be, employees of the Board. The language of the CBA deprives the Board ofthe decision reserved to it under the statute and that language cannot be harmonized to give effect to both the statute and the CBA. Alternatively, the CBA language creates a situation whereby the Board may exercise its statutory authority to approve a non- instrumentality charter, but it must staff the school with school district employees, a result clearly prohibited under the statute. For reasons that will be explained below, in our view, the law trumps the CBA in either of these situations.Analysis
Under Wisconsin law, "[a]labor contract may not violate the law." Glendale Professional Policeman's Ass'n v. City ofGlendale, 83 Wis. 2d 90, 102 (Wis. 1978). City ofGlendale addressed the tension that can arise between bargained for provisions in a collective bargaining agreement and statutory language. In City of Glendale, the City argued that a provision dealing with job promotions was unenforceable because it could not be harmonized with statutory language. Specifically, the agreement in question set forth parameters for promoting employees and stated in part that openings "shall be filled by the applicant with the greatest department seniority..." City of Glendale, 83 Wis. 2d at 94. Wisconsin law provided the following:
The chiefs shall appoint subordinates subject to approval by the board. Such appointments shall be made by promotion when this can be done with advantage, otherwise from an eligible list provided by examination and approval by the board and kept on file with the clerk.Wis. Stat.§ 62.13(4)(a).The City contended that "the contract term governing promotions is void and unenforceable because it is contrary to sec. 62.13(4)(a), Stats." City ofGlendale, 83 Wis. 2d at 98. Ultimately, the court ruled against the City based on the following rationale:
Although sec. 62.13(4)(a), Stats., requires all subordinates to be appointed by the chief with the approval of the board, it does not, at least expressly, prohibit the chief or the board from exercising the power of promotion of a qualified person according to a set of rules for selecting one among several qualified applicants.The factual scenario in City ofGlendale differs significantly from the present situation. In City of Glendale, the terms of the agreement did not remove the ability of the chief, with the approval of the board, to make promotions. They could still carry out their statutory duties. The agreement language simply set forth parameters that had to be followed when making promotions. Accordingly, the discretion of the chief was limited, but not eliminated. In the present scenario, the discretion of the Board to decide whether a charter school should be an instrumentality or a non-instrumentality has been effectively eliminated by the CBA language.There is nothing in the CBA that explicitly prohibits the Board from voting for a non-instrumentality charter school. This discretion clearly lies with the Board. Pursuant to state law, instrumentality charter schools are staffed by District teachers. However, non-instrumentality charter schools cannot be staffed by District teachers. See Wis. Stat.§ 118.40. Based on your recent comments, you have taken the position that the Board cannot vote for a non-instrumentality charter school because this would conflict with the work preservation clause of the CBA. Specifically, you wrote that "given the CBA complications, I don't see how the school board can authorize a non-instrumentality Madison Prep to open its doors next fall, and I say that as one who has come to be sympathetic to the proposal." While we appreciate your sympathy, what we would like is your support. Additionally, this position creates at least two direct conflicts with the law.
First, under Wisconsin law, "the school board of the school district in which a charter school is located shall determine whether or not the charter school is an instrumentality of the school district." Wis. Stat. § 118.40(7)(a) (emphasis added.) The Board is required to make this determination. If the Board is precluded from making this decision on December 19"' based on an agreement previously reached with MTI, the Board will be unable to comply with the law. Effectively, the instrumentality/non- instrumentality decision will have been made by the Board and MTI pursuant to the terms and conditions of the CBA. However, MTI has no authority to make this determination, which creates a direct conflict with the law. Furthermore, the Board will be unable to comply with its statutory obligation due to the CBA. Based on your stated concerns regarding the alleged inability to vote for a non-instrumentality charter school, it appears highly unlikely that the Board ever intentionally ceded this level ofauthority to MTI.
Second, if the Board chose to exercise its statutorily granted authority on December 19th and voted for a non-instrumentality charter school, this would not be a violation of the CBA. Nothing in the CBA explicitly prohibits the Board from voting for a non-instrumentality charter school. At that point, to the extent that MTI chose to challenge that decision, and remember that MTI would have to choose to grieve or litigate this issue, MTI would have to try to attack the law, not the decision made by the Board. Pursuant to the law, "[i] f the school board determines that the charter school is not an instrumentality of the school district, the school board may not employ any personnel for the charter school." Wis. Stat.§ 118.40(7)(a) (emphasis added). While it has been suggested that the Board could choose to avoid the legal impasse by voting down the non-instrumentality proposal, doing so would not cure this conflict. This is particularly true if some Board members were to vote against a non-instrumentality option solely based on the CBA. In such a case, the particular Board Member's obligation to make this decision is essentially blocked. Making a decision consistent with an illegal contract provision for the purposes of minimizing the conflict does not make the provision any less illegal. "A labor contract term whereby parties agree to violate the law is void." WERC v. Teamsters Local No. 563, 75 Wis. 2d 602, 612 (Wis. 1977) (citation omitted).
Conclusion
In Wisconsin, "a labor contract term that violates public policy or a statute is void as a matter of law." Board of Education v. WERC, 52 Wis. 2d 625, 635 (Wis. 1971). Wisconsin law demonstrates that there is a public policy that promotes the creation of charter schools. Within that public policy, there is an additional public policy that promotes case-by-case decision making by a school board regarding whether a charter school will be an instrumentality or a non-instrumentality. The work preservation clause in the CBA cannot be harmonized with these underlying public policies and should not stop the creation of Madison Preparatory Academy.The Madison Prep initiative has put between a rock and a hard place. Instrumentality status lost support because of the costs associated with employing members of MTI. Yet, we are being told that non-instrumentality status will be in conflict with the CBA and therefore cannot be approved. As discussed above, the work preservation clause is irreconcilable with Wisconsin law, and would likely be found void by acourt of law.
Accordingly, I call on you, and the rest of the Board to vote for non- instrumentality status on December 19th. In the words of Langston Hughes, "a dream deferred is a dream denied." Too many children in this district have been denied for far too long. On behalf of Madison children, families and the Boards of the Urban League and Madison Prep, I respectfully request your support.
Respectfully,
Kaleem Caire
President & CEOcc: Dan Nerad, Superintendent
Dylan Pauly, Legal Counsel
MMSD Board ofEducation Members
ULGMand Madison Prep Board Members and Staff
Godfrey & Kahn, S.C.
Howard Blume: New teacher contract could shut down school choice program
As schools across California bemoan increasing class sizes, the Alliance Technology and Math Science High School has boosted class size -- on purpose -- to an astonishing 48. The students work at computers most of the school day.Next door in an identical building containing a different school, digital imaging -- in the form of animation, short films and graphics -- is used for class projects in English, math and science.
At a third school on the same Glassell Park campus, long known as Taylor Yards, high-schoolers get hands-on experience with a working solar panel.
These schools and two others coexist at the Sotomayor Learning Academies, which opened this fall under a Los Angeles school district policy called Public School Choice. The 2009 initiative, the first of its kind in the nation, has allowed groups from inside and outside the Los Angeles Unified School District to compete for the right to run dozens of new or low-performing schools.
Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School, here.
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As a fledgling voice of reform in higher education, Salman Khan is an oddity. He cannot name any higher education accrediting agencies off the top of his head. He advocates for competency-based credentialing, but has never heard of Western Governors University. He is capable of talking on the phone for a full hour without using the word "disruptive" once. Until recently, he was an analyst for a hedge fund.Here is what Khan does know: algebra, statistics, trigonometry, calculus, computer science, biology, chemistry, astronomy, physics, economics, and finance -- well enough, at least, to demonstrate the concepts via brief video tutorials on Khan Academy, his free learning website. What began in 2006 as an attempt to tutor his young cousin from afar has evolved into a 2,700-video library with millions of monthly visitors.
Many have lauded Khan's natural skill as a teacher. Khan's charmingly unpolished home recordings form the public face of the organization and provide a peg for media narratives about online learning and the YouTube-ification of the textbook in an era where the rising prices and demand for higher education has collided with the Internet's culture of free.
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The public is in a foul mood over increasing college costs and student debt burdens. Talk of a "higher education bubble" is common on the contrarian right, while the Occupy Wall Street crowd is calling for a strike in which in which ex-students refuse to pay off their loans.This week, President Barack Obama held a summit with a dozen higher-education leaders "to discuss rising college costs and strategies to reduce these costs while improving quality." The administration plans to introduce some policy proposals in the run-up to the presidential campaign.
Any serious policy reform has to start by considering a heretical idea: Federal subsidies intended to make college more affordable may have encouraged rapidly rising tuitions.
It's not as crazy as it might sound.
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What does the Hillsborough County, Fla., school district have that Milwaukee Public Schools doesn't? What about Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools in North Carolina?Much better overall scores in reading and math, for one thing. They were at the top of the list of 21 urban school districts in results released last week as part of the National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAEP. Milwaukee was near the bottom.
But here's something else Hillsborough County - which is the Tampa school district - has: Among its 193,000 students, 57% are from low-income homes. For Charlotte-Mecklenburg, the percentage of low-income students among its 136,000 students is 52%.
For MPS, with 80,000-plus students, the low-income rate is 83%.
Each of the four urban districts that scored the best in fourth-grade reading had a low-income rate of 61% or less. Among the four with the worst results, MPS was the lowest with its 83% rate. Detroit, with the worst scores, was listed in the NAEP report at 87%, Cleveland at 100%, and Fresno, Calif., at 93%.
Two other things:
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And no matter which way the Dec. 19 vote goes, there's no way to know now whether the school will be entirely effective.Two School Board seats will be on the Spring, 2012 ballot. They are currently occupied by Lucy Mathiak, who is not running again and Arlene Silveira. I suspect the outcome of this vote will drive new candidates, and perhaps, even recalls."This is the most difficult decision I will ever make on the School Board," said Marj Passman, who plans to vote against the proposal. "It has the potential for polarizing our community, and that's the last thing I want to happen."
The vote comes more than a year after the charter was proposed and in the wake of a School District report outlining its opposition to Madison Prep. The school would violate the district's contract with its teachers and preclude sufficient oversight of the $17.5 million in district funds the school would receive over five years, the report said.
District opposition likely will lead the board to reject the proposal, said School Board president James Howard.
"I don't see how it can pass," said Howard. He and Lucy Mathiak are the only two board members who said they will vote to approve the school.
In interviews last week, Passman, Maya Cole and Ed Hughes said they expect to vote against the proposal. Arlene Silveira and Beth Moss declined to disclose how they plan to vote.
Urban League of Greater Madison president Kaleem Caire, the lead proponent of the charter, acknowledged he doesn't have the votes. But he's engaged in a full-court press to generate public support for the proposal.
"We have a moral obligation to do whatever it takes to support our children and special interest of adults should not come before that," Caire said last week.
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reviewed by Richard P. Phelps, via a kind email:
In research organizations that have been "captured" by vested interests, the scholars who receive the most attention, praise, and reward are not those who conduct the most accurate or highest quality research, but those who produce results that best advance the interests of the group. Those who produce results that do not advance the interests of the group may be shunned and ostracized, even if their work is well-done and accurate.
The prevailing view among the vested interests in education does not oppose all standardized testing; it opposes testing with consequences based on the results that is also "externally administered"--i.e., testing that can be used to make judgments of educators but is out of educators' direct control. The external entity may be a higher level of government, such as the state in the case of state graduation exams, or a non-governmental entity, such as the College Board or ACT in the case of college entrance exams.
One can easily spot the moment vested interests "captured" the National Research Council's Board on Testing and Assessment (BOTA). BOTA was headed in the 1980s by a scholar with little background or expertise in testing (Wise, 1998). Perhaps not knowing who to trust at first, she put her full faith, and that of the NRC, behind the anti-high-stakes testing point of view that had come to dominate graduate schools of education. Proof of that conversion came when the NRC accepted a challenge from the U.S. Department of Labor to evaluate the predictive validity of the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) for use in unemployment centers throughout the country.
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What inspired you to start The Concord Review?Diane Ravitch, an American historian of education, wrote a col- umn in The New York Times in 1985 about the ignorance of his- tory among 17-year-olds in the United States, based on a study of 7,000 students. As a history teacher myself at the time, I was interested to see that what concerned me was a national problem, and I began to think about these issues. It occurred to me that if I had one or two very good students writing his- tory papers for me and perhaps my colleagues had one or two, then in 20,000 United States high schools (and more overseas) there must be a large number of high school students doing exemplary history research papers. So in1987, I established The Concord Review to provide a journal for such good work in his- tory. I sent a four-page brochure calling for papers to every high school in the United States, 3,500 high schools in Canada, and 1,500 schools overseas. The papers started coming in, and in the fall of 1988, I was able to publish the first issue of The Concord Review. Since then, we have published 89 issues.
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Richard P. Phelps, via a kind email:
Every year, the education magazine Phi Delta Kappan hires the Gallup Organization to survey American opinion on the public schools. Though Gallup conducts the poll, education grandees selected by the editors of the Kappan write the questions. In 2007 the poll asked, "Will the current emphasis on standardized tests encourage teachers to 'teach to the tests,' that is, concentrate on teaching their students to pass the tests rather than teaching the subject, or don't you think it will have this effect?"The key to the question, of course, is the "rather than"--the assumption by many critics that test preparation and good teaching are mutually exclusive. In their hands, "teach to the test" has become an epithet. The very existence of content standards linked to standardized tests, in this view, narrows the curriculum and restricts the creativity of teachers--which of course it does, in the sense that teachers in standards-based systems cannot organize their instructional time in any fashion they prefer.
A more subtle critique is that teaching to the test can be good or bad. If curricula are carefully developed by educators and the test is written with curricula in mind, then teaching to the test means teaching students the knowledge and skills we agree they ought to learn--exactly what our teachers are legally and ethically obligated to do.
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Kaleem Caire, via email:
December 10, 2011Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school, here.
Dear Friends & Colleagues.
For the last 16 months, we have been on an arduous journey to develop a public school that would effectively address the educational needs of children who have under-performed or failed to succeed in Madison's public schools for at least the last 40 years. If you have followed the news stories, it's not hard to see how many mountains have been erected in our way during the process.
Some days, it has felt like we're desperately looking at our children standing dangerously close to the edge of a cliff, some already fallen over while others dangling by their thumbs waiting to be rescued; but before we can get close enough to save them, we have to walk across one million razor blades and through thousands of rose bushes with our bare feet. As we make our way to them and get closer, the razor blades get sharper and the rose bushes grow more dense.
Fortunately, our Board members and team at the Urban League and Madison Preparatory Academy, and the scores of supporters who've been plowing through the fields with us for the last year believe that our children's education, their emotional, social and personal development, and their futures are far more important than any pain we might endure.
Our proposal for Madison Prep has certainly touched a nerve in Madison. But why? When we launched our efforts on the steps of West High School on August 29, 2010, we thought Madison and its school officials would heartily embrace Madison Prep.We thought they would see the school as:
(1) a promising solution to the racial achievement gap that has persisted in our city for at least 40 years;(2) a learning laboratory for teachers and administrators who admittedly need new strategies for addressing the growing rate of underachievement, poverty and parental disengagement in our schools, and
(3) a clear sign to communities of color and the broader Greater Madison community that it was prepared to do whatever it takes to help move children forward - children for whom failure has become too commonplace and tolerated in our capital city.
Initially, the majority of Board of Education members told us they liked the idea and at the time, had no problems with us establishing Madison Prep as a non-instrumentality - and therefore, non-union, public school. At the same time, all of them asked us for help and advice on how to eliminate the achievement gap, more effectively engage parents and stimulate parent involvement, and better serve children and families of color.
Then, over the next several months as the political climate and collective bargaining in the state changed and opponents to charter schools and Madison Prep ramped up their misinformation and personal attack campaign, the focus on Madison Prep got mired in these issues.
The concern of whether or not a single-gender school would be legal under state and federal law was raised. We answered that both with a legal briefing and by modifying our proposal to establish a common girls school now rather than two years from now.
The concern of budget was raised and how much the school would cost the school district. We answered that through a $2.5 million private gift to lower the per pupil request to the district and by modifying our budget proposal to ensure Madison Prep would be as close to cost-neutral as possible. The District Administration first said they would support the school if it didn't cost the District more than $5 million above what it initially said it could spend; Madison Prep will only cost them $2.7 million.
Board of Education members also asked in March 2011 if we would consider establishing Madison Prep as an instrumentality of MMSD, where all of the staff would be employed by the district and be members of the teacher's union. We decided to work towards doing this, so long as Madison Prep could retain autonomy of governance, management and budget. Significant progress was made until the last day of negotiations when MMSD's administration informed us that they would present a counter-budget to ours in their analysis of our proposal that factored in personnel costs for an existing school versus establishing a modest budget more common to new charter schools.
We expressed our disagreement with the administration and requested that they stick with our budget for teacher salaries, which was set using MMSD's teacher salary scale for a teacher with 7 years experience and a masters degree and bench-marked against several successful charter schools. Nevertheless, MMSD argued that they were going to use the average years of experience of teachers in the district, which is 14 years with a master's degree. This drove up the costs significantly, taking teacher salaries from $47,000 to $80,000 per year and benefits from $13,500 to $25,000 per year per teacher. The administration's budget plan therefore made starting Madison Prep as an instrumentality impossible.
To resolve the issue, the Urban League and Board of Madison Prep met in November to consider the options. In doing so, we consulted with every member of MMSD's Board of Education. We also talked with parents, stakeholders and other community members as well. It was then decided that we would pursue Madison Prep as a non-instrumentality of the school district because we simply believe that our children cannot and should not have to wait.
Now, Board of Education members are saying that Madison Prep should be implemented in "a more familiar, Madison Way", as a "private school", and that we should not have autonomy even though state laws and MMSD's own charter school policy expressly allow for non-instrumentality schools to exist. There are presently more than 20 such schools in Wisconsin.
What Next?
As the mountains keep growing, the goal posts keep moving, and the razor blades and rose bushes are replenished with each step we take, we are forced to ask the question: Why has this effort, which has been more inclusive, transparent and well-planned, been made so complicated? Why have the barriers been erected when our proposal is specifically focused on what Madison needs, a school designed to eliminate the achievement gap, increase parent engagement and prepare young people for college who might not otherwise get there? Why does liberal Madison, which prides itself on racial tolerance and opposition to bigotry, have such a difficult time empowering and including people of color, particularly African Americans?
As the member of a Black family that has been in Madison since 1908, I wonder aloud why there are fewer black-owned businesses in Madison today than there were 25 years ago? There are only two known black-owned businesses with 10 or more employees in Dane County. Two!
Why can I walk into 90 percent of businesses in Madison in 2011 and struggle to find Black professionals, managers and executives or look at the boards of local companies and not see anyone who looks like me?
How should we respond when Board of Education members tell us they can't vote for Madison Prep while knowing that they have no other solutions in place to address the issues our children face? How can they say they have the answers and develop plans for our children without consulting and including us in the process? How can they have 51 black applicants for teaching positions and hire only one, and then claim that they can't find any black people to apply for jobs? How can they say, "We need more conversations" about the education of our children when we've been talking for four decades?
I have to ask the question, as uncomfortable as it may be for some to hear, "Would we have to work this hard and endure so much resistance if just 48% of white children in Madison's public schools were graduating, only 1% of white high school seniors were academically ready for college, and nearly 50% of white males between the ages of 25-29 were incarcerated, on probation or under some form of court supervision?
Is this 2011 or 1960? Should the black community, which has been in Madison for more than 100 years, not expect more?
How will the Board of Education's vote on December 19th help our children move forward? How will their decision impact systemic reform and seed strategies that show promise in improving on the following?
Half of Black and Latino children are not completing high school. Just 59% of Black and 61% of Latino students graduated on-time in 2008-09. One year later, in 2009-10, the graduation rate declined to 48% of Black and 56% of Latino students compared to 89% of white students. We are going backwards, not forwards. (Source: MMSD 2010, 2011)
Black and Latino children are not ready for college. According to makers of the ACT college entrance exam, just 20% of Madison's 378 Black seniors and 37% of 191 Latino seniors in MMSD in 2009-10 completed the ACT. Only 7% of Black and 18% of Latino seniors completing test showed they had the knowledge and skills necessary to be "ready for college". Among all MMSD seniors (those completing and not completing the test), just 1% of Black and 7% of Latino seniors were college ready
Too few Black and Latino graduates are planning to go to college. Of the 159 Latino and 288 Black students that actually graduated and received their diplomas in 2009-10, just 28% of Black and 21% of Latino students planned to attend a four-year college compared to 53% of White students. While another 25% of Black and 33% of graduates planned to attend a two-year college or vocation program (compared to 17% of White students), almost half of all of all Black and Latino graduates had no plans for continuing their education beyond high school compared to 27% of White students. (Source: DPI 2011)
Half of Black males in their formative adult years are a part of the criminal justice system. Dane County has the highest incarceration rate among young Black men in the United States: 47% between the ages of 25-29 are incarcerated, on probation or under some form of court supervision. The incarceration phenomena starts early. In 2009-10, Black youth comprised 62% of all young people held in Wisconsin's correctional system. Of the 437 total inmates held, 89% were between the ages of 15-17. In Dane County, in which Madison is situated, 49% of 549 young people held in detention by the County in 2010 were Black males, 26% were white males, 12% were black females, 6% were white females and 6% were Latino males and the average age of young people detained was 15. Additionally, Black youth comprised 54% of all 888 young people referred to the Juvenile Court System. White students comprised 31% of all referrals and Latino comprised 6%.
More importantly, will the Board of Education demonstrate the type of courage it took our elders and ancestors to challenge and change laws and contracts that enabled Jim Crow, prohibited civil rights, fair employment and Women's right to vote, and made it hard for some groups to escape the permanence of America's underclass? We know this is not an easy vote, and we appreciate their struggle, but there is a difference between what is right and what is politically convenient.
Will the Board have the courage to look in the faces of Black and Latino families in the audience, who have been waiting for solutions for so long, and tell them with their vote that they must wait that much longer?
We hope our Board of Education members recognize and utilize the tremendous power they have to give our children a hand-up. We hope they hear the collective force and harmony of our pleas, engage with our pain and optimism, and do whatever it takes to ensure that the proposal we have put before them, which comes with exceptional input and widespread support, is approved on December 19, 2011.
Madison Prep is a solution we can learn from and will benefit the hundreds of young men and women who will eventually attend.
If not Madison Prep, then what? If not now, then when?
JOIN US
SCHOOL BOARD VOTE ON MADISON PREP
Monday, December 19, 2011 at 5:00pm
Madison Metropolitan School District
Doyle Administration Building Auditorium
545 West Dayton Street
Madison, WI 53703
Contact: Laura DeRoche Perez, Lderoche@ulgm.org
Phone: 608-729-1230
CLICK HERE TO RSVP: TELL US YOU'LL BE THERE
Write the School Board and Tell Them to "Say 'Yes', to Madison Prep!"
Madison Prep 2012!
Onward!
Kaleem Caire
President & CEO
Urban League of Greater Madison
Phone: 608-729-1200
Fax: 608-729-1205
www.ulgm.org
OUR RESPONSE TO MMSD'S NEW CONCERNS
Autonomy: MMSD now says they are concerned that Madison Prep will not be accountable to the public for the education it provides students and the resources it receives. Yet, they don't specify what they mean by "accountability." We would like to know how accountability works in MMSD and how this is producing high achievement among the children it serves. Further, we would like to know why Madison Prep is being treated differently than the 30 early childhood centers that are participating in the district's 4 year old kindergarten program. They all operate similar to non-instrumentality schools, have their own governing boards, operate via a renewable contract, can hire their own teachers "at their discretion" and make their own policy decisions, and have little to no oversight by the MMSD Board of Education. All 30 do not employ union teachers. Accountability in the case of 4K sites is governed by "the contract." MMSD Board members should be aware that, as with their approval of Badger Rock Middle School, the contract is supposed to be developed "after" the concept is approved on December 19. In essence, this conversation is occurring to soon, if we keep with current district practices.
Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA): MMSD and Madison Teachers, Incorporated have rejected our attorney's reading of ACT 65, which could provide a path to approval of Madison Prep without violating the CBA. Also, MTI and MMSD could approve Madison Prep per state law and decide not to pursue litigation, if they so desired. There are still avenues to pursue here and we hope MMSD's Board of Education will consider all of them before making their final decision.
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Bill Smojver, Director of Technical Services:
Madison Metropolitan School District was provided an award from the Microsoft Cy Pres settlement in the Fall of 2009. Since that time the district has utilized many of these funds to prorate projects across the district in order to free up budgeted funds and to provide for more flexibility. The plan and process for these funds liquidates the General Purpose portion of the Microsoft Cy Pres funds, provides an equitable allocation per pupil to each school, and is aimed at increasing the amount of technology within our schools.I found the device distribution to be quite interesting. The iPad revolution is well underway. Technology's role in schools continues to be a worthwhile discussion topic.The total allocation remaining from Cy Pres revenues totals $2,755,463.11, which was the target for the technology acquisition plan. Two things happened prior to allocating funds to schools: first was to hold back $442,000 for the future purchase of iPads for our schools (at $479 per iPad this equates to a 923 iPads), and second was to hold back $200,000 necessary for increased server capacity to deal with the increase in different types of technology.
The final step was to allocate the remaining funding ($2,113,463.11) out to the schools on a per pupil basis. This was calculated at $85.09 per pupil across all schools within the district.
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John Matthews, Executive Director of Madison Teachers, Inc., via email:
The Urban League proposes that Madison Prep be operated as a non-instrumentality of the Madison Metropolitan School District. The Urban League's proposal is unacceptable to Madison Teachers, because it would effectively eliminate supervision and accountability of the school to the Madison School Board regarding the expenditure of millions of dollars in taxpayer money, and because it would also violate long-standing terms and conditions of the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the Madison Metropolitan School District and MTI.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school, here.The Urban League proposes to use District funds to hire non-District teaching staff at lower salaries and benefits than called for in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. It was recently stated in a meeting between representatives of Madison Prep, the School District and MTI that the Urban League plans to hire young African-American males and asks that MTI and the District enable them to pay the teachers they hire less than their counterparts, who are employed by the District. MTI cannot agree to enable that. We believe that such is discriminatory, based both on race and gender. The MTI/MMSD Contract calls for teachers to be compensated based upon their educational achievement and their years of service. MTI and MMSD agreed in the early 1970's that the District would not enable such undermining of employment standards. The costing of the Contract salary placement was explained by both Superintendent Nerad and John Matthews. Those explanations were ignored by the Urban League in their budgeting, causing a shortfall in the proposed operational budget, according to Superintendent Nerad.
It is also distasteful to MTI that the Urban League proposes to NOT ADDITIONALLY pay their proposed new hires for working a longer day and a longer school year. Most employees in the United States receive overtime pay when working longer hours. The Urban League proposes NO additional compensation for employees working longer hours, or for the 10 additional school days in their plan.
Finally, the Urban League is incorrect in asserting that MTI and the District could modify the MMSD/MTI Contract without triggering Act 10, Governor Walker's draconian attack on teachers and other public employees. The Contract would be destroyed if MTI and the District agreed to amend it. Such is caused by Walker's Law, Act 10. MTI is not willing to inflict the devastating effects of Act 10 on its members. The Urban League states that Walker's Act 65 would enable the Contract to be amended without the horrible impact cause by Act 10. That claim is unfounded and in error.
The Madison Prep proposal could easily be implemented if it followed the Charter Plan of Wright School, Nuestro Mundo, and Badger Rock School, all of which operate as instrumentalities of the District, under its supervision and the MMSD/MTI Collective Bargaining Agreement.
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Madison Preparatory Academy could easily open if it followed the same model as the district's other charter schools, Madison Teachers Inc. Executive Director John Matthews said in response to yesterday's Urban League press conference.Related: Some Madison Teachers & Some Community Members (*) on the Proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School.But the current proposal is "unacceptable" to Madison teachers because it would "effectively eliminate School Board oversight of the expenditure of millions of dollars in taxpayer money" and violate the district's contract with its union, Matthews said.
Matthews initially declined to comment on Madison Prep when I contacted him yesterday, but later responded in an e-mail.
In his response, Matthews criticized Madison Prep's plan to pay its teachers lower salaries and benefits than other district teachers, and not offer overtime for working longer days.
He also said the Urban League is incorrect in asserting that the current union contract can be modified without nullifying it under the state's new collective bargaining law.
Related: student learning has become focused instead on adult employment - Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman.
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In the world of finance, there is always talk of bubbles - mortgage bubbles, tech stock bubbles, junk bond bubbles. But bubbles don't develop only in financial markets. In recent years, there's been another one quietly inflating, not capturing the attention of most observers.It's an education bubble - just not the one of student debt that has graced the pages of the New York Times and so many other publications in recent months.
The problem is not that we are overeducating ourselves as many would have you believe. Rather, it's that we are spending a fortune to undereducate ourselves.
The United States has always been a very educated country. But it is becoming less and less so, especially in the areas that matter to our individual and collective economic futures. Our undereducation begins with a stubbornly high dropout rate among secondary education students. About a quarter of those who begin high school don't finish.
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Persistently rising college tuitions, high spending per student, and mounting student debt burdens have re-emerged as key issues in Washington. Secretary Arne Duncan has called on college and university officials to show more urgency in keeping down their prices and spending, the House subcommittee on postsecondary education has held another hearing to wring its hands about college unaffordability, and President Obama has now summoned a select group of college presidents and higher education thought leaders to consider what can be done.Federal efforts in the past have focused on shining a spotlight on institutions with the highest rates of tuition growth and exhorting college officials to do more to restrain their spending growth and rein in their price increases. Recent news stories indicate that these largely symbolic approaches will continue to dominate the debate as the focus seems to be on extolling the virtues of those schools or states that freeze or reduce their tuition levels, move to three-year degrees, measure learning outcomes, or find ways to use technology to lower their costs per student and hopefully their prices.
But these efforts are unlikely to yield satisfactory results, just as previous efforts have failed to slow cost and price growth or to reduce the amount students must borrow to pay for their education and related expenses. They will continue to fail unless the aim is to reshape the relationship between governments and institutions and the rules that determine how much students can and do borrow. Federal and state officials must recognize that the signals embedded in a number of policies have contributed to the past growth in costs, prices and student debt -- and then do something about it.
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Kaleem Caire, via email:
Fails to address core issues impacting racial achievement gap and middle class flightRelated: "They're all rich, white kids and they'll do just fine" -- NOT!.WHAT: The Urban League of Greater Madison and the founding Board of Madison Preparatory Academy will share their response to the Madison Metropolitan School District Administration's recommendation that the Board of Education not Support Madison Prep, and will call for immediate and wider education reforms within the Madison Metropolitan School District to address the racial achievement gap and middle-class flight and crises.
WHEN: 12:00 pm, Thursday, December 8, 2011
WHERE: Urban League of Greater Madison, 2222 S. Park St., Suite 200, Madison, WI 53713
WHO: Kaleem Caire, Urban League President & CEO Urban League of Greater Madison Board of Directors Madison Preparatory Academy Board of Directors Community Leaders and Parents
For more information, contact Laura DeRoche Perez, Director of School Development, Urban League of Greater Madison, at lderoche@ulgm.org or 608-729-1235.
Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school, here.
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I recently received a history paper submitted by a high school Junior who was kind enough
to enumerate the hours he has spent on athletics in a recent year:
Football: 13 hours a week, 13 weeks per year. (169 hours)
Basketball: 12 hours a week, 15 weeks per year. (180 hours)
Lacrosse: 12 hours a week, 15 weeks per year. (180 hours)
Summer Lacrosse: 10 hours per week, 15 weeks per year. (150 hours)
This yields a total, by my calculations, of
169 + 180 + 180 hours = 529 hours + 150 in the summer, for a new total of 679 hours.
We are told that there is no time for high school students to write serious history research papers, which they need to do to prepare themselves for college academic requirements. It seems likely that this young man will be better prepared in athletics
than in academics.
If it were considered important for all students to read history books and to write a serious history research paper, 679 hours (84 eight-hour days) might just be enough for them to manage that.
This particular young man made the time on his own to write a 28-page history research paper with a bibliography and 107 endnotes and submit it to The Concord Review, but this was not his high school requirement.
===============
"Teach by Example"
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
www.tcr.org/blog
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200K PDF File, via a kind reader.
Madison Teacher's Inc. Twitter feed can be found here.
Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school, here.
* Please see TJ Mertz's comment below. A link to the document was forwarded to me via a kind reader from Madison Teachers, Inc. Twitter Feed (a "retweet" of Karen Vieth's "tweet"). Note that I enjoyed visiting with Karen during several Madison School District strategic planning meetings.
A screenshot of the link:
The outcome of the Madison Prep "question" will surely reverberate for some time.
Finally, I suspect we'll see more teacher unions thinking different, as The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers has done: Minneapolis teacher's union approved to authorize charter schools.
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If policymakers (see Brown, Jerry) still aren't convinced that education data matters, two reports released this week demonstrate that high quality, actionable information about schools and students is vital in efforts to improve education and student outcomes.Bill summarized the important work of the Data Quality Campaign yesterday. More states than ever are collecting the information educators and policymakers need to make informed decisions about what's working and what isn't in schools. But just because the data can be collected, it doesn't mean that states' work is complete. Data for Action 2011 identifies four challenges - turf, trust, technical issues, and time - that continue to hinder states' efforts to utilize the full potential of their data (shameless plug: you should read my report, Data That Matters, for another set of 4 Ts that all states should follow to make their data user-friendly and actionable for school leaders).
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Jesse Roe, a ninth-grade math teacher at a charter school here called Summit, has a peephole into the brains of each of his 38 students.He can see that a girl sitting against the wall is zipping through geometry exercises; that a boy with long curls over his eyes is stuck on a lesson on long equations; and that another boy in the front row is getting a handle on probability.
Each student's math journey shows up instantly on the laptop Mr. Roe carries as he wanders the room. He stops at each desk, cajoles, offers tips, reassures. For an hour, this crowded, dimly lighted classroom in the hardscrabble shadow of Silicon Valley hums with the sound of fingers clicking on keyboards, pencils scratching on paper and an occasional whoop when a student scores a streak of right answers.
The software program unleashed in this classroom is the brainchild of Salman Khan, an Ivy League-trained math whiz and the son of an immigrant single mother. Mr. Khan, 35, has become something of an online sensation with his Khan Academy math and science lessons on YouTube, which has attracted up to 3.5 million viewers a month.
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In another issue, Sam Castaneda Holdren, a spokesman for Stand for Children, said the organization collected about 100,000 voter signatures for a ballot question that would codify into law new educator-evaluation regulations approved in June by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.The new state regulations call for evaluating teachers and administrators partly by the scores of their students on the MCAS statewide tests, feedback from students and parents, by state and local observations in classrooms and other measures.
The ballot question would go beyond the state regulations in some respects, said Jason Williams, executive director of Stand for Children in Massachusetts. For example, the question would mandate that the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education approve evaluation plans developed through bargaining with unions in school districts if those local plans differ from a state model that will eventually be developed. Right now, the department could only review those local plans, not reject them, Williams said
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America now finds itself at an interesting crossroads. Over the next few years, it is estimated that this country will need one million new teachers, as more and more baby boomers begin to retire. (A baby boomer is a person who was born during the demographic Post-War II baby boom and who grew up during the period between 1946 and 1964.)This impending shortfall of public educators is further exacerbated by the disturbing national trend that has severely undermined job security for many public-sector employees by restricting, or outright prohibiting workers from engaging in the collective bargaining process.
As we have seen, Wisconsin has become the embarrassing leader of the political attack now being orchestrated against the poor and working-class families in this country. But vilifying teachers is nothing new for the Badger State. Former Governor and now U.S. Senate hopeful, Tommy Thompson used teachers and its union (WEAC) as convenient political scapegoats back in the 1990s. He succeeded in making the case that state property taxes were so out of whack, solely as a result of the exorbitant salaries and benefits being afforded to teachers. Talk about pure political demagoguery!
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Recommendations:Matthew DeFour:
We are in agreement that the achievement gaps for low-income students, students of color, students with disabilities, and English Language Learners must be eliminated. The Administration agrees that bolder steps must be taken to address these gaps. We also know that closing these gaps is not a simple task and change will not come overnight, but, the District's commitment to doing so will not waiver. We also know that to be successful in the long run, we must employ multiple strategies both within our schools and within our community. This is why the District has held interest in many of the educational strategies included in the Madison Prep's proposal like longer school days and a longer school year at an appropriately compensated level for staff, mentoring support, the proposed culture of the school and the International Baccalaureate Program.While enthusiastic about these educational strategies, the Administration has also been clear throughout this conversation about its concern with a non-instrumentality model.
Autonomy is a notion inherent in all charter school proposals. Freedom and flexibility to do things differently are the very reasons charter schools exist. However, the non-instrumentality charter school model goes beyond freedom and flexibility to a level of separateness that the Administration cannot support.
In essence, Madison Prep's current proposal calls for the exclusion of the elected Board of Education and the District's Administration from the day-to-day operations of the school. It prevents the Board, and therefore the public, from having direct oversight of student learning conditions and teacher working conditions in a publicly-funded charter school. From our perspective, the use of public funds calls for a higher level of oversight than found in the Madison Prep proposal and for that matter in any non-instrumentality proposal.
In addition, based on the District's analysis, there is significant legal risk in entering into a non- instrumentality charter contract under our collective bargaining agreement with our teachers.In our analysis of Madison Prep's initial instrumentality proposal, the Administration expressed concerns over the cost of the program to the District and ultimately could not recommend funding at the level proposed. Rather, the Administration proposed a funding formula tied to the District's per pupil revenues. We also offered to continue to work with Madison Prep to find ways to lower these costs. Without having those conversations, the current proposal reduces Madison Prep's costs by changing from an instrumentality to a non-instrumentality model. This means that the savings are realized directly through reductions in staff compensation and benefits to levels lower than MMSD employees. The Administration has been willing to have conversations to determine how to make an instrumentality proposal work.
In summary, this administrative analysis finds concerns with Madison Prep's non-instrumentality proposal due to the level of governance autonomy called for in the plan and due to our collective bargaining agreement with our teachers. Based on these issues, we cannot recommend to the Board that Madison Prep be approved as a non-instrumentality charter school.
We know more needs to be done as a district and a community to eliminate our achievement gaps. We must continue to identify strategies both within our schools and our larger community to eliminate achievement gaps. These discussions, with the Urban League and with our entire community, need to continue on behalf of all of our students.
In anticipation of the recommendation, Caire sent out an email Friday night to School Board members with a letter responding to concerns about the union contract issue.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.The problem concerns a "work preservation" clause in the Madison Teachers Inc. contract that requires all teaching duties in the district be performed by union teachers.
Exceptions to the clause have been made in the past, such as having private day-care centers offer 4-year-old kindergarten, but those resulted from agreements with the union. Such an agreement would nullify the current union contract under the state's new collective bargaining law, according to the district.
Caire said a recent law signed by Gov. Scott Walker could allow the district to amend its union contract. However, School Board member Ed Hughes, who is a lawyer, disagreed with Caire's interpretation.
Nerad said even if the union issue can be resolved, he still objects to the school seeking autonomy from all district policies except those related to health and safety of students.
.....
Caire said Madison Prep's specific policies could be ironed out as part of the charter contract after the School Board approves the proposal. He plans to hold a press conference Tuesday to respond to the district's review.
"The purpose of a charter school is to free you from red tape -- not to adopt the same red tape that they have," Caire said. "We hope the board will stop looking at all of those details and start looking at why we are doing this in the first place."
The fate of Madison Prep, yea or nea, will resonate locally for years. A decisive moment for our local $372M schools.
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As Dropout Nation reported on Wednesday, the National Education Association reported in its recent U.S. Department of Labor filing that it spent $133 million in 2010-2011 on lobbying and contributions to groups whose agendas (in theory) dovetail with its own. And the list of organizations and players who have benefited from the union's largesse grows even larger.More here.The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, a longtime beneficiary of NEA funds, garnered $400,373 from the union during its last fiscal year. The Great Lakes Center for Education, which, like the Economic Policy Institute, always churns out studies that dovetail nicely with NEA positions, got $250,000 from the national union. (Three affiliates -- Michigan Education Association, Education Minnesota, and the Illinois Education Association -- chipped in another $30,000, according to each of their respective federal filings.) National Board for Professional Teaching Standards got $10,000 from the union last fiscal year. And the University of Colorado at Boulder also picked up $250,000 for a "sponsored project", likely something being put together by one of the NEA's longtime fellow-travelers, Kevin Welner's National Education Policy Center that is based on the university's campus.
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Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad:
Elementary Support & Services
National Novel Writing Month
Future Problem Solving
Math enrichment
GEMS
William & Mary Literature groups
M2 and M3 Math groups
American Math Competition 8
Science enrichment pilot College for Kids I (support)Middle School Support & Services
WCATY courses
Future Problem Solving
Online courses
Advanced Math courses
Assistance with Science Symposium
American Math Competition 8
College for Kids II (support)
Great Books Pilot
Hybrid Geometry PilotHigh School Support & Services
College Matters at UW Madison
Math Meets (competitions)
Respectful Relationship days
Leadership Conference (pilot, grant application in progress)
Assistance with High School Science SymposiumMentor Services
1. Falk- Working with students in a writing group
2. Stephens- Working with a group of students in math
3. Lapham-1'1/2"dgrade-Math
4. Schenk- Science/math enrichment
5. Crestwood- Math enrichment
6. Crestwood- Math enrichment
7. Crestwood-Math enrichment
8. Franklin- Math enrichment
9. Randall- Math enrichment
10. Randall - Math enrichment
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On Dec. 19, the Madison school board is scheduled to vote on whether to approve Madison Preparatory Academy, a charter school that would target at-risk minority students.For more than 18 months, the proposal -- drawn up by the Urban League of Greater Madison as an ambitious step toward closing the district's racial achievement gap -- has polarized the community, with a broad range of critics taking aim on multiple fronts.
The proposal, at least by local standards, is a radical one, under which the Urban League would operate two largely taxpayer-funded, gender-specific secondary schools with an unprecedented level of autonomy. If approved, Madison Prep would open next fall with 120 sixth-graders and peak at 840 students in grades 6 through 12 by its seventh year.
Opponents say the Urban League's proposal combines flawed educational models, discredited science, fuzzy budgeting and unrealistic projections of student success. While some applaud certain elements of the proposal, like longer school days and academic years, they maintain that Madison Prep won't help enough students to justify the $17.5 million cost to the district over its first five years.
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Madison schools aren't failing, by any stretch of the imagination, for many students.Remarkable. Are there some excellent teachers in Madison? Certainly. Does Madison's Administration seek best in the world results? A look at the math task force, seemingly on hold for years, is informative. The long one size fits all battle and the talented and gifted complaint are worth contemplating.In fact, if you're a white, middle-class family sending your children to public school here, your kids are likely getting an education that's on a par with Singapore or Finland -- among the best in the world.
However, if you're black or Latino and poor, it's an unquestionable fact that Madison schools don't as good a job helping you with your grade-point average, high school graduation, college readiness or test scores. By all these measures, the district's achievement gap between white and minority students is awful.
These facts have informed the stern (and legitimate) criticisms leveled by Urban League President Kaleem Caire and Madison Prep backers.
But they doesn't take into account some recent glimmers of hope that shouldn't be discounted or overlooked. Programs like AVID/TOPS support first-generation college-bound students in Madison public schools and are showing some successes. Four-year-old kindergarten is likely to even the playing field for the district's youngest students, giving them a leg up as they enter school. And, the data surrounding increasing numbers of kids of color participating in Advanced Placement classes is encouraging.
Stepping back from the local district and looking at education through a broader lens, it's easy to see that No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have aimed to legislate, bribe and punish their way toward an unrealistic Lake Wobegon world where all the students are above average.
Could Madison be the best? Certainly. The infrastructure is present, from current spending of $14,963/student to the nearby UW-Madison, Madison College and Edgewood College backed by a supportive community.
Ideally, Madison (and Wisconsin) should have the courage to participate in global examinations (Florida Students Take Global Examinations, Wisconsin's Don't). Taxpayers and parents would then know if Troller's assertions are fact based.
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Kaleem Caire, via email
December 2, 2011PDF letter:Greetings Madison Prep.
Tomorrow afternoon, we are expecting to learn that MMSD's Administration will inform the Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education that Madison Prep should not be approved. A possible reason we expect will be MMSD's concern that the current collective bargaining agreement between the District and Madison Teachers Inc. (MTI) has a "work preservation clause" which the teacher's union advocated for long ago to ensure that it was the only game in town to represent public school teachers in Madison.
Below, is the cover note that I forwarded to Ed Hughes of the Board of Education and copied to a number of others, who had asked a thoughtful question about our proposal to establish Madison Prep as a non-instrumentality charter school, we hope, in fall 2012. Also see the letter attached to this email.
---------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 2, 2011Greetings Ed.
Attached, please find a letter that contains the answer to your question referenced in your email below. The letter contains the explanation of a path to which Madison Prep could be established as a non-instrumentality public charter school, under Wisconsin law, and in a way that would not violate the current collective bargaining agreement between MMSD and Madison Teachers Inc.
We look forward to answering any questions you or other members of the Board of Education may have.
Thank you so much and Many blessings to you and your family this holiday season.
Onward.
cc: Daniel Nerad, MMSD Superintendent
Dylan Pauly, MMSD Legal Counsel
MMSD Board of Education Members
ULGM Board of Directors
Madison Prep Board of Directors
Godfrey & Kahn, S.C.
Steve Goldberg, CUNA Mutual Foundation
This letter is intended to respond to your November 78,207I email and to suggest that there is a viable option for moving forward with Urban League's proposal for the Madison Preparatory Academy ("Madison Prep") that: [i) will reduce cost; and (ii) will not sacrifice the union security provisions of the Collective Bargaining Agreement "Agreement" or "Contract") between the Madison Metropolitan School District ("MMSD" or "District") and Madison Teachers, Inc. ("MTI").Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.Your email asks for a response to a question concerning how the school district could authorize Madison Prep as a non-instrumentality charter without thereby violating the terms of the District's Agreement with MTI. Your email references a provision in the MTI Agreement that provides "that instructional duties where the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction requires that such be performed by a certifìcated teacher, shall be performed only by'teachers."' .See Article I, Section 8.3.a. In addition you note that "the term 'teacher' refers to anyone in the collective bargaining unit." See Article I, Section 8.2. You conclude your email by stating that "it appears that all teachers in MMSD schools -- including non-instrumentality charter schools - must be members of the MTI bargaining unit."
The Urban League is aware of the Agreement's language and concedes that the language, if enforceable, poses an obstacle as we look for School Board approval of the plan to open and operate a "non-instrumentality" school. Under an instrumentality charter, the employees of the charter school must be employed by the school board. Under a non-instrumentality charter, the school board may not be the employer of the charter school's staff. See S 118.40(7)(a). Thus, the statement in your email that all teachers, including those in a non-instrumentality charter school - "must be members of the MTI bargaining unit" and, presumably, employed by the school board is not permitted under Wisconsin law.
Under Wisconsin's charter school law the School Board has the exclusive authority to determine whether a school is an instrumentality or not an instrumentality of the school district. .See S 118.40(7)(a). That decision is an important decision reserved to the School Board alone. The effect of that decision drives whether teachers and staff must be, or cannot be, employees of the School Board. The language of the Contract deprives the School Board of the decision reserved to it under the statute and that language cannot be harmonized to give effect to both the statute and the Agreement. Alternatively the Contract language creates a situation whereby the School Board may exercise its statutory authority to approve a non-instrumentality charter but it must staff the school with school district employees, a result clearly prohibited under the statute. In our view the law trumps the Contract in either of these situations.
The situation described above could likely only be resolved in a court of law. The Contract includes a "savings clause" that contemplates that where a court invalidates a provision in the Agreement, the invalid provision is deleted and the remainder of the contract remains intact. See Article VIII, Section E.
The Urban League is, however, mindful that litigation is both expensive and time consuming. Moreover it is clear that the Contract language will become a prohibited subject of bargaining in the near future when the current Agreement expires. Unfortunately, the children we seek to serve, do not have the time to wait for that day.
Our second purpose in writing is to make you aware of a possible solution to a major obstacle here. One of the major obstacles in moving forward has been the cost associated with an instrumentality school coupled with MTI's reluctance to work with the District in modifying the Contract to reduce costs associated with staffing and certain essential features of Madison Prep, like an extended school day, As we understand it MTI does not want to modify the Contract because such a modification would result in an earlier application of 2077 Wisconsin Act L0 to the District, members of the bargaining unit and to MTI itself.
We understand MTI's reluctance to do anything that would hasten the application of Act 10 in the school district, With the passage of 2011. Wisconsin Act 65, that concern is no longer an obstacle.
Act 65 allows the parties to a collective bargaining agreement to enter into a memorandum of understanding that would run for the remaining term of the collective bargaining agreement, for the purpose of reducing the cost of compensation or fringe benefits in the collective bargaining agreement,
The Act also provides that entering into such a memorandum would not be considered a "modification" of the collective bargaining agreement for the purposes of Act 10. Act 65 was published on November 23,2077 and took effect the following day. The law allows the parties to a collective bargaining agreement to enter into such a memorandum no later than 90 days after the effective date of the law.
The Urban League believes that Act 65 gives the Board and MTI the opportunity to make changes that will facilitate cost reductions, based in compensation and fringe benefits, to help Madison Prep move forward. And, the law allows the parties to do so in a way that does not adversely impact the teachers represented by MTI or the union security provisions of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
For example, the parties could agree to reduce the staffing costs for Madison Prep, The parties could also agree that a longer school day would not have to cost more. And, the parties could agree that the work preservation clause referenced in the first part of this letter does not apply where the School Board has determined a charter school willbe a non-instrumentality of the District, a move that would also most certainly reduce costs. These changes would not be forced upon any existing MTI represented teacher as teachers would apply for vacancies in the school.
We hope that the School Board will give serious consideration to the opportunity presented by Act 65. 0n behalf of the Urban League of Greater Madison and Madison Preparatory Academy, we thank you for your support of Madison Prep.
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This past weekend the New York Times devoted two big op-eds to the decline of the suburb. In one, new urban theorist Chris Leinberger said that Americans were increasingly abandoning "fringe suburbs" for dense, transit-oriented urban areas. In the other, UC Berkeley professor Louise Mozingo called for the demise of the "suburban office building" and the adoption of policies that will drive jobs away from the fringe and back to the urban core.Perhaps no theology more grips the nation's mainstream media -- and the planning community -- more than the notion of inevitable suburban decline. The Obama administration's housing secretary, Shaun Donavan, recently claimed, "We've reached the limits of suburban development: People are beginning to vote with their feet and come back to the central cities."
Yet repeating a mantra incessantly does not make it true. Indeed, any analysis of the 2010 U.S. Census would make perfectly clear that rather than heading for density, Americans are voting with their feet in the opposite direction: toward the outer sections of the metropolis and to smaller, less dense cities. During the 2000s, the Census shows, just 8.6% of the population growth in metropolitan areas with more than 1 million people took place in the core cities; the rest took place in the suburbs. That 8.6% represents a decline from the 1990s, when the figure was 15.4%.
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Black and Hispanic students in a special Madison School District college preparatory program have higher grade point averages, attendance rates and test scores than their peers who aren't in the program, according to a UW-Madison analysis.The study of the AVID/TOPS program -- geared toward preparing low-income, minority students for college -- comes as the Madison School Board contemplates a proposal to create Madison Preparatory Academy, a controversial charter school with similar goals.
Some opponents of Madison Prep argue the AVID/TOPS program is a proven way of helping close the achievement gap between white and minority students.
Superintendent Dan Nerad said the district is pushing ahead with a proposal to expand the program in middle school. It currently serves 491 students at East, West, Memorial and La Follette high schools and Black Hawk Middle School.
"I would not tell you that AVID alone will make the difference," Nerad said. "But it's a very important piece for us."
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The new Brookings index on school choice is interesting and worth a look but as I go through it two things seem to jump out. First, despite the rhetoric in the public square there still isn't a great deal of real choice in education. And second, the index seems to reward places (relatively speaking) that have limited choices but still do all the things you should do (information, transportation etc...nonetheless). That's like having an incredible restaurant with easy valet parking, wonderful fresh food, great service, and lovely ambiance - but that can only seat four people a night. Nice but limited.
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Parents gathered in the auditorium of the Talented and Gifted School for Young Scholars on Tuesday morning were not happy.Their school, one of only three citywide gifted and talented programs in Manhattan, shares space in an East Harlem building with three middle schools. They learned recently that one of the schools, Esperanza Preparatory Academy, wants to expand to a high school, and they are concerned that the expansion will cause overcrowding and bring other problems.
Tuesday's meeting was called by the Education Department last week after parents flooded the office with calls and e-mails expressing concern about the addition of high school grades when their school has children as young as kindergarten.
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There is much less competition in the public sector than the private sector, and that has made all the difference.Since the Great Recession began in 2008, there has been a growing criticism of public sector unions, reflecting taxpayer concerns about union compensation and unfunded pension liabilities. These concerns have led to proposals to change public sector union policy in very significant ways. Earlier this month, voters in Ohio defeated by a wide margin a law that would have restricted union powers, although polls showed broad support for portions of the law that would have reduced union benefits. In Wisconsin, a state with a long-standing pro-union stance, Governor Scott Walker advanced policy in February that would cut pay and substantially curtail collective bargaining rights of many public sector union workers. In Florida, State Senator John Thrasher introduced legislation that would prevent governments from collecting union dues from union worker state paychecks. And it is not just Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida that are attempting to change the landscape of public unions. Cash-strapped governments in many states are considering ways to reduce the costs associated with public unions.
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Among the extended family I saw over the holiday was a young relative who is working as a substitute teacher in the Northeast since he can't find a full-time teaching post. He shared a story that surprised me, and I wanted to run it by folks here.He was subbing at a low-performing high school that recently had a well-publicized stabbing. A student in his class pulled what he thought was a real gun on him, and they had a standoff for several minutes until the teen put the "gun" away and the teacher tackled him to the floor. It turned out the gun was a toy, and the student received a three-day suspension for the incident.
The substitute teacher was disappointed with the punishment, but said the school wanted to prevent another round of negative press.
Would such an incident be kept quiet in Georgia? Could it go so easily unreported under zero tolerance policies in which students can get suspended for Tweety Bird key chains?
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As the superintendent of the Perth Amboy school district, I am responsible for the education of more than 10,000 children.We are fortunate to have the dedication of hundreds of committed and talented teachers and administrators who focus on education every day. But for 15 to 20 percent of each week, I shift focus from our students, who should be at the center of all we do, to certain adults who no longer have a place in our education system, yet simply can't be dismissed.
There has been much discussion about teacher evaluation and its potential to improve learning in our classrooms. This issue focuses on things like linking teacher tenure and pay to student test scores, and so-called value-added data. There are many disagreements about these measures, but I believe we can agree on the fact that there are certain teachers who just should not be working with children. We don't want teachers in our classrooms who talk explicitly about sexual acts, or who hit children, put soap in their mouths or curse at them. We certainly don't want teachers who make repeated sexual advances to other teachers, do drugs at school or fly into rages for no apparent reason. I have active cases like these, and have returned almost all of these teachers to their positions.
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When the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released their 2011 results, things seemed to be working out well for Wisconsin's public schools. The state posted above average numbers in key subjects like reading and mathematics in fourth and eighth grade.Related: Updating the 2009 Scholastic Bowl Longhorns 17 - Badgers 1; Thrive's "Advance Now Competitive Assessment Report"However, a deeper look into those numbers exposes some troubling trends. Namely, Wisconsin's Hispanic students are regressing when it comes to reading in the state's classrooms.
The state's 2011 results held steady at 202 points for fourth-grade reading amongst Hispanic pupils. This was down from a score of 208 in 2007 and less than the state's score of 209 in 1992, the first iteration of the test. In eighth grade, the average score dropped from 250 to 248. This is a decrease from 1998's average of 256 - the first year the test was recorded for the group.
These results highlight a grim trend. Over the past two decades, reading achievement amongst the state's Hispanic students has regressed. While national averages have seen a growth of 5.7 percent in fourth grade reading and 5.5 percent in eighth grade reading amongst Hispanic test takers, Wisconsin has posted losses. The state's scores dropped by 3.4 percent and 2.8 percent in the two grades, respectively.
Earlier this year Wisconsin teachers and their supporters compared Wisconsin and Texas academically and claimed that Wisconsin had better achievement because it ranked higher on ACT/SAT scores. The fact that this claim ignored the ethnic composition of the states, prompted David Burge to use the National Assessment of Educational Progress(NAEP) to compare educational achievement within the same ethnic groups. His conclusion, based on the 2009 NAEP in Reading, Mathematics, and Science (3 subject areas times 2 grades, 4th and 8th, times 3 ethnicities, white, black, and hispanic equals 18 comparisons), was Longhorns 17 - Badgers 1.
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.htmlThe 2011 NAEP results are now available for Reading and
Mathematics. The updated conclusion (2 subject areas times 2 grades, 4th and 8th, times 3 ethnicities, white, black, and hispanic equals 12 comparisons) is Longhorns 12 - Badgers 0. Not only did Texas students outperform Wisconsin students in every one of the twelve ethnicity-controlled comparisons, but Texas students exceeded the national average in all 12 comparisons. Wisconsin students were above the average 3 times, below the average 8 times, and tied the average once.
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[well, at least these guys don't have students reading history books, writing history papers--stuff like that!!]
What is it about academics and Lady Gaga? Last year it was a freshman writing course at the University of Virginia titled "GaGa for Gaga: Sex, Gender, and Identity." This fall there's an upper-division sociology course at the University of South Carolina titled "Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame." Meghan Vicks, a graduate student in comparative literature at the University of Colorado, co-edits a postmodernist online journal, "Gaga Stigmata: Critical Writings and Art About Lady Gaga," in which the names "Judith Butler" and "Jean Baudrillard" drip as thickly as summer rain and the tongue-tripping sentences read like this: "And her project?--To deconstruct the very pop culture that creates and worships her, and to explore and make problematic the hackneyed image of the pop icon while flourishing in the clichéd role itself."And now Gaga has reached the very pinnacle of academic recognition: a Harvard affiliation. On Nov. 2 she announced that she and Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet Society will launch a nonprofit foundation, to be called Born This Way (after one of Gaga's songs), which will focus on mentoring teenagers and combating bullying.
What is fascinating is how, well, gaga the tenured scholars and highly placed academic administrators are for the 25-year-old singer whose main claim to fame is her rise from unknown to superstar and multiple Grammy winner in just three years. She managed this feat mostly on the basis of outré costumes and transgressive dancing--plus her world-class flair for self-promotion--rather than her ho-hum musical ability. Mathieu Deflem, the sociology professor who is teaching the Gaga course at South Carolina, for example, owns more than 300 of her records, maintains a fan website called gagafrontrow.net, and (according to a 2010 New York Times article) has attended more than 28 of her live concerts, following her from city to city around the world. Similarly, Harvard's Berkman Center is a well-funded interdisciplinary think tank whose faculty consists of prestigious professors of law, engineering, and business at Harvard (two of the biggest names are Lawrence Lessig and Charles Ogletree). But when the forthcoming Gaga-Berkman partnership went public last week, the center's mental heavyweights sounded as besotted as the teen-age girls and starstruck gays who hang onto every Gaga Twitter tweet. In an interview with the Harvard Crimson John Palfrey, a Harvard law professor who is the Berkman Center's co-director, praised as "impressive" the "research" that Gaga had done and hailed the forthcoming partnership as "a good chance for Harvard to be one University."
Gaga's faculty fans like to clothe their obsessive interest in her with a dense coat of academic-speak. Christa Romanosky, the graduate student at U.Va. who made Gaga the centerpiece of her freshman writing course last year, told the student newspaper, the Daily Cavalier, "We're exploring how identity is challenged by gender and sexuality and how Lady Gaga confronts this challenge." The reading list for Deflem's course at South Carolina includes several articles about Gaga by Victor Corona, a postdoctoral fellow in sociology at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University. Corona's writing is a kudzu-like tangle of po-mo jargon: "Gaga's hypermodern gospel of liberation hints at the irrelevance of truth or, rather, the creation of one's own truth, a performance that is relentlessly enacted until some version of it becomes true."
Yet Corona has nothing on Judith "Jack" Halberstam, English professor and director of the Center for Feminist Research at the University of Southern California. In an essay analyzing Gaga's Grammy-nominated 2010 music video "Telephone" for Gaga Stigmata, Halberstam drops trendy poststructuralist surnames like coins into a wishing well: "[I]t is a [Michel] Foucaultian take on prison and 'technological entrapment'; here... it has been read as the channeling of [Judith] Butler's 'Lesbian Phallus'; it is obscene, murderous, cruel to animals, misogynist, man-hating, homophobic and heterophobic; and I think you could safely place it as a [Gilles] Deleuzian exploration of flow and affect not to mention an episode in Object Oriented Philosophy. So whether the philosophy in question is drawn from [Slavoj] Zizek on speed, [Avital] Ronell on crack or [Quentin] Meillassoux on ecstasy, this video obviously chains a few good ideas to a few very good bodies and puts thought into motion." Neither Halberstam nor Corona permit any negative assessments of their idol. Corona characterized a recent critical biography, Poker Face: The Rise and Rise of Lady Gaga, as "embittered."
Since Gaga's academic fan base indulges heavily in "theory," as the po-mo types like to call it, allow me to indulge in my own "theory" about why college professors and other self-proclaimed avant-garde intellectuals have taken her to their bosoms. Take note of the academic fields represented by the scholars I have quoted above: sociology (Deflem and Corona), English (Halberstam), comparative literature (Vicks), and creative writing (Romanosky). Once those were real fields, with genuine bodies of knowledge to be studied and then enlarged by their scholarly practitioners. English professors taught and wrote about the literature of English-speaking nations. Sociologists studied the writings of Emil Durkheim and C. Wright Mills and built upon their paradigms for understanding how human beings function in social groups. Instructors of freshman writing focused on teaching their students how to write, often using models of particularly effective rhetoric and style.
Now, it seems, professors and their graduate students want to do anything but teach or do research in the fields with which they are supposedly affiliated. Sociologists want to devote class time to their record collections. English professors want to gush on about music videos. Writing instructors want to immerse their students in "gender and sexuality," not the mechanics of constructing a coherent term paper. In short, professors want to teach pop culture and nothing but pop culture. Christa Romanosky, for example, was hardly unusual in turning her freshman writing class into a class about something else besides writing. The freshman writing course list for this fall at U.Va. includes sections titled "Gender in Film," "Graffiti and Remix Culture," "Cinematic Shakespeare," "Queer Studies," "Race Matters," "Pirates," and "Female Robots." Fortunately for themselves, those professors who have turned the humanities and social sciences into vehicles for indulging their hobbies have the vast and unintelligible apparatus of postmodern theory to give their fanboy preoccupations intellectual respectability. Or at least to make it look that way to outsiders--such as parents--who might wonder why they are spending up to $6,000 per course so that little Johnny or Jenna can write an essay about "Telephone."I admit that I'm not much of a fan of Lady Gaga. I find her music monotonous, although she cleverly camouflages that defect with histrionic visuals and shocking costumes. I give her an A+, however, for brains, a sure market sense, and an entrepreneurial spirit worthy of Henry A. Ford. She has also snookered an entire generation of academics into deeming her profound. The Harvard Business School has just added Lady Gaga to its curriculum, with a case study of the decisions she and her manager made that catapulted her to fame. Now that's where Lady Gaga belongs as an object of scholarly study.
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Reading science books for the general public, you'll often find physicists talking about elegance, beauty and words of the like describing laws or theories.The Wikipedia has an entry for "Mathematical Beauty". Another entry says "Many mathematicians talk about the elegance of mathematics, its intrinsic aesthetics and inner beauty. Simplicity and generality are valued. There is beauty in a simple and elegant proof [...]".
The Spanish journal El Pais is publishing each week a mathematical challenge to its readers to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Spanish Royal Mathematics Society.
Last week's challenge was to solve the sides of the different inner squares that compose the following rectangle, knowing that the red one has a side of 3.
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Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:
As my previous post described, things are looking up at Leopold Elementary School. Leopold, the largest elementary school in Madison, has strong leadership and a talented and hard-working staff. Their efforts are paying positive dividends for the school's 700+ young students.While many criticize the Ted Kennedy / Bush No Child Left Behind initiative, we parents certainly have a great deal more information on our publicly financed schools than before. For that, I am thankful. I am also thankful that NCLB has, to some extent, increased attention on our schools, including curricular issues.There's a millstone around Leopold's neck, however, and it's called No Child Left Behind. According to that much-maligned federal law, Leopold is a "School Identified for Improvement" (SIFI).
What gives? If so many signs point toward Leopold succeeding, why do the feds consider that it is falling short.
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After more than two years under state control, Detroit's public school district appears to be getting its basic finances in order by privatizing services, cutting wages, restructuring debt and aggressively seeking out students to fill its classrooms.The district's operating deficit stands at $83 million, down from $327 million at the start of the year, according to documents released by the district Monday. The progress under the district's new state-appointed emergency financial manager could offer a roadmap for the city of Detroit, which is running out of cash and may itself fall into state hands.
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conncan.org, via a kind Doug Newman email:
For the past five years, ConnCAN has analyzed the state's graduation rates; this Issue Brief provides a more detailed examination of the latest data. In addition to relatively flat graduation rates across the board in Connecticut, the data reveal dramatic, persistent gaps by race.1 These numbers point to an urgent need for policy change to reverse these trends. By 2020, nearly one-third of Connecticut's population and nearly half of the youngest workers (25-29 year olds) will be non-white.2 If we fail to increase graduation rates significantly, especially for students of color, we risk seeing a continued increase in the proportion of children who are not prepared for success in our state--and we put our state's economic future in peril.As with previous years, our analysis also reveals that Connecticut State Department of Education graduation rates are significantly higher than the rates reported in Education Week's Diplomas Count report. Edu- cation Week uses a more accurate cohort method to calculate these rates. Connecticut plans to use this method beginning with the class of 2009.3 The analyses in this report draw on data for the Class of 2008, which is the most recent data available from both the Connecticut State Depart- ment of Education and from Education Week's Diplomas Count report.4
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Washington state education officials know a lot more about your kids than they ever knew about you.They can now track a child from kindergarten through college enrollment and soon will be able to tell you everything about every kid who has gone to school in Washington from preschool through their first job.
Everything includes every school they attended, every achievement test they passed or failed, their ethnic identity, whether they qualified for free lunch, what college they chose, if they had to take remedial courses, when they started college, and more.
Of course this information is anonymous to outside viewers, including researchers and the public, but it gives local school officials a lot to comb through to find ways to improve their preparation of students for college and the world.
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Last week, I posted a quick and dirty reading of the DPI/WASD survey on the impact of the biennial budget on school districts. I thought that the survey needs a more thorough vetting but that it seemed to be a polemical document and did not support the claims of disaster that some are making in response to it.The Florida Department of Education has taken a strong position on higher academic standards and comparing their students to the world. I've seen nothing from Wisconsin's DPI regarding substantive curricular improvements.Jay Bullock tries to defend the survey but I am afraid that he totally misses the mark. I have no reason to doubt that a number of districts had some kind of staff reduction. Most did not but it appears that somewhere in the neighborhood of 42% of the surveyed districts did.
But the doesn't tell us much. How deep were the reductions? How do they relate to changes in enrollment? What impact, if any, do they have on the delivery of services. Jay thinks that any reduction in staffing is a catastrophe, writing "[s]o, yes, a lot of districts were able to stave off disaster in this area but, you know, a full third didn't. " (emphasis in original)
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The Urban League of Greater Madison:
Response to P4-5 of the Admin Analysis (No College Going Culture) [Page 23 of BP][Response] MMSD and the Boys & Girls Club have done an excellent job implementing the AVID/TOPS program in MMSD's four high schools. While AVID is beginning to build a college going culture among the students it serves (students with 2.0 - 3.5 GPAs), more than 60% of African American high school students in MMSD, for example, have GPAs below a 2.0 and therefore do not qualify for AVID. At 380 students, AVID serves just 10% of all students of color enrolled in MMSD high schools.Related: Madison School District Administrative Analysis of the Proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School; WKCE Rhetoric.While the Urban League believes AVID/TOPS should continue to grow to serve more students, it also believes MMSD must invest more resources in programs like Schools of Hope, MSCR, Aspira/Juventud, ACT Prep, Culturally Relevant Teaching and Commonwealth's middle school careers program.
It must also invest in a system-wide, whole school reform agenda that addresses not only educational skill-building among students, but establishes a college going culture in all of
its schools for all students while addressing curriculum quality, instructional and school innovation, teacher effectiveness, diversity hiring and parent engagement at the same time. ULGM is ready to help MMSD accomplish these goals.Response to P6 of the Admin Analysis (NO COLLEGE GOING CULTURE) [Page 23 of BP]
[Response] While MMSD offers advanced placement classes, very few African American and Latino students enroll in or successfully complete AP classes by the end of their senior year (see page 5 of the Madison Prep Business Plan). Nearly half of African American and Latino males don't make it to senior year. Additionally, MMSD states that its students "opt to participate," meaning, they have a choice of whether or not to take such classes. At Madison Prep, all students will be required to take rigorous, college preparatory courses and all Madison Prep seniors will complete all IB examinations by the end of their senior years, which are very rigorous assessments.E. Response to questions from P7 of Admin Analysis (STUDENT PERFORMANCE MEASURES) [Page 29 of BP]
[Response] The Urban League acknowledges that WKCE scores of proficient are not adequate to predict success for college and career readiness. In the Madison Prep business plan, WKCE is not mentioned; instead, ULGM mentions "Wisconsin's state assessment system." It is ULGM's understanding that by the time Madison Prep reaches the fifth and final year of its first charter school contract, Wisconsin will have implemented all of the new standards and assessments affiliated with the Common Core State Standards that it adopted last year. ULGM anticipates that these assessments will be more rigorous and will have an appropriate measurement for "proficiency" that is consistent with the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in college and work. Additionally, Madison Prep will provide several supports to assist students below proficiency. These strategies are explained in Madison Prep's business and education plans.F. Response to Recommendation on P7 of Admin Analysis (STUDENT PERFORMANCE MEASURES) [Page 29 of BP]
[Response] Madison Prep will adjust its goals in its charter school contract to be commensurate with existing state and district accountability standards. However, to move a school whose student body will likely have a sizeable number of young people who are significantly behind academically to 100% proficiency in one academic year will require a miracle sent from heaven.
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Newt Gingrich has some unconventional ideas about education reform. He wants every state to open a work-study college where students work 20 hours a week during the school year and full-time in the summer and then graduate debt-free.In poverty stricken K-12 districts, Mr. Gingrich said that schools should enlist students as young as 9 to14 to mop hallways and bathrooms, and pay them a wage. Currently child-labor laws and unions keep poor students from bootstrapping their way into middle class, Mr. Gingrich said.
"This is something that no liberal wants to deal with," he told an audience at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard on Friday, according to Politico.
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A Dane County judge on Monday ordered the Madison School District to turn over more than 1,000 sick notes submitted by teachers who didn't come to work in February during mass protests over collective bargaining.Dane County Circuit Judge Juan Colas said the district violated the state's Open Records Law by issuing a blanket denial to a request for the notes from the Wisconsin State Journal rather than reviewing each note individually.
Under the records law, government agencies must make public the records they maintain in most circumstances.
State Journal editor John Smalley said the court ruling was a victory for open records and government accountability. He said the newspaper was not planning to publish individual teacher names but rather report on the general nature of the sick notes the district received from employees.
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A troubling attitude seems prevalent today in many professional circles: confusing one's own self-interest or viewpoint with the public interest. This problem is especially troubling in fields that have historically prided themselves on service.Take universities and their role in training teachers. In April, the Wisconsin Association of Colleges of Teacher Education -- the umbrella group representing 13 UW System campuses and prominent private colleges and universities such as Marquette, Beloit and Alverno -- announced that its members would not participate in a U.S. News and World Report survey intended to assess the quality of teaching programs.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, this survey would be the "first-ever review of the nation's roughly 1,400 colleges of education" and a response to a 2006 report issued by Teachers College at Columbia University, which claimed that less qualified students are going into teaching.
Teacher quality is of growing importance for at least two reasons beyond the concern noted by the Columbia report. First, reports continue to show American students falling further behind those of other nations, especially in the vital subjects of math and science. Second, many education schools teach progressive pedagogical theories and methods that critics claim are not rigorous enough to prepare students to master arduous subjects.
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The Los Angeles Unified School District has declined to release to The Times the names of teachers and their scores indicating their effectiveness in raising student performance.Much more on value-added assessment, which, in Madison is based on the oft-criticized WKCE.The nation's second-largest school district calculated confidential "academic growth over time" ratings for about 12,000 math and English teachers last year. This fall, the district issued new ones to about 14,000 instructors that can also be viewed by their principals. The scores are based on an analysis of a student's performance on several years of standardized tests and estimate a teacher's role in raising or lowering student achievement.
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Late last week I got an email from Kaleem Caire, Urban League CEO and champion of the Madison Preparatory Academy charter school proposal.I wonder if other Madison School District programs, many spending far larger sums, receive similar substantive scrutiny compared with the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school? The District's math (related math task force) and reading programs come to mind.Caire was unhappy with the way I had characterized the latest version of the charter school proposal.
In a blog post following the Madison Prep board's decision late Wednesday to develop the proposed school as what's known as a "non-instrumentality" of the school district, I described this type of school as being "free from district oversight."
While it's true that the entire point of establishing a non-instrumentality charter school is to give the organization maximum freedom and flexibility in the way it operates on a day-to-day basis, I agree it would be more accurate to describe it as "largely free of district oversight," or "free of routine oversight by the School Board."
In his message, Caire asked me, and my fellow reporter, Matt DeFour from the Wisconsin State Journal, to correct our descriptions of the proposed school, which will be approved or denied by the Madison School Board in the coming weeks.
In his message, Caire writes, "Madison Prep will be governed by MMSD's Board of Education. In your stories today, you (or the quotes you provide) say we will not be. This continues to be a subject of public conversation and it is just not true."
Ideally, the local media might dig into curricular performance across the spectrum, over time along with related expenditures and staffing.
From a governance perspective, it is clear that other regions and states have set the bar much higher.
In my view, the widely used (at least around the world) IB approach is a good start for Madison Prep.
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With college costs skyrocketing and the number of jobs for new grads on the decline, it's no wonder that students are questioning whether a degree is worth the investment. But given that the jobs of the future are projected to require some form of post-secondary education, a key question is how to provide academic knowledge and industry-specific training that will prepare students for the future. The answer might come from a throwback to the Middle Ages: apprenticeships.Traditionally, we think of interning as the way for students to get on-the-job experience. But internships vary in quality and often aren't paid, which means that students from low-income backgrounds are unable to take advantage of the opportunity. Apprenticeships offer a new model, combining paid on-the-job training with college or trade school classes.
The demand for apprenticeships is particularly acute in the United Kingdom, where a recent BBC survey of high schoolers revealed that two-thirds say they'd forgo attending college in favor of entering an apprenticeship. Businesses there also support the apprenticeship revival. Adrian Thomas, head of resourcing for Network Rail, a company that maintains the U.K.'s rail infrastructure told The Independent that "the investment that we make in our apprentices is driven by needing people with the right skills coming in to support our maintenance teams." Thomas says organizing an apprenticeship program makes "both economic and safety sense," because without the trainees, his company would be in the position of having to look outside the country for employees, or retrain workers from other industries.
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Listen to the pundits, and public education has a Goldilocks problem. Are teachers being overpaid, underpaid or paid just right? Few arguments in education are as contentious -- or as misleading. A report released Nov. 1 by two conservative think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, set off fireworks with the claim that teachers are overpaid by a collective $120 billion each year and that their pensions, health care and other benefits make their total compensation 52% higher than "fair market levels."The report looked at a variety of factors to reach its conclusion. Some are well known issues; for instance, teachers enjoy more generous benefits than most workers. But the analysis also rested on a variety of debatable assumptions about the quality of the teaching force, the job security that teachers have and opportunities for teachers in the private sector. Only by accepting all of the authors' assumptions do you reach the eye-popping $120 billion figure.
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Taxpayers in Zion-Benton Township High School District can now compare contract proposals put forward by the union and school board.The proposals are posted online on the Web site of the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board at http://www2.illinois.gov/elrb/Pages/FinalOffers.aspx. The two sides have been negotiating since April 21 and after several mediation sessions, the district declared an impasse on Oct. 31.
The online posting is mandated under SB7, the state's school reform law, which orders more transparency in contract negotiations. The law stipulates that any unsuccessful mediation be followed by publication of last best offers -- a move intended to help the public understand unresolved issues and positions taken by each side.
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Keith Nelson says it has been a godsend for Wisconsin Academy to take part in Milwaukee's school voucher program. Thirteen voucher students are enrolled this fall, which stands to bring the school more than $83,000 in public money this school year.The 13 students are less than a thousandth of the 23,198 city of Milwaukee residents whose education in private schools - the vast majority of them religious - is being supported by tax dollars this fall.
But the Wisconsin Academy involvement is eye-catching: The coed boarding high school with about 100 students is in Columbus, northeast of Madison and more than 70 miles from Milwaukee.
And the school's involvement illustrates the core essence of the voucher program. Whether you find it wonderful, enraging or simply really interesting, it is (best as I've ever figured out) a fact that nowhere in America, present or past, has so much public money been spent on sending children to religious schools. Both the Wisconsin and United States supreme courts have found this constitutional.
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Does FERPA ban schools from allowing students to post their schoolwork on the open Web?Of the trio of laws that address children's and students' privacy and safety online, FERPA is often the one least cited outside of educational circles. The other two, COPPA and CIPA, tend to be in the news more often; the former as it relates to some of the ongoing discussions about privacy and social networking, the latter as it relates to BYOD and filtering programs. But in all cases, there seems to be a growing gulf between the laws and their practical application or interpretation, particularly since these pieces of legislation are quite old: COPPA was enacted in 1998, and CIPA in 2000. FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, dates all the way back to 1974.
FERPA is meant to give students control over access to and disclosure of their educational records. This prevents schools from divulging information about a student's grades, behavior or school work to anyone other than the student without that student's consent (with some exceptions, such as to parties involved with student aid or to schools to which students are transferring). The classic example used to explain how FERPA works: you can't post a list of students' names and grades on a bulletin board in the hallway.
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Teachers and principals are worrying more about their own report cards these days.They're being graded on more than student test scores. The way educators are evaluated is changing across the country, with a switch from routine "satisfactory" ratings to actual proof that students are learning.
President Barack Obama's recent use of executive authority to revise the No Child Left Behind education law is one of several factors driving a trend toward using student test scores, classroom observation and potentially even input from students, among other measures, to determine just how effective educators are. A growing number of states are using these evaluations to decide critical issues such as pay, tenure, firings and the awarding of teaching licenses.
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I recently read an editorial piece by Arlene Ackerman, former Philadelphia public schools superintendent and longtime educator, on how she came to the realization that our public education system will not improve on its own. I have come to the same realization, because among other reasons, there is no indication school districts are suddenly going to hold themselves accountable for elevating the academic achievement of all students; or take every step necessary to ensure all students only have effective teachers. There are also just too many people who have a vested interest in keeping the current system intact, who are resistant to even the smallest of changes - let alone the dramatic improvements most of us recognize must be made in order for the system to succeed.The traditional school establishment and its supporters know if you change the ingredients, it likely changes the recipe. If you change the recipe, you get a different dish; and, there are no real internal motivators to change a system that has served a whole bunch of adults so well for such a long time.
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Smaller schools? More charters? Those are yesterday's headlines in the world of school reform. The hot-button topic now is the inclusion of student test scores in teacher evaluations. Yet as school administrators and the teachers union battle it out in current contract negotiations in Los Angeles, who would have guessed that state law addressed this issue long ago?A lawsuit filed by a group of parents, aided by the reform group EdVoice, claims that the Los Angeles Unified School District must include standardized test scores or some other measure of student progress to comply with the 40-year-old Stull Act. Though filed only against the district, the suit has statewide implications.
The Stull Act mainly concerned itself with the appeals process for teachers who had been fired. But it included some common-sense language about teacher evaluations, instructing school districts to make student progress one of many factors in teachers' performance reviews. In 1999, specifics were added to the law, requiring teacher evaluations to measure that progress in part through state-approved assessments.
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Before full implementation of the Common Core State Standards, Florida is gathering information about how our students compare internationally in reading, mathematics and science. We are participating in Trends in the International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Adjustments to Florida standards will be made based on the results of these studies.How does Wisconsin compare? Learn more at www.wisconsin2.org.
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The Urban League of Madison, via a kind Kaleem Caire email:
November 17, 2011Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.
Madison, Wis. - Last night, by unanimous vote, the Board of Directors of Madison Preparatory Academy announced they would request that the Madison Metropolitan School District's Board of Education approve their proposal to establish its all-boys and all-girls schools as non-instrumentality public charter schools. This means that Madison Preparatory Academy would employ all staff at both schools instead of MMSD, and that Madison Prep's staff would not be members of the district's collective bargaining units.
If approved, the Board of Education would retain oversight of both schools and likely require Madison Prep to submit to annual progress reviews and a five year performance review, both of which would determine if the school should be allowed to continue operating beyond its first five-year contract.
"We have worked for six months to reach agreement with MMSD's administration and Madison Teachers Incorporated on how Madison Prep could operate as a part of the school district and its collective bargaining units while retaining the core elements of its program design and remain cost effective," said Board Chair David Cagigal.
Cagigal further stated, "From the beginning, we were willing to change several aspects of our school design in order to find common ground with MMSD and MTI to operate Madison Prep as a school whose staff would be employed by the district. We achieved agreement on most positions being represented by local unions, including teachers, counselors, custodial staff and food service workers. However, we were not willing to compromise key elements of Madison Prep that were uniquely designed to meet the educational needs of our most at-risk students and close the achievement gap."
During negotiations, MMSD, MTI and the Boards of Madison Prep and the Urban League were informed that Act 10, the state's new law pertaining to collective bargaining, would prohibit MMSD and MTI from providing the flexibility and autonomy Madison Prep would need to effectively implement its model. This included, among other things:
Changing or excluding Madison Prep's strategies for hiring, evaluating and rewarding its principals, faculty and staff for a job well done;
Excluding Madison Prep's plans to contract with multiple providers of psychological and social work services to ensure students and their families receive culturally competent counseling and support, which is not sufficiently available through MMSD; and
Eliminating the school's ability to offer a longer school day and year, which Madison Prep recently learned would prove to be too costly as an MMSD charter school.
On November 1, 2011, after Madison Prep's proposal was submitted to the Board of Education, MMSD shared that operating under staffing and salary provisions listed in the district's existing collective bargaining agreement would cost $13.1 million more in salaries and benefits over five years, as compared to the budget created by the Urban League for Madison Prep's budget.
Cagigal shared, "The week after we submitted our business plan to the Board of Education for consideration, MMSD's administration informed us that they were going to use district averages for salaries, wages and benefits in existing MMSD schools rather than our budget for a new start-up school to determine how much personnel would cost at both Madison Prep schools."
Both MMSD and the Urban League used the same district salary schedule to write their budgets. However, MMSD budgets using salaries of district teachers with 14 years teaching experience and a master's degree while the Urban League budgeted using salaries of teachers with 7 years' experience and a master's degree.
Gloria Ladson Billings, Vice Chair of Madison Prep's Board and the Kellner Professor of Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison stated that, "It has been clear to all parties involved that the Urban League is committed to offering comparable and competitive salaries to its teachers but that with limited resources as a new school, it would have to set salaries and wages at a level that would likely attract educators with less teaching experience than the average MMSD teacher. At the budget level we set, we believe we can accomplish our goal of hiring effective educators and provide them a fair wage for their level of experience."
Madison Prep is also committed to offering bonuses to its entire staff, on top of their salaries, in recognition of their effort and success, as well as the success of their students. This also was not allowed under the current collective bargaining agreement.
Summarizing the decision of Madison Prep's Board, Reverend Richard Jones, Pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church and Madison Prep Board member shared, "Our Board has thought deep and hard about additional ways to compromise around the limitations that Act 10 places on our ability to partner with our teachers' union. However, after consulting parents, community partners and the MMSD Board of Education, we ultimately decided that our children need what Madison Prep will offer, and they need it now. A dream deferred is a dream denied, and we must put the needs of our children first and get Madison Prep going right away. That said, we remain committed to finding creative ways to partner with MMSD and the teachers' union, including having the superintendent of MMSD, or his designee, serve on the Board of Madison Prep so innovation and learning can be shared immediately."
Cagigal further stated that, "It is important for the public to understand that our focus from the beginning has been improving the educational and life outcomes of our most vulnerable students. Forty-eight percent high school graduation and 47 percent incarceration rates are just not acceptable; not for one more day. It is unconscionable that only 1% of Black and 7% of Latino high school seniors are ready for college. We must break from the status quo and take bold steps to close the achievement gap, and be ready and willing to share our success and key learning with MMSD and other school districts so that we can positively impact the lives of all of our children."
The Urban League has informed MMSD's administration and Board of Education that it will share with them an updated version of its business plan this evening. The updated plan will request non-instrumentality status for Madison Prep and address key questions posed in MMSD's administrative analysis of the plan that was shared publicly last week.
The Board of Education is expected to vote on the Madison Prep proposal in December 2011.
Copies of the updated plan will be available on the Urban League (www.ulgm.org) and Madison Prep (www.madison-prep) websites after 9pm CST this evening.
For more information, contact Laura DeRoche Perez at Lderoche@ulgm.org or 608.729.1230.
A Madison School Board vote to approve Madison Preparatory Academy has been delayed until at least December after the proposed charter school's board decided to amend its proposal to use nonunion employees.The Madison Prep board voted Wednesday night after an analysis by the school district found the pair of single-sex charter schools, geared toward low-income minority students, would cost $10.4 million more than previously estimated if it were to use union staff.
Superintendent Dan Nerad said the district would have to update its analysis based on the new proposal, which means a vote will not happen Nov. 28. A new time line for approval has not been established.
In announcing Wednesday's decision, the Madison Prep board said the state's new collective bargaining law made the school district and teachers union inflexible about how to pay for employing teachers for longer school days and a longer school year, among other issues.
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Backers of the Madison Preparatory Academy are now recommending establishing the proposed single-sex public charter school as what's known as a "non-instrumentality" of the district.Related: Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes provides his perspective on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school.Ultimately, that means the school's staff would be non-union, and the Urban League-backed charter school would have an unprecedented degree of autonomy in its operations, free from district oversight.
With the recommendation, made at a meeting Wednesday, Madison Prep supporters, the school district and the local School Board wade into uncharted waters.
Because of the change, school officials will need to revise their administrative analysis of the charter school proposal in advance of a School Board vote on whether to approve the Madison Prep plan.
Much more on Madison Prep, here.
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High School teacher Joseph Thomas, suspended for refusing to meet with a district-assigned peer evaluator, said he hopes for a compromise that will put him back in the classroom.Thomas said he met with school district officials for more than an hour Monday and told them he would be willing to be evaluated by a middle school teacher with experience in grades 7 through 12. "As long as they're playing by the rules, I fell that I should too," said Thomas, an 18-year teacher.
If that cannot be arranged, Thomas was told he could be suspended without pay, fired and have 10 days to appeal. There was no comment Monday from the district, which suspended Thomas with pay pending an investigation into behavior officials are calling insubordinate.
News of Thomas's suspension generated a variety of reactions.
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For the first time next year, thousands of Chicago Public Schools teachers will be evaluated based partly on how well their students are doing academically. Many fear they will face dismissal if the standards are not applied fairly."It's going to make people really angry," said Ruth Resnick, a librarian at O'Keefe Elementary School, who spoke last week at a public forum about carrying out a new state law that changes how teachers, principals, librarians and other staff are graded.
But state and district leaders say the new evaluations will be better than the decades-old system now in use. They say more thoughtful and effective evaluations will not only increase student achievement, but also provide teachers with better feedback for how to improve.
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After its big referendum victory last week, Ohio teachers union vice president Bill Leibensperger said "There has always been room to talk. That's what collective bargaining is about. You bring adults around a table to talk about serious issues." He voiced an argument made by union supporters through the fight over Senate Bill 5 (and the similar battle in Wisconsin over public sector union rights): All employees want is the right to bargain; they are more than willing to make concessions during these difficult times.If we want to win the fight for the more immediate future, we're going to need to take on the unions directly, and take over the school boards.And to be sure, you can find examples of unions--of police, firefighters, even teachers--who have agreed to freeze wages or reduce benefits in order to protect the quality of services or keep colleagues from being laid off. But they are the exceptions that prove the rule.
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A new analysis (PDF) by the Madison school district shows that the budget submitted by the Urban League of Greater Madison for a pair of sex-segregated charter schools could potentially cost the district an additional $13 million over the schools' first five years.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.The new numbers came as a shock to Urban League president Kaleem Caire, who says that Madison Prep may pull out of a tentative agreement with Madison Teachers, Inc., that would require Madison Prep to hire mostly union staff.
"It's become clear to us that the most reasonable path to ensure the success of these kids is as a non-instrumentality," says Caire. "Others on our board want to look at a couple of other options, so we're looking at those before we make that final determination."
One of those options would be to scale back the program, including the proposed longer school days and extended school year.
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On Nov. 10, Spokane Public Schools hosted a lovely “Breakfast for Community Leaders.” The district’s goal was to assure well-connected and like-minded folks in the city that – as the district put it – it’s “better preparing all students for success after graduation.” A few students also were brought in to “share their stories about the effectiveness of that preparation and what high school is like today.”
Superintendent Nancy Stowell began the breakfast by saying she wanted to “put to rest” the “fingerpointing and blame” the district faced during the 2011 board election. Here are a few examples of how she put things to rest.
- Stowell praised the district for higher graduation rates, saying the next challenge is college readiness. Wasn't college readiness always the goal? Most parents think so. So, the district is letting more of the kids leave, and at some point, they'll start getting them ready for postsecondary life? How does that work?
- Stowell showed us how enrollment is increasing in Advanced Placement classes. Had she shown AP pass rates -- we also would have seen a precipitous drop in the percentage passing, and an alarming drop in the average AP grade.
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Wisconsin (and just about every other state) is involved in developing new state tests. That work is one of the requirements of getting a waiver and, if a bill ever emerges form Congress, it will almost certainly continue to require every state to do testing.The oft-criticized WKCE often provides grist for "successes". Sometimes, rarely, the truth about its low standards is quietly mentioned.But the new tests aren't scheduled to be in place for three years - in the fall of 2014. So this fall and for at least the next two, Wisconsin's school children and schools will go through the elaborate process of taking a test that still gets lots of attention but seems to be less useful each year it lives on.
I remember a conversation with a well educated Madison parent earlier this year. "My child is doing well, the WKCE reports him scoring in the 95th percentile in math"......
www.wisconsin2.org is worth a visit.
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Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad:
Critique of the District (MMSD)
Page # 23: MPA - No College Going Culture among Madison's New Student Population
The data on student performance and course-taking patterns among students in MMSD paint a clear picture. There is not a prevalent college going culture among Black, Hispanic and some Asian student populations enrolled in MMSD. In fact, the opposite appears to be true. The majority of these students are failing to complete a rigorous curriculum that would adequately prepare them for college and 21st century jobs. Far too many are also failing to complete college requirements, such as the ACT, or failing to graduate from high school.Page # 23: No College Going Culture among Madison's New Student Population -
MMSD Response
MMSD has taken many steps towards ensuring college attendance eligibility and readiness for our students of color. Efforts include:AVID/TOPS
East High School became the first MMSD school to implement AVID in the 2007-2008 school year. Teens of Promise or TOPS became synonymous with AVID as the Boys and Girls Club committed to an active partnership to support our program. AVID/TOPS students are defined as:
"AVID targets students in the academic middle - B, C, and even D students - who have the desire to go to college and the willingness to work hard. These are students who are capable of completing rigorous curriculum but are falling short of their
potential. Typically, they will be the first in their families to attend college, and many are from low-income or minority families. AVID pulls these students out of their unchallenging courses and puts them on the college track: acceleration instead of remediation."Source: http://www.avid.org/abo_whatisavid.html
The MMSD has 491 students currently enrolled in AVID/TOPS. Of that total, 380 or 77% of students are minority students (27% African-American, 30% Latino, 10% Asian, 10% Multiracial). 67% of MMSD AVID/TOPS students qualify for free and reduced lunch. The 2010- 2011 school year marked an important step in the District's implementation of AVID/TOPS. East High School celebrated its first cohort of AVID/TOPS graduates. East Highs AVID/TOPS class of 2011 had a 100% graduation rate and all of the students are enrolled in a 2-year or 4- year college. East High is also in the beginning stages of planning to become a national demonstration site based on the success of their program. This distinction, determined by the AVID regional site team, would allow high schools from around the country to visit East High School and learn how to plan and implement AVID programs in their schools.
MMSD has a partnership with the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE) and they are conducting a controlled study of the effects of AVID/TOPS students when compared to a comparison groups of students. Early analysis of the study reveals positive gains in nearly every category studied.
AVID pilot studies are underway at two MMSD middle schools and support staff has been allocated in all eleven middle schools to begin building capacity towards a 2012-2013 AVID Middle School experience. The program design is still underway and will take form this summer when school based site teams participate in the AVID Summer Institute training.
I found this commentary on the oft criticized WKCE exams fascinating (one day, wkce results are useful, another day - this document - WKCE's low benchmark is a problem)" (page 7):
Page # 28: MPA - Student Performance Measures:
85% of Madison Prep's Scholars will score at proficient or advanced levels in reading, math, and science on criterion referenced achievement tests after three years of enrollment.90% of Scholars will graduate on time.
100% of students will complete the SAT and ACT assessments before graduation with 75% achieving a composite score of 22 or higher on the ACT and 1100 on the SAT (composite verbal and math).
100% of students will complete a Destination Plan before graduation.
100% of graduates will qualify for admissions to a four-year college after graduation.
100% of graduates will enroll in postsecondary education after graduation.Page # 28: Student Performance Measures - MMSD Response:
WKCE scores of proficient are not adequate to predict success for college and career readiness. Cut scores equated with advanced are needed due to the low benchmark of Wisconsin's current state assessment system. What specific steps or actions will be provided for students that are far below proficiency and/or require specialized support services to meet the rigorous requirements of IB?Recommendation:
No Child Left Behind requires 100% proficiency by 2014. Madison Prep must be held to the same accountability standards as MMSD.
Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school, here.
Madison School District links & notes on Madison Prep.
TJ Mertz comments, here.
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Single-gender classrooms, and, to a lesser degree, single-gender schools, are a hot trend in education circles. In less than a decade, Wisconsin has gone from zero classrooms segregated by gender to more than a dozen scattered across the state. That mirrors increasing numbers throughout the country.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.But there's growing pushback from researchers, who claim the desire to separate boys from girls in school is based on what they call "pseudoscience."
In September, the prestigious journal, Science, published results of a study that showed sex segregation did not contribute to increased academic performance and harmed students by making sex stereotypes acceptable. Seven well-regarded researchers, including UW-Madison psychology professor Janet Hyde, write in the article, "A new curriculum, like a new drug or factory production method, often yields a short-term gain because people are motivated by novelty and belief in the innovation. Novelty-based enthusiasm, sample bias and anecdotes account for much of the glowing characterization of (single-sex) education in the media."
In addition, the American Civil Liberties Union has successfully sued on the basis of sex discrimination, recently forcing a public high school in Pittsburgh to abandon its single-sex classrooms and a school board in Louisiana to end its practice of separating boys and girls at a middle schoo
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The Wall Street Journal's excellent series on jobless young people features an article today on why students study liberal arts in college over STEM subjects, and why so many would-be STEM majors shift to liberal arts, despite the apparent loss of career prospects. Larry Ribstein follows up with commentary suggesting that law school becomes a logical option for students who were badly guided in their choices of majors -- leading them to liberal arts with few skills and few prospects in today's world.I want to reiterate something I wrote about a few weeks ago about the incentive structures for students. I'm basing this on my current experience as a law professor who talks a lot with students at a mid-tier law school and what led them there, as well as my experience as a parent of a student who will be doing humanities as her major at Rice, a school with world class STEM and world class humanities.
There are a lot of smart students out there who will nonetheless not be able to compete in world class institutions in STEM. Why? They might have, say, near 800s in verbal and writing, and mid 600s in math on the SAT. (This matches up, btw, to Gene Expression blog's mapping of the GRE scores of various college majors for the highest testing of the humanities majors -- the philosophy students, who have about exactly those scores. I'll put up the charts in a later post, but very roughly the verbal and math scores flip for the highest scoring of the sciences -- physics, and are somewhere in the middle for the highest scoring of the social sciences, economics.) At a school like Rice -- and any university ranked above it -- specialization has already taken place, sorting by subject area. A tiny handful of students can be true polymaths, but that's hardly the norm. Instead, the STEM students are sought competitively on a world-wide basis, and it will be academic suicide and frankly impossible for a student who is not at the top of those competitive areas even to pass the classes.
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It's time to restructure all of our schools to become inclusive of all of our children.Cheryl M. Jorgensen, Ph.D., is a member of the affiliate faculty with the National Center on Inclusive Education at the Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire. In 2008 she received the National Down Syndrome Congress Education Award for her leadership and pioneering research supporting the inclusion of students with Down syndrome. She has written this open letter to Shael Polakow-Suransky, the chief academic officer for New York City schools.We have reached the tipping point where it is no longer educationally or morally defensible to continue to segregate students with disabilities. We shouldn't be striving to educate children in the least restrictive environment but rather in the most inclusive one.
Inclusion is founded on social justice principles in which all students are presumed competent and welcomed as valued members of all general education classes and extra-curricular activities in their local schools -- participating and learning alongside their same-age peers in general education instruction based on the general curriculum, and experiencing meaningful social relationships.
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Excellent teachers and excellent education are inseparable. In fact, teacher quality is one of the most important determinants of whether a child succeeds in school and continues to college.Related: Teacher evaluation system a good start, but seems not to go far enough by Chris Rickert:A handful of states have been working hard to recruit and nurture great teachers -- starting with strong, effective evaluation systems. Tennessee has led the charge.
When it comes to improving public schools, ideas can only take us so far. It's effective implementation of those ideas that yields results. Last year, the state passed bold, bipartisan legislation, the First to the Top Act, to create a rigorous teacher and principal evaluation system that has the potential to set an example for the rest of the country. The legislation was supported by the teachers' union, the business community and a wide range of education stakeholders.
It was encouraging to see the state Department of Public Instruction release a framework for evaluating public school teachers that is the product of much time and thought by a broad array of smart people.I can even ignore that it took until now to devise such a framework when the quality of public school teachers and, indeed, public education itself have been among the hottest of public policy topics since, well, forever.
Harder to ignore is that while the state took a decidedly top-down approach to grading teachers, it's taking a decidedly hands-off approach to how districts use the grades.
DPI's 17-page "preliminary report and recommendations" employs plenty of euphemisms and academia-speak to go into great detail about technical aspects of the proposed evaluation system without saying how the evaluations should be used when it comes to paying teachers -- or dismissing bad ones.
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Related: Madison School District Identified for Improvement (DIFI); Documentation for the Wisconsin DPI
1. Develop or Revise a District Improvement PlanPerhaps the No Child Left Behind requirement waivers that Education Secretary Duncan has discussed remove the urgency to address these issues. Of course, the benchmark used to measure student progress is the oft-criticized WKCE "Wisconsin, Mississippi Have "Easy State K-12 Exams" - NY Times".Address the fundamental teaching and learning needs of schools in the Local Education Agency (LEA), especially the academic problems o f low-achieving students.
MMSD has been identified by the State of Wisconsin as a District Identified for Improvement, or DIFI. We entered into this status based on District WKCE assessment scores. The data indicates that sub-groups of students-African American students, English Language Learner Students with Disabilities or Economically Disadvantaged -did not score high enough on the WKCE in one or more areas of reading, math or test participation to meet state criteria.
Under No Child Left Behind, 100% of students are expected to achieve proficient or advanced on the WKCE in four areas by 2014. Student performance goals have been raised every year on a regular schedule since 2001, making targets more and more difficult to reach each year. In addition to the curriculum changes being implemented, the following assessments are also new or being implemented during the 2011-12 school year (see Attachment 1):
Related: Comparing Wisconsin & Texas: Updating the 2009 Scholastic Bowl Longhorns 17 - Badgers 1; Thrive's "Advance Now Competitive Assessment Report".
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Peter Theron via a kind Don Severson email:
Earlier this year Wisconsin teachers and their supporters compared Wisconsin and Texas academically and claimed that Wisconsin had better achievement because it ranked higher on ACT/SAT scores. The fact that this claim ignored the ethnic composition of the states, prompted David Burge to use the National Assessment of Educational Progress(NAEP) to compare educational achievement within the same ethnic groups. His conclusion, based on the 2009 NAEP in Reading, Mathematics, and Science (3 subject areas times 2 grades, 4th and 8th, times 3 ethnicities, white, black, and hispanic equals 18 comparisons), was Longhorns 17 - Badgers 1.Related: Comparing Madison, Wisconsin & College Station, Texas.http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.html
The 2011 NAEP results are now available for Reading and
Mathematics. The updated conclusion (2 subject areas times 2 grades, 4th and 8th, times 3 ethnicities, white, black, and hispanic equals 12 comparisons) is Longhorns 12 - Badgers 0. Not only did Texas students outperform Wisconsin students in every one of the twelve ethnicity-controlled comparisons, but Texas students exceeded the national average in all 12 comparisons. Wisconsin students were above the average 3 times, below the average 8 times, and tied the average once.
Again, as in 2009, the achievement gaps were smaller in Texas than in Wisconsin.2011 Data from http://nationsreportcard.gov/
2011 4th Grade MathWhite students: Texas 253, Wisconsin 251 (national average 249)
Black students: Texas 232, Wisconsin 217 (national 224)
Hispanic students: Texas 235, Wisconsin 228 (national 229)2011 8th Grade Math
White students: Texas 304, Wisconsin 295 (national 293)
Black students: Texas 277, Wisconsin 256 (national 262)
Hispanic students: Texas 283, Wisconsin 270 (national 269)2011 4th Grade Reading
White students: Texas 233, Wisconsin 227 (national 230)
Black students: Texas 210, Wisconsin 196 (national 205)
Hispanic students: Texas 210, Wisconsin 202 (national 205)2011 8th Grade Reading
White students: Texas 274, Wisconsin 272 (national 272)
Black students: Texas 252, Wisconsin 240 (national 248)
Hispanic students: Texas 254, Wisconsin 248 (national 251)2009 data compiled by David Burge from NAEP
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.html
2009 4th Grade MathWhite students: Texas 254, Wisconsin 250 (national average 248)
Black students: Texas 231, Wisconsin 217 (national 222)
Hispanic students: Texas 233, Wisconsin 228 (national 227)2009 8th Grade Math
White students: Texas 301, Wisconsin 294 (national 294)
Black students: Texas 272, Wisconsin 254 (national 260)
Hispanic students: Texas 277, Wisconsin 268 (national 260)2009 4th Grade Reading
White students: Texas 232, Wisconsin 227 (national 229)
Black students: Texas 213, Wisconsin 192 (national 204)
Hispanic students: Texas 210, Wisconsin 202 (national 204)2009 8th Grade Reading
White students: Texas 273, Wisconsin 271 (national 271)
Black students: Texas 249, Wisconsin 238 (national 245)
Hispanic students: Texas 251, Wisconsin 250 (national 248)2009 4th Grade Science
White students: Texas 168, Wisconsin 164 (national 162)
Black students: Texas 139, Wisconsin 121 (national 127)
Hispanic students: Wisconsin 138, Texas 136 (national 130)2009 8th Grade Science
White students: Texas 167, Wisconsin 165 (national 161)
Black students: Texas 133, Wisconsin 120 (national 125)
Hispanic students: Texas 141, Wisconsin 134 (national 131)
Thrive released its "Advance Now Competitive Assessment Report," which compares the Madison Region to competitors Austin, TX, Des Moines, IA, and Lincoln, NE, across the major areas of People, Prosperity and Place, 3MB PDF via a kind Kaleem Caire email.
Finally, www.wisconsin2.org is worth a visit.
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Andrew Biggs & Jason Richwine:
A common story line in American education policy is that public school teachers are underpaid--"desperately underpaid," according to Education Secretary Arne Duncan in a recent speech. As former first lady Laura Bush put it: "Salaries are too low. We all know that. We need to figure out a way to pay teachers more."Good teachers are crucial to a strong economy and a healthy civil society, and they should be paid at a level commensurate with their skills. But the evidence shows that public school teachers' total compensation amounts to roughly $1.50 for every $1 that their skills could garner in a private sector job.
How could that be? First, consider salaries. Public school teachers do receive salaries 19.3% lower than similarly-educated private workers, according to our analysis of Census Bureau data. However, a majority of public school teachers were education majors in college, and more than two in three received their highest degree (typically a master's) in an education-related field. A salary comparison that controls only for years spent in school makes no distinction between degrees in education and those in biology, mathematics, history or other demanding fields.
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Lots of kids have tried lentils. But what about Ethiopian-style lentils, accompanied by injera bread, couscous and cucumber salad?Fourth graders in Santa Fe, N.M. prepared this lunch feast themselves as part of a nutrition education program called Cooking with Kids. And nutrition experts say programs like this one are not just about expanding timid kids' palates.
Even as home economics classes have been phased out in recent years, some schools are bringing cooking back. And a new study that evaluates cooking curriculum says these hands-on classes do more than just prepare students to cook a decent meal.
"Teachers and principals are seeing how the classroom cooking experience helps support critical thinking, collaboration, and problem-solving skills," says study author Leslie Cunningham-Sabo, a nutrition researcher at Colorado State University. The study appears this week in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.
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Today, I walked my first-grade son to our neighborhood public school before joining over 500 leaders converging on New York City to make tangible commitments to promote economic mobility in America at the Opportunity Nation summit. I told Matthew that people were coming virtually every sector -- business, education, non-profit and community organizations, religious institutions and the military -- to focus on how to provide him and his peers from every background a great education and a shot at the American dream. When I dropped Matthew off at his school's front door, he looked at me and warned me with a big smile not to follow him inside -- something I occasionally do partly to make him laugh and partly out of that desire to support him wherever he goes.I didn't follow my son inside that schoolhouse door. But I have been working hard to determine what commitments I can personally make to provide our kids and all of America's children with tools they can use to create opportunity once they walk as young adults out of our sight-line into America's future.
One must know where one is in order to determine where to go and how to get there, but today's parents face significant challenges in that regard.
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William Hughes Fitzhugh, Founder & Publisher, The Concord Review
1. Please tell us about yourself. What inspired you to start The Concord Review?
Diane Ravitch, an American historian of education, wrote a column in The New York Times in 1985 about the ignorance of history among 17-year-olds in the United States, based on a recent study of 7,000 students, and as a history teacher myself at the time, I was interested to see that what concerned me was a national problem. I did have a few students at my high school who did more than they had to in history, and when I began a sabbatical leave in 1986, I began to think about these issues. In March 1987, it occurred to me that if I had one or two very good students writing history papers for me and perhaps my colleagues had one or two, then in 20,000 United States high schools (and more overseas) there must be a large number of high school students doing exemplary history research papers. In June of 1987, I incorporated The Concord Review to provide a journal for such good work in history. In August 1987, I sent a four-page brochure calling for papers to every high school in the United States, 3,500 high schools in Canada, and 1,500 schools overseas. The papers started coming in, and in the Fall of 1988 I was able to publish the first issue (of now 89 issues) of The Concord Review.
2. What makes for a great history research essay?
In order to write a great history essay it is first necessary to know a lot of history. Students who read as much as they can about a historical topic have a better chance of writing an exemplary history paper. Of course they must make an effort to write so that readers can understand what they are saying and so they will be interested in what they are writing, and they must re-write their papers, but without knowing a good deal about their topic, their paper will probably not be very interesting or very good.
3. Please tell us about some of the most outstanding essays you have received. What made them special?
In 1995, I as able to begin awarding the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes for the best few papers from the 44 published in each volume year of The Concord Review. Many of these papers are now on our website at www.tcr.org, and students and teachers who are interested may read some there. I have several favorites and would be glad to send some to anyone who asks me at fitzhugh@tcr.org.
4. Please tell us about some of your most interesting authors. Where did they go to college, what did they study, and what are they doing now?
About 30% of our authors have gone to Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford and Yale, and many have gone to other good colleges, such as those at Cambridge and Oxford. Three, that I know of, have been named Rhodes Scholars. I work alone, so that I am not able to follow up on authors very well. I know that many are doctors and lawyers and some are professors and entrepreneurs, but I have lost track of almost all of them, for lack of funding and staff to help me keep in touch with them.
5. Please tell us how you evaluate and select essays for publication in The Concord Review.
The purpose of The Concord Review is two-fold. We want to recognize exemplary work in history by secondary students (from 39 countries so far) but we also want to distribute their work to inspire their peers to read more history and work harder on their own research papers, because being able to read nonfiction and write term papers are important skills for future success in college and beyond, and also because students should know more history if they want to be educated. So I look for papers that are historically accurate, well-researched, serious and worth reading.
6. What are your favorite books and why?
I was an English Literature major at Harvard College and I read English Literature at Cambridge for one year, and I still enjoy Dickens, Thackeray, Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, and so on, but I also have a number of favorite historians, such as Martin Gilbert, David McCullough, David Hackett Fischer, James McPherson, G.M. Trevelyan, John Prebble, Max Hastings, and others. I also read a fair number of books on education and contemporary intellectual culture.
7. Do you have any advice on how to write well?
As I suggested, there is no substitute for knowing a lot about the subject you are writing about. I think it helps to read your drafts to a friend or family member as you go along as well. You will find all sorts of things you want to improve or correct as you offer what you write to another person. So, read (study), write, and re-write...that is about it. And read the good writing of other authors.
8. Do you have advice on how students can best prepare themselves to do well in college?
There is a great deal of emphasis, at least in the United States, on math and science, but, in my view, there is much too little attention here on the importance for secondary students of being able to read complete nonfiction books and to write serious (e.g. 6,000-word) research papers. I have heard from a few of my authors that they are mobbed when they get to college by their peers who never had to write a research paper when they were in high school and so have no idea how to do it. Students who write Extended Essays for the International Baccalaureate Diploma have an advantage, as do the many students from all over the world who write history research papers on their own as independent studies and send them to The Concord Review.
Chinese International Schools' website, Hong Kong.
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The stress was overwhelming.For years, this veteran teacher had received exemplary evaluations but now was feeling pressured to raise her students' test scores. Her principal criticized her teaching and would show up to take notes on her class. She knew the material would be used against her one day.
"My principal told me right to my face that she -- she was feeling sorry for me because I don't know how to teach," the instructor said.
The Los Angeles educator, who did not want to be identified, is one of about three dozen in the state accused this year of cheating, lesser misconduct or mistakes on standardized achievement tests.
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Design Team Report & Recommendation:
1. Guiding PrinciplesRelated: Wisconsin 25th in 2011 NAEP Reading, Comparing Rhetoric Regarding Texas (10th) & Wisconsin NAEP Scores: Texas Hispanic and African-American students rank second on eighth-grade NAEP math test, Wisconsin, Mississippi Have "Easy State K-12 Exams" - NY Times and Seidenberg endorses using the Massachusetts model exam for teachers of reading (MTEL 90), which was developed with input from reading scientists. He also supports universal assessment to identify students who are at risk, and he mentioned the Minnesota Reading Corps as a model of reading tutoring that would be good to bring to Wisconsin.The Design Team believes that the successful development and implementation of the new performance-based evaluation system is dependent upon the following guiding principles,
which define the central focus of the entire evaluation system. The guiding principles of the educator evaluation system are:The ultimate goal of education is student learning. Effective educators are essential to achieving that goal for all students. We believe it is imperative that students have highly effective teams of educators to support them throughout their public education. We further believe that effective practice leading to better educational achievement requires continuous improvement and monitoring.
A strong evaluation system for educators is designed to provide information that supports decisions intended to ensure continuous individual and system effectiveness. The system must be well-articulated, manageable
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Jason Richwine, Ph.D. & Andrew G. Biggs, Ph.D.:
The teaching profession is crucial to America's soci- ety and economy, but public-school teachers should receive compensation that is neither higher nor lower than market rates. Do teachers currently receive the proper level of compensation? Standard analytical approaches to this question compare teacher salaries to the salaries of similarly educated and experienced private-sector workers, and then add the value of employer contributions toward fringe benefits. These simple comparisons would indicate that public-school teachers are undercompensated. However, comparing teachers to non-teachers presents special challenges not accounted for in the existing literature.First, formal educational attainment, such as a degree acquired or years of education completed, is not a good proxy for the earnings potential of school teach- ers. Public-school teachers earn less in wages on aver- age than non-teachers with the same level of education, but teacher skills generally lag behind those of other workers with similar "paper" qualifications. We show that:
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Leslie Postal and Denise-Marie Balona:
Teachers have been under a hot spotlight in recent years, blamed for public education's shortcomings. Now the colleges that train them are feeling the heat.U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is calling for reforms in the nation's education schools, arguing too many are "mediocre" and send out graduates who aren't ready to teach.
In a speech last month, Duncan noted 62 percent of new teachers reported feeling unprepared. He called that figure from a 2006 study "staggering."
The Florida Department of Education (Reports) has crunched student-test-score data and tied results back to teachers' education schools, looking to tease out which institutions are best. That effort could ramp up into a more-detailed rating system for all Florida's education schools.
The most intense, and controversial, scrutiny likely will come when teacher colleges find themselves graded A to F next year, with the results posted in U.S. News & World Report.
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Augenblick, Palaich and Associates:
As part of the School Funding Reform Act of 2008, New Jersey changed how special education was funded. Prior to 2008, special education students in New Jersey were funded based on their level of need. Each student was placed into one of four need tiers, with higher per pupil funding associated with the higher need tiers. A study done in 2003 by Center for Special Education Finance (CSEF) showed that New Jersey had higher per pupil spending for special education than the national average. 1 The study suggested switching to a census-based special education funding model might help New Jersey control its spending. In 2008, the state made the switch to a census-based model.New Jersey Left Behind:Under a census-based funding model all districts are funded for the same percentage of special education students. For the 2008-09 through 2010-11 school years the funding percentage was 14.69%. (This percentage does not include students receiving only speech services, who are funded separately.) Each district's special education funding, excluding extraordinary aid2, is calculated by multiplying the district's resident student population by 14.69% to determine the number of special education students to fund. This funded count is then multiplied by the special education per pupil funding amount to determine the total special education funding allotted to the district. The new system then wealth equalizes two thirds of this amount, splitting it up into a state and local share, and then funds the remaining third entirely from the state. Wealth equalization is a process commonly used in school funding formulas that determines what percentage of funding the state pays based inversely on the relative wealth of each individual district (the wealthier the district, the lower percentage the state pays). It is important to note that districts also receive extraordinary aid for special education students who are extremely expensive to serve. This aid is beyond the basic special education funding.
First, a little back story. New Jersey currently has about 185,000 kids who are eligible for special education services, out of a total enrollment of about 1.3 million. Before SFRA, costs for special ed kids was calculated based on the individual level of need. But after the passage of SFRA, we went to a census-based model which calculates state aid for kids with disabilities based on a percentage above cost-per-pupil of 14.69%. The idea behind the census-based model was that we could control our special ed costs, which are among the highest across the nation.The formula is also weighted for high high cost-disabilities (like autism, emotional disturbances, deaf/blind, severe cognitive impairment); moderate-cost disabilities (like moderate cognitive impairment, auditory); and low-cost disabilities (like specific learning disabilities or communication-impaired).
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With only 24 days remaining till the Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education will vote on the Madison Preparatory Academy charter and only 9 days until the MMSD administration is required to issue an analysis of their proposal (and that is assuming the analysis is issued on a Sunday, otherwise we are talking only one week), there are still many, many unanswered questions concerning the school. Too many unanswered questions.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter school, here.Where to start?
All officially submitted information (and more) can be found on the district web site (scroll down for the latest iterations, and thanks to the district public info team for doing this).
The issues around instrumentality/non instrumentality and the status of staff in relation to existing union contracts have rightfully been given much attention. It is my understanding that there has been some progress, but things seem to be somewhat stalled on those matters.
Do current schools face the same scrutiny as the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter?
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Madison School District Superintendent Dan Nerad 15MB PDF
1. Develop or Revise a District Improvement PlanClusty Search: District Identified for Improvement (DIFI)Address the fundamental teaching and learning needs of schools in the Local Education Agency (LEA), especially the academic problems o f low-achieving students.
MMSD has been identified by the State of Wisconsin as a District Identified for Improvement, or DIFI. We entered into this status based on District WKCE assessment scores. The data indicates that sub-groups of students-African American students, English Language Learner Students with Disabilities or Economically Disadvantaged -did not score high enough on the WKCE in one or more areas of reading, math or test participation to meet state criteria.
Under No Child Left Behind, 100% of students are expected to achieve proficient or advanced on the WKCE in four areas by 2014. Student performance goals have been raised every year on a regular schedule since 2001, making targets more and more difficult to reach each year. In addition to the curriculum changes being implemented, the following assessments are also new or being implemented during the 2011-12 school year (see Attachment 1):
Attached are six documents describing programs being implemented for the 2011-12 school year to address the needs of all students.
- The Measures of Academic Progress (MAP): Grades 3-7. MAP is incorporated into the MMSD Balanced Assessment Plan as a computer adaptive benchmark assessment tool for grades 3-7. Administration of the assessment was implemented in spring, 2011.
- Cognitive Ability Test (CogAT): Grades 2 and 5. As proposed in the Talented and Gifted Plan approved by the Board of Education in August, 2009, the district requested approval of funds to purchase and score the Cognitive Ability Test (CogAT) which was administered in February, 2011, to all second and fifth graders.
- The EPAS System: Explore Grades 8-9, Plan Grade 10, ACT Grade 11. The EPAS system provides a longitudinal, systematic approach to educational and career planning, assessment, instructional support, and evaluation. The system focuses on the integrated, higher-order thinking skills students develop in grades K-12 that are important for success both during and after high school. The EPAS system is linked to the College and Career Readiness standards so that the information gained about student performance can be used to inform instruction around those standards.
1. Strategic Plan Document: Year Three (Attachment 2)
2. Strategic Plan Summary of Three Main Focus Areas (Attachment 3)
3. Addressing the Needs of All Learners and Closing the Achievement Gap Through K-12 Alignment (Attachment 4)
4. Scope and Sequence (Attachment 5)
5. The Ideal Graduate from MMSD (Attachment 6)
6. 4K Update to BOE- Program and Sites- (Attachment 7)
Madison School District administrators aren't keeping track of the best classroom instruction. Not all principals create a culture of high expectations for all students. And teachers aren't using the same research-based methods.Such inconsistencies across the district and within schools -- stemming from Madison's tradition of school and teacher autonomy -- are hurting student achievement, according to a district analysis required under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
"There are problems within the entire system," Superintendent Dan Nerad said. "We do have good practice, but we need to be more consistent and have more fidelity to our practices."
Inconsistencies in teaching and building culture can affect low-income students, who are more likely to move from school to school, and make teacher training less effective, Nerad said.
The analysis is contained in an improvement plan the district is scheduled to discuss with the School Board on Monday and to deliver next week to the state Department of Public Instruction.
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Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis has had some ugly squabbles with Rahm Emanuel--the longer school day battles, for starters, including his recent charge that the union is "cheating children out of an education"--and, in my opinion, she has often emerged the loser.Last week, she filed the CTU's latest lawsuit against the city, charging that the school board is using its "TeacherFit" questionnaire to hire teachers who are willing to buck the union.
The camera doesn't favor her, and in her battle to stop the new mayor from pushing through a longer school day, she seems on the side of outmoded, lumbering labor. Who, after all, wants to deny Chicago public school kids more time for math, reading, lunch, and recess?
But in person, Lewis, 58--South Sider (grew up in Hyde Park, now lives in the Oakland neighborhood), CPS lifer (Kenwood, '71), daughter of two teachers, former high-school chemistry teacher (Sullivan, Lane Tech, King College Prep), wife of a now-retired CPS P.E. teacher--has a sharp sense of humor, and intelligence and articulateness to spare. After an hour spent with her at a conference table at the CTU's headquarters in the Merchandise Mart, if someone asked me to choose a few words to describe her, I'd say "substantial, self-confident, direct."
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I've had the privilege of meeting with union leaders from around the country to explain what Teach Plus is. Many love it; plenty are skeptics.In every case, I begin with three opening points. First, I describe our mission as very similar to the union's: to retain excellent teachers in the classroom and strengthen the teaching profession. Second, I talk about our belief that leadership opportunities are a key lever to helping promising young teachers extend their commitment to the classroom. Third, I state my personal belief in the value in the role of unions and describe the role Teach Plus has been able to play in helping a subset of Gen Y teachers to see that value for the first time. We're usually off to a good start.
Then I say we focus our work on high-performing teachers* in years 3-10. It is at that point that many union leaders begin scratching their heads about whether our presence in a city will be a headache or a help. By design, our approach is not about the unity and equality of all teachers. In that way, it is at odds with an industrial union model.
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Winnie Hu, via a kind Carla McDonald email:
Charter schools, publicly financed but independently operated, have encountered fierce resistance in many suburban communities, criticized by parents and traditional educators who view them as a drain on resources.But since the Amani Public Charter School won state approval to open this year, officials at the Mount Vernon City School District have taken that opposition to a new level.
The district, in Westchester County, sued the State Education Department and the Amani school this year, calling the approval an "arbitrary and capricious" decision, and sought to block Amani from moving forward. It has refused to turn over state, federal and local aid money to Amani, so the state has begun paying the charter directly. During the summer, district workers were sent to knock on the doors of Amani students to check that they lived in the district, a tactic that angered some parents. And in recent weeks, the district has delayed providing special education services to Amani students.
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Dr. Armand A. Fusco, via a kind email:
"No one has been able to stop the steady plunge of young black Americans into a socioeconomic abyss." Bob Herbert / Syndicated columnistEverything you wanted to know about urban education and its solutions!
For over 50 years this shame of the nation and education has remained as a plague upon its most vulnerable children. All reform efforts involving billions of dollars have not alleviated this scourge in our public schools. The rhetoric has been profound, but it has been immune to any antidote or action and it is getting worse; but it doesn't have to be!
The following quotes summarize the 285 pages and over 400 references from my book.
Edited Insightful Quotes The explanations and references are found in the contents of the book.
- School pushouts is a time bomb exploding economically and socially every twenty-six seconds
- Remember what the basic problem is--they are in all respects illiterate and that is why they are failing.
- Every three years the number of dropouts and pushouts adds up to a city bigger than Chicago.
- Politics trump the needs of all children to achieve their potential.
- One reason that the high school dropout crisis is known as the "silent epidemic" is that the problem is frequently minimized.
- Simply stated black male students can achieve high outcomes; the tragedy is most states and districts choose not to do so.
- In the majority of schools, the conditions necessary for Black males to systematically succeed in education do not exist.
- While one in four American children is Latino--the largest and fastest growing minority group in the United States--they are chronically underserved by the nation's public schools and have the lowest education attainment levels in the country.
- Miseducation is the most powerful example of cruel and unusual punishment; it's exacted on children innocent of any crime.
- Traditional proposals for improving education--more money, smaller classes, etc.--aren't getting the job done.
- The public school system is designed for Black and other minority children to fail.
- The U.S. Department of Education has never even acknowledged that the problem exists.
- Though extensive records are kept...unions and school boards do not want productivity analysis done.
- Educational bureaucracies like the NEA are at the center of America's dysfunctional minority public schools.
- Does bonus pay alone improve student outcomes? We found that it does not.
- Performance pay is equivalent to "thirty pieces of silver."
- Data necessary to distinguish cost-effective schools are all available, but our system has been built to make their use difficult.
- Districts give credit for students who fail standardized tests on the expectation that students someday will pass.
- We saw some schools that were low performing and had a very high parent satisfaction rate.
- We're spending ever-greater sums of money, yet our high school graduates' test results have been absolutely flat.
- America's primary and secondary schools have many problems, but an excess of excellence is not one of them.
- Not only is our use of incarceration highly concentrated among men with little schooling, but corrections systems are doing less to correct the problem by reducing educational opportunities for the growing number of prisoners.
- Although states will require school districts to implement the common core state standards, the majority of these states are not requiring districts to make complementary changes in curriculum and teacher programs.
- We can show that merit pay is counterproductive, that closing down struggling schools (or firing principals) makes no sense.
- The gap between our articulated ideals and our practice is an international embarrassment.
- It's interesting to note that despite the growing support by minority parents for charters, the NAACP, the National Urban League, and other civil rights groups collectively condemn charter schools.
- Public schools do respond constructively to competition by raising their achievement and productivity.
- Gates Foundation has also stopped funding the small school concept because no results could be shown.
- The policies we are following today are unlikely to improve our schools.
- Our country still does a better job of tracking a package than it does a student.
- Indeed, we give these children less of all the things that both research and experience tell us make a difference.
- Reformers have little knowledge of what is working and how to scale what works.
- The fact is that illiteracy has persisted in all states for generations, particularly among the most vulnerable children, and getting worse is a testament that national policy and creative leadership rings hollow.
- We can't change a child's home life, but what we can do is affect what they do here at school.
- Only a third of young Americans will leave high school with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed.
- Black churches can no longer play gospel in the sanctuaries while kids drop out into poverty and prison. They must embrace school reform and take the role that Catholic churches have done for so long and for so many.
- There is only one way to equalize education for all--technology.
- Whatever made you successful in the past won't in the future.
- The real potential of technology for improving learning remains largely untapped in schools today.
- Can't read, can't learn, can't get a job, can't survive, so can't stay within the law.
- Of the 19.4 million government workers, half work in education, which rivals health care for the most wasteful sector in America.
- The only people not being betrayed are those who feed off our failing education system...that group gets larger every year.
- Mediocrity, not excellence, is the national norm as demonstrated by the deplorable evidence.
- Parents are left to face the bleak reality that their child will be forever stuck in a failing school and a failing system.
- The key is that unless there is accountability, we will never get the right system.
- The very public institutions intended for student learning have become focused instead on adult employment.
- We conclude that the strategies driving the best performing systems are rarely found in the United States.
- No reform has yet lived up to its definition!
- Minority males don't get the beef, they get the leftovers.
- The cotton plantations have become the school plantations (children held in bondage of failing schools) and the dropouts move on to the prison plantations.
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Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via a kind Chan Stroman-Roll email:
Guest Speaker Mark Seidenberg (Donald O. Hebb and Hilldale Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, UW-Madison): Professor Seidenberg gave an excellent presentation on the science of reading and why it is important to incorporate the findings of that science in teaching. Right now there is a huge disconnect between the vast, converged body of science worldwide and instructional practice. Prospective teachers are not learning about reading science in IHE's, and relying on intuition about how to teach reading is biased and can mislead. Teaching older students to read is expensive and difficult. Up-front prevention of reading failure is important, and research shows us it is possible, even for dyslexic students. This will save money, and make the road easier for students to learn and teachers to teach. Seidenberg endorses using the Massachusetts model exam for teachers of reading (MTEL 90), which was developed with input from reading scientists. He also supports universal assessment to identify students who are at risk, and he mentioned the Minnesota Reading Corps as a model of reading tutoring that would be good to bring to Wisconsin.Much more on the Read to Lead Task Force, here.
Lander: Can Seidenberg provide a few examples of things on which the Task Force could reach consensus?Seidenberg: There is a window for teaching basic reading skills that then will allow the child to move on to comprehension. The balanced literacy concept is in conflict with best practices. Classrooms in Wisconsin are too laissez-faire, and the spiraling approach to learning does not align with science.
Michael Brickman: Brickman, the Governor's aide, cut off the discussion with Professor Seidenberg, and said he would be in touch with him later.
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Texas Hispanic and African-American students rank
second on eighth-grade NAEP math test
Texas Education Agency:
Texas Hispanic and African-American students earned the second highest score among their peer groups on the 2011 eighth-grade National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics test. The state's white eighth grade students ranked fourth, missing out on the second place position themselves by less than one point.NAEP math on upward trend, state reading results stableOnly Hispanic students in Montana earned a higher scale score on the math test than did eighth-grade Hispanic Texans. Only African-American students in Hawaii earned a higher average score than did their counterparts in Texas.
White students in the District of Columbia earned an average scale score of 319, the highest score for that ethnic group. Texas students ranked fourth, with less than a fraction of a point separating this group from students in Massachusetts and New Jersey. Massachusetts students had the second highest scale score at 304.2876, while Texas received an average score of 303.5460.
Overall, the state ranked 10th among the states with an average scale score of 290, substantially above the national average score of 283.
Wisconsin's biennial mathematics and reading results held steady on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation's Report Card. The state's overall trend in mathematics is improving.Average scores for fourth gradeFor fourth-grade mathematics, the state's 2011 scale score was 245, up one point but statistically the same as in 2009, compared to the national scale score of 240, a one-point increase from 2009. Wisconsin results for fourth-grade math are significantly higher than in 2003 when the average scale score was 237. At eighth grade, the Wisconsin scale score for mathematics was 289,
the same as in 2009 and up five points from 2003, which is statistically significant. For the nation, the 2011 mathematics scale score was 283, up one-point from 2009. State average scale scores in mathematics at both grade levels were statistically higher than the national score.
| All | White | Black | Hispanic | Asian Amer-Pac.Island | Native Amer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US | 240 | 249 | 224 | 229 | 256 | 227 |
| Texas | 241 | 253 | 232 | 235 | 263 | *** |
| Wisconsin | 245 | 251 | 217 | 228 | 242 | 231 |
| Average scores for eighth grade | ||||||
| US | 283 | 293 | 262 | 269 | 302 | 266 |
| Texas | 290 | 304 | 277 | 283 | 316 | *** |
| Wisconsin | 289 | 295 | 256 | 270 | 290 | *** |
Erin Richards has more on Wisconsin's results.
Steve Dykstra's comments on Wisconsin's NAEP reading scores.
Related: Madison and College Station, TX.
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The National Council on Teacher Quality :
Since the recession began, the specter of massive teacher layoffs has been hanging over the nation's schools. The feds have repeatedly come to the rescue--even when some parts of the country didn't seem to be particularly struggling--providing funds first in the form of stimulus dollars, followed by last year's EduJobs.So far this year there appears to be little likelihood of a comparable rescue package. The president's job bill offers the only hope, but we all know how far that one isn't going. The White House has been making the case nonetheless, supplying sobering evidence of a decline in education jobs and that as many as 280,000 "educator jobs" are at risk this school year.
Not discounting this evidence, we've been struck by the lack of reports on layoffs in newspapers this fall. Last spring, they were all reporting about school districts handing out pink slips by the thousands, but there's been little follow up on teachers converting from pink-slip status to no-job-at-all status.
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There are 19 gym teachers in the Farmington School District who make more than $85,000 a year each. The average gym teacher's salary in Farmington is $75,035. By comparison, the science teachers in that district make $68,483 per year on average.That's not unusual in Michigan schools, according to Freedom of Information Act requests received from around the state.
In the Woodhaven-Brownstown district, 18.5 (FTE) science teachers average some $58,400 per year in salary, while 12 gym teachers averaged nearly $76,700. In Harrison, science teachers earned $49,000 on average while gym teachers averaged $62,000.
This is not unusual, because school districts don't differentiate what a teacher does when considering compensation, regardless of the district's educational needs. Teachers are paid on a single salary schedule based on seniority and education level.
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Dan Dempsey, via a kind email:
r spent slightly more than $500,000 combined on their four campaigns, which was 81% of the total amount spent by those running in 2007. These incumbent Directors are endorsed for reelection in 2011 by the Seattle Times while The Stranger, an alternative newspaper, recommends three of the challengers.It will be interesting to see if Madison has contested board races in 2012...
This election has parallels to dissatisfaction underlying Occupy Wall Street. Many Seattle residents see the "School Reform" pushed by the District as largely driven by those more interested in profit by corporations than student learning. Public records of where the $500,000 plus came from in 2007 indicate likely pro corporate connections.
On March 2, 2011 after giving the public only 22 hours notice, the Board bought out Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson and her CFO-COO Mr. Don Kennedy for $360,000. The Superintendent had Broad Academy training and pushed for School Reform along the lines advocated by the Broad Academy in her 3.5 years in Seattle.
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Racine Unified School District (RUSD) implemented a district-wide vision for improvement in March 2009. Called the North Star vision, it is intended to specify "the path to successful completion of high school for all RUSD students with an ultimate goal of every graduate being ready for a career and/or college." It includes performance targets at each grade level to be used in creating school improvement plans and in setting school-level learning targets.Public Policy Forum Report (PDF):The vision is the result of a collaborative effort by the school board, district administrators, the teachers and administrators unions, and the support staff union. A simple graphic illustrating the measures of focus at each grade level has been widely distributed to parents, teachers, and district stakeholders.
For dedicated readers, this 14th Annual Comparative Analysis of the Racine Unified School District will look quite different from the previous 13 reports. For the first time, we compare the district's performance to its own goals, as well as to its peers and to its past performance. The peer comparison tables, which have been the hallmark of previous reports, appear in Appendix I. The body of the report is focused on the district goals established in 2009 as the North Star vision, which according to the district, "is a shared vision that clearly identifies the path to successful completion of high school for all RUSD students with an ultimate goal of every graduate being ready for a career and/or college."As in previous reports, we also present contextual information about the Racine community and student body. RUSD has experienced many changes over the past 14 years, including: slipping from the third largest district in the state to the fourth largest, becoming a majority minority district, and now having most of its students quality for free or reduced-price lunch. The community has also become less wealthy during this time and seen fewer adults obtain college degrees. It is clear that RUSD has many challenges to overcome and a loss of significant state aid for this school year is yet another challenge. Consequently, this year's report also includes a more in-depth analysis of the district's fiscal situation.
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Education Plan (PDF) via a kind Kaleem Caire email:
Madison Preparatory Academy's educational program has been designed to be different. The eight features of the educational program will serve as a powerful mix of strategies that allow Madison Prep to fulfill its mission: to prepare students for success at a four-year college or university by instilling Excellence, Pride, Leadership and Service. By fulfilling this mission, Madison Prep will serve as a catalyst of change and opportunity for young men and women who live in a city where only 48% of African American students and 56% of Latino students graduate from high school. Madison Prep's educational program will produce students who are ready for college; who think, read, and write critically; who are culturally aware and embrace differences among all people; who give back to their communities; and who know how to work hard.Business Plan (PDF), via a kind Kaleem Caire email:One of the most unique features of Madison Prep is the single gender approach. While single gender education has a long, successful history, there are currently no schools - public or private - in Dane County that offer single gender education. While single gender education is not right for every student, the demand demonstrated thus far by families who are interested in enrolling their children in Madison Prep shows that a significant number of parents believe their children would benefit from a single gender secondary school experience.
Madison Prep will operate two schools - a boys' school and a girls' school - in order to meet this demand as well as ensure compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The schools will be virtually identical in all aspects, from culture to curriculum, because the founders of Madison Prep know that both boys and girls need and will benefit from the other educational features of Madison Prep.
The International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum is one of those strategies that Madison Prep's founders know will positively impact all the students the schools serve. IB is widely considered to be the highest quality curricular framework available. What makes IB particularly suitable for Madison Prep is that it can be designed around local learning standards (the Wisconsin Model Academic Standards and the Common Core State Standards) and it is inherently college preparatory. For students at Madison Prep who have special learning needs or speak English as a second language, IB is fully adaptable to their needs. Madison Prep will offer both the Middle Years Programme (MYP) and the Diploma Programme (DP) to all its students.
Because IB is designed to be college preparatory, this curricular framework is an ideal foundation for the other aspects of Madison Prep's college preparatory program. Madison Prep is aiming to serve a student population of which at least 65% qualify for free or reduced lunch. This means that many of the parents of Madison Prep students will not be college educated themselves and will need the school to provide considerable support as their students embark on their journey through Madison Prep and to college.
College exposure, Destination Planning, and graduation requirements that mirror admissions requirements are some of the ways in which Madison Prep will ensure students are headed to college. Furthermore, parents' pursuit of an international education for their children is increasing rapidly around the world as they seek to foster in their children a global outlook that also expands their awareness, competence and comfort level with communicating, living, working and problem solving with and among cultures different than their own.
Harkness Teaching, the cornerstone instructional strategy for Madison Prep, will serve as an effective avenue through which students will develop the critical thinking and communication skills that IB emphasizes. Harkness Teaching, which puts teacher and students around a table rather than in theater-style classrooms, promotes student-centered learning and rigorous exchange of ideas. Disciplinary Apprenticeship, Madison Prep's approach to literacy across the curriculum, will ensure that students have the literacy skills to glean ideas and information from a variety of texts, ideas and information that they can then bring to the Harkness Table for critical analysis.
Yet to ensure that students are on track for college readiness and learning the standards set out in the curriculum, teachers will have to take a disciplined approach to data-driven instruction. Frequent, high quality assessments - aligned to the standards when possible - will serve as the basis for instructional practices. Madison Prep teachers will consistently be analyzing new data to adjust their practice as needed.
Based on current education and social conditions, the fate of young men and women of color is uncertain.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School, here.Black and Hispanic boys are grossly over-represented among youth failing to achieve academic success, are at grave risk of dropping out of school before they reach 10th grade, are disproportionately represented among adjudicated and incarcerated youth, and are far less likely than their peers in other subgroups to achieve their dreams and aspirations. Likewise, boys in general lag behind girls in most indicators of student achievement.
Research indicates that although boys of color have high aspirations for academic and career success, their underperformance in school and lack of educational attainment undermine their career pursuits and the success they desire. This misalignment of aspirations and achievement is fueled by and perpetuates a set of social conditions wherein men of color find themselves disproportionately represented among the unemployed and incarcerated. Without meaningful, targeted, and sustainable interventions and support systems, hundreds of thousands of young men of color will never realize their true potential and the cycle of high unemployment, fatherless homes, overcrowded jails, incarcerated talent, deferred dreams, and high rates of school failure will continue.
Likewise, girls of color are failing to graduate high school on-time, underperform on standardized achievement and college entrance exams and are under-enrolled in college preparatory classes in secondary school. The situation is particularly pronounced in the Madison Metropolitan School District where Black and Hispanic girls are far less likely than Asian and White girls to take a rigorous college preparatory curriculum in high school or successfully complete such courses with a grade of C or better when they do. In this regard, they mimic the course taking patterns of boys of color.
Additionally, data on ACT college entrance exam completion, graduation rates and standardized achievement tests scores provided to the Urban League of Greater Madison by the Madison Metropolitan School District show a significant gap in ACT completion, graduation rates and standardized achievement scores between students of color and their White peers.
Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men and Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Women will be established to serve as catalysts for change and opportunity among young men and women in the Greater Madison, Wisconsin area, particularly young men and women of color. It will also serve the interests of parents who desire a nurturing, college preparatory educational experience for their child.
Both schools will be administratively separate and operated by Madison Preparatory Academy, Inc. (Madison Prep), an independent 501(c)(3) established by the Urban League of Greater Madison and members of Madison Prep's inaugural board of directors.
The Urban League of Greater Madison, the "founder" of Madison Prep, understands that poverty, isolation, structural discrimination, limited access to schools and classrooms that provide academic rigor, lack of access to positive male and female role models in different career fields, limited exposure to academically successful and achievement-oriented peer groups, and limited exposure to opportunity and culture experiences outside their neighborhoods contribute to reasons why so many young men and women fail to achieve their full potential. At the same time, the Urban League and its supporters understand that these issues can be addressed by directly countering each issue with a positive, exciting, engaging, enriching, challenging, affirming and structured learning community designed to specifically address these issues.Madison Prep will consist of two independent public charter schools - authorized by the Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education - designed to serve adolescent males and females in grades 6-12 in two separate schools. Both will be open to all students residing within the boundaries of the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) who apply, regardless of their previous academic performance.
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Earlier this year, Dropout Nation argued that one way that school reformers -- including school choice activists and Parent Power groups -- could advance reform and expand school choice was to file lawsuits similar to school funding torts filed for the past four decades by school funding advocates. But now, it looks like Parent Power activists may be filing a lawsuit in Los Angeles on a different front: Overhauling teacher evaluations. And the Los Angeles Unified School District may be the place where the first suit is filed.In a letter sent on behalf of some families Wednesday to L.A. Unified Superintendent John Deasy and the school board -- and just before the district begins negotiations with the American Federation of Teachers' City of Angels unit over a new contract -- Barnes & Thornburg's Kyle Kirwan demanded that the district "implement a comprehensive system" of evaluating teachers that ties "pupil progress" data to teacher evaluations. Kirwan and the group he represents are also asking for the district to begin evaluating all teachers "regardless of tenure status" and to reject any contract with the American Federation of Teachers local that allows for any veteran teacher with more than a decade on the job to go longer than two years without an evaluation if they haven't had one in the first place.
We represent minor-students currently residing within the boundaries of the Los Angeles Unified School District (the "District" or "LAUSD"), the parents of these students, and other adults who have paid taxes for a school system that has chronically failed to comply with California law.Our clients seek to have the District immediately meet its obligations under the Stull Act, a forty year old law that is codified at California Education Code section 44660 et seq. (the "Stull Act").
In relevant part, the Stull Act requires that "[t]he governing board of each school district establish standards of expected pupil achievement at each grade level in each area of study."
Cal. Educ. Code § 44662(a). The Stull Act requires further that "[t]he governing board of each school district ... evaluate and assess certificated employee performance as it reasonably relates to ... [t]he progress of pupils toward the standards established pursuant to subdivision (a) and, if applicable, the state adopted academic content standards as measured by state adopted criterion referenced assessments ...." Cal. Educ. Code§ 44662(b)(l).
In the forty years since the California Legislature passed the Stull Act, the District has never evaluated its certificated personnel based upon the progress of pupils towards the standards established pursuant to Education Code section 44662(a) and, if applicable, the state adopted academic content standards as measured by the state adopted criterion referenced assessments; never reduced such evaluations to writing or added the evaluations to part of the permanent records of its certificated personnel; never reviewed with its certificated personnel the results of pupil progress as they relate to Stull Act evaluations; and never made specific recommendations on how certificated personnel with unsatisfactory ratings could improve their performance in order to achieve a higher level of pupil progress toward meeting established standards of expected pupil achievement.
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After revving up a few hundred adolescents in the Central Middle School auditorium during a recent homecoming pep rally, educators had to get the children out the doors and onto school buses idling outside.And there wasn't much time to do it.
As the children began to get up, principal Darren Guido jumped to direct traffic. Moments later, outside, aspiring school leader Nakia Fambro noticed some students were dallying. She rushed to the office.
"If you are a bus rider, the buses are leaving in 30 seconds," Fambro announced over the intercom system, repeating the urgent message several times.
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I attended the talk last night by Dr. Dina Bulles put on by Wedgwood Elementary (and held at Nathan Hale High). (FYI, her name is pronounced Bree-yays.) The other SPS staff represented were the principal of Wedgwood, Chris Cronas, Ex. Director, Phil Brockman, and head of Advanced Learning, Bob Vaughn. Mr. Cronas pointed out that several Wedgwood teachers were in attendance as well. There were a large number of seats put out but the room wasn't full. My guess is it was about 60 people.Dr. Bulles explained that in her district, Paradise Valley School district (which is just outside of Phoenix, Arizona), all of their elementary schools use cluster grouping. (Her district is about 35,000 students and there are 31 elementary schools.) She said out of those 35,000, about 5,000 student received gifted classes/services. (Help me out anyone else who attended; I thought she said towards the end that this was included high school students taking AP/IB. Is that what you heard?) She also made a startling statement that 68% of her teachers (and I believe this is in elementary) had 3 years or less of teaching experience. Wow.
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I attended the talk last night by Dr. Dina Bulles put on by Wedgwood Elementary (and held at Nathan Hale High). (FYI, her name is pronounced Bree-yays.) The other SPS staff represented were the principal of Wedgwood, Chris Cronas, Ex. Director, Phil Brockman, and head of Advanced Learning, Bob Vaughn. Mr. Cronas pointed out that several Wedgwood teachers were in attendance as well. There were a large number of seats put out but the room wasn't full. My guess is it was about 60 people.Paradise Valley School District's website.Dr. Bulles explained that in her district, Paradise Valley School district (which is just outside of Phoenix, Arizona), all of their elementary schools use cluster grouping. (Her district is about 35,000 students and there are 31 elementary schools.) She said out of those 35,000, about 5,000 student received gifted classes/services. (Help me out anyone else who attended; I thought she said towards the end that this was included high school students taking AP/IB. Is that what you heard?) She also made a startling statement that 68% of her teachers (and I believe this is in elementary) had 3 years or less of teaching experience. Wow.
What was most fascinating to me and an absolute pleasure is that here was a educator who made no apologies for wanting to serve gifted students. She gave a PowerPoint and several times talked about the need to serve these students needs as a district would any other student with a special need like ELL or Special Education. It was very refreshing and I have never, in all my years in SPS, heard any SPS principal or Board member or staff member or Superintendent speak in this manner.
She started out by showing a list from J. Skabos about differences between gifted children and bright children (and I note that she believes both groups need to be served). I couldn't find the exact list but here is link to one that is quite similar.
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The Department has identified the following constituencies as having interests that are significantly affected by the topics proposed for negotiations. The Department plans to seat as negotiators individuals from organizations or groups representing these constituencies:
- Postsecondary students, including legal assistance organizations that represent students.
- Teachers.
- Financial aid administrators at postsecondary institutions.
- Business officers and bursars at postsecondary institutions.
- Admissions officers at postsecondary institutions.
- State officials, including officials with teacher preparation program approval agencies, State teacher licensing boards, higher education executive officers, chief State school officers, State attorneys general, and State data system administrators.
- Institutions that offer teacher preparation programs, including schools of education.
- Institutions of higher education eligible to receive Federal assistance under Title III, Parts A, B, and F, and Title V of the HEA, which include Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, American Indian Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian- Serving Institutions, Predominantly Black Institutions, and other institutions with a substantial enrollment of needy students as defined in Title III of the HEA.
- Two-year public institutions of higher education.
- Four-year public institutions of higher education.
- Private, non-profit institutions of higher education.
- Private, for-profit institutions of higher education.
- Operators of programs for alternative routes to teacher certification.
- Accrediting agencies.
- Students enrolled in elementary and secondary education, including parents of students enrolled in elementary and secondary education.
- School and local educational agency officials, including those responsible for hiring teachers and evaluating teacher performance.
The topics the committee is likely to address are as follows:
- The requirements for institutional and program report cards on the quality of teacher preparation (Section 205(a) of the HEA);
- The requirements for State report cards on the quality of teacher preparation (Section 205(b) of the HEA);
- The standards to ensure reliability, validity, and accuracy of the data submitted in report cards on the quality of teacher preparation (Section 205(c) of the HEA);
- The criteria used by States to assess the performance of teacher preparation programs at higher education institutions in the State, the identification of low-performing programs (Section 207(a) of the HEA), and the consequences of a State's termination of eligibility of a program (Section 207(b) of the HEA);
- The definition of the term ''high quality teacher preparation program'' for the purpose of establishing the eligibility of an institution to participate in the TEACH Grant program (Section 420L(1) of the HEA);
- The definition of the term ''high quality professional development services'' for the purpose of establishing the eligibility of an institution to participate in the TEACH Grant program (Section 420L(1) of the HEA); and
- The service and repayment obligations for the TEACH Grant Program (Subpart E of 34 CFR 686).
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Scientists think they can prove that free will is an illusion. Philosophers are urging them to think again.The experiment helped to change John-Dylan Haynes's outlook on life. In 2007, Haynes, a neuroscientist at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, put people into a brain scanner in which a display screen flashed a succession of random letters1. He told them to press a button with either their right or left index fingers whenever they felt the urge, and to remember the letter that was showing on the screen when they made the decision. The experiment used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to reveal brain activity in real time as the volunteers chose to use their right or left hands. The results were quite a surprise.
"The first thought we had was 'we have to check if this is real'," says Haynes. "We came up with more sanity checks than I've ever seen in any other study before."
The conscious decision to push the button was made about a second before the actual act, but the team discovered that a pattern of brain activity seemed to predict that decision by as many as seven seconds. Long before the subjects were even aware of making a choice, it seems, their brains had already decided.
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Here's a pop quiz: What foods are best to eat before a high-stakes test? When is the best time to review the toughest material? A growing body of research on the best study techniques offers some answers.Chiefly, testing yourself repeatedly before an exam teaches the brain to retrieve and apply knowledge from memory. The method is more effective than re-reading a textbook, says Jeffrey Karpicke, an assistant professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University. If you are facing a test on the digestive system, he says, practice explaining how it works from start to finish, rather than studying a list of its parts.
In his junior year of high school in Cary, N.C., Keenan Harrell bought test-prep books and subjected himself to a "relentless and repetitive" series of nearly 30 practice SAT college-entrance exams. "I just took it over and over again, until it became almost aggravating," he says.
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Is Denver going to follow in the footsteps of other reform minded urban school districts that saw momentum, change, and improvement fade away? Or will we be one of the few cities to sustain and even accelerate effective school reform?In less than two weeks, the most hotly contested and expensive school board race in the history of Colorado will come to an end. It looks like nearly $1 million will be spent by both sides in this election by the time Election Day arrives on November 1st.
Denver has a seven-person school board with four members currently supporting the Superintendent Tom Boasberg and a broad set of reforms while the remaining three board members have relied upon Diane Ravitch to try to thwart nearly every reform initiative. Needless to say, if two of the three seats go to anti-reform candidates, Boasberg will need to look for another job and the Colorado reform community is going to have to look to some other districts for bold leadership.
Denver has been the epicenter for reform in Colorado since Michael Bennet took the helm of Denver Public Schools (DPS). Most of the reforms, which were highlighted in Colorado's Race to the Top application and elsewhere, are dependent upon Denver leading the charge.
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Anne Arnesen, Barbara Arnold, Nan Brien and Carol Carstensen:
We applaud the Urban League's energy and persistence in identifying the significant achievement gap that remains in Madison schools. We welcome the fact that the Urban League has helped focus broader community discussion on this issue, and the need to serve more effectively and successfully African-American and Hispanic students. The achievement gap is real and must be addressed.While the Madison Preparatory Academy may provide a fine educational experience for 840 students, the Madison Metropolitan School District is charged with improving outcomes for more than 12,000 children of color. We may be better served by using our limited and diminishing resources:
1. To increase the number of students in AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) by expanding this nationally proven and successful program, now in all four high schools, to lower grade levels. AVID is a college readiness system that accelerates learning for students in the academic middle who may not have a college tradition in their families. Ultimately, AVID uses research-based instructional strategies to increase academic performance schoolwide. East High, the first Madison school to implement AVID, has had two graduating classes. These graduates, who attend a variety of Wisconsin colleges and universities, are 90 percent students of color and 74 percent low income; 52 percent of these graduates speak a language other than English as their first language.
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I will not be working in the office Thursday. I have to care for my kids, two of whom, like lots of other Wisconsin public school students, have the day off.Why, you ask, are classes canceled on this entirely unremarkable Thursday the week before Halloween? On a day not set aside for any national holiday, nor part of any traditionally recognized vacation season, nor beset by record-breaking snowfall or some other natural cataclysm?
Well, because historically, a couple of consecutive weekdays in October have been something of a Wisconsin public schools-recognized holiday -- the traditional time for the annual convention of the statewide teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council.
I know what you're saying: "Don't be ridiculous. Teachers have two and a half months in the summer to hold their convention! Why wouldn't they have it then?"
And I hear you; an October teachers convention does defy logic. Yet, that's been the case until this year, when things managed to get even more illogical.
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via a kind Larry Winkler email.
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A recent SchoolBook article on the high teacher turnover at one of Eva Moskowitz's Harlem Success Schools raises an important question in the debate over improving urban schools -- how can we stop corporate education reform's focus on "getting rid of bad teachers" from creating a level of instability in school staffing that hurts our city's students?The case of turnover in the Harlem Success schools is only the latest example of this issue, but it's a striking one. Over a third of the teachers at Harlem Success 3 have chosen to leave the school in the past few months, a decision Moskowitz describes as "frankly, unethical." At the same time, however, Moskowitz chooses to employ her staff with a policy of "at will employment" rather than a negotiated contract. Under this model, she and her principals have the right to terminate teachers' service at the school at any time, for any reason. In fact, Steven Brill's Class Warfare describes the case of one new teacher who was "forced out" only a few months into the school year when a young principal at Harlem Success decided she wasn't a "good fit" for the school.
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It was the kind of memo that high school students would dream of getting, if they dreamed in memos.Lisa Waller, director of the high school at Dalton, a famously rigorous private school on the Upper East Side, sent a letter to parents this summer announcing that tests and papers would be staggered to make sure students did not become overloaded. January midterms would be pushed back two weeks so students would not have to study during vacation.
Across town at the Trinity School, another of Manhattan's elite academies, the administration has formed a task force to examine workload, and the upper school, grades 9 to 12, has been trying ways to coordinate test-taking with papers, labs and other projects.
Horace Mann School, in the Bronx, opened a tutoring center this year to help students manage their work. Hunter College High School, which has a tough admissions exam, is for the first time this year offering homework holidays, on Halloween, the Chinese New Year (Jan. 23) and a day nearer spring, March 14.
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When it comes to public-sector pensions, writes lead author Michael B. Lafferty in Fordham's newest report, "A major public-policy (and public-finance) problem has been defined and measured, debated and deliberated, but not yet solved. Except where it has been." As recounted in Halting a Runaway Train: Reforming Teacher Pensions for the 21st Century, these exceptions turn out to be revealing--and encouraging. As leaders around the country struggle to overhaul America's controversial and precarious public-sector pensions, this study draws on examples from diverse fields to provide a primer on successful pension reform. Download to find valuable lessons for policymakers, workers, and taxpayers looking for timely solutions to a dire problem.The complete report can be downloaded here.
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Here's a pop quiz: What foods are best to eat before a high-stakes test? When is the best time to review the toughest material? A growing body of research on the best study techniques offers some answers.Chiefly, testing yourself repeatedly before an exam teaches the brain to retrieve and apply knowledge from memory. The method is more effective than re-reading a textbook, says Jeffrey Karpicke, an assistant professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University. If you are facing a test on the digestive system, he says, practice explaining how it works from start to finish, rather than studying a list of its parts.
In his junior year of high school in Cary, N.C., Keenan Harrell bought test-prep books and subjected himself to a "relentless and repetitive" series of nearly 30 practice SAT college-entrance exams. "I just took it over and over again, until it became almost aggravating," he says.
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While a small number of cynics out there still argue that classroom teachers are not really an important ingredient in a child's overall education recipe, one of the most important developments in K-12 education policy in the last few years has been the recognition that decades-old teacher evaluations (where the best a child can hope for is a 'satisfactory' teacher over an 'unsatisfactory' teacher) aren't up for the task of recognizing which teachers are hitting the ball out of the park with their students.At DFER, we've long believed that the widespread irrelevance of excellence itself in the K-12 world has created a culture that has actively done damage to the lives of too many children who deserved much, much better from our nation's most important public institution.
But there have been a lot of positive developments in this area of late. There's obviously a long way to go, and surely some of what has been done to-date will need to be changed/enhanced/expanded, but we are clearly closer to a day where the link between teaching and learning is more clear in workplace evaluations for educators. (And we continue to hope and believe that this will usher in a new era where successful teachers are treated more like the community heroes that we believe they are.)
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Chicago charter schools could soon receive financial incentives similar to those being offered to city elementary schools that vote to lengthen the school day.The Chicago Board of Education will vote on a resolution Wednesday that would create a $4.4 million grant fund for charter schools that choose to extend their day. Individual schools would eligible to receive $75,000 and individual teacher stipends of $800. Roughly 42 schools will be awarded money under the program, which Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman Becky Carroll estimated will cost about $6 million.
Carroll told the Chicago News Cooperative in September that charter schools would not be included in the city's longer day incentive program, which has been one of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's signature education initiatives. She said the decision to incorporate charters followed "an organic conversation" between CPS and charter operators and is about ensuring "equity in the system."
The move to include charter schools is the latest salvo in the fight between the district and the Chicago Teachers Union over the length of the school day.
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An independent charter school program would expand to medium and large school districts around Wisconsin, under a bill passed Wednesday by Republicans on the Legislature's budget committee.The proposal passed 12-3 on a party-line vote, with Republicans voting in favor and Democrats voting against.
The bill would take an independent charter school program currently operating in only Milwaukee and Racine and extend it statewide to districts with more than 2,000 students. That would apply to roughly a quarter of the state's districts.
Republicans said it would help provide another options for students whose schools are failing them.
"The bill we are taking up today is truly something that is going to help the long-term prospects of Wisconsin," said Rep. Robin Vos (R-Burlington), a co-chairman of the committee.
But Democrats said that the program would undermine local control of schools by elected officials in favor of an unelected board. They said the proposal could also prove another financial blow to regular public schools that are losing nearly $800 million in state aid over two years as part of the state budget and having tight state caps placed on their property tax levies.
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Julian R. Betts and Y. Emily Tang via a kind Deb Britt email:
Charter schools are largely viewed as a major innovation in the public school landscape, as they receive more independence from state laws and regulations than do traditional public schools, and are therefore more able to experiment with alternative curricula, pedagogical methods, and different ways of hiring and training teachers. Unlike traditional public schools, charters may be shut down by their authorizers for poor performance. But how is charter school performance measured? What are the effects of charter schools on student achievement?
Assessing literature that uses either experimental (lottery) or student-level growth- based methods, this analysis infers the causal impact of attending a charter school on student performance.Focusing on math and reading scores, the authors find compelling evidence that charters under-perform traditional public schools in some locations, grades, and subjects, and out-perform traditional public schools in other locations, grades, and subjects. However, important exceptions include elementary school reading and middle school math and reading, where evidence suggests no negative effects of charter schools and, in some cases, evidence of positive effects. Meta-analytic methods are used to obtain overall estimates on the effect of charter schools on reading and math achievement. The authors find an overall effect size for elementary school reading and math of 0.02 and 0.05, respectively, and for middle school math of 0.055. Effects are not statistically meaningful for middle school reading and for high school math and reading. Studies that focus on urban areas tend to find larger effects than do studies that examine wider areas. Studies of KIPP charter middle schools suggest positive effects of 0.096 and 0.223 for reading and math respectively. New York City and Boston charter schools also appeared to deliver achievement gains larger than charter schools in most other locations. A lack of rigorous studies in many parts of the nation limits the ability to extrapolate.
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If you want to tell if someone is a good driver, you watch them drive. If you want to tell if someone is a good teacher, watch them teach. When it comes to evaluating teachers, the further from the classroom you get, the weaker the measure is.There's no doubt about it - high-quality evaluation systems for teachers and principals help students and schools. Our union of educators has called for consistent evaluations for years - and even advanced our own proposal back in January. We have been one of many voices on the State Superintendent's Educator Effectiveness Design Team, which is near to releasing a comprehensive evaluation framework.
The education community knows what works: professional development, consistent and thorough classroom observation and using results to help good educators become great.
It was troubling, then, when last week the state Senate voted to advance a bill to tie teacher discipline - even firing - to students' Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam (WKCE) test scores.
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Most area schools will be closed Thursday and Friday, but with the annual teachers union convention canceled districts are considering whether to do away with the mid-semester break in the future.Many school districts had already set their calendars for this year by the time the Wisconsin Education Association Council announced in May it would cancel its fall convention.
But Sun Prairie and McFarland have decided to hold classes next year on the days previously set aside for the WEAC convention. Others, including Cambridge, Belleville and DeForest, are thinking about doing the same.
"Early indications are people would favor having regular classes on those days to reduce breaks in instruction for students," DeForest Superintendent Jon Bales said. "It also allows for the addition of makeup snow days at the end of the year without going too far into the month of June."
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The annual state teachers union convention that has traditionally meant a two-day school holiday at the end of October is off this year, leaving public school districts with decisions about how to schedule students and teachers.The Wisconsin Education Association Council canceled the convention, which would have been Thursday and Friday this week, after changes in state law weakened the union and its local affiliates.
Without the certainty of having input into school calendars through the negotiations process, members could not guarantee that they could all get the days off from school, said WEAC President Mary Bell, who added that the convention was "the flagship piece of professional development that we provided for members."
Some school districts, with their calendars already set before the convention was called off, are keeping the school holiday for students but bringing teachers in for training or other activities. Others, such as Waukesha, are keeping the holiday and treating it as two unpaid days for teachers.
The Brown Deer School District scheduled classes.
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Armed with tote bags for the handouts awaiting them, thousands of Chicago parents shuffled through display tables adorned with brightly colored posters as they faced the daunting task of selecting schools for their children.For many parents, the school fair, put on by the Neighborhood Parents Network, is their first encounter with the public school system. It is timed to coincide with the opening of the district's admissions process, which ends in December. Many parents hope to place their children in the growing number of charter, magnet and selective-enrollment elementary schools."If you hang out with parents of 4-year-olds, the conversation never stops," said Christine Whitley, a Chicago Public Schools parent. "That's all they talk about: 'Where are you sending your child to school?' "
As choosing a school becomes increasingly complicated, some entrepreneurial parents, including Ms. Whitley, have started small consulting businesses aimed at helping parents navigate the admission process. But some observers have raised concerns about the potential for parents to game the system.
The district has 482 elementary schools, multiple application forms and five specialty school options in addition to the neighborhood elementary schools: gifted, classical, magnet, magnet cluster and charter. Magnet, magnet cluster and charter schools select students largely through a computerized lottery, but gifted and classical require admission tests for children at age 4 because the schools offer an accelerated curriculum.
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In the end it couldn't have come as any great shock when the Department of Justice intervened on behalf of a Muslim school teacher who claimed that the board of her Illinois school district was guilty of religious bias. Nor could it have come as any surprise that the Board of Education, Berkeley School District 87 Cook Country Illinois, was finally forced to settle the case brought against it by the DOJ. Still, even Americans accustomed to the relentless -- more precisely the relentlessly selective -- political correctness of the Obama Justice Department had to have been startled at the facts of this case and the deranged notions of equity that had impelled Eric Holder's DOJ to go rushing into battle against the school district.The school teacher in question, Safoorah Khan, a middle school math lab instructor, had worked at the school for barely a year when she applied for some 19 days unpaid leave so that she could make a pilgrimage to Mecca. The school district denied the request: She was the only math lab instructor the school had, her absence would come just at the period before exams, and furthermore, the leave she wanted was outside the bounds set for all teachers under their union contract.
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The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.But the school's chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home.
Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. But the contrarian point of view can be found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don't mix.
This is the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, one of around 160 Waldorf schools in the country that subscribe to a teaching philosophy focused on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks. Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans.
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Terra Snider, via a kind JH Snider email:
Considerable research confirms the relationship between school start times, sleep deprivation, and student performance, truancy, and absenteeism, as well as depression, mood swings, impulse control, tobacco and alcohol use, impaired cognitive function and decision-making, obesity, stimulant abuse, automobile accidents, and suicide. Mounting evidence about the biology of adolescent sleep, and about the impact of later start times, shows that starting school before 8 a.m. not only undermines academic achievement but endangers health and safety. Because logistical and financial issues prevent local school systems from establishing safe and educationally defensible hours, however, federal legislation mandating start times consistent with student health and educational well-being is essential.Terra Snider:
As the parent of two former and one current Severna Park High School student, I've been living with the issue of early high school start times for years. Although the consensus of scientific opinion is that teenagers (and young adults) would be better off if school hours were better aligned with their biological clocks, the possibility of changing school hours inevitably sparks raging controversy, both here and across the country.Changing school hours costs money, and we all know school systems don't have a lot of that on hand. It also means changing the way we do things, and most of us don't like doing that much either. On the other hand, Moses didn't come down from Mount Sinai with commandments that schools must start at 7:17 a.m. and end at 2:05 p.m.
Surely if we know students learn better, and are healthier and safer, with different hours, we should make that our number one priority. Shouldn't we?
The Severna Park High School CAC (and the now defunct countywide CAC) have been working on the issue of high school start time for years, decades even - to no avail. Many of us have become convinced that the only solution to the problem is a national mandate. That's why I created a petition on We the People on WhiteHouse.gov, a new platform that allows anyone to create and sign petitions asking the Obama Administration to take action on a range of issues.
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A tragedy of American politics is that civil rights groups like the NAACP oppose education reform, even as reform's main beneficiaries are poor and minority students in places like Harlem and New Orleans. The latest evidence comes in a study showing that black students in charter schools outperform their peers in traditional public schools.The California Charter Schools Association looked at the state's Academic Performance Index (API), which runs on a scale from 200 to 1000, and found that the average black charter student outscored the average black traditional school student by an average of 18 points over the last four years of publicly available data.
In reform hubs like Los Angeles, the charter advantage was 22 points, in Sacramento 48 points, in Oakland 51 and in San Francisco 150. In San Diego, the other major urban center, traditional schools outscored charters by an average of eight points.
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Legislation rewriting the No Child Left Behind education law finally gained traction this week, and the Senate Democrat whose committee passed the bill said on Friday that progress became possible because lawmakers were irritated by the Obama administration's offering states waivers to the law's key provisions."Some of us on both sides of the aisle were upset with them coming out with the waiver package that they did, so that spurred us on," Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, who heads the Senate education committee, said in an interview. "It gave us a sense of urgency."
Mr. Harkin's committee voted 15 to 7 on Thursday to approve a bill that would greatly reduce Washington's role in overseeing public schools. It was co-sponsored by Senator Michael B. Enzi, the Wyoming Republican who is the committee's ranking minority member. Mr. Harkin called it "a good compromise bill" that would have bipartisan support in the full Senate.
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2011-2012 Revised Budget 1.3MB PDF (Budget amendments document). District spending remains largely flat at $369,394,753, yet "Fund Equity", or the District's reserves, has increased to $48,324,862 from $22,769,831 in 2007 (page 24). The District's property tax "underlevy" (increases allowed under Wisconsin school revenue limits which are based on student population changes, successful referendums along with carve-outs such as Fund 80, among others) will be $13,084,310. It also appears that property taxes will be flat (page 19) after a significant 9% increase last year. Interestingly, MSCR spending is up 7.97% (page 28).
2011-2012 enrollment is 24,861. $369,394,753 planned expenditures results in per student spending of $14,858.40.
I welcome clarifications and updates to these numbers, which are interesting. We've seen a doubling of District reserves over the past few years while spending has remained relatively flat as has enrollment.
Finally, this is worth reading in light of the District's 2011-2012 numbers: Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad Advocates Additional Federal Tax Dollar Spending & Borrowing via President Obama's Proposed Jobs Bill.
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Let's see:Related: Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory Acdemy IB Charter school.If the Madison Preparatory Academy can pull off all of that, how could it not improve the academic success of its largely black and Latino students?
- A longer school day and year, with July classes.
- Higher standards, expectations and school uniforms.
- Mandated extracurricular activities.
- Grades for parents based on their involvement at the school.
- More minority teachers as role models.
- More connections and internships with local employers.
- Millions in private fundraising.
That's the big picture view Madison should adopt as it considers the Urban League of Greater Madison's intriguing charter school request. Instead, a disproportionate amount of time and concern has been spent on a final part of the proposal:
Same-sex classrooms.
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California Charter Schools Association, via a kind reader's email:
Chartering and Choice as an Achievement Gap-Closing ReformOne of the greatest public education challenges in California--and the nation--is the achievement and opportunity gaps between African American students and their White and Asian peers.
The California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) has an interest in understanding how the state's charter public schools can accelerate closing achievement gaps for African American students, while at the same time advancing educational innovation that improves teaching and learning for all public school students.
The Chartering and Choice as an Achievement Gap-Closing Reform report, released by CCSA in October 2011, details the performance and enrollment trends of African American students in both charter public and traditional public schools. The results show that California charter public schools are effectively accelerating the performance of African American students, and that African American students are enrolled at higher percentage in the state's charters, among other findings.Since the inception of the Charter Schools Act in California in 1992, charter schools have become an important part of the public education system, opening their doors in both urban and rural areas, in order to provide quality educational options for families. Chartering and Choice as an Achievement Gap-Closing Reform demonstrates that as laboratories of innovation, California's highly effective charter public schools can demonstrate proven paths to success that should be replicated nationally.
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New York University pulled out of the National Merit scholarships, becoming at least the ninth school to stop funding one of the largest U.S. merit-based aid programs, because it doesn't want to reward students based on a standardized test.Related: 2011 National Merit Cut ScoresThe National Merit Scholarship Corp. distributed more than $50 million to students in the 2009-2010 year based on the PSAT college entry practice exam. Most of the money comes from almost 200 colleges, including Northwestern University and University of Chicago, to fund awards of as much as $8,000 over four years. Companies such as Boeing Co. and Pfizer Inc. also sponsor the program, primarily to benefit their employees' children.
NYU's withdrawal is another blow to National Merit, already ignored by many elite colleges and a subject of a critical report by a Harvard College-chaired commission. Schools are debating how to allocate scarce financial-aid dollars as tuition costs rise and the economy remains sluggish. While high schools trumpet National Merit winners, relying heavily on a standardized test is a flawed way to evaluate students, said Shawn Abbott, assistant vice president of admissions at NYU.
..........
National Merit hasn't collected any fees from the PSAT for the past 14 years, though it is entitled to a "nominal percent" of revenue under their contract, Kauffmann said. Instead, it has reinvested the funds into the program to keep test fees low and expand access to fee waivers, he said.
The College Board gains a marketing benefit from its association with National Merit when school districts or states consider using public funds to pay for the PSAT in 11th grade or ACT Inc.'s 10th-grade test known as PLAN, according to Bob Schaeffer, a spokesman for FairTest, a nonprofit group in Boston that works to end the misuses of standardized testing. Almost 1.3 million 10th-graders nationally took the PLAN test in the 2010-2011 academic year, according to the nonprofit ACT.
Illinois 214Minnesota 213
Iowa 209
Massachusetts 223
Michigan 209
Texas 215
Wisconsin 209
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High School Students--please study less, if you can. As you should know, jobs and our economy depend on consumers buying goods and services, and the time you spend reading and writing, doing math and science problems, and the like, is simply time spent out of the economy and contributes nothing to the effort to sell products and provide jobs for the American people.
You could consider your time away from studying as part of your community service, putting the needs of the economy ahead of your own selfish desire to learn and grow by doing homework for yourself alone. By spending more time buying and using goods produced by America's workers, you are making a contribution to the community in which you live.
If you have to do three or four hours of homework a week, at least do it using a computer and software which you or your family have purchased. If you do it that way, naturally you will find it easier to play the games you have bought, spend time with social media, and to listen to the songs you paid for at the same time, and you can also surf the Web for products on which you may wish to spend more money in the future.
While in the short term you may do less well in school by combining your schoolwork with your commercial obligations, at least you will be helping to keep our economy going and providing jobs for our unemployed workers.
It is possible that when it comes time for you to look for a job, you may not have the knowledge, skills, and general educational background to qualify for the ones on offer, but that is not your problem in the present.
If you need to learn something in the future, there will always be digital learning and online classes for you to buy. There will be no need to go to the library or read on your own. We expect young people to make sacrifices and to do community service, and refraining from studying is one painless and very useful way for you to work on behalf of those in your country who need jobs now, so that our economy can get help in its recovery on the backs of those of our students who have decided to study even less than they usually do.
The main thing is not to let your schoolwork interfere with your own purchases or with influencing as much as possible the purchases of your parents and friends.
As our President has told us, we need more jobs right now, and if you spend too much time on reading books, writing term papers, and stuff like that, you will be basically just more of a drag on our economy than you should be, so please study less, or if possible, not at all, and help keep our economy growing. You will learn less, but someone somewhere in our economy will thank you for spending more time away from those old printed school books and term papers!
------------------------------
"Teach by Example"
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
www.tcr.org/blog
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School officials could use standardized tests to help decide whether to discipline or fire a teacher, under a bill passed by the state Senate Thursday.The bill passed 17-16 on a party-line vote, with Republicans supporting it and Democrats in opposition.
Current law allows school administrators to use standardized tests as one of multiple criteria to evaluate teachers' performance but prohibits school districts from using the test results to fire or suspend a teacher. The bill would allow such actions as long as the test results weren't the sole reason for removing, suspending or disciplining a teacher.
Democrats urged senators to hold off on the bill and wait for an effort by GOP Gov. Scott Walker and state schools Superintendent Tony Evers to finish its work developing a system to better evaluate student learning.
"This is a very unfair position that we're putting teachers in," Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee) said.
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Lucy Mathiak, via a kind email:
Dear Friends,I am appreciative of Lucy's tireless and often thankless work on behalf of our students.I am writing to thank you for your encouragement and support in my decision to seek election to the MMSD Board of Education in late fall 2005. Your help in getting elected, your support during tough times, and your help in finding solutions to problems, have made a great difference to my service on the board.
I am writing to let you know that I will not seek re-election in 2012. I continue to believe that the Board of Education is one of the most important elected positions for our community and its schools, and encourage others to step forward to serve in this capacity. MMSD is facing significant challenges, and it is more important than ever that thoughtful citizens engage in the work that will be needed to preserve the traditional strengths of our public schools while helping those schools to change in keeping with the times and the families that they serve.
At the same time, I do not view school board service as a career, and believe that turnover in membership is healthy for the organization and for the district. I have been fortunate to have had an opportunity to serve on this board, and to work with many fine community organizations in that capacity. For that I am grateful.
Again, thank you for your interest, support, and collegiality.
Lucy J. Mathiak
716 Orton Ct.
Madison, WI 53703Madison School Board
Seat #2
Every organization - public or private, deteriorates. It is often easier to spend more (raise taxes), raise fees on consumers - or a "rate base", reduce curricular quality and in general go along and get along than to seek substantive improvements. Change is hard.
Citizens who seek facts, ask difficult and uncomfortable questions are essential for strong institutions - public or private. Progress requires conflict.
Yet, very few of us are willing to step into the theatre, spend time, dig deep and raise such questions. I am thankful for those, like Lucy, who do.
Her years of activism and governance have touched numerous issues, from the lack of Superintendent oversight (related: Ruth Robarts) (that's what a board does), the District's $372M+ budget priorities and transparency to substantive questions about Math, reading and the endless battle for increased rigor in the Madison Schools.
In closing, I had an opportunity to hear Peter Schneider speak during a recent Madison visit. Schneider discussed cultural differences and similarities between America and Germany. He specifically discussed the recent financial crisis. I paraphrase: "If I do not understand a financial vehicle, I buy it". "I create a financial product that no one, including me, understands, I sell it". This is "collective ignorance".
Schneider's talk reminded me of a wonderful Madison teacher's comments some years ago: "if we are doing such a great job, why do so few people vote and/or understand civic and business issues"?
What, then, is the payoff of increased rigor and the pursuit of high standards throughout an organization? Opportunity.
I recently met a technical professional who works throughout the United States from a suburban Madison home. This person is the product of a very poor single parent household. Yet, high parental standards and rigorous academic opportunities at a somewhat rural Wisconsin high school and UW-Madison led to an advanced degree and professional opportunities.
It also led to a successful citizen and taxpayer. The alternative, as discussed in my recent conversation with Madison Mayor Paul Soglin is growth in those who don't contribute, but rather increase costs on society.
Lucy will be missed.
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Gheorghe Craciun, via a kind email:
We have started the "Madison Math Circle" for interested middle and high school students (please see more details below, or at https://www.math.wisc.edu/wiki/index.php/Madison_Math_Circle ), but we are having some trouble advertising it.Prof. Steffen Lempp told me that you might be able to help us.
Thank you very much!
Best,
George
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Erin Richards, via a kind Chan Stroman-Roll email:
A young and tech-savvy charter school network that's gotten attention for reducing the achievement gap in San Jose, Calif., got the green light from a Common Council committee Tuesday to bring the model to Milwaukee.Rocketship Education, a nonprofit management company, has applied for a charter from the City of Milwaukee that would allow it to open a publicly funded school in the fall of 2013, with the eventual intent to serve up to 4,000 children in eight K-5 schools by 2017. Each school would have to show measurable progress before subsequent schools could open.
The organization, started in 2006, currently serves about 2,500 students in five San Jose area elementary schools.
A majority of members on the Steering and Rules Committee on Tuesday approved sending Rocketship's application to the full council for consideration.
Rocketship CEO and co-founder John Danner explained the organization's three areas of emphasis: engaging parents through teacher-led home visits and training them to advocate for their children; developing talent by growing a pipeline of teachers who can become school leaders; and giving all students individualized learning plans that blend six hours a day of face-to-face instruction with two hours of lab time spent working with online computer programs and low-cost tutors.
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157 page pdf, via a kind reader's email.
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Today, full page ads appear in the L.A. Times, Daily News and La Opinion taken out by Don't Hold Us Back -- respected organizations calling out United Teachers Los Angeles and LAUSD for letting kids fail. The new supergroup includes The United Way, The Urban League, Community Coalition, Alliance for a Better Community, Families in Schools, Asian Pacific American Legal Center and Communities for Teaching Excellence.The ad's bland wording at first seems a bit "so what?" but it's actually written in code to UTLA leaders, who have helped the local teachers union gain a reputation as one of the most anti-reform big-city education unions in the U.S. Here's a translation:
In one line, the ad says teachers should "be rewarded for academic excellence."
That sounds normal, right?
But in fact, that idea has for years been vehemently opposed by UTLA. UTLA has fiercely fought efforts to reward the most effective teachers, or the teachers who take on the toughest assignments, by giving them financial sweeteners -- merit pay.
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Shannon Maloney had already earned a degree in mechanical engineering, but she returned to Lehigh University for a fifth year to complete a second major she knows will make her more employable:Philosophy.
Yep, philosophy.
Though philosophy is routinely dismissed and disparaged - as useless as English, as dead as Latin, as diminished as library science - more college students are getting degrees in that field than ever before.
Though the overall figures remain small, the number of four-year graduates has grown 46 percent in a decade, surpassing the growth rates of much bigger programs such as psychology and history.
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From the dawn of institutionalized schooling until now there have always been reformers, who want to modify the way schooling is done. For the most part, such reformers can be scaled along what might be called a liberal-conservative, or progressive-traditionalist, continuum. At one end are those who think that children learn best when they are happy, have choices, study material that is directly meaningful to them, and, in general, are permitted some control over what and how they learn. At the other end are those who think that children learn best when they are firmly directed and guided, by authoritative teachers who know better than children what to learn and how to learn it. Over time there has been regular back-and-forth movement of the educational pendulum along this continuum. But the pendulum never moves very far. Kindhearted progressives, viewed as softheaded by the traditionalists, push one way for a while, and that doesn't work very well. And then hardnosed traditionalists, viewed as petrified fossils by the progresssives, push the other way for a while, and that doesn't work very well either.
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Madison Schools Superintendent Dan Nerad publicly touted President Barack Obama's stalled jobs proposal Monday, saying it would help the School District pay for millions of dollars in needed maintenance projects.Federal tax receipts, spending and deficits, fiscal years 2007-2011, billions of dollars:"We either pay now, or we pay more at a much later date," Nerad said at a press conference at West High School, which is due for about $17.4 million in maintenance projects over the next five years.
A School Board committee is reviewing maintenance projects identified in a 2010 study by Durrant Engineers that said the district may need to spend as much as $83.7 million over five years on projects not already included in the budget.
The committee is expected to make recommendations early next year. Nerad said the committee hasn't decided yet whether to recommend another maintenance referendum. A 2004 referendum authorizing $20 million over five years ran out last year.
| Receipts | Outlays | Deficit | Deficit as a % of GDP |
| 2007 | $2,568$2,729 | $161 | 1.2% |
| 2008 | $2,524$2,983 | $459 | 3.2% |
| 2009 | $2,104$3,520 | $1,416 | 10% |
| 2010 | $2,162$3,456 | $1,294 | 8.9% |
| 2011 | $2,303$3,600 | $1,298 | 8.6% |
The most recent Madison School District maintenance referendum spending has come under scrutiny - though I've not seen any further discussion on this topic over the past year.
Related: Wisconsin state budget is bad for kids by Thomas Beebe:
"It'll be OK," Gov. Scott Walker said last winter when he announced a budget that snatched away more than $800 million in opportunities to learn from Wisconsin public school kids. "I'm giving you the tools to make it work."Reuters:Well, the tools the governor gave local school districts are the right to force teachers to pay more toward their retirement, and the option to unilaterally require educators to kick in more for their health care. The problem is that the tools, along with any money some of them might have left over from federal jobs funds, are one-time solutions. These tools can't be used again unless school districts ask teachers to give up even more of their take-home pay.
By law, all school districts have to balance their budgets. They always have, and always will. That's not the point. The point is that the governor has hijacked the language. Educational accountability isn't about balancing the budget, it's about giving kids opportunities to grow up into good, contributing adults. That's not what Gov. Walker wants to talk about.
The red line, here, is median real household income, as gleaned from the CPS, indexed to January 2000=100. It's now at 89.4, which means that real incomes are more than 10% lower today than they were over a decade ago.More striking still is the huge erosion in incomes over the course of the supposed "recovery" -- the most recent two years, since the Great Recession ended. From January 2000 through the end of the recession, household incomes fluctuated, but basically stayed in a band within 2 percentage points either side of the 98 level. Once it had fallen to 96 when the recession ended, it would have been reasonable to assume some mean reversion at that point -- that with the recovery it would fight its way back up towards 98 or even 100.
Instead, it fell off a cliff, and is now below 90.
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MY son, Ronan, looks at me and raises one eyebrow. His eyes are bright and focused. Ronan means "little seal" in Irish and it suits him.I want to stop here, before the dreadful hitch: my son is 18 months old and will likely die before his third birthday. Ronan was born with Tay-Sachs, a rare genetic disorder. He is slowly regressing into a vegetative state. He'll become paralyzed, experience seizures, lose all of his senses before he dies. There is no treatment and no cure.
How do you parent without a net, without a future, knowing that you will lose your child, bit by torturous bit?
Depressing? Sure. But not without wisdom, not without a profound understanding of the human experience or without hard-won lessons, forged through grief and helplessness and deeply committed love about how to be not just a mother or a father but how to be human.
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In a move that has startled many on the left and the right, Iowa Republican Gov. Terry Branstad has made public his new 18-page education reform bill titled "One Unshakable Vision: World-Class Schools for Iowa." The plan, officially released Oct. 3, makes sweeping changes to the Iowa public education system, as well as to the process for becoming a teacher in Iowa, which could substantially affect aspiring teachers at Iowa State and other colleges and universities in Iowa.Under this new education bill, students in K-12 public school will be subjected to a more intense Iowa core curriculum, third graders will be required to take a reading test in order to move on to the fourth grade, ninth graders will be asked to take a standardized test that would compare them to other students on an international basis, and 11th graders will be required to take a college entrance exam.
As for teachers, the required grade point average for admission into teaching programs at Iowa universities will be raised from a 2.5 to 3.0, core content coursework may be increased, new teachers will enter into an apprentice program in which they will be mentored and trained by distinguished veteran teachers, and a new pay ladder will be implemented from which pay will be tied to both performance and experience. Many believe that these new ambitious approaches are needed to make Iowa a leader in education again, but many still remain wary of some of the ideas proposed in the bill, especially the new standards for prospective teachers at Iowa universities.
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Fran, by Way of IntroductionMy high school algebra 2 class which I had in the fall of 1964, was notable for a number of things. One was learning how to solve word problems. Another was a theory that most problems we encountered in algebra class could be solved with arithmetic. Yet another was a girl named Fran who I had a crush on.
Fran professed to not like algebra or the class we were in, and found word problems difficult. On a day I had occasion to talk to her, I tried to explain my theory that algebra was like arithmetic but easier. Admittedly, my theory had a bit more to go. She appeared to show some interest, but she wasn't interested. On another occasion I asked her to a football game, but she said she was washing her hair that day. Although Fran had long and beautiful black hair, and I wanted to believe that she had a careful and unrelenting schedule for washing it, I resigned myself to the fact that she would remain uninterested in me, algebra, and any theories about the subject.
My theory of arithmetic vs. algebra grew from a realization I had during that the problems that were difficult for me years ago when I was in elementary school were now incredibly easy using algebra. For example: $24 is 30% of what amount? In arithmetic this involved setting up a proportion while in algebra, it translated directly to 24 = 0.3x, thus skipping the set up of the ratio 24/30 = x/100. Similarly, it was now much easier to understand that an increase in cost by 25% of some amount could be represented as 1.25x. What had been problems before were now exercises; being able to express quantities algebraically made it obvious what was going on. It seemed I was on to something, but I wasn't quite sure what.
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Newcomb Central School had two big problems when Skip Hults took over as superintendent five years ago: There were only 55 students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, and the cultural diversity was zero.Hults took a novel approach solving both problems: He recruited students from abroad.
"We realized that if we wanted to keep our school, we needed to expose our kids to the world," Hults said.
The innovation has worked as Hults intended. This fall, the school has nearly twice as many students, 96, including nine from such nations as Brazil, Russia, Korea, Spain, and Thailand. Lured by Newcomb's innovative programs, other students have come from neighboring districts, one from 50 miles away. And parents and teachers mention signs that show students are becoming more engaged in the world, too.
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If Milwaukee needs a big, well-crafted, we're-all-in-this-together effort by a wide-range of power players working on meeting the educational needs of so many thousands of our children, why do I sense so much reluctance to be enthusiastic about an effort that aims to be all of those things?Two simple answers:
Because we've been down roads like this before and nothing much came from them.
Because a lot of people, including some of those power players, are skeptical about our collective ability to make real progress.
I'm sympathetic with both of those points.
For years, I've seen community leaders of all kinds say good things (and often mean them) and come up with no consequential results.
I, too, suffer from oh-no-not-another-big-initiative syndrome. And we all know how deeply entrenched our problems are.
But overall, I say: It's time to get moving, folks.
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But it's clear that teachers are doing their part to keep one small, if important, piece of the public education reform movement alive: making sure they have an organized voice.Now we should do ours.
Say what you want about his approach, Walker basically gave reform-minded school districts their chance by ramming through a collective bargaining law that drastically limits what's subject to negotiation.
So, if you think the school year should be longer, if you'd like to see your district have an easier time keeping that awesome first-year teacher and ditching the underwhelming 20-year vet, if you want more money put into recruiting minority teachers and less into teachers' generous health care and pension benefits -- now's your chance.
For despite what you might have heard from union backers, teachers union priorities and students' needs are not always the same thing.
Unions exist, appropriately, to protect their members. You can quibble about whether Walker went too far in lessening their power. But a grudge against a transitory public figure shouldn't take precedence over trying something new to improve public education.
Besides, it's not as if teachers won't have a seat at the reform table.
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Clayton M. Christensen and Michael B. Horn:
As a disruptive innovation--an innovation that transforms a sector from one that was previously complicated and expensive into one that is far simpler and more affordable--the rise of online learning carries with it an unprecedented opportunity to transform the schooling system into a student-centric one that can affordably customize for different student needs by allowing all students to learn at their appropriate pace and path, thereby allowing each student to realize her fullest potential.Whether it does this in the coming years will depend on several variables.
Entrepreneurs and investors--both for-profit and non-profit--are doing their part, as they seek to fashion the future by solving the problems they see students and teachers struggling with today.
Some, like those at Los Altos School District and Rocketship Education, are creating new learning and schooling models and liberating students and teachers.
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Imagine a world, in which when you teach something to someone the knowledge is considered your "intellectual property". Your students are not permitted to teach the things they have learned from you to anyone else, neither for money, nor even for free.To become a teacher, one must buy into the guild for a lot of money, inherit rights from someone who was a teacher, or teach something that hasn't been learned from anyone, i.e. something newly invented.
Being a teacher was a very powerful position. Having a monopoly to teach and usually even your own districts to educate exclusively, a teacher could charge any price. Furthermore, teachers even had the right to dictate the purpose and conditions on which the knowledge they taught was allowed to be used.
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1. Read: Any thing and Everything.2. Write: Use new words that your learn in your writings.
3. Listen: When someone uses a word you don't understand, ask them what it means or look it up later.
4. Carry a Dictionary.
5. Watch Frasier: Get your hands on Frasier Dvds. An entertaining way to Improve Your Vocabulary.
6. Make sticky notes of new words and post them in strategic places.
7. Download a words and definitions screensaver.
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We founded the American Center for School Choice because we believe a focus on parental empowerment can contribute to a broadening and coalescing of the coalition that seeks to provide the best possible education for children. Simultaneously, empowering parents creates a common good--for the child, the parent, the family, and society.Clusty Search: John Coons.We begin with the delicate subject of authority--that of parent or of government over the mind of the young. In our culture, authority over thought (or even behavior) has never been a popular premise for argument. But no other way exists; some adult will in fact select a preferred set of skills and values and will attempt, through schooling, to convince Johnny, Susie, Jamal, or Juanita of their truth. Authority is simply a fact.
Whether one is Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or the National Education Association, we must proceed by asking which big person will decide this issue for some little person. The fact of authority is no exit, but it is instead the necessary entrance to the debate of educators and society about content, values, money, liberty, the best interest of the child, and the common good.
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No factor is more important to the quality of education than the quality of the teacher. With so much at stake, it would be good to know just how well teacher preparation programs are equipping tomorrow's teachers -- and their students -- up for success.Teacher colleges balk at being rated Wisconsin schools say quality survey from national nonprofit and magazine won't be fair by: Erin Richards:
To answer this question, the National Council on Teacher Quality has partnered with U.S. News & World Report to launch a review of the more than 1,400 teacher preparation programs around the country. NCTQ will look at whether the programs select academically capable students, ensure they know the subjects they will teach and equip them with the techniques they need to help their students achieve. The review will let aspiring teachers know where they can get the best preparation, and encourage other programs to emulate the models of their field.
In the 2008-09 academic year, the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development produced more than 300 of the 4,500 new teachers who graduated in Minnesota. Yet despite its key role in filling the state's ranks of educators and despite being sent a formal request to participate in July, as of this week, CEHD has not indicated that they will cooperate with the review.
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A system that trains your brain to overcome degrading vision as you age will soon be available as an iPhone appWE HAVE gotten used to the idea that smartphone apps can substitute for devices like GPS navigation systems or portable music players. But the latest item on the list may come as a surprise: reading glasses.
Early next year, a company called Ucansi will launch GlassesOff, an iPhone app that could help older people shed their reading glasses for at least part of the time - and may allow others to carry on reading without optical aids for years longer than would otherwise be possible.
The app helps people compensate for deterioration in their eyes' ability to focus on nearby objects by training the brain to process the resulting blurred images. "We're using the brain as glasses," says Uri Polat of Tel Aviv University in Israel, and co-founder of Ucansi.
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Choehorned into a small living room in a South Los Angeles apartment, a dozen parents discuss why their kids' school ranks as one of the worst in the nation's second-largest school district.The answers come quickly: Teachers are jaded; gifted pupils aren't challenged; disabled students are isolated; the building is dirty and office staff treat parents disrespectfully.
"We know what the problem is -- we're about fixing it," said Cassandra Perry, the Woodcrest Elementary School parent hosting the meeting. "We're not against the administrators or the teachers union. We're honestly about the kids."
School parent groups are no longer just about holding the next bake-sale fundraiser. They're about education reform.
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The British are coming! The British are coming!
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Public education needs more money! Public education needs more money!One of these statements (had Paul Revere actually said it) was true. One of these statements is obviously false. And the third, well, skies don't fall, silly.
Taxpayers keep hearing how the funding for public education has been cut. We're constantly barraged with: "Money is tight." "We've cut the budget to the bone." "We're running out of options." "We've done all we can; now we have to cut programs and teachers." These claims defy explanation. They aren't true in Spokane. They aren't true in Washington State. They aren't true in most other states, and they aren't true at the federal level. Unfortunately, many people believe them.
A city council candidate insisted recently: "We can't gut education!" Last week, a Spokane reporter wrote: "Since 2002, Spokane Public Schools has cut $45 million from its budget..." In its budget forums last spring, district administrators and board directors told the public that since 2002, the district has cut $54 million from its budget. Spokane school board candidate Deana Brower has repeatedly said that the district needs more money.
Let's look at some numbers. Follow the links to the budget documents. See how the budget has grown, and see the district's tendency to budget for greater expenditures than it has in revenues.
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Arnaud Chevalier, Joanne Lindley:
During the early Nineties the proportion of UK graduates doubled over a very short period of time. This paper investigates the effect of the expansion on early labour market attainment, focusing on over-education. We define over-education by combining occupation codes and a self-reported measure for the appropriateness of the match between qualification and the job. We therefore define three groups of graduates: matched, apparently over-educated and genuinely over-educated; to compare pre- and post-expansion cohorts of graduates. We find the proportion of over-educated graduates has doubled, even though over-education wage penalties have remained stable. This suggests that the labour market accommodated most of the large expansion of university graduates. Apparently over-educated graduates are mostly undistinguishable from matched graduates, while genuinely over-educated graduates principally lack non-academic skills such as management and leadership. Additionally, genuine over-education increases unemployment by three months but has no impact of the number of jobs held. Individual unobserved heterogeneity differs between the three groups of graduates but controlling for it, does not alter these conclusions.
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Consider three anecdotes from Mary Diez, dean of education at Alverno College:Several years ago, she was walking up to the door of a Milwaukee high school. A student told her, "Lady, you don't want to go in there. It's not a nice place." Unfortunately, she said, he was right. Too many staff members didn't really care about the kids, and you had the feeling the place could go out of control at any time. Is that the formula for a successful school?
While Diez was involved in an effort to help 11 specific schools in the city, a principal showed her a six-page document, listing rules and the consequences for violating them. Her response: "You think, if you had more engaging classes, you would need all that?"
Students at one school were telling her about their favorite teacher. "She respects us and we respect her back," one said. The teacher had found something you don't learn from a course or a manual: the right mix of caring for kids and demanding educational progress from them that brings good outcomes, even with high-needs youths.
Diez is one of the leading figures in the Milwaukee area in what I believe (and this may be hopeful thinking) is a growing commitment by schools and educators to strengthen their work on improving the character traits of their students - and of staff members.
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At John McDonough High School in this city's Esplanade Ridge district, the new superintendent points to a broken window boarded up with plastic. Nobody thought to fix it properly. "Why? Because these are the poor kids," says John White, who arrived in New Orleans this spring. "The message is: 'We don't care.'"John Mac is one of the worst schools in New Orleans, which makes it one of the worst in America. It scored 30 out of 200 on a statewide performance scale when 75 counts as "failing." In a school built for 800 students, 340 are enrolled. Virtually all are African-American. A couple years ago, an armed gang burst into the cafeteria and assassinated a student.
Mr. White looks in on classrooms. In one, groups of seniors chat loudly and puzzle over a basic algebra problem. In another the teacher struggles to start a conversation about a USA Today article that few students had read. A girl in the corner sits with a jacket over her head, headphones in both ears.
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Backers of the Madison Preparatory Academy and Madison School Board members appear to have ironed out some of the major wrinkles in the plans for the controversial new charter school aimed at improving the academic performance of minority students.But the devil remains in the details, board members say. Bringing several issues into clearer focus and then getting agreement will be essential to move the project forward. A final vote by the School Board will take place before the end of the year.
Details to be examined include the fine print on a broad agreement announced last week between the Madison teachers union and organizers of the Urban League-sponsored charter school.
"There are still some tremendously big questions that haven't been answered about how this agreement would actually work," says Marj Passman, School Board vice president. "It's not clear to me that all the parties are on the same page on all the issues, large and small."
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Monopolists hate competition, and they'll say almost anything to prevent it. When natural gas competition was introduced in the mid-1980s, pipeline executives told regulators it would lead to gas explosions throughout Manhattan. As implausible as that tale was, it pales in comparison to the misinformation campaign waged by the public school monopoly against school choice.The school choice movement is gathering steam because of one simple fact: Public education is one of the most unproductive and underperforming sectors in America. Since 1970, spending on public schools (per student, in inflation-adjusted terms) has more than doubled. Over the same period, students' combined math and reading scores have been flat, and the U.S. has fallen behind most other industrial nations on standardized tests.
Educational productivity can be measured as the "output" of educational achievement for each inflation-adjusted dollar spent per student, and by this measure, the productivity of American public schools has fallen by 50% since 1970. A dollar invested in public schools in the U.K., Ireland and New Zealand now yields nearly twice the educational achievement as the same dollar spent in U.S. public schools.
These results cannot be explained by the efforts made to educate the disadvantaged, or by "exit exams" that reduce the pool of high school graduates in some countries. America's public schools clearly need to be improved but, in spite of receiving a massive increase in resources, have consistently failed to do so. Given this dismal performance, the current calls for fundamental educational reform are natural, healthy and long overdue.
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A college professor looks at the forgotten victims of our mediocre educational system--the potentially high achievers whose SAT scores have fallen, and who read less, understand less of what they read, and know less than the top students of a generation ago.Two crises are stalking American education. Each poses a major threat to the nation's future. The two are very different in character and will require separate strategies if we wish to solve them; yet to date, almost without exception, those concerned with restoring excellence to our schools have lumped them together.
The first crisis, which centers on disadvantaged minority children attending inner-city schools, has received considerable attention, as well it should. Put simply, it involves students whose habitat makes it very difficult for them to learn. The key issues are more social than educational. These children clearly need dedicated teachers and a sound curriculum, the two staples of a quality school, but the fact remains that most of them will not make significant progress until they also have decent housing, a better diet, and a safer environment in which to live.
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It appears that the one thing holding down student achievement was the jeans the teacher wore to class. Oh, if only we had realized that unless the teacher was wearing a tie while dodging spitballs from his class of 60 kids, that would make all the difference as to whether or not Johnny could read.Nancy Ettenheim:No one cares to lower class sizes, and heaven forbid we should give teachers the opportunity to have any say in their workplace. So let's enact dress codes for teachers. No one is saying where the teachers are going to get the money for all these clothes, but I guess Goodwill might be high on the list.
What an interesting paradox to read the Oct. 2 article on dress codes for teachers in the same newspaper that carried the lament that we need more people with manufacturing skills such as machinists and CNC operators. Does anyone remember that some people who work with their hands are the ones who are actually helping the economy along? I mean, are we so blinded by the thought that we all want everyone to be a doctor, lawyer or MBA that we have forgotten that some people are amazing at doing jobs that don't require wearing a suit?
In this era of tumult and freefall for teachers in public schools, the imposition of a teacher dress code seems almost over the top. At first glance, it appears heavily dredged in the flour of unbounded management power.A number of public school districts in the metro area have imposed dress codes on their teaching staff. While the codes vary in detail, they seem to center around a neat, casual appearance for the teachers.
Politics aside, when one steps back and examines the strengths of the policy, it is a good idea. Teachers quoted in an Oct. 2 Journal Sentinel article, for the most part, appear to be supportive. In my experience, most teachers already dress this way, what I call "respectfully comfortable."
The key issue to me is that teachers not be mistaken for students because of lax appearance. Clothing is a powerful symbol in all areas of life; it makes announcements as to how a person wishes to be perceived. Teachers do and should occupy an arena of esteem and authority. This can be diminished if a teacher shows up in class wearing clothes so informal as to send a message to students that, hey, we're all buddies and I want to be your friend.
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"Our shared goal is that every teacher should receive the high-quality preparation and support so that every student can have the education they deserve," U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said at the report's release here on Friday at a forum sponsored by Education Sector. The current system provides no measurement of teacher effectiveness, and thus no guarantee of quality, he said. Despite federal rules requiring states to identify low-performing teacher preparation programs, in the past dozen years, more than half haven't pointed to a single one. "That would be laughable if the results weren't so tragic for our nation's children," Duncan said.The plan also includes special aid for programs that recruit more diverse candidates who become successful teachers, to address the increasing difference between the proportion of minority students and that of minority teachers.
Measuring teacher performance has been a focus for Duncan, who last year upset many programs by suggesting that master's degrees in education should not automatically merit higher paychecks, saying that money should be redirected to teachers who either prove their ability to perform or work in high-needs areas such as low-income districts. The new federal proposal, which Duncan announced here on Friday, was widely praised for its goal of improving student outcomes. But it also prompted some skepticism from teacher education groups questioning its feasibility.
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Everybody hates the No Child Left Behind Act. In the last few weeks, both conservative Republicans and President Obama have announced plans to overhaul George W. Bush's signature education law by sending power over K-12 schooling back to the states. On the surface, this might seem like a rare moment of bipartisan consensus. Don't believe it. The two plans actually represent radically different views of the federal government's responsibility for helping children learn.To see why, it helps to understand some common misconceptions about NCLB. The law requires schools to administer annual reading and math tests in grades 3-8 and once in high school, and it holds schools accountable for the percentage of students who pass the tests. That target percentage increases steadily over time, to 100 percent in 2014. Since universal proficiency is obviously impossible, the law has been cast as a malevolent force designed to tar public schools with "failing" labels as a prelude to corporate takeover and/or conversion to the free-market voucher nirvana of Milton Friedman's dreams.
There are, however, three aspects of NCLB that render this scenario very unlikely. First, states were given total discretion to set their own academic standards, pick their own tests, and decide what scores on the tests count as passing. Last year, for example, Alabama reported that 87 percent of its fourth graders had passed the state's reading test. Yet Alabama is, by all available measures, one of the most academically low-performing states in the nation. According to the federal National Assessment of Education Progress, only 34 percent of Alabama fourth graders are proficient in reading. The lesson: Give state education officials the ability to decide how their performance will be judged, and they'll respond in predictable fashion.
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Imagine the National Football League in an alternate reality. Each player's salary is based on how long he's been in the league. It's about tenure, not talent. The same scale is used for every player, no matter whether he's an All-Pro quarterback or the last man on the roster. For every year a player's been in this NFL, he gets a bump in pay. The only difference between Tom Brady and the worst player in the league is a few years of step increases. And if a player makes it through his third season, he can never be cut from the roster until he chooses to retire, except in the most extreme cases of misconduct.Let's face the truth about this alternate reality: The on-field product would steadily decline. Why bother playing harder or better and risk getting hurt?
No matter how much money was poured into the league, it wouldn't get better. In fact, in many ways the disincentive to play harder or to try to stand out would be even stronger with more money.
Of course, a few wild-eyed reformers might suggest the whole system was broken and needed revamping to reward better results, but the players union would refuse to budge and then demonize the reform advocates: "They hate football. They hate the players. They hate the fans." The only thing that might get done would be building bigger, more expensive stadiums and installing more state-of-the-art technology. But that just wouldn't help.
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Stopping in areas notorious for volatile labor relations this year, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wrapped up his Great Lakes bus tour in Milwaukee and Chicago on Friday with little talk of teachers union battles.In Milwaukee, Duncan was joined by Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who outraged educators by signing a budget in June that severely limited their collective bargaining rights, at a town hall event focused on connecting learning to career skills.
"All of us feel your presence today but appreciate your interest in Milwaukee and particularly the Milwaukee Public School system," Walker said in the library of Milwaukee's School of Career and Technical Education.
"You've done some things we agree with, and you've done some things that we don't agree with," Duncan said, addressing Walker. "Limiting collective bargaining rights is not the right way to go," he added, garnering applause.
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I suppose this is, officially speaking, the end of the tennis season. Djokovic and Nadal - a raging bull tamed by a matador of superhuman reflexes and speed - fought out their thunderous final in New York a month ago and our end-of-season party at the club took place not long afterwards. As far as I'm concerned, though, there is no end to the season; I was brought up to play in light snow and some of our most exhilarating battles have been joined on crisp winter evenings with the temperature close to zero.Perhaps the best moments of my tennis year, so far, came just as the autumn leaves started to strew the courts, just before the nets and posts of the grass courts were taken up for the last time. There were some good late-season games - but even better than the games were flashes of insight, not just into technical aspects of the game but more particularly into the true nature of mentoring.
Our club is a place where people of different generations come regularly and naturally together, from the senior members, a little creaky in the limbs, to very young children just beginning to swing racquets (you hope not in the direction of their brothers and sisters), and that in itself is unusual in a world that is more and more stratified in terms of age - and not just age.
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The Chicago Teachers Union's closed-door "policy briefings" for aldermen Monday were as much about public relations as they were about school policy, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's unofficial City Council floor leader, Ald. Patrick O'Connor (40th Ward) said after attending one of the three sessions.For weeks, the union and Emanuel have been locked in a war of words over the mayor's push to immediately extend the school day by 90 minutes. On Monday, the union's leaders made their case instead to 25 of the council's 50 members, with eight other aldermen sending aides to the meetings.
"They're trying to win a little more sympathy from the public and the City Council, and this was their effort to do that," O'Connor said. "I think today was an attempt by the Chicago Teachers Union to basically say, 'We don't like to be vilified. We don't want to be in a position when people are upset with us as being an obstruction to a longer school day.'"
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Don Severson, via email:
DATE: October 3, 2011PDF Version.
TO: MMSD Board of Education
FROM: Don Severson, President, 577-0851, donleader@aol.com RE: Madison Preparatory Academy Hearing
Notes: For public appearanceThe actions of the past few days are stunning, but not necessarily surprising ULGM (Madison Prep) and MTI have made working 'arrangements' regarding employment of teachers and staff and working conditions, the details of which have yet to be made public.
Major issue: 'negotiations/arrangements' have been made between MP & MTI without MMSD BOE nor administration at the table--both observed and verified by parties not involved.
In other words, MTI is the de facto negotiator for the Board and NOT the elected BOE, nor specified as its representative
ACE has publicly stated its support of MP. We must now withhold affirmation of that support until and unless major, systemic changes occur in how the proposal process and plans (both academic and business) play out.By design, default, benign neglect or/and collusion the BOE has abdicated the authority vested in it by law and the electorate of the District with regards to its fiduciary irresponsibility and lack of control for policy-making.
Lest you are OK with your past and current operating methods; have forgotten how you are demonstrating your operating methods; or don't care, you have been elected to be the leader and be in charge of this District, not MTI.
By whatever BOE action or in-action has thus far been demonstrated, the proposed operational direction of MP has been reduced to appearing and acting in the mirror image of the District. This is inappropriate to say the least. The entire purpose of a charter school is to be different and to get different results.
How is forcing MP to operate in essentially the same fashion as the District and at a cost of more money....any different from....operating the District's nearly 30 current alternative/innovative programs and services for 800 students, at millions of dollars, taking away from other students in the District? And, you can't even produce data to show what differences, if any, are being made with these students.
This current Board, and past Boards of Education have proven over and over again that spending more money and doing essentially the same things, don't get different results (speaking here essentially about the 'achievement gap' issue)
Continuing to speak bluntly, the Board's financial and academic philosophies, policies and actions are inconsistent, phony and discriminatory.Let us be clear...
The process for consideration of the Madison Prep charter school proposal must
- be open and public
- be under the leadership of the BOE
- be accountable to the BOE and the public
- have ALL stakeholders at the same table at ALL times
Thank you.
Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.
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Late last week the proposal cleared a major hurdle with the announcement that the Urban League had struck a deal with MTI to employ unionized teachers, nurses and clerical staff.
AFSMCE Local 60 President Tom Coiyer asked the district to use its own unionized custodial staff rather than allow them to be contracted. And Don Severson, president of a conservative district watchdog group, withdrew his previous support because of the deal struck between the Urban League and MTI, which didn't involve the School Board.MTI executive director John Matthews, who attended but did not speak at the hearing, said the union would no longer oppose the proposal. However, he remains skeptical that Madison Prep would be more successful than the district's high schools at closing the achievement gap.
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At this time of year there is always talk of education. The autumn term has started; some children are entering school for the first time; others are making the transition from primary to secondary; young adults are being driven, with bulging bags and cases, to halls of residence by parents who may be more traumatised than they are. And this year, at least in the UK, there is more talk than ever, because education is being "shaken up" by Michael Gove, a notably driven and idealistic, and ideological, education secretary; and also by a universities minister, David Willetts, of legendary intellectual firepower. A new class of "free schools" has been created; the whole system of university education has been rethought, or at least put on a different financial footing.Of course the idea of free schools sounds grand - but free from what? Or, more importantly, free for what? Trying to get some perspective on what this idea of freedom might mean, I found myself looking back to two inspiring experiments in education, both of which were conducted in Madrid before the Spanish Civil War.
The more famous of the two was the Residencia de Estudiantes - the arty version of an Oxbridge college at which Lorca, Buñuel, Dalí, Falla and others spent time in the 1920s and 1930s, and which served as a seedbed for much of the burgeoning artistic creativity of that brilliant, short-lived time.
But the less well-known Institución Libre de Enseñanza, or Free Institute of Education, founded in 1876 by Francisco Giner de los Ríos, is possibly more relevant to my theme. In this case the word "free" meant very specifically free from the dead hand of state and religious control. The Spanish "Glorious Revolution" of 1868 had promised a more modern, secular, scientific model of education; but the Restoration of 1874 brought back not only the Bourbons but a repressive, state-controlled education system in which the minister dictated the choice of textbooks and curriculum, and forbade the teaching of non-Catholic religious doctrine or critical political ideas.
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Joe Nystrom, who teaches math at a low-income high school here, used to think that only a tiny group of students -- the "smart kids" -- were capable of advanced coursework.But two years ago, spurred by a national program that offered cash incentives and other support for students and teachers, Mr. Nystrom's school, South High Community School, adopted a come one, come all policy for Advanced Placement courses. Today Mr. Nystrom teaches A.P. statistics to eight times as many students as he used to, and this year 70 percent of them scored high enough to qualify for college credit, compared with 50 percent before. One in four earned the top score possible, far outpacing their counterparts worldwide.
South High students said Mr. Nystrom and his colleagues had transformed the culture of a tough urban school, making it cool for boys with low-slung jeans who idolize rappers like Lil Wayne to take the hardest classes.
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It would have been easy to predict an unpromising future for Maurice Thomas when he was born. His mother was single, 17 years old, and the product of a low-income, troubled Milwaukee home.But Thomas had some big things going for him: His mother's dedication to education. Teachers who pushed him forward with care and skill. And his own commitment to making a difference.
"Trajectory" is a word used often by Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America, the organization that over two decades has trained more than 20,000 high performing college graduates to be teachers and placed them in high-needs classrooms across the country for their first two years out of school.
Kopp is convinced that the trajectory of the lives of children - in fact, of entire communities - can be turned for the better, especially by education.
When Kopp published her book, "A Chance to Make History," last winter, Maurice Thomas, who was with Teach for America in Atlanta, was one of the people she wrote about in detail. She described his impact as a teacher and how he had become deeply involved in getting his students to succeed.
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The ongoing debate over whether using student test results on standardized exams is a good way to evaluate a teacher's effectiveness just took a new twist.The U.S. Department of Education on Friday released a report calling for new regulations designed to link federal funding for teacher-education programs to the test scores of students.
"While there are many beacons of excellence, unfortunately some of our existing teacher preparation programs are not up to the job," U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says in the forward to the report. "They operate partially blindfolded, without access to data that tells them how effective their graduates are in elementary and secondary school classrooms after they leave their teacher preparation programs. Too many are not attracting top students, and too many states are not setting a high bar for entry into the profession."
The report, which outlines the Obama administration's proposals for teacher education reform, also calls for additional funds for teaching scholarships and expanding efforts to create more minority teachers. It's mainly catching the eyes of higher education officials nationally, however, for proposing ways to hold colleges, universities and programs that produce teachers accountable for those they send into the classroom.
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One hundred fifty-three thousand words per week. That's the difference between the 215,000 words per week that the average child in a privileged home hears and the 62,000 words per week that the average child in a family on welfare hears. I'll explain the research behind these numbers later; for now, just consider how staggering the differ- ence is. And consider the implications. Hearing language is the first step in learning to read and write and make sense of the world.The language gap that results in the achievement gap begins at home. Schools can and should do their part to close this gap, but parents, by reading to their children and interacting with them in positive and encouraging ways, need to do their part, too.
The idea that families need to provide enriching educational activities is not new. In 1908, Edmund Burke Huey, regarded as "one of the foremost leaders" in educating children with learning disabilities,1 wrote, "The school of the future will have as one of its important duties the instruction of parents in the means of assist- ing the child's natural learning in the home."2 This insight was just one of many in his classic work The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, a 500-page book so highly regarded that it was reprinted by the MIT Press in 1968 and again by the International Reading Association in 2009.
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We have historically been uncomfortable with so-called "charter" schools, which too frequently sacrifice the principle of providing all students with a well-rounded education in favor of narrower experiments.And we have never had any taste for separate-but-equal -- or more usually separate-and-unequal -- schemes that divide students along lines of race, class and gender.
As such, we approached the Madison Preparatory Academy project with trepidation.
The proposal to create a charter school with single-sex classrooms focused on raising the academic performance of minority students has been sincerely and generally well presented by Urban League President Kaleem Caire. We respect that Caire is attempting to address serious issues, including a lingering frustration with the Madison Metropolitan School District's responses to the achievement gap that has plagued the district for many years.
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Tim Comer says when his son moved from a mostly black magnet school in Chicago to the Madison School District in 2006, "he went from sharp to dull."Comer, 45, a black father and unemployed electronic engineer, said the difference was that Madison was "laid back" while the Chicago school pushed students to work extra hard to succeed.
"In Chicago he was always a frontrunner," Comer said. "But here, he's always on the back burner."
Comer's dissatisfaction is shared by many black parents in Madison where, despite decades of efforts, a significant gap persists between white and black students' academic performance and graduation rates.
Although the gap is closing among students completing algebra by the 10th grade, it has widened on 4th grade reading tests and in high school graduation rates since 2003. Those changes have come as the number of black students in the district has increased and the number of whites has declined.
"We know that we're not pushing the needle significantly," Superintendent Dan Nerad said about what he considers "the most significant social justice issue in America."
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Kaleem Caire, via email:
October 3, 2011
Dear Friends & Colleagues.
As the Wisconsin State Journal and The Capital Times newspapers reported over the weekend, the Urban League of Greater Madison, the new Board of Madison Preparatory Academy and Madison Teachers, Inc., the local teachers' union, achieved a major milestone last Friday in agreeing to collaborate on our proposed charter schools for young men and women.
After a two-hour meeting and four months of ongoing discussions, MTI agreed to work "aggressively and proactively" with Madison Prep, through the existing collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between MTI and the Madison Metropolitan School District, to ensure the school achieves its diversity hiring goals; educational mission and staff compensation priorities; and staff and student performance objectives.
Where we started.
In March 2011, we submitted a proposal to MMSD's Board of Education to start an all-boys public charter school that would serve 120 boys beginning in the 2012-13 school year: 60 boys in sixth grade and 60 boys in seventh grade. We proposed that the school would operate as a "non-instrumentality" charter school, which meant that Madison Prep would not employ teachers and other relevant support staff that were members of MTI's collective bargaining unit. We also proposed a budget of $14,471 per pupil, an amount informed by budgets numbers shared with us by MMSD's administration. MMSD's 2010-11 budget showed the projected to spend $14,800 per student.
Where we compromised.
A. Instrumentality: As part of the final proposal that the Urban League will submit to MMSD's Board of Education for approval next month, the Urban League will propose that Madison Prep operate as an instrumentality of MMSD, but have Madison Preparatory Academy retain the autonomy of governance and management of both the girls and boys charter schools. MTI has stated that they have no issue with this arrangement.
What this means is that Madison Prep's teachers, guidance counselor, clerical staff and nurse will be members of the MTI bargaining unit. As is required under the current CBA, each position will be appropriately compensated for working extra hours to accommodate Madison Prep's longer school day and year. These costs have been built into our budget. All other staff will employed by Madison Preparatory Academy, Inc. and the organization will contract out for some services, as appropriate.
B. Girls School Now: When we began this journey to establish Madison Prep, we shared that it was our vision to establish a similar girls school within 12-24 months of the boys school starting. To satisfy the concerns of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction about how Madison Prep complies with federal Title IX regulations, we offered to start the girls school at the same time. We have since accelerated the girls school in our planning and look forward to opening the girls and boys schools in August 2012 with 60 sixth grade boys and 60 sixth grade girls. We will add one grade per year in each school until we reach a full compliment of 6th - 12th grades and 840 students total.
C. Costs: Over the past six months, we have worked closely with MMSD's administration to identify an appropriate budget request for Madison Prep. Through an internal analysis of their spending at the secondary level, MMSD recently reported to us that they project to spend $13,207 per pupil on the actual education of children in their middle and high schools. To address school board members' concerns about the costs of Madison Prep, we worked hard to identify areas to trim spending without compromising our educational mission, student and staffing needs, and overall school effectiveness. We've since reduced our request to $11,478 per pupil in Madison Prep's first year of operation, 2012-13. By year five, our request decreases to $11,029 per pupil. Based on what we have learned about school spending in MMSD and the outstanding educational needs of students that we plan to address, we believe this is a reasonable request.
Why we compromised.
We have more information. After months of deliberation, negotiation and discussion with Board of Education members, school district administration, the teacher's union and community stakeholders, we've been able to identify what we believe is a clear path to getting Madison Prep approved; a path that we hope addresses the needs and interests of all involved without compromising the mission, objectives and needs of our future students.
We believe in innovation and systemic change. We are very serious about promoting change and opportunity within our public schools, and establishing innovative approaches - including new schools - to respond to the educational needs, interests and challenges of our children, schools and community. Today's children are tomorrow's workforce; tomorrow's leaders; tomorrow's innovators; and tomorrow's peacekeepers. We should have schools that prepare them accordingly. We are committed to doing our part to achieve this reality, including finding creative ways to break down boundaries rather than reinforce them.
The needs and desires of our children supersede all others. Children are the reward of life, and our children are our first priority. Our commitment is first and foremost to them. To this end, we will continue to seek ways to expand opportunities for them, advocate on their behalf and find ways to work with those with whom we have differences, even if it means we have to compromise to get there. It is our hope that other organizations and individuals will actively seek ways to do to the same.
We see the bigger picture. It would not serve the best interests of our community, our children, our schools or the people we serve to see parents of color and their children's teachers at odds with each other over how best to deliver a quality education to their children. That is not the image we want to portray of our city. We sincerely hope that our recent actions will serve as a example to areas businesses, labor unions, schools and other institutions who hold the keys to opportunity for the children and families we serve.
Outstanding Issues.
Even though we have made progress, we are not out of the woods yet. We hope that over the next several weeks, the Board of Education will respond to your advocacy and work with us to provide the resources and autonomy of governance and leadership that are exceedingly important to the success of Madison Prep.
We look forward to finding common ground on these important objectives and realizing our vision that Greater Madison truly becomes the best place in the Midwest for everyone to live, learn and work.
Thank you for your courage and continued support.
Madison Prep 2012!
Onward!
Kaleem Caire
President & CEO
Urban League of Greater Madison
Phone: 608-729-1200
Fax: 608-729-1205
www.ulgm.org
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Since January 2007, I've attempted repeatedly and in myriad ways to persuade Spokane Public Schools' leadership to provide teachers with good math materials so that our children will gain sufficient basic math skills. It's an effort you'd think would be welcome, respected, and relatively painless. Alas.In 2008, after repeated failed efforts to get a conversation going with the district or with the daily newspaper, I decided to take that conversation public. Thus was born my blog, Betrayed. Shortly after that, I began writing my book, Betrayed: How the Education Establishment Has Betrayed America and What You Can Do about it. The book was published in January 2011, and shortly thereafter, I worked with two professionals to hold public forums in Spokane and talk directly with the people. The district leadership does not appear to appreciate my efforts to inform the people and try to get the children the mathematics they need.
A school district's activities should be an open book to the community that pays for them. My blog, book and advocacy all required thorough and accurate information. Therefore, over these nearly five years of effort, I've had to file public records requests with the district in order to obtain pertinent information that wasn't available in any other venue. For records other than internal district communications, my searches usually went like this:
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Celebrating the one-year anniversary of Massachusetts's successful pitch for $250 million from the Obama administration's Race to the Top program, Gov. Deval Patrick, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and state Education Secretary Paul Reville on Wednesday touted the efforts the state has made to improve innovation and student performance in public schools.How does Wisconsin compare to Massachusetts? Find out, here.The anniversary comes as state education officials indicate they plan to seek a waiver from key provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act that require 100 percent of students to be proficient in English and math by 2014. Obama announced the opportunity for states to apply to opt out of portions of NCLB last Friday.
Duncan credited Massachusetts with setting "a great example for the country," despite Reville acknowledging that under No Child Left Behind over 90 percent of Massachusetts schools have been categorized in some way as "underperforming" based on the most recent MCAS scores.
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I've been something of a pessimist when it comes to the general state of public education.But I'm coming around. I'm coming around to the view that big, important, disruptive -- and positive -- changes are coming; and they're coming faster than many might think. I've concluded that those who see online learning as a part of the solution to crumbling school budgets and lackluster student performance are right. I now believe that the education world is on the brink of a revolution that will come about not because of politics and policy, but despite them.
The potential is so compelling that if the education establishment does not encourage the move to smart online learning, parents, students, teachers and innovative administrators will lead the charge. They will engineer the shift. And they'll do it in a matter of years, not decades.
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Teacher preparation programs play an essential role in our elementary and secondary education system, which relies on them to recruit, select, and prepare approximately 200,000 future teachers every year.1 Strong programs recruit, select, and prepare teachers who have or learn the skills and knowledge they need to be hired into teaching positions, be retained in them, and lead their students to strong learning gains. Weak programs set minimal standards for entry and graduation. They produce inadequately trained teachers whose students do not make sufficient academic progress.Unfortunately, while there are shining examples of strong programs throughout the country, too many of our teacher preparation programs fall short. As a whole, America is not following the lead of high-performing countries and recruiting the nation's best and brightest into teaching. Instead, only 23% of all teachers, and
only 14% of teachers in high-poverty schools, come from the top third of college graduates.2 Our differences with other nations are not due to teacher preparation alone. We must do more to support and reward excellent teaching at various stages in the education system. However, we can do more in the area of preparation. After admission, too many programs do not provide teachers with a rigorous, clinical experience that prepares them for the schools in which they will work. Only 50 percent of current teacher candidates receive supervised clinical training. More than three in five education school alumni report that their education school did not prepare them for "classroom realities." 3
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Many Americans, having grown accustomed to Caesarism, probably see magnanimity in that front-page headline. Others, however, read it as redundant evidence of how distorted American governance has become. A president "gives" states a "voice" in education policy concerning kindergarten through 12th grade? How did this quintessential state and local responsibility become tethered to presidential discretion? Here is how federal power expands, even in the guise of decentralization:Ohio Sen. Robert Taft (1889-1953) was "Mr. Republican," revered by conservatives chafing under the domination of the GOP by Eastern money that preferred moderates such as New York Gov. Tom Dewey, the GOP's 1944 and 1948 presidential nominee. In "The Roots of Modern Conservatism: Dewey, Taft, and the Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party," Michael Bowen, historian at Pennsylvania's Westminster College, recounts how Taft leavened his small-government orthodoxy with deviations, including federal aid to primary and secondary education.
In the 79th Congress (1945-47), Taft sponsored legislation to provide such education more than $8 billion over 25 years. The sum was huge (the 1947 federal budget was $34.5 billion), and the 25-year horizon said that federal intervention would not be temporary. Taft drafted his bill with help from the National Education Association (NEA), the teachers union that today is an appendage of the Democratic Party, except when the relationship is the other way around.
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It started with a partnership between the school district and the teachers' union.Next came $100 million in grant funding from Bill and Melinda Gates, then the arduous job of explaining the Empowering Effective Teachers plan to more than 11,000 teachers.
On Monday night, a small group of parents braved heavy rains for its chance.
Turnout at Chamberlain High School to hear Hillsborough County school officials explain and answer questions about the program was sparse. But Melissa Erickson, president of the county PTA council, didn't mind.
"It's the beginning of a conversation," she said.
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Ed Hughes has a problem.Like most of his fellow school board members and practically everyone else in Madison, he was bowled over by Urban League president Kaleem Caire's vision for Madison Prep, a charter school that would aggressively tackle the school district's entrenched minority achievement gap.
"The longer day, the instructional focus, and the 'no excuses' approach appealed to me," Hughes says.
But as he looked into the details, Hughes became more and more concerned about the cost of the school and "whether there is a good match between the problem we are trying to address and the solution that's being proposed."
Expressing those doubts in his blog has turned the soft-spoken Hughes into a heretic.
Caire is a superstar who has galvanized the community to get behind his charter school. At school board hearings, only a handful of speakers express any reservations about the idea, while an overwhelming number speak passionately about the need to break the school-to-prison pipeline, and about Madison's moral obligation to do something for the kids who are not being served.
Hughes listens respectfully. But, he says, "for Madison Prep to be the answer, we'd need to know that the students it was serving would otherwise fall through the cracks."
.....
But Hughes' big problem with the Urban League's draft proposal, submitted to the district last February, is cost. The total cost to the school district of $27 million over five years is just too much, he says.
Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:
I don't know if the Urban League's plans for Madison Prep will come to fruition. If they do, I predict here and now that the school will have a higher graduation rate than the Madison school district as a whole for African-American students and probably for other groups of students as well. I also predict that all or nearly all of its graduates will apply to and be admitted to college. What is impossible to predict is what difference, if any, this will make in overall educational outcomes for Madison students.Of course charter schools like Madison Prep will have higher graduation rates than their home school districts as a whole. Students enrolled in charter schools are privileged in one clear way over students not enrolled. Each student has a parent or other caregiver sufficiently involved in the child's education to successfully navigate the process to get the student into the charter school. Not all students in our traditional neighborhood schools have that advantage. Other things equal, students with more involved parents/caregivers will be more likely to graduate from high school. So, one would expect that charter schools will have higher graduation rates.
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Several major impediments facing the proposed Madison Prep charter school appear closer to resolution after a series of meetings and communications Friday between Urban League CEO Kaleem Caire, district Superintendent Daniel Nerad and John Matthews, executive director of Madison Teachers Inc.Matthew DeFour and Gayle Worland:The changes are just in time for a public hearing on the Urban League-backed school on Monday, Oct. 3 at 6 p.m. at the Doyle Administration Building, 545 W. Dayton St.
In a major shift, the proposed charter school will now be what's called an "instrumentality" of the Madison Metropolitan School District. That means a significant portion of the school's staff will be covered by the contract the district has with the local teachers union, Madison Teachers Inc. The contract runs through the end of June 2013
On the eve of a public hearing for Madison Preparatory Academy -- a proposed charter school with single-sex classrooms focused on raising the academic performance of minority students -- backers of the school agreed to employ union staff, eliminating a potential hurdle to approval of the school.Fascinating. It will be interesting to see the substance of the arrangement, particularly its implications for the current MMSD schools and Madison Prep's curriculum and operating plans.A budget plan for Madison Prep, proposed by the Urban League of Greater Madison, also was released late Friday. It estimates the Madison School District would spend $19.8 million over five years on the school, or about $2,000 less per student than it spends on other secondary-school students.
In lengthy meetings Friday, Urban League officials hammered out an agreement with Madison Teachers Inc., the union that represents Madison school teachers. MTI executive director John Matthews said the union, which previously opposed creation of Madison Prep, will remain neutral on whether the school should be approved.
A friend notes that the change is "stunning" and that it will likely "cost more" and perhaps "gut" some of Madison Prep's essential components.
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David Crane, the former economic adviser--at that moment rapidly receding into the distance--could itemize the result: a long list of depressing government financial statistics. The pensions of state employees ate up twice as much of the budget when Schwarzenegger left office as they had when he arrived, for instance. The officially recognized gap between what the state would owe its workers and what it had on hand to pay them was roughly $105 billion, but that, thanks to accounting gimmicks, was probably only about half the real number. "This year the state will directly spend $32 billion on employee pay and benefits, up 65 percent over the past 10 years," says Crane later. "Compare that to state spending on higher education [down 5 percent], health and human services [up just 5 percent], and parks and recreation [flat], all crowded out in large part by fast-rising employment costs." Crane is a lifelong Democrat with no particular hostility to government. But the more he looked into the details, the more shocking he found them to be. In 2010, for instance, the state spent $6 billion on fewer than 30,000 guards and other prison-system employees. A prison guard who started his career at the age of 45 could retire after five years with a pension that very nearly equaled his former salary. The head parole psychiatrist for the California prison system was the state's highest-paid public employee; in 2010 he'd made $838,706. The same fiscal year that the state spent $6 billion on prisons, it had invested just $4.7 billion in its higher education--that is, 33 campuses with 670,000 students. Over the past 30 years the state's share of the budget for the University of California has fallen from 30 percent to 11 percent, and it is about to fall a lot more. In 1980 a Cal student paid $776 a year in tuition; in 2011 he pays $13,218. Everywhere you turn, the long-term future of the state is being sacrificed.wikipedia on bread and circuses.This same set of facts, and the narrative it suggested, would throw an ordinary man into depression. He might conclude that he lived in a society that was ungovernable. After seven years of trying and mostly failing to run California, Schwarzenegger is persuasively not depressed. "You have to realize the thing was so much fun!" he says. "We had a great time! There were times of frustration. There were times of disappointment. But if you want to live rather than just exist, you want the drama." As we roll to a stop very near the place on the beach where he began his American bodybuilding career, he says, "You have to step back and say, 'I was elected under odd circumstances. And I'm going out in odd circumstances.' You can't have it both ways. You can't be a spoiled brat."
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Ten Wisconsin senators, from both parties, have joined forces to propose legislation that would require any further expansion of voucher schools to receive a full public debate.The state's voucher program provides taxpayer funds for families to send their children to private schools. It has served low-income students in Milwaukee for about 20 years, but was expanded by Gov. Scott Walker in the state budget passed in June without public debate or other legislative action.
Also included was language allowing automatic expansion of the voucher program in the future to any school district in Wisconsin that meets certain financial and demographic criteria.
That mechanism isn't sitting well with some senators, including Senate President Mike Ellis, R-Neenah. He introduced SB 174, which ensures that any further expansion of the voucher program would include full public debate and legislative action.
"Sen. Ellis is not an enthusiastic advocate nor is he an opponent of voucher programs. But he's long argued that policy issues should not be added into the budget process and this legislation addresses concerns about automatic expansion without proper debate," says Michael Boerger, an aide to Ellis.
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Anthony Cody's recent reflection on this year's Education Nation program on MSNBC offers an important caution to those trying to develop "multiple measures" for student learning and effective teaching. If the decision to use a given measure is determined solely by whether or not it's linked to higher standardized test scores (as with the Gates Foundation's Measures of Effective Teaching study), then you don't really have "multiple measures."
Tracking test scores can be an important tool in helping students make progress, and it is useful to know which elements of classroom practice have a significant impact on students' performance on end-of-the-year tests. For example, teachers in Chicago who had high ratings on Charlotte Danielson's framework for evaluating effective teaching have also been shown to have higher value-added scores. However, when test scores are used as the sole measure of effective teaching and learning -- or when valuable aspects of effective teaching and important types of student learning are discarded or ignored because they don't align with standardized test results -- our students are the ones who ultimately pay the price.
Do you notice what is bothering me? Mrs. Gates begins by acknowledging that good teaching cannot be reduced to a test score -- or at least that this is often said. She then asserts that the half billion dollars they have spent on research in this area have uncovered a number of things that can be measured that allow us to predict which teachers will have the highest test scores. A great teacher is defined over and over again as one who made sure students “learned the material at the end of the year.”
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When Debbie Sumner Mahle, an Atlanta mother, wants to know what her sons, ages 6, 7 and 10, are working on in school, she turns on her computer and logs into NetClassroom. The portal lets her see not just their school assignments but also their attendance and grades.More public and private school systems are wiring up data-management systems, and school work is just the tip of the iceberg. Parent-accessible websites and "learning community management systems"--or LCMSs, in the age of no jargon left behind--are increasingly handling schools' scheduling, emergency contacts, immunizations, academic assessments and even meals, with some offering a daily nutritional breakdown of lunch.
Ms. Sumner Mahle receives email reminders to place her sons' requests at orderlunches.com, which manages the meal program at their school, the Davis Academy. If she wants to work a shift as a cafeteria monitor, or bring cupcakes to a Halloween party, she signs up at volunteerspot.com.
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The Madison School District now has another justification for killing a charter school aimed at doing what the district hasn't: consistently educate minority students.TJ Mertz:Last week, the state Department of Public Instruction said the first half of a planning grant for Madison Preparatory Academy would be released. Madison Prep would focus on low-income minority students and was originally just for boys but has since been revamped to include girls in separate classrooms.
But DPI had a catch: In order to get the rest of the grant, the school must provide scientific research that single-gender education is effective. If you're going to discriminate by gender, DPI is saying, at least have a good reason for it.
I can't help but wonder: Is this the best DPI can do?
I don't know much more than what I've read in this newspaper about how Madison Prep would organize itself, what kinds of educational approaches it would use or how capable its sponsor, the Urban League of Greater Madison, would be.
ewsletter (as of this writing PD has not taken a position on the Madison Prep proposal). I've only changed minimally for posting here; one thing I have added is some hyperlinks (but I did not link as thoroughly as I usually do), another is a small "For Further Reading" set of links at the end," and of course the song. This is intended to be a broad overview and introduction to what I think are some of the most important issues concerning the decision on the Madison Preparatory Academy presented in the context of related national issues. Issues raised in this post have been and will be treated in more depth -- and with hyperlinks -- in other posts]Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School, here.For decades free market advocates such as the Bradley Foundation, the Walton Foundation and the Koch brothers have a waged a multi-front campaign against the public sector and the idea of the common good. Public education has been one of the key battlegrounds. In the coming weeks the Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education will decide whether to approve a proposal for the Madison Prep Charter School. This proposal and the chief advocate for it - Kaleem Caire of the Urban League of Greater Madison - have their roots in the Bradley/Walton/Koch movement, and like much of that movement they offer false promises of educational progress in order to obscure the damage being done to every child in our public schools.
A Public Hearing on the Madison Prep proposal has been scheduled for Monday October 3, at 6:00 PM in the Doyle Building Auditorium; The Madison Prep proposal is on the agenda of the PD General Membership Meeting (Wed , 9/28 , 6:00 p.m, Hawthorne Branch Library, guests welcome).
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Norman Augustine, via a kind reader's email:
The very subject of giftedness is fraught with contradiction and controversy. On the one hand, we often encounter misunderstanding, envy, and perceived elitism--and on the other, admiration, dependency, and respect. Little wonder that our K-12 education system has not yet determined how best to nurture extraordinary individuals so that they can become extraordinary contributors to society--and feel rewarded in doing so. Unfortunately, it is not simply the gifted who are underserved by most of our nation's 14,000 public school systems; that group is just more acutely neglected, along with the economically less fortunate, than the nation's student population as a whole.
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In the coming weeks, Madison police dogs will be able to sniff through the halls, bathrooms and parking lots of the city's middle and high schools if school principals suspect there may be illegal drugs there.The School Board voted 5-1 Monday to allow the sweeps, which school officials say will help eliminate drug use and trafficking in schools and decrease violence. Annual evaluations will be conducted to assess the program's effectiveness.
Supporters, including Madison Police Chief Noble Wray, said it could be an effective and color-blind tool as part of a strategy to keep schools safe. The dogs would search for marijuana, heroin and cocaine.
Luis Yudice, coordinator of safety and security for the school district, said one statistic that led officials to consider these searches was the 60 percent increase in student code-of-conduct violations since 2007 occurring because of drugs.
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The Global Report Card, via a kind Chan Stroman-Roll email:
The Global Report Card was developed by Jay P. Greene and Josh B. McGee as part of the George W. Bush Institute's Education Reform Initiative. The Bush Institute works to increase dramatically the number of American students who graduate high school ready for college or prepared for a good career by:The Best United States School Districts (2007 Math data) [PDF].Driven by accountability and data, these initiatives challenge the status quo and lead a wide range of partners to share goals and use clear metrics tied to student achievement.
- cultivating a new generation of principals
- implementing cutting edge research
- advancing accountability
Summary of Methodology
The calculations begin by evaluating the distributions of student achievement at the state, national, and international level. To allow for direct comparisons across state and national borders, and thus testing instruments, we map all testing data to the standard normal curve using the appropriate student level mean and standard deviation. We then calculate at the lowest level of aggregation by estimating average district quality within each state. Each state's average quality is evaluated then using national testing data. And finally, the average national quality is determined using international testing data. Essentially, this re-centers our distribution of district quality based upon the relative performance of the individual state when compared to the nation as a whole as well as the relative performance of the nation when compared to our economic competitors.For example, the average student in Scarsdale School District in Westchester County, New York scored nearly one standard deviation above the mean for New York on the state's math exam. The average student in New York scored six hundredths of a standard deviation above the national average of the NAEP exam given in the same year, and the average student in the United States scored about as far in the negative direction (-.055) from the international average on PISA. Our final index score for Scarsdale in 2007 is equal to the sum of the district, state, and national estimates (1+.06+ -.055 = 1.055). Since the final index score is expired in standard deviation units, it can easily be converted to a percentile for easy interpretation. In our example, Scarsdale would rank at the seventy seventh percentile internationally in math.
Related: www.wisconsin2.org and 1990-2010 US High School & College Graduation Comparison.
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Tests used to be just for evaluating students, but now the testing of students is used to evaluate teachers and, in fact, the entire educational system. On an individual level, some students and parents have noticed a change -- more standardized tests and more classroom and homework time devoted to preparation for them.So what exactly do test scores tell us?
Poor test scores are the initial premises in most current arguments for educational reform. At the end of last year, reading scores that showed American 15-year-olds in the middle of an international pack, led by Asian countries, prompted calls from researchers and educators for immediate action. This year two sociologists, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, showed that 45 percent of students, after two years of college, have made no significant gains on a test of critical thinking. Last week's report of falling SAT scores is the latest example.
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Public and private school teachers will explore the shifting line between "mainstream" students and special education students during a two-day special education summit at The Martin Institute that begins Tuesday, Sept. 27.The session is for special education teachers. The Wednesday session is for teachers outside the specific special education area. Both are on the Presbyterian Day School campus in East Memphis.
The summit and an 18-month focus on special education that follows arose from a series of luncheons and discussions Institute director Clif Mims had last spring with special education teachers.
The teachers and school system administrators cited "inclusion teaching" as both a trend and a challenge for all teachers.
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edweek, via a kind Richard Askey email:
This interactive timeline digs deep into the Education Week archives to tell the story of U.S. education and the changing policies, theories, and perspectives that have influenced it since 1981, the year the publication began.
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WORTHINGTON, Minn. (AP) -- Perla Banegas arrived in Worthington a decade ago, on a Greyhound bus from Los Angeles. Her single mom had heard about a safe, quiet town in the upper Midwest and steady jobs at its meatpacking plant.In sixth grade that year, Banegas quickly got a reputation as a painfully shy kid -- and a talking-to for taking too many bathroom breaks. She wasn't shy: She just didn't understand a word of English in class. In bathroom stalls, she'd have a good cry and then give herself a pep talk: "You have to go back and try."
She did. And she graduated.
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StoryCorps -- a national oral history project whose interviews you've probably heard on public radio -- kicked off its National Teacher Initiative earlier this week with AFT president Randi Weingarten participating at the White House event.The project, which launched Sept. 19, celebrates and honors the courageous work of public school educators nationwide. "This is a fantastic opportunity to hear from teachers -- the people who are closest to the kids," said Weingarten. "Their stories will be a window to the world on today's public education -- what's working, what's not, and what we can do better to prepare our children for the 21st-century knowledge economy."
StoryCorps is looking to partner with schools, districts, teachers unions, community groups, and others to conduct an on-site recording day, and will send their staff and equipment to schools or events if the local or state federation can guarantee that at least eight interview pairs that include at least one teacher are available to participate. Each interview takes 40 minutes, and the participants will receive a CD of their interview.
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Imagine what would happen to Milwaukee's most vulnerable children if it weren't for the services provided by their school district: Milwaukee Public Schools.I know what some of you are thinking: Their parents should be providing for them. Or: MPS might get better results if the district focused more on education and less on being a social service agency.
I agree. Parents are responsible for their kids, and the district is responsible for education. I'm not here to defend the district against justifiable criticism.
But understand: Many of the kids who attend MPS come from homes so impoverished that even the most basic things - breakfast or a place to sleep - are missing. How can the district educate kids living in such circumstances?
The U.S. Census Bureau reported last week that nearly half of Milwaukee's kids live in poverty. More than 80% of MPS students receive free or reduced-price lunch.
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A thought-provoking essay in the current issue of National Affairs by the prolific and sardonic Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute calls for a retreat from education reform's long-held focus on closing the achievement gap. Hess feels the federal No Child Left Behind Act has, ironically, become "education policy that has shortchanged many children." His thesis is that by focusing on improving achievement scores of the lowest performing subgroups of students, opportunities for reform that would also benefit the other students have been passed up. The result is that many parents, educators, principals, and elected officials see school reform as inapplicable to the average- or highly-performing students who make up the majority of children in most classrooms across the country.Which begs the question--if most children in the country are, in fact, being served pretty well by their public schools (and there can be strong arguments made that children who are white, or female, or upper class, or suburban are served well enough by public schools), then why should the adults who care for and educate them want to reform their schools? Should education reform affect change throughout the system or should it focus more narrowly on those students poorly served by public schooling?
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Twenty-three percent?Does it surprise you to hear that is the percentage of Milwaukee Public Schools children who had adults in their lives attend parent-teacher conferences last spring?
Or that the figure for a year earlier was 47%, meaning the percentage dropped by half in one year?
I've often heard anecdotes from teachers or principals about how low involvement is in parent-teacher conferences. Five parents show up for conferences involving a class of 27 kids. Numbers like that. There are individual MPS schools where participation is high, but that underscores how low the figure is at many other schools.
Parent-teacher conference attendance is sometimes overemphasized. There are other things parents can and should do that are much more important. But conferences can be seen as a measure of parent involvement. I had never seen specific numbers for MPS as a whole until now. The School Board was given a report on parent involvement this month, including numbers produced by stepped-up efforts in MPS to monitor this.
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Call it the recession's lost generation.In record-setting numbers, young adults struggling to find work are shunning long-distance moves to live with Mom and Dad, delaying marriage and buying fewer homes, often raising kids out of wedlock. They suffer from the highest unemployment since World War II and risk living in poverty more than others -- nearly 1 in 5.
New 2010 census data released Thursday show the wrenching impact of a recession that officially ended in mid-2009. It highlights the missed opportunities and dim prospects for a generation of mostly 20-somethings and 30-somethings coming of age in a prolonged slump with high unemployment.
"We have a monster jobs problem, and young people are the biggest losers," said Andrew Sum, an economist and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. He noted that for recent college grads now getting by with waitressing, bartending and odd jobs, they will have to compete with new graduates for entry-level career positions when the job market eventually does improve.
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A decade ago, the No Child Left Behind Act ushered in an era of federally driven educational accountability focused on narrowing the chasms between the test scores and graduation rates of students of different incomes and races. The result was a whole new way of speaking and thinking about the issue: "Achievement gaps" became reformers' catch phrase, and closing those gaps became the goal of American education policy.Today, the notion of "closing achievement gaps" has become synonymous with education reform. The Education Trust, perhaps the nation's most influential K-12 advocacy group, explains: "Our goal is to close the gaps in opportunity and achievement." The National Education Foundation has launched its own "Closing the Achievement Gaps Initiative." The California Achievement Gap Educational Foundation was launched in 2008 to "eliminate the systemic achievement gap in California K-12 public education." Elite charter-school operator Uncommon Schools says its mission is running "outstanding urban charter public schools that close the achievement gap and prepare low-income students to graduate from college." Education Week, the newspaper of record for American education, ran 63 stories mentioning "achievement gaps" in the first six months of this year.
The No Child Left Behind Act's signal contribution has been this sustained fixation on achievement gaps -- a fixation that has been almost universally hailed as an unmitigated good. Near the end of his presidency, George W. Bush bragged that NCLB "focused the country's attention on the fact that we had an achievement gap that -- you know, white kids were reading better in the 4th grade than Latinos or African-American kids. And that's unacceptable for America." Margaret Spellings, Bush's secretary of education, said last year, "The raging fire in American education is the achievement gap between poor and minority students and their peers."
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State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers said Friday that Wisconsin will seek waivers to avoid having to meet basic elements of the federal No Child Left Behind education law at the "first possible moment."Kevin Helliker:Evers spoke during a conference call with U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan shortly after President Barack Obama announced that he was allowing states to seek the waivers.
"This is absolutely outstanding news," said Evers, who has long advocated for states to be given the ability to get out of meeting some parts of the law.
Obama is allowing states to scrap the hugely unpopular requirement that all children must show they are proficient in reading and math by 2014 if states can meet conditions designed to better prepare and test students.
Education chiefs from more than 20 states gathered at the White House on Friday morning to hear President Barack Obama formally propose relaxing certain tenets of the No Child Left Behind act for states that agree to meet a new set of standards he called more flexible.Much more on No Child Left Behind, hereIn characterizing the nearly 10-year-old act as too rigid, the president appeared to strike a chord with school administrators across the country. How much enthusiasm his solution will generate remains to be seen. It calls for evaluating teachers in a way that wouldn't be legal in California, for example, a state that very much supports amending the No Child Left Behind Act.
"It's problematic," Michael Kirst, president of the California State Board of Education, said of a condition that would require states to set specific policy on teacher evaluation, something that in California currently can be done only at the local level. To comply, he said, "we would need legislation passed."
I spoke with a local mother recently who mentioned that her child was doing great, based on the WKCE math report.
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Allison Sherry, via a kind reader's email
While Perry has been outspoken against the Common Core, he and his education commissioner have pulled the quality of Texas tests up to a level respected among education reformers. Test scores among kids of all racial and ethnic backgrounds are higher in Texas than in Wisconsin, for example, which has fewer students qualifying for free- and reduced-price lunch.National Center for Education Statistics State Education Data Profiles.Though Perry will probably make this point on the campaign trail, he's not likely to promise to take over the nation's schools. On the contrary, he'll likely pick up on his recent call to repeal No Child Left Behind and let states take charge of their education systems. In his book released last year, Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington, Perry argues that Washington has taken power away from states. At a speech in November in Washington, Perry took aim at two of former President Bush's signature accomplishments, No Child Left Behind and the Medicare drug benefit program, saying they were examples of areas in which Washington need not be.
"Those are both big government but more importantly, they were Washington-centric," he told the Dallas Morning News. "One size does not fit all, unless you're talking tube socks."
much more at www.wisconsin2.org
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Despite a decade of technological advances that make it possible to work almost anywhere, many of the nation's most educated people continue to cluster in a handful of dominant metropolitan areas such as Boston, New York and California's Silicon Valley, according to census data released Thursday.Data Source: American Community Survey.The upshot is that regions with the most skilled and highly paid workers continue to widen their advantages over less well-endowed locales.
"In a knowledge economy, success breeds success," said Alan Berube, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
Of the largest 100 metropolitan areas, those with the highest percentage of college graduates in 2000 outpaced in education gains areas with lower percentages of college grads. For instance, the 10 cities with the highest share of their population holding a bachelor's degree or higher saw that share jump by an average of 4.6 percentage points over the decade, while the bottom 10 saw their share grow 3.1 percentage points.
Related: www.wisconsin2.org
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Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are scheduled Friday to detail plans to waive some of the law's toughest requirements, including the goal that every student be proficient in math and reading by 2014 or else their schools could face escalating sanctions.A Capital Times Editorial:In exchange for relief, the administration will require a quid pro quo: States must adopt changes that could include the expansion of charter schools, linking teacher evaluation to student performance and upgrading academic standards. As many as 45 states are expected to seek waivers.
For many students, the most tangible impact could be what won't happen. They won't see half their teachers fired, their principal removed or school shut down because some students failed to test at grade level -- all potential consequences under the current law.
Wisconsin has moved to take authority away from local elected school boards and parents and to rest it with political appointees who respond to Gov. Scott Walker and out-of-state groups that are spending millions of dollars to undermine public education.Wisconsin's best and brightest teachers -- the Teacher of the Year award winners -- have joined mass demonstrations to decry the assault by politicians and their cronies on public education.
What's Walker's response? He wants to tell the nation how to do the same.
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The state Department of Public Instruction is requiring backers of the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy to provide scientific research supporting the effectiveness of single-gender education to receive additional funding.I find this ironic, given the many other programs attempted within our public schools, such as English 10, small learning communities, connected math and a number of reading programs.The hurdle comes as university researchers are raising questions about whether such evidence exists. In an article published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers also say single-gender education increases gender stereotyping and legitimizes institutional sexism.
Efforts to justify single-gender education as innovative school reform "is deeply misguided, and often justified by weak, cherry-picked, or misconstrued scientific claims rather than by valid scientific evidence," according to the article by eight university professors associated with the American Council for CoEducational Schooling, including UW-Madison psychology professor Janet Hyde.
The Urban League of Greater Madison originally proposed Madison Prep as an all-male charter school geared toward low-income minorities. But after a state planning grant was held up because of legal questions related to single-gender education, the Urban League announced it would open the school next year with single-gender classrooms in the same building.
Related: Co-Ed Schooling Group Study Assails Merits of Single-Sex Education and from Susan Troller:
A newly published article by child development experts and neuroscientists blasting the trend toward single-sex education as "pseudoscience" won't help the cause of the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy.Neither will the continued opposition of the South Central Federation of Labor, which reiterated its opposition to the Urban League-sponsored proposal this week because teachers at the school would not be represented by a union. The Madison Metropolitan School District has a collective bargaining agreement with Madison Teachers Inc. that runs through June of 2013, and Madison Prep's plan envisions working conditions for its staff -- a longer school day and a longer school year, for example -- that differ substantially from the contract the district has with its employees.
With a public hearing on the charter school scheduled for Monday, Oct. 3, the debate surrounding Madison Prep is heating up on many fronts. The Madison School Board must take a final vote giving the charter school a go or no-go decision in November.
Kaleem Caire, CEO of the Urban League and a passionate proponent for the separate boys and girls academies aimed at helping boost minority youth academic performance, says he is unimpressed by an article published in the prestigious journal, Science, on Sept. 23, that says there is "no empirical evidence" supporting academic improvement through single-sex education.
Are other DPI funded initiatives held to the same "standard"?
The timing of these events is certainly interesting.
14mb mp3 audio. WORT-FM conducted an interview this evening with Janet Shibley Hyde, one of the authors. Unrelated, but interesting, Hyde's interview further debunked the "learning styles" rhetoric we hear from time to time.
UPDATE: The Paper in Question: The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling:
In attempting to improve schools, it is critical to remember that not all reforms lead to meaningful gains for students. We argue that one change in particular--sex-segregated education--is deeply misguided, and often justified by weak, cherry-picked, or misconstrued scientific claims rather than by valid scientific evidence. There is no well-designed research showing that single-sex (SS) education improves students' academic performance, but there is evidence that sex segregation increases gender stereotyping and legitimizes institutional sexism.
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By Reihan Salam
I've been eagerly awaiting the release of the latest issue of National Affairs, which includes Rick Hess's fascinating and at times provocative discussion, or perhaps I say "devastating takedown," of "achievement-gap mania." The following paragraph gives you a hint as to Hess's conclusion:
In essence, NCLB was an effort to link "conservative" nostrums of accountability to Great Society notions of "social justice." The result was a noble exercise hailed for its compassion. The sad truth, however, is that the whole achievement-gap enterprise has been bad for schooling, bad for most children, and bad for the nation.
I found his discussion of the neglect of advanced and gifted education particularly convincing, as well as his recounting of how the "delusion of rigor" has undermined quality control across many domains. Hess ends his essay with an accounting of where "achievement-gap mania" has left the politics of K-12.
(1) Reforming education has become someone else's problem:
First, achievement-gap mania has signaled to the vast majority of American parents that school reform isn't about their kids. They are now expected to support efforts to close the achievement gap simply because it's "the right thing to do," regardless of the implications for their own children's education. In fact, given that only about one household in five even contains school-age children -- and given that two-thirds of families with children do not live in underserved urban neighborhoods, or do not send their kids to public schools, or otherwise do not stand to benefit from the gap-closing agenda -- the result is a tiny potential constituency for achievement-gap reform, made up of perhaps 6% or 7% of American households.
Because middle-class parents and suburbanites have no personal stake in the gap-closing enterprise, reforms are tolerated rather than embraced. The most recent annual Gallup poll on attitudes toward schooling reported that just 20% of respondents said "improving the nation's lowest-performing schools" was the most important of the nation's education challenges. Indeed, while just 18% of the public gave American schools overall an A or a B, a sizable majority thought their own elementary and middle schools deserved those high grades. The implication is that most Americans, even those with school-age children, currently see education reform as time and money spent on other people's children.
(2) Reforming education for the majority of students who come non-poor families is seen as somehow unnecessary:
Second, achievement-gap mania has created a dangerous complacency, giving suburban and middle-class Americans the false sense that things are just fine in their own schools. Thus it's no surprise that professionals and suburbanites tend to regard "reforms" -- from merit pay to charter schooling -- as measures that they'll tolerate as long as they're reserved for urban schools, but that they won't stand for in their own communities. ...
Gap-closing strategies can be downright unhelpful or counterproductive when it comes to serving most students and families, and so can turn them off to education reform altogether. Longer school years and longer school days can be terrific for disadvantaged students or low achievers, but may be a recipe for backlash if imposed on families who already offer their kids many summer opportunities and extracurricular activities. Policies that seek to shift the "best" teachers to schools and classrooms serving low-achieving children represent a frontal assault on middle-class and affluent families. And responding to such concerns by belittling them is a sure-fire strategy for ensuring that school reform never amounts to more than a self-righteous crusade at odds with the interests of most middle-class families.
This is one reason why Hess rightly bristled at the crusader mentality that informs films like the recent Waiting for 'Superman.'
(3) Education reform has come to be associated with metrics that aren't particularly helpful for schools that serve non-poor students.
Third, achievement-gap mania has prompted reformers to treat schools as instruments to be used in crafting desired social outcomes, capable of being "fixed" simply through legislative solutions and federal policies. This tendency is hardly surprising, given that most of the thinking about achievement gaps is done in the context not of education reform but of "social justice." Thus gap-closers approach the challenge not as educators but as social engineers, determined to see schools fix the problems that job-training initiatives, urban redevelopment, income supports, and a slew of other well-intentioned government welfare programs have failed to address.
With the social engineer's calm assurance that there are clear, identifiable interventions to resolve every problem, today's education reformers insist that closing the achievement gap is a simple matter of identifying "what works" and then requiring schools to do it. And integral to determining "what works" has been evaluating different strategies in terms of their effects on reading and math scores and graduation rates. This approach has been especially popular when it comes to identifying good teachers. But while the ability to move these scores may be 90% of the job for an elementary-school teacher in Philadelphia or Detroit, it doesn't necessarily make sense to use these metrics to evaluate teachers in higher-performing schools -- where most children easily clear the literacy and numeracy bar, and where parents are more concerned with how well teachers develop their children's other skills and talents.
As Hess has argued elsewhere, what we really need is a more diverse ecology of specialized instructional providers tailored to meet the needs of individual students, including advanced and gifted students, rather than rigid carrot-and-stick systems designed to "fix" centralized command-and-control systems not by making them less centralized and command-and-control, but rather by issuing new commands from the center.
(4) This "what works" mentality, which implicitly assumes that there are a few simple nostrums that "work" in every or at least most cases, has proved a barrier to innovation:
Fourth, the achievement-gap mindset stifles innovation. When a nation focuses all its energies on boosting the reading and math scores of the most vulnerable students, there is neither much cause nor much appetite for developing and pursuing education strategies capable of improving American schools overall.
Consider the case of school choice. Today, for all the vague talk of innovation, charter schools and school vouchers rarely do more than allow poor, urban students to move from unsafe, horrific schools into better conventional-looking schools. The leading brands in charter schooling, for instance, almost uniformly feature traditional classrooms; an extended school day, school year, or both; and a reliance on directive pedagogy attuned to the needs of disadvantaged students. In other words, these are terrific 19th-century schools. One has to search long and hard among the nation's more than 5,000 charter schools to find the handful that are experimenting with labor-saving technologies, technology-infused instruction, or new staffing models better suited to the 21st century.
Furthermore, the intense focus on gap-closing has led to a notion of "innovation" dedicated almost entirely to driving up math and reading scores and graduation rates for low-income and minority students. Promising innovations that promote science, foreign-language learning, or musical instruction have garnered little public investment or acclaim. Even in terms of math and reading, there is not much interest in interventions that do not show up on standardized state assessments.
(5) And interestingly, Rick argues that gap-closing has dimmed interest in promoting racially and socioeconomically integrated schools.
As always, the essay is worth reading in full. I haven't done it justice.
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As more Chicago public schools cash in on Mayor Rahm Emanuel's longer-day financial incentives by adding 90 minutes to their school day, the previous votes by a dozen schools to add about a half hour to the day by bringing back recess are going unnoticed.Restoring recess is part of a broader health push by parents, advocacy groups and some city officials to bring more exercise and better nutrition to both schoolchildren and preschoolers.
Beginning in November, the city's Department of Public Health will require children who attend preschool or day care centers in Chicago to spend less time in front of television or computer screens -- 60 minutes or less -- and more time, at least an hour a day, participating in physical activity. At snack or meal time, milk cannot have a fat content higher than 1 percent, unless a child has written consent from a doctor. Only 100 percent juice can be served.
In Chicago, 22 percent of children are overweight before they enter school, more than twice the national average, according to research compiled by the Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children, a group of organizations and health advocates.
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Tamar Lewin, via a kind reader's email:
Money is talking a bit louder in college admissions these days, according to a survey to be released Wednesday by Inside Higher Ed, an online publication for higher education professionals.More than half of the admissions officers at public research universities, and more than a third at four-year colleges said that they had been working harder in the past year to recruit students who need no financial aid and can pay full price, according to the survey of 462 admissions directors and enrollment managers conducted in August and early September.
Similarly, 22 percent of the admissions officials at four-year institutions said the financial downturn had led them to pay more attention in their decision to applicants' ability to pay.
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"School choice" is a broad term that refers to a wide range of alternatives, including themed charter schools that are entirely under the control of their home school districts. Forty states and the District of Columbia have those in place, according to the American Federation for Children, a national school choice advocacy group.It would be interesting to compare special interest spending in support of the status quo, vs groups advocating change, as outlined in Bill Lueders' article. A few links:But it is the voucher programs, in which public funds are used to send children to private schools, that are the focus of much of the energy around the choice movement. Seven states and the District of Columbia have those, and Milwaukee's voucher program is the first and largest of its kind in the country. That makes Wisconsin a key national battleground.
"Wisconsin has a high level of value to the movement as a whole," says Robert Enlow, president of the Indianapolis-based Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, a nonprofit group that advocates for school choice. The state, he says, is notable for "the high level of scholarship amounts that families can get."
Milwaukee's voucher program had 20,300 full-time equivalent voucher students at 102 private schools in 2010-11, compared to about 80,000 students at Milwaukee's public K-12 schools. The total cost, at $6,442 per voucher student, was $130.8 million, of which about $90 million came from the state and the rest from the Milwaukee Public Schools.
Critics see the school choice program as part of a larger strategy -- driven into high gear in Wisconsin by the fall election of Gov. Scott Walker and other Republicans -- to eviscerate, for ideological and religious reasons, public schools and the unions that represent teachers.
How much do election-year firewalls cost to build? For the state's largest teachers union, $1.57 million.That's how much the Wisconsin Education Association Council said last week it will spend trying to make sure four Democratic state senators are re-elected - enough, WEAC hopes, to keep a Democratic majority in the 33-member state body.
Although there are 15 Democratic candidates running for the state Senate, and 80 Democrats running for the state Assembly, the latest WEAC report shows that the teachers union is placing what amounts to an "all in" bet on saving just four Democratic senators who are finishing their first terms.
In an Oct. 25 report to the Government Accountability Board, the 98,000-member union reported that it will independently:
The statewide teachers union led in spending on lobbying state lawmakers even before this year's fight over collective bargaining rights.The Wisconsin Education Association Council spent $2.5 million on lobbying in 2009 and 2010, years when Democrats were in control of all of state government, a report released Thursday by the Government Accountability Board showed.
WEAC is always one of the top spending lobbyists in the Capitol and they took a central role this year fighting Gov. Scott Walker's plan curbing public employee union rights, including teachers.
Back in 2009, when Democrat Jim Doyle was governor and Democrats controlled the Senate and Assembly, WEAC wasn't helping to organize massive protests but it was a regular presence in the Capitol.
Spending in the summer's recall elections by special interest groups, candidates and political action committees shattered spending records set in previous elections, with $43.9 million doled out on nine elections, according to a study released Tuesday by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.Spending by six political action committees or special interest groups topped the $1 million mark. We Are Wisconsin was the top spender.
The union-backed group spent roughly $10.75 million, followed by the conservative-leaning Club for Growth at $9 million and $4 million in spending from the Greater Wisconsin Committee.
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The struggling Kansas City, Missouri School District was stripped of its accreditation on Tuesday, raising the possibility of student departures and a state takeover. The action follows weeks of tumult that included another round of turnover of top leadership.Former Madison School District Superintendent Art Rainwater formerly worked for the Kansas City School District.Though not entirely unexpected, the move was a painful return to reality for the city after a period of optimism that difficult choices were finally being made to confront longstanding problems in the school district, most notably the closing of nearly half the schools in response to a huge budget deficit.
The Missouri Board of Education cited the continued failure to improve academic performance and the continued instability in district leadership as driving its decision. The district has been provisionally accredited for nearly a decade after a two-year period during which it was unaccredited.
"We've given Kansas City more time than maybe we should have to address the problems," said Chris L. Nicastro, the state education commissioner, who had recommended the move. "Over a sustained period of time, student performance has not met state standards."
Money & School Performance is well worth a read.
It is a rare organization that can reinvent itself, rather than continuing to atrophy.
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It's time for a tuition revolt, and higher taxes aren't the answer. Students and the rest of the public are now paying for decades of mission creep and bureaucratic bloat.The regents of the University of California met this past week to revisit an old issue they've never really dealt with well -- how to cope with erratic (and usually dwindling) state aid.
Sooner or later, they'll probably raise tuition again, as they have in the past. But for now they are quailing at a plan, offered by UC's president, to raise students' costs by at least 8%, and up to 16%, annually for the next four years. "It scares the bejesus out of folks," said one of the regents, California's Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom.
If the past is any guide, that horror will give way to realism. The regents will take a shot at raising more private money from corporations, foundations, rich alumni and the like. They'll come up short, if only because every other academic institution is trying to do the same thing and there's only so much money to go around.
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THE latest bad but unsurprising news on education is that reading and writing scores on the SAT have once again declined. The language competence of our high schoolers fell steeply in the 1970s and has never recovered.This is very worrisome, because the best single measure of the overall quality of our primary and secondary schools is the average verbal score of 17-year-olds. This score correlates with the ability to learn new things readily, to communicate with others and to hold down a job. It also predicts future income.
The decline has led some commentators to embrace demographic determinism -- the idea that the verbal scores of disadvantaged students will not significantly rise until we overcome poverty. But that explanation does not account for the huge drop in verbal scores across socioeconomic groups in the 1970s.
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I have attended dozens of legislative hearings, community meetings, and board meetings where the problems related to public education are discussed. Not to mention the numerous one-on-one conversations I've had with adults who are usually middle or upper class, where the subject of parental involvement in children's education is raised as a major factor contributing to the ills of public education. Educators who work in urban areas are quick to point out how negligent their students' parents are and are eager to recite anecdotes to illustrate their case. What is not said, but clearly implied is this: if the parents of these children in low-performing schools would do their jobs as parents, these children would not be failing.Every time I hear someone raise the issue of parental involvement, I can't help but think of the parents in the latest "education" movies: The Lottery and Waiting for Superman. What good did "parental involvement" do for their children that didn't get accepted into a charter school? If they were not lucky enough to have their number called, they were still stuck in bad schools with educators who, for the most part, had given up on them. What good did "parental involvement" do for them?
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Scientists habitually moan that the public doesn't understand them. But they complain too much: public ignorance isn't peculiar to science. It's sad if some citizens can't tell a proton from a protein. But it's equally sad if they're ignorant of their nation's history, can't speak a second language, or can't find Venezuela or Syria on a map.Indeed, I'm gratified and surprised that so many people are interested in dinosaurs, the Large Hadron Collider or alien life - all blazingly irrelevant to our day-to-day lives. We should be grateful to David Attenborough, Robert Winston, Brian Cox and other popular writers and television presenters for generating such interest. But it's depressing that all too often this natural enthusiasm of the young has been stifled by the time they leave school.
That's sad, because science is important for its own sake. It is a cultural deprivation not to appreciate the wonderful panorama offered by modern cosmology, DNA and Darwinian evolution. This common understanding should transcend all national differences - and all faiths, too. It should be part of global culture; but even in the UK a group of scientists including Attenborough has this week felt the need to reassert this.
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If people want a charter school to be an inspiration to other youngsters in the community, here's a better way to do it. Instead of building an entirely new school, which costs a ton and isolates the kids from the rest of their peers, why not go with the school within a school model, in which a charter is operated within an existing public school?Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter school, here.That's the only original idea I have. Now here is my two cents on the rest of the plan.
I believe Kaleem Caire knows what he is talking about though. It's frustrating to see a debate on the crisis facing minority students as polarized between the know-nothings on the right who believe the only issues facing blacks are self-inflicted cultural ones and the lefties who refuse to accept that anything besides racism and poverty are responsible for the poor performance of black males in America.
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Spending in the summer's recall elections by special interest groups, candidates and political action committees shattered spending records set in previous elections, with $43.9 million doled out on nine elections, according to a study released Tuesday by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.Spending by six political action committees or special interest groups topped the $1 million mark. We Are Wisconsin was the top spender.
The union-backed group spent roughly $10.75 million, followed by the conservative-leaning Club for Growth at $9 million and $4 million in spending from the Greater Wisconsin Committee.
Put in perspective, the $43.9 million spent on the recalls more than doubled the previous record for spending by candidates and groups in legislative races, which was $20.25 million for 99 Assembly seats and 16 Senate seats in the 2008 general elections, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
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A controversial bill that would create an independent, statewide authorizing board for charter schools is facing a tougher path now that Republicans have a razor thin 17-16 edge in the Wisconsin Senate. The legislation is designed to expand charter school choice in Wisconsin and to allow charters to be formed even in communities where they are not approved by local school districts.Although the bill, introduced by Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, last spring, has been modified from its original form, the amended Senate Bill 22 still doesn't pass muster with the Department of Public Instruction. Perhaps more importantly, moderate Republican Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, says he continues to have "more concerns than enthusiasm" for the legislation.
If he, or one of the Senate Democrats that opposed the earlier legislation, can't be persuaded that more independent charter schools would benefit Wisconsin students, SB 22 will be in trouble if it moves from the Joint Finance Committee to a vote in front of legislators, likely in October.
Read more: http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/education/blog/article_a54178bc-e30a-11e0-b207-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1YXkYxg5f
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The Economist via a kind Mary Battaglia email
FROM Toronto to Wroclaw, London to Rome, pupils and teachers have been returning to the classroom after their summer break. But this September schools themselves are caught up in a global battle of ideas. In many countries education is at the forefront of political debate, and reformers desperate to improve their national performance are drawing examples of good practice from all over the world.Related: www.wisconsin2.org.Why now? One answer is the sheer amount of data available on performance, not just within countries but between them. In 2000 the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) at the OECD, a rich-country club, began tracking academic attainment by the age of 15 in 32 countries. Many were shocked by where they came in the rankings. (PISA's latest figures appear in table 1.) Other outfits, too, have been measuring how good or bad schools are. McKinsey, a consultancy, has monitored which education systems have improved most in recent years.
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"Come on Madison, we can do better than this!"That's Kaleem Caire. He said it not recently but in 1998 in an op-ed questioning why his hometown wasn't paying more attention to the poor educational outcomes and high incarceration rates of black males.
"I'm asking Madison to be your best self and get this done!"
That's also Caire, in an interview this week about his proposal for a publicly funded charter school designed to improve educational outcomes of low-income minority students.
What hasn't changed, then to now, is Caire's conviction that Madison's public schools are failing minority students and his willingness to force issues that cause some distress to the city's white liberal establishment.
What has changed is Caire's clout. He returned to his hometown in 2010 after a decade long detour with his family to the East Coast. As president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Madison, and public face for the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy, his profile has skyrocketed. But with it has come criticism and skepticism over a plan that challenges Madison's longstanding commitment to inclusive learning.
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Education remains the trickiest part of attempts to reform the public sector. But as ever more countries embark on it, some vital lessons are beginning to be learnedRelated: www.wisconsin2.orgFROM Toronto to Wroclaw, London to Rome, pupils and teachers have been returning to the classroom after their summer break. But this September schools themselves are caught up in a global battle of ideas. In many countries education is at the forefront of political debate, and reformers desperate to improve their national performance are drawing examples of good practice from all over the world.
Why now? One answer is the sheer amount of data available on performance, not just within countries but between them. In 2000 the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) at the OECD, a rich-country club, began tracking academic attainment by the age of 15 in 32 countries. Many were shocked by where they came in the rankings. (PISA's latest figures appear in table 1.) Other outfits, too, have been measuring how good or bad schools are. McKinsey, a consultancy, has monitored which education systems have improved most in recent years.
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Before I jump into an argument about how we teach history, I want to make we don't lose the point that Charles Mann's 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created is a wonderful book.A modern updating of Crosby's classic The Columbian Exchange, Mann traces the biological, epidemiological, and agricultural impact of trade between Europe, Asia and the America's after 1493.
1493 is a book for fans of Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and Morris' Why the West Rules -- for Now.
If you like your history to be big, the scope to be wide, but to be tied into how you eat and pay your way in the world, then 1493 is probably perfect.
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High-school teachers in the Spanish capital started a two-day strike Tuesday, disrupting the school days of hundreds of thousands of youths as opposition to sweeping austerity measures starts to harden ahead of general elections this November in the euro zone's fourth-largest economy.The Madrid protests were echoed by demonstrations across the country against spending cuts on education. Teachers in Galicia, in northwest Spain, have called a strike for later this month. The protests follow close on the heels of a series of rallies called by unions against new constitutional budget controls they say will undermine the social welfare state.
The cuts in education are part of a new round of austerity from regional governments as Spain aims to narrow its budget deficit to 6% of gross domestic product this year, from just over 9% in 2010. Most of the country's 17 regions are now in the hands of the conservative Popular Party. Currently in the opposition at the national level, the Popular Party is widely tipped by opinion polls to win the Nov. 20 elections and oust the incumbent Socialists. If he becomes prime minister, party leader Mariano Rajoy has pledged to follow the example of austerity set by the regions, regardless of any public backlash.
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Peg Tyre is the author of "The Good School: How Smart Parents Get Their Kids the Education They Deserve."THE school year is in full swing and, if you are the parent of a school-age child, you've probably figured out how to get your children up each weekday morning, dressed and out the door -- toast in hand -- in order to catch the school bus. Good for you.
If you've met and exchanged contact information with your child's homeroom teacher or gone the extra step and volunteered to become the class parent, give yourself a pat on the back. You're on your way to becoming an engaged parent -- the kind of adult, education researchers say, who helps children to be the best they can be in school.
Now, steady yourself. New legislation, called the parent trigger, which is being proposed in more than 20 states, including New York, is about to make your role as an engaged parent a lot more complicated.
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California Gov. Jerry Brown already anticipates relying on spending cuts and forgoing higher taxes to balance his state's budget next year, sobered by his deadlock with Republicans over revenue issues this year."There will be no taxes, as far as I know, by the legislature," he said in an interview this week.
The Democrat also said he hasn't decided whether to seek a ballot measure next year that would allow him to bypass the legislature and ask voters to boost taxes--apparently backing off earlier plans to do so. "I'm talking to groups...but we don't have a clear path forward," he said.
On Sept. 9, the last day of the legislature's eight-month session, Mr. Brown failed to pass a plan to rework state tax breaks after GOP senators balked. It was the 73-year-old's latest letdown after he unsuccessfully tried to pass a budget pairing deep cuts with the extension of some expiring tax increases. Those higher taxes would have been subject to voter approval.
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If people want a charter school to be an inspiration to other youngsters in the community, here's a better way to do it. Instead of building an entirely new school, which costs a ton and isolates the kids from the rest of their peers, why not go with the school within a school model, in which a charter is operated within an existing public school?That's the only original idea I have. Now here is my two cents on the rest of the plan.
I believe Kaleem Caire knows what he is talking about though. It's frustrating to see a debate on the crisis facing minority students as polarized between the know-nothings on the right who believe the only issues facing blacks are self-inflicted cultural ones and the lefties who refuse to accept that anything besides racism and poverty are responsible for the poor performance of black males in America.
I saw the intersection of both the cultural and economic aspects that bring black guys down. At my high school, in Montclair, NJ, which was slightly majority-minority, blacks were not only much more likely to come from poor or uneducated backgrounds, but many black kids from well-to-do or educated families felt pressure to conform to the mainstream image of black Americans. To not be "oreos." This, according to friends who spent their whole lives in Montclair, was one of the reasons why groups of friends were generally more integrated in grade school and middle school than in high school.
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Many years ago, I attended a public high school student's graduation ceremony out in what I consider the sticks.I was amazed at the overt Christianity. There was a prayer at the beginning, and again at the end. The commencement speeches were full of references to God.
My own public high school was roughly one-third Jewish, so this wouldn't have flown. Someone would have sued, and rightfully so. A Jewish student should be able to go to his own public high school graduation without being told he needs to pray to Jesus Christ.
But out in the sticks, I guess, that sort of thing was okay.
Being a lawyer, I approached the father of the graduate, knowing he was not religious, and asked if he would like to bring a lawsuit against the school district. He said he found the ceremony offensive, but that he owns a business in that town, and he was certainly not going to bring a lawsuit just because they turned his son's graduation ceremony into a revival meeting. Fair enough. I let the matter drop.
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USA Today, in the persons of reporters Marisol Bello and Greg Toppo, has a new ground-breaking report on the feeble response to standardized test-tampering in America.Bello and former USA Today reporter Jack Gillum exposed test security problems in the D.C. schools. Now, we learn that most states are even worse than D.C. because they don't bother even to look for evidence of unusual numbers of wrong-to-right erasures.
USA Today reports that only 20 states and the District do any erasure analysis. Four others give tests online (a good way to prevent principals from changing answers after the kids go home) and so don't have erasures to check. It said five other states, including Maryland, plan to check erasures next year because of the outbreak of cheating scandals in Atlanta, Baltimore, Philadelphia and the District. New York may do the same.
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SAT scores for the high-school graduating class of 2011 fell in all three subject areas, and the average reading and writing scores were the lowest ever recorded, according to data released on Wednesday.Michael Alison Chandler:The results from the college-entrance exam, taken by about 1.6 million students, also revealed that only 43% of students posted a score high enough to indicate they were ready to succeed in college, according to the College Board, the nonprofit that administers the exam. Students had to score a 1550 out of a possible 2400 to meet that benchmark, which would indicate a 65% chance of getting at least a B-minus average in the first year of college, the Board calculated.
The report on the SAT, long known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, comes on the heels of results from the ACT college-entrance exam that suggested only 25% of high-school graduates who took that exam were ready for college. And results from national high-school math and reading exams show only modest progress over the past five years. The data highlight the difficult task faced by the Obama administration in pursuing education policies to help Americans remain globally competitive.
SAT reading scores for graduating high school seniors this year reached the lowest point in nearly four decades, reflecting a steady decline in performance in that subject on the college admissions test, the College Board reported Wednesday.In the Washington area, one of the nation's leading producers of college-bound students, educators were scrambling to understand double-digit drops in test scores in Montgomery and Prince William counties and elsewhere.
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Wisconsin Governmant Accountability Board:
Four labor unions spent $4.2 million in the first half of 2011 lobbying state lawmakers, according to a report from the Government Accountability Board.Overall, lobbying organizations reported spending $23.9 million, a 15 percent increase over the first six months of the 2009-2010 legislative session.
The first-half 2011 report analyzes the activities of 707 lobbying principals and 725 registered lobbyists.
"Wisconsin has a strong lobby law which requires that the public has ready access to information on the amount and sources of money used to influence legislation," said Kevin J. Kennedy, director and general counsel of the Government Accountability Board. "The Board's Eye on Lobbying online database allows the public to keep track of lobbying activities at the Capitol without leaving home."
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Paul Tough, via a kind reader's email:
Dominic Randolph can seem a little out of place at Riverdale Country School -- which is odd, because he's the headmaster. Riverdale is one of New York City's most prestigious private schools, with a 104-year-old campus that looks down grandly on Van Cortlandt Park from the top of a steep hill in the richest part of the Bronx. On the discussion boards of UrbanBaby.com, worked-up moms from the Upper East Side argue over whether Riverdale sends enough seniors to Harvard, Yale and Princeton to be considered truly "TT" (top-tier, in UrbanBabyese), or whether it is more accurately labeled "2T" (second-tier), but it is, certainly, part of the city's private-school elite, a place members of the establishment send their kids to learn to be members of the establishment. Tuition starts at $38,500 a year, and that's for prekindergarten.Randolph, by contrast, comes across as an iconoclast, a disrupter, even a bit of an eccentric. He dresses for work every day in a black suit with a narrow tie, and the outfit, plus his cool demeanor and sweep of graying hair, makes you wonder, when you first meet him, if he might have played sax in a ska band in the '80s. (The English accent helps.) He is a big thinker, always chasing new ideas, and a conversation with him can feel like a one-man TED conference, dotted with references to the latest work by behavioral psychologists and management gurus and design theorists. When he became headmaster in 2007, he swapped offices with his secretary, giving her the reclusive inner sanctum where previous headmasters sat and remodeling the small outer reception area into his own open-concept work space, its walls covered with whiteboard paint on which he sketches ideas and slogans. One day when I visited, one wall was bare except for a white sheet of paper. On it was printed a single black question mark.
For the headmaster of an intensely competitive school, Randolph, who is 49, is surprisingly skeptical about many of the basic elements of a contemporary high-stakes American education. He did away with Advanced Placement classes in the high school soon after he arrived at Riverdale; he encourages his teachers to limit the homework they assign; and he says that the standardized tests that Riverdale and other private schools require for admission to kindergarten and to middle school are "a patently unfair system" because they evaluate students almost entirely by I.Q. "This push on tests," he told me, "is missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human."
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Nature Publishing Group, which publishes several highly regarded scientific journals and textbooks, was founded in England in 1869, eight years before electric lights illuminated the streets of London. Now, 140 years later, with the help of Harvard Classics scholar Vikram Savkar, the company is beginning to disrupt the traditional textbook model that it helped to create. This month at California State University, the company released Principles of Biology, an interactive, constantly updating biology textbook that retails for less than $50. Like most digital textbooks, the software is accessible on laptops and tablets, but unlike most digital textbooks, it's not just a scan of a .pdf. The company calls it a "digital reinvention of the textbook," meaning that students can interact with the material; they can literally match amino acids and corresponding DNA with their fingers. Inc.com's Eric Markowitz spoke with Vikram Savkar about what it takes to create a culture of innovation in an old-school company.
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Using the elite private school where Mayor Rahm Emanuel now sends his kids as a starting point, Chicago Teachers Union officials have crafted a proposed schedule that adds 75 minutes to the typical public elementary school student's day.The union's latest salvo in the battle over a longer school day uses as a comparison point the schedule of one third-grade classroom at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, union officials said Tuesday.
Just like at what U of C kids often call "the Lab School,'' the CTU proposal offers a well-rounded curriculum featuring far more art, music, physical education and other extras than most CPS kids now get and even includes the study of a second language.
Ultimately, the proposed CTU schedule would provide an even longer school day than the Lab School , where a third-grader's tuition is $21,876. And it does so without requiring Chicago Public School teachers to add any minutes to their work day.
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Laura DeRoche-Perez, via email:
Media ReleaseMuch more on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter school, here.Madison Preparatory Academy today announced its inaugural Board of Directors. Board members represent a diverse cross-section of corporate and community leaders from the Greater Madison area who are all passionate about and dedicated to ensuring Madison Prep becomes a reality for young men and women. They are:
Tyler Beck, Undergraduate Student, UW-Madison
Dave Boyer, CEO, MCD, Inc.
David Cagigal, Vice Chair, Urban League of Greater Madison
Elizabeth Donley, CEO, Stemina Corporation
Rosa Frazier, Clinical Professor/Immigration Law, UW-Madison Law School
Dennis Haefer, Vice President of Commercial Banking, Johnson Bank
Donna Hurd, Executive Director, Boardman Law Firm
Torrey Jaeckle, Vice President, Jaeckle Distributors
Rev. Richard Jones, Pastor, Mount Zion Baptist Church
Gloria Ladson-Billings, Chair of Urban Education and Professor of Curriculum & Instruction and Education Policy Studies, UW-Madison
Maddy Niebauer, Managing Director of Strategy & Human Assets, Teach for America
J. Marshall Osborn, Retired Math Professor, UW-Madison
Fran Petonic, President, Meriter Foundation
John Roach, Owner & CEO, John Roach Projects
Mario Garcia Sierra, Director of Programs, Centro Hispano
Derrick Smith, Area Manager, Thermo Fisher Scientific Corporation
Terrence Wall, President, T. Wall PropertiesAbout Madison Preparatory Academy:
Madison Preparatory Academy (Madison Prep) is a tuition-free public charter school that will serve as a catalyst for change and opportunity, particularly for young people of color. Its mission is to prepare students for success at a four year college or university by instilling excellence, pride, leadership, and service. The school will open in the Fall of 2012 to students in the Madison Metropolitan School District, pending approval from the Board of Education in the Fall of 2011.For more information, contact Laura DeRoche-Perez at 608-729-1230 or Lderoche@ulgm.org
Website: www.madison-prep.org
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Is your child ready for first grade? Earlier this month, Chicago Now blogger Christine Whitley reprinted a checklist from a 1979 child-rearing series designed to help a parent figure that one out. Ten out of 12 meant readiness. Can your child "draw and color and stay within the lines of the design being colored?" Of course. Can she count "eight to ten pennies correctly?" Heck, yeah, I say for parents of kindergarteners everywhere. "Does your child try to write or copy letters or numbers?" Isn't that what preschool is for?"Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend's home?"
It's amazing what a difference 30 years have made. Academically, that 1979 first grader (who also needed to be "six years, six months" old and "have two to five permanent or second teeth") would have been considered right on target to start preschool. In terms of life skills, she's heading for middle school, riding her two-wheeled bike and finding her own way home. It's not surprising that I came to this link via Lenore Skenazy's Free-Range Kids blog. What is surprising is just how shocking a jolt it is to realize how stark the difference is between then and now.
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New Jersey, via a kind Chan Stroman-Roll email:
To be sure, the Task Force recognizes, these are not always easy lines to draw. How do we define the level of school failure that is sufficiently injurious to children that we can no longer afford to "empower" districts with the authority to be the primary decision-maker? In addition to the core duty of setting goals and enforcing a schedule of consequences for failure, are there other areas that are so central to success that a state should continue to hold them "tight" rather than devolve them to local control?(Examples might include teacher certification and evaluation criteria, requirements that schools have systems and processes in place to enable data driven decision-making to adjust instruction and address deficiencies, or matters related to health and safety.) As the entity ultimately responsible for the fiscal health of the State and the legal distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funds, should state authorities reserve a larger measure of involvement to assure that districts are responsible wards
of taxpayers' money?These are difficult questions, which the Task Force will continue to wrestle with throughout its tenure.Whatever the answer in these more nuanced areas however, the Task Force believes that there is much that can and should be accomplished as quickly as possible with respect to the two inextricably connected elements of the Governor's charge: 1) an evaluation and redesign of the State's accountability system, and 2) reduction of "empowerment - restricting" red tape.
With respect to the first, the Task force has concluded that the State's accountability system warrants significant revision. More likely to frustrate than positively affect behavior, the system is a patchwork of essentially unconnected, sometimes contradictory, federal (No Child Left Behind) and State (QSAC, etc.)mandates.
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A proposal that Milwaukee taxpayers be told on tax bills exactly how much of their money is going to private schools through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program is on the fast track for school board consideration.During a special MPS board meeting Saturday morning to discuss the district's long-range master plan for buildings, board member Larry Miller asked that his "voucher tax" transparency proposal be discussed at a school board committee meeting Tuesday, rather than wait to be introduced at the board's next regular meeting Sept. 22, and then be referred to committee for discussion at a later date.
"The urgency of this is there's a huge tax burden on the community and it's important for the community to be educated on this burden," Miller told the board Saturday morning.
The tax that MPS must levy under state law to support low-income Milwaukee students enrolled in private schools under the choice program would have ranked just behind Milwaukee Area Technical College and ahead of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District if it had been broken out, ranked, and displayed under the "Levy by Unit of Government" section of tax information sent to taxpayers in 2010, Miller said.
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It has been nearly 50 years since Michael Harrington wrote The Other America, pulling the curtain back on invisible poverty within the United States. If he were writing today, Harrington would find the same populations he described then: young, marginally educated people who drift in and out of low-pay, dead-end jobs, and older displaced workers, unable to find work as industries transform and shops close. But he would find more of them, especially the young, their situation worsened by further economic restructuring and globalization. And while the poor he wrote about were invisible in a time of abundance, ours are visible in a terrible recession, although invisible in most public policy. In fact, the poor are drifting further into the dark underbelly of American capitalism.One of the Obama administration's mantras is that we need to "out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build" our competition in order to achieve fuller prosperity. The solution to our social and economic woes lies in new technologies, in the cutting edge. This is our "Sputnik moment," a very American way to frame our problems. However, the editors of The Economist wrote a few months back that this explanation of our economic situation is "mostly nonsense."
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The president of the Chicago Teachers Union says Mayor Rahm Emanuel "exploded" at her during a debate over a longer school day, pointing his finger in her face and cursing.CTU President made the allegations in a Friday morning press release detailing a complaint filed by the union to the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board over the ongoing battle between the union and City Hall.
"A couple of weeks ago I sat down with the mayor in his office to talk about how to roll out a longer school year and what components would go into making it a better school year for our students but he did not want to have that conversation," said Lewis. "When I explained to him that a longer school day should not be used for warehousing or babysitting our youth he exploded, used profanity, pointed his finger in my face and yelled. At that point the conversation was over -- soon thereafter we found ourselves subject to a full-scale propaganda war over a moot point."
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Learning in public schools is set to resume on Monday after striking teachers accepted on Sunday a Government offer to hire more tutors in phases.The Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) officially called off the four-day strike on Sunday and urged teachers to ignore the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) which has defied a call by the Government to end the industrial action.
KNUT's Secretary General David Okuta told journalists in Nairobi that the resolution to call off the strike was reached by KNUT National Executive Council following a commitment by Government to meet most of their demands.
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Value added is the use of statistical technique to isolate the contributions of schools to measured student knowledge from other influences such as prior student knowledge and demographics. In practice, value added focuses on the improvement of students from one year to the next on an annual state examination or other periodic assessment. The Value-Added Research Center (VARC) of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research produces value-added measures for schools in Madison using the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE) as an outcome. The model controls for prior-year WKCE scores, gender, ethnicity, disability, English language learner, low-income status, parent education, and full academic year enrollment to capture the effects of schools on student performance on the WKCE. This model yields measures of student growth in schools in Madison relative to each other. VARC also produces value-added measures using the entire state of Wisconsin as a data set, which yields measures of student growth in Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) relative to the rest of the state.Some of the most notable results are:
1. Value added for the entire district of Madison relative to the rest of the state is generally positive, but it differs by subject and grade. In both 2008-09 and 2009-10, and in both math and reading, the value added of Madison Metropolitan School District was positive in more grades than it was negative, and the average value added across grades was positive in both subjects in both years. There are variations across grades and subjects, however. In grade 4, value-added is significantly positive in both years in reading and significantly negative in both years in math. In contrast, value-added in math is significantly positive--to a very substantial extent--in grade 7. Some of these variations may be the result of the extent to which instruction in those grades facilitate student learning on tested material relative to non-tested material. Overall, between November 2009 and November 2010, value-added for MMSD as a whole relative to the state was very slightly above average in math and substantially above average in reading. The section "Results from the Wisconsin Value-Added Model" present these results in detail.
2. The variance of value added across schools is generally smaller in Madison than in the state of Wisconsin as a whole, specifically in math. In other words, at least in terms of what is measured by value added, the extent to which schools differ from each other in Madison is smaller than the extent to which schools differ from each other elsewhere in Wisconsin. This appears to be more strongly the case in the middle school grades than in the elementary grades. Some of this result may be an artifact of schools in Madison being relatively large; when schools are large, they encompass more classrooms per grade, leading to more across-classroom variance being within-school rather than across-school. More of this result may be that while the variance across schools in Madison is entirely within one district, the variance across schools for the rest of the state is across many districts, and so differences in district policies will likely generate more variance across the entire state. The section "Results from the Wisconsin Value-Added Model" present results on the variance of value added from the statewide value-added model. This result is also evident in the charts in the "School Value-Added Charts from the MMSD Value-Added Model" section: one can see that the majority of schools' confidence intervals cross (1) the district average, which means that we cannot reject the hypothesis that these schools' values added are not different from the district average.
Even with a relatively small variance across schools in the district in general, several individual schools have values added that are statistically significantly greater or less than the district average. At the elementary level, both Lake View and Randall have values added in both reading and math that are significantly greater than the district average. In math, Marquette, Nuestro Mundo, Shorewood Hills, and Van Hise also have values added that are significantly greater than the district average. Values added are lower than the district average in math at Crestwood, Hawthorne, Kennedy, and Stephens, and in reading at Allis. At the middle school level, value added in reading is greater than the district average at Toki and lower than the district average at Black Hawk and Sennett. Value added in math is lower than the district average at Toki and Whitehorse.
3. Gaps in student improvement persist across subgroups of students. The value-added model measures gaps in student growth over time by race, gender, English language learner, and several other subgroups. The gaps are overall gaps, not gaps relative to the rest of the state. These gaps are especially informative because they are partial coefficients. These measure the black/white, ELL/non-ELL, or high-school/college-graduate-parent gaps, controlling for all variables available, including both demographic variables and schools attended. If one wanted to measure the combined effect of being both ELL and Hispanic relative to non-ELL and white, one would add the ELL/non-ELL gap to the Hispanic/white gap to find the combined effect. The gaps are within-school gaps, based on comparison of students in different subgroups who are in the same schools; consequently, these gaps do not include any effects of students of different subgroups sorting into different schools, and reflect within-school differences only. There does not appear to be an evident trend over time in gaps by race, low-income status, and parent education measured by the value-added model. The section "Coefficients from the MMSD Value-Added Model" present these results.
4. The gap in student improvement by English language learner, race, or low-income status usually does not differ substantively across schools; that between students with disabilities and students without disabilities sometimes does differ across schools. This can be seen in the subgroup value-added results across schools, which appear in the Appendix. There are some schools where value-added for students with disabilities differs substantively from overall value- added. Some of these differences may be due to differences in the composition of students with disabilities across schools, although the model already controls for overall differences between students with learning disabilities, students with speech disabilities, and students with all other disabilities. In contrast, value-added for black, Hispanic, ELL, or economically disadvantaged students is usually very close to overall value added.
Value added for students with disabilities is greater than the school's overall value added in math at Falk and Whitehorse and in reading at Marquette; it is lower than the school's overall value added in math at O'Keefe and Sennett and in reading at Allis, Schenk, and Thoreau. Value added in math for Hispanic students is lower than the school's overall value added at Lincoln, and greater than the school's overall value added at Nuestro Mundo. Value added in math is also higher for ELL and low-income students than it is for the school overall at Nuestro Mundo.
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Madison School District Superintendent Dan Nerad:
Year four of the five-year REaL Grant has several key areas of focus to support our three grant goals:Increase student achievement for all students
Strengthen student-student and student-staff relationships
Increase post-secondary outcomes for all students
Following the completion of the K-12 Literacy Evaluation during the 2010-2011 school year there is a renewed commitment and expectations to develop core practices in literacy across the content areas. Professional development around literacy has been scheduled for the 2011-2012 school year and includes: instructional resource teachers, reading interventionists, learning coordinators, literacy coaches. Data from WKCE and EXPLORE indicate the need to improve core practices in literacy.
The division of Curriculum and Assessment has structured the entire 2011-2012 school year with high school department chairperson meetings across the district. The central purpose of this important dialogue is to build consensus around a curriculum scope and sequence that is aligned to both the ACT Career and College Readiness Standards and the Common Core State Standards. Much progress has been made with the adoption of common course names and numbers throughout our high schools.
AVID/TOPS has increased in capacity throughout the high schools and preliminary data indicates continued significant differences in the success of our AVID/TOPS students and their comparison group counterparts. Several teachers and departments outside of our AVID/TOPS classrooms have adopted the AVID/TOPS strategies and we look forward to supporting this demand helping our schools develop consistent systems of support and shared high expectations for all students.
Several professional development opportunities over the summer were supported by the REaL grant. Examples include: Critical Friends, Adaptive Schools, AVID Institute, and Align by Design. Additionally, school leadership teams under the direction of principals, REaL grant coordinators and literacy coaches met to create the Welcome Back Conference sessions for their respective schools.
Principals and teacher leaders continue to increase their capacities as instructional leaders. This year we also have in place a coordinated plan to help assistant principals progress their roles as instructional leaders. This has been an area clearly lacking in the first three years of the grant. Principals and all assistant principals will receive the same professional development each month.
The four high schools received a significant grant from the DPI to support safe schools. These added resources and action plans will compliment the REaL grant goals of improved relationships. High schools continue to address critical student behavior issues with a greater systematic approach. Two areas identified district wide based on the success in one school are: Youth Court and Restorative Justice classes.
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Arne Duncan ended a week-long education and jobs stump speech bus tour in Chicago this week. And he had plenty to say about what is going on in his old stomping grounds at CPS. Some of what he had to say was undoubtedly music to the ears of the Chicago Teachers Union, given the weird and ugly battle brewing with the Emanuel administration (complete with a curious mix of F-bombs and hugs). Friday, he called for a doubling of teacher salaries nationally:
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Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that one cannot simultaneously measure the location of a particle while also measuring the momentum of that particle. When you apply this principle to schools, it's a little disheartening--if we attempt to measure where we are now, we are no longer certain how fast we're improving. If the environment in which the measurement is taking place is also moving (think of the vast legal and budgetary changes at the state level), the uncertainty is all but overwhelming.Thus, this year's analysis of public school data in southeast Wisconsin heeds Heisenberg and emphasizes the use of the 2010-11 data as a baseline. Knowing that all Wisconsin school districts will be in a state of flux over the next few years due to changes in contractual bargaining legislation, the state budget, a slow economic recovery, a new standardized testing system, and new standards for curriculum, in the future we hope to measure their improvements over time as these various "new normals" kick in. For now, we emphasize where they've been and where they are currently.
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[Note from Laurie Rogers: Recently, results from the 2011 state standardized test scores came out, and the general impression given to the public -- for example from the state education agency (OSPI) and from media in Seattle and in Spokane -- was that improvements had been made. It's all in the definitions: How do you define "improvement"? Did some of the numbers go up? Assuredly. Did that mean that real improvments in real academic knowledge had been made? It's best to remain skeptical.Most students in Spokane are as weak in math skill this year as they were last year. Given a proper math test that assesses for basic skills, many high schoolers still test into 4th or 5th-grade math. College remedial rates are still high. Parents are still frantic, and students are still stressed out about math. So ... what do those higher scores actually mean? I've been trying to find out. It's hard to say.
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In an attempt to counter Mayor Rahm Emanuel's relentless campaign for a longer school day, the Chicago Teachers Union claimed Friday that 30 elementary schools have voted to reject the city's offer to extend the school day in exchange for financial incentives.Emanuel and the Chicago Public Schools have offered up to $150,000 in discretionary funds and a roughly 2 percent raise for teachers at city elementary schools that elect to waive a portion of the union contract and add 90 minutes to the day. CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll told the Chicago News Cooperative that the union's list is not accurate. She said the only schools that have voted are the four elementary schools that have accepted the district's deal.
"Not a single school voted down waivers. Not true," Carroll said in an email. "Only four have voted on waivers and they all supported them."
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This summer, I met a principal who was recently named as the administrator of the year in her state. She was loved and adored by all, but she told me she was leaving the profession.I screamed, "You can't leave us," and she quite bluntly replied, "Look, if I get an offer to lead a school system of orphans, I will be all over it, but I just can't deal with parents anymore; they are killing us."
Unfortunately, this sentiment seems to be becoming more and more prevalent. Today, new teachers remain in our profession an average of just 4.5 years, and many of them list "issues with parents" as one of their reasons for throwing in the towel. Word is spreading, and the more negativity teachers receive from parents, the harder it becomes to recruit the best and the brightest out of colleges.
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A debate related to the repeal of collective bargaining rights for most public employees in Wisconsin is whether teachers' job security should be tied to seniority.The Cadott school board recently rewrote its employee handbook, which now says the needs of the district, not the seniority of its employees, will be the "prime consideration" to determine which employees should be laid off.
Other school districts are deciding how to proceed. In the past, representatives of the school board and teachers union would negotiate the handbook's contents. Now, the board can unilaterally set the rules, which has teachers understandably unnerved. Job security, especially in this economy, is paramount.
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Madison Preparatory Academy will receive the first half of a $225,000 state planning grant after the Madison School Board determined Thursday that the revised proposal for the charter school addresses legal concerns about gender equality.Madison School Board Member Ed HughesMadison Schools Superintendent Dan Nerad announced the decision following a closed School Board meeting.
Questions still remain about the cost of the proposal by the Urban League of Greater Madison, which calls for a school for 60 male and 60 female sixth-graders geared toward low-income minorities that would open next year.
"I understand the heartfelt needs for this program," Nerad said, but "there are other needs we need to address."
The school district does not have a lot of spare money lying around that it can devote to Madison Prep. Speaking for myself, I am not willing to cut educational opportunities for other students in order to fund Madison Prep. If it turns out that entering into a five-year contract with Madison Prep would impose a net cost of millions of dollars on the school district, then, for me, we'd have to be willing to raise property taxes by that same millions of dollars in order to cover the cost.TJ Mertz:It is not at all clear that we'd be able to do this even if we wanted to. Like all school districts in the state, MMSD labors under the restrictions of the state-imposed revenue caps. The law places a limit on how much school districts can spend. The legislature determines how that limit changes from year to year. In the best of times, the increase in revenues that Wisconsin school districts have been allowed have tended to be less than their annual increases in costs. This has led to the budget-slashing exercises that the school districts endure annually.
In this environment, it is extremely difficult to see how we could justify taking on the kind of multi-million dollar obligation that entering into a five-year contract with Madison Prep would entail. Indeed, given the projected budget numbers and revenue limits, it seems inevitable that signing on to the Madison Prep proposal would obligate the school district to millions of dollars in cuts to the services we provide to our students who would not attend Madison Prep.
A sense of the magnitude of these cuts can be gleaned by taking one year as an example. Since Madison Prep would be adding classes for seven years, let's look at year four, the 2015-16 school year, which falls smack dab in the middle.
Last night I (TJ) was asked to leave the meeting on African American issues in the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) advertised as being facilitated by the Department of Justice Community Relations Service (DOJ CRS) and hosted or convened by the Urban League of Greater Madison (ULGM) with the consent and participation of MMSD. I was told that if I did not leave, the meeting would be canceled. The reason given was that I write a blog (see here for some background on the exclusion of the media and bloggers and here for Matt DeFour's report from outside the meeting).The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:I gave my word that I would not write about the meeting, but that did not alter the request. I argued that as a parent and as someone who has labored for years to address inequities in public education, I had both a legitimate interest in being there and the potential to contribute to the proceedings. This was acknowledged and I was still asked to leave and told again that the meeting would not proceed if I did not leave. I asked to speak to the DOJ CRS representatives in order to confirm that this was the case and this request was repeatedly refused by Kaleem Caire of the ULGM.
An idea hatched in Madison aims to give parents with boys in Wisconsin's second-largest city another positive option for their children. It's an idea that ought to be channeled to Milwaukee.Rebecca Kemble:Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men would feature the rigorous International Baccalaureate program, longer days, a longer school year and lofty expectations for dress and behavior for boys in sixth grade through high school. And while it would accept all comers, clearly it is designed to focus on low-income boys of color. Backers hope to open a year from now.
One of the primary movers behind Madison Prep is Kaleem Caire, the head of the Urban League of Madison, who grew up in the city and attended Madison West High School in 1980s, Alan J. Borsuk explained in a column last Sunday. Caire later worked in Washington, D.C., as an education advocate before returning to Madison.
Caire saw too many young black men wash out and end up either dead or in jail, reported Borsuk, a senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette University Law School. And Caire now is worried, as are we, about the atrocious statistics that place young black boys so far behind their white peers.
The Department of Justice official explained the shadowy, confidential nature of the Community Relations Service to the audience by describing the kinds of situations it intervenes in, mostly having to do with hate crimes and rioting. He said in no uncertain terms, "We are not here to do an investigation," and even asked for the audience members to repeat the sentence with him. He then went on to ask for people to respect the confidentiality of those raising issues, and laid out the structure of the meeting: 30 minutes for listing problems relating to the achievement gap and 45 minutes generating solutions.I will respect the confidentiality of the content of the meeting by not repeating it. However, I will say that what was said in that room was no different that what has been said at countless other open, public meetings with the School District and in community groups on the same topic, the only difference being that there were far fewer parents in the room and few if any teachers.
It turned out that the Department of Justice secretive meeting was a convenient way to pack the house with a captive audience for yet another infomercial about Madison Prep. Kaleem Caire adjourned the one meeting and immediately convened an Urban League meeting where he gave his Madison Prep sales pitch yet again. About 1/3 of the audience left at that point.
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Web of Science ® provides researchers, administrators, faculty, and students with quick, powerful access to the world's leading citation databases. Authoritative, multidisciplinary content covers over 10,000 of the highest impact journals worldwide, including Open Access journals and over 110,000 conference proceedings. You'll find current and retrospective coverage in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, with coverage available to 1900.Overcome information overload and focus on essential data across 256 disciplines.
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The next time your great idea at work elicits silence or eye rolls, you might just pity those co-workers. Fresh research indicates they don't even know what a creative idea looks like and that creativity, hailed as a positive change agent, actually makes people squirm."How is it that people say they want creativity but in reality often reject it?" said Jack Goncalo, ILR School assistant professor of organizational behavior and co-author of research to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science. The paper reports on two 2010 experiments at the University of Pennsylvania involving more than 200 people.
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The threat of possible litigation has roiled the already turbulent waters surrounding the proposal for a single-sex Urban League charter school.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter school, here.Madison school officials began feeling skittish over recommending a $225,000 planning grant for the Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men after the state Department of Public Instruction raised concerns recently that the school doesn't meet state and federal requirements to provide gender-equal education.
Now, a new legal threat has emerged, this one from Madison Teachers Inc. Together, the two issues could cause the board to pull back from supporting the planning grant, possibly as early as Thursday.
First, some background: After DPI put the planning grant on hold, the Urban League of Greater Madison last week submitted a new proposal to simultaneously establish a separate campus for girls. Kaleem Caire, Urban League president and a driving force behind Madison Prep, wants to see the schools open next year, initially with 60 sixth-grade girls and 60 sixth-grade boys. The proposal calls for adding 120 additional sixth-graders in each of the four subsequent years. Because the proposal now envisions 600 students rather 480 as originally planned, it would require more funding from the Madison Metropolitan School District than originally planned.
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A hundred and fifty years ago, adults were incensed about child labor. Low-wage kids were taking jobs away from hard-working adults.Sure, there was some moral outrage at seven-year olds losing fingers and being abused at work, but the economic rationale was paramount. Factory owners insisted that losing child workers would be catastrophic to their industries and fought hard to keep the kids at work--they said they couldn't afford to hire adults. It wasn't until 1918 that nationwide compulsory education was in place.
Part of the rationale to sell this major transformation to industrialists was that educated kids would actually become more compliant and productive workers. Our current system of teaching kids to sit in straight rows and obey instructions isn't a coincidence--it was an investment in our economic future. The plan: trade short-term child labor wages for longer-term productivity by giving kids a head start in doing what they're told.
Large-scale education was never about teaching kids or creating scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system.
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By the time we sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" in 9th grade English, it was too late to save me. So I didn't even try to keep the kids quiet, and joined the class as they burst into song.Almon, an A-average boy whose parents had emigrated from the Dominican Republic by way of Milwaukee, was absolutely sure our national anthem includes the lyric "cheese bursting in air."
Daria, who came from Honduras just a few years ago and was struggling with English, was gamely singing, trying to guess what words would be appropriate for a song about her new country. "Nice!" "Nice! In air!"
Sarah, the daughter of Ghanese immigrants, got every word right and hit every note with church-choir perfection. And from Rikkie, the highly intelligent, perhaps brilliant, boy, whose father is serving six years in an upstate prison, to Cristofer, a skinny kid who fancies himself a Puerto Rican tough ("I didn't even cry when my father died"), to A'Don, whose mother doesn't speak English, to Michael, whose father doesn't speak English, to Macon, who only seems to care about basketball, we sang loud, we sang laughing, we sang whatever words we knew, and we sang for all we were worth.
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Going online to get a college degree has been championed as a cost-effective way to educate the masses and challenged as a cheapening of academia. Now, the online classroom is coming to the vaunted University of California system, making it the nation's first top-tier university to offer undergraduate credit for cyberstudies.By dislodging education from its brick-and-mortar moorings, the University of California - short on money and space - hopes to ease the path to a diploma for students who are increasingly forced to wait for a vacant seat in a lecture hall. Especially in high-demand "gateway courses," such as chemistry, calculus and composition.
This summer, UC Berkeley tested its first pilot course: Chemistry 1A. For one student, working as a lifeguard in San Rafael, it accelerated her progress toward a joint degree in biology and economics. Another was able to live at home in Sacramento, because she registered for summer school too late to get dorm space.
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Kaleem Caire, via email:
September 7, 2011Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School, here.
Dear Friends & Colleagues,
On Thursday, August 25, 2011, leadership of the Urban League of Greater Madison, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and the Madison Metropolitan School District met at DPI's Madison offices to discuss how the Urban League and MMSD would address DPI's concerns that a comparable option to Madison Prep's charter school for boys also be available to girls at the same time the boys' school would open in August 2012.
During that meeting, all three parties discussed ways "comparability" could be achieved. DPI suggested and the Urban League agreed that starting the girl's campus at the same time as the boy's campus would be the best way to achieve comparability and sufficiently comply with state law and federal Title IX regulations that address single-sex public schools.
Initially, the Urban League planned to wait 12-24 months to start the girls' campus of Madison Prep. However, given DPI's concerns, we saw this as the perfect opportunity and argument to serve girls right away, and subsequently adjusted our plans to include a girls' campus of Madison Prep last week. You can review a copy of the proposal we submitted last week to DPI and MMSD that explains how we'll adjust our plans and add the girls' campus in 2012 by clicking here. We have also attached the document to this email here.
Today, we were excited to learn from a DPI official, Mr. Bob Soldner, that our proposal for adding the girls' campus now satisfies DPI's concerns that a comparable option would be available for boys and girls at the same time. Mr. Soldner also said he was awaiting a response to our plan from the Madison Metropolitan School District before releasing our $225,000 charter school planning grant, which DPI put on hold two weeks ago.
I just learned 2 hours ago from MMSD Superintendent, Dr. Daniel Nerad, that the Board of Education decided today to hold an executive session tomorrow at 4:30pm at the Doyle Administration Building to "discuss the legal implications of Madison Prep and the potential for litigation." Dr. Nerad said that immediately following their executive session, the Board of Education would also hold a "special public meeting" to discuss Madison Prep.
Unfortunately, the Urban League of Greater Madison and the Board members of Madison Prep will not be able to attend the public meeting on Madison Prep tomorrow as we are attending a long-scheduled fundraiser for the school at the same time tomorrow - 5:30pm. This will be the first major fundraiser for the school, and is being hosted by four prominent leaders and advocates for children in Greater Madison.
We hope that those of you who support Madison Prep and are not attending our fundraiser tomorrow night will be available to attend the public meeting of the Board of Education tomorrow to express your support for our proposal to establish Madison Preparatory Academy campuses for boys and girls. We assume a critical decision regarding our charter school grant application will be decided tomorrow. You can find the agenda for the Board of Education's meeting by clicking here.
For more information about tomorrow's Board of Education meeting, please contact the Madison Metropolitan School District's Board of Education at board@madison.k12.wi.us or 608-204-0341. For more information about our updated Madison Prep proposal, please contact Ms. Laura DeRoche Perez at Lderoche@ulgm.org or 608-729-1230.
We intend to host our own public forum on Madison Prep in the near future. More details and information will be shared with you soon.
Thank you so much. It's all about the future of our children.
Onward!
Kaleem Caire
President & CEO
Urban League of Greater Madison
Phone: 608-729-1200
Fax: 608-729-1205
www.ulgm.org
The Madison Urban League's 9.2.2011 memorandum to the Madison School District 311K PDF.
A Madison charter school geared toward low-income, minority students would include single-gender classrooms for both boys and girls in 2012 under a revised proposal for Madison Preparatory Academy.The new proposal from the Urban League of Greater Madison would nearly double the contribution required by the Madison School District in the fifth year -- from $4.8 million in the original plan to $9.4 million -- but the net cost to the district remains unclear.
The Urban League submitted the proposal to the school district and the state Department of Public Instruction on Friday, and it was made public by the district Wednesday. The revision came after DPI withheld support for a $225,000 planning grant for an all-boys charter school that the Urban League had discussed creating for more than a year. State officials said that such a school would discriminate against girls and that if they open an all-male school, they must open a similar school for girls at the same time.
The Madison School Board has scheduled two meetings for Thursday, one in closed session at 4:30 p.m. to discuss legal issues related to the new proposal and the second in open session at 5:30 p.m., Superintendent Dan Nerad said.
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Yes, the US Department of Education owns guns. Its Office of the Inspector General has statutory authority to make arrests, conduct warrants, and pound open your front door. Usually if you get involved in some sort of fraud scheme related to federal student loans.Here's a message from a recent victim:
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A meeting Wednesday to discuss the minority achievement gap in the Madison district will be closed to the media, even if that means kicking School Board members out, the organizer said Monday.The Urban League of Greater Madison invited Madison School Board members to its meeting facilitated by an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, but if four board members attend, it would be considered a quorum of the school board and need to abide by the open meetings law.
Four of the seven school board members confirmed with the State Journal Monday that they plan to attend the meeting.
"We'll have to kick one of them out," said Urban League President Kaleem Caire, laughing. "I'm serious."
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Why should mathematicians be in- terested and involved in pre-K-12 mathematics education? What are the benefits of mathematicians working with school teachers and mathematics educators?1 I will answer these questions from my perspective of research math- ematician who became interested in mathematics education, wrote a book for prospective elemen- tary teachers, and taught sixth-grade math a few years ago. I think my answers may surprise you because they would have surprised me not long ago.It's Interesting!
If you had told me twenty-five years ago, when I was in graduate school studying arithmetic geometry, that my work would shift toward improving pre-K- 12 mathematics education, I would have told you that you were crazy. Sure, I would have said, that is important work, it's probably hard, and somebody needs to do it, but it doesn't sound very interesting. Much to my surprise, this is the work I am now fully engaged in. It's hard, and I believe what I'm doing is useful to improving education, but most surprising of all is how interesting the work is.
Yes, I find it interesting to work on improving pre-K-12 math! And in retrospect, it's easy to see how it could be interesting. Math at every level is beautiful and has a wonderful mixture of intri- cacy, big truths, and surprising connections. Even preschool math is no exception.
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In college, I pumped my fist at a rally against standardized testing. I'd never seen the exam I was protesting, but stood in solidarity with educators and labor organizers who felt the testing movement was an attack on teachers, particularly those working in poor public schools. My opposition grew when I became a teacher in the South Bronx, one of America's poorest communities. I wanted to uplift my students and resented the weight of a looming high-stakes test.Besides, I thought good teachers should be left to their own devices. And, I was certain that I was a good teacher. For the most part, my students were punctual, respectful, and engaged. It wasn't until my second year in the classroom that I began questioning this assumption.
In a routine evaluation, my principal praised my organization, management, and facilitation, but posed the following question: "How do you know the kids are really getting it?" She urged me to develop more-rigorous assessments of student learning. Ego and uncertainty inspired me to measure the impact of my instruction. I thought I was effective, but I wanted proof.
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Kaleem Caire knows what it is like to be a young black man growing up in Madison and going on to success. A troubled kid when he was a student at Madison West High School in the 1980s, he went on to become a nationally known Washington-based education advocate before returning in 2010 to head the Urban League of Greater Madison.Kaleem Caire knows what it means to be a young black man growing up in Madison and going on to failure. He saw what happened to many childhood friends who ended up dead or in prison. He sees it now in the disturbing statistics on African-American education outcomes and unemployment.
And Kaleem Caire has an eye-catching idea he thinks will put more black and Latino youths on the path to success - enough to make a difference in the overall troubling picture of minority life in the state's second largest city.
The idea? An all-male charter school for sixth- through 12th-graders with longer days and longer school years than conventional schools, an International Baccalaureate program, and high expectations of students and teachers, including academic performance, the way they treat others, and the way they dress.
Related:
Notes and links on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School.
Susan Troller:Madison Prep now says girls will be welcome:
Kaleem Caire says there's a simple fix for concerns that a proposal for an all-male charter school in Madison would discriminate against girls.The fate of Madison Preparatory Academy will be a defining moment for our school climate."If it's a problem, we'll introduce a single-sex charter school for girls at the same time we start the boys' school, in the fall of 2012-2013," Caire said in an interview Friday.
Caire, president of the Urban League of Greater Madison, first began talking a year ago about creating a rigorous, prep-style public charter school for boys aimed at improving minority student performance. With its single-sex approach, International Baccalaureate curriculum, emphasis on parent involvement and expanded hours and days, Madison Preparatory Academy would not only be unique in the Madison district, but also unique in the state.
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This post is not going to promise dramatic learning gains from using a new technology. It's not one of those stories where at first a teacher was skeptical, but in the end, the classroom was like a sports movie where the technology scored the winning homerun. I feel skeptical when I read those stories. I don't doubt the success, but I wonder whether the learning gains, increased student interest/participation, or higher levels of reported satisfaction have less to do with the iPad, blog, twitter stream, or virtual environment and more to do with who is in the classroom.Cathy Davidson recently described an idyllic experience of teaching a course in which she and the students shared in the discovery of new applications of technologies for learning. She describes the process of developing the course, the thrill when the students actually invited and facilitated a guest lecture, and the ways in which the students challenged her to really be collaborative, even in grading.
If we step back for a moment, though, and consider a class with Davidson and those same students without the new technologies, what would the learning experience be like? I imagine it would still be exceptional, because Davidson is an obviously engaged teacher and the students are obviously engaged learners. She employs teaching strategies that were effective before the new technologies she describes. In particular, she encourages students to take ownership of their learning experience and creates a flexible environment to support whatever direction they take. When developing assignments, Davidson incorporates research in motivation, particularly students' likelihood to put more effort into writing for an authentic audience. She also has deep experience with her topic and an obvious enthusiasm for both the content and the teaching. These factors are consistently linked to positive learning experiences in educational research. Additionally, the students clearly seem motivated to learn. She describes the class list as a diverse collection of disciplines, so the students appear to be choosing the course. They demonstrate active involvement with the assignments and content and even provide substantive feedback for future courses.
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LANGUAGE-learning is fascinating, but not for those who can't take the occasional humiliation.I live in São Paulo and though I'm sure my Portuguese accent is horrible, it's horrible in a recognisably Paulistano way. I say the "e" in duzentos (two hundred) with a twang; and I don't say "sh" for "s", as Cariocas, or residents of Rio, do. Generally people in São Paulo understand what I'm trying to say--and so do taxi drivers and hotel staff in Rio. Indeed, they are usually so delighted to meet a foreigner who speaks any Portuguese at all that they are highly complimentary, which even if it is more to do with Brazilian hospitality and courtesy, is delightfully confidence-inducing.
Not so Cariocas who don't have regular contact with tourists. On holiday in Rio with my family recently, I tried to strike up conversation with some children aged around 11 or 12 on the top of the Pão de Açúcar, or Sugarloaf Mountain, one of Rio's most famous tourist spots. I asked one if they were visiting with their school. (This was an easy guess; they were wearing uniform. But I wanted to practise.) He stared at me, bemused. I repeated: "Vocês estão aqui com sua escola?" No good. He called over a friend. By now I was getting embarrassed, but I tried again. This time he turned to her and said: "Não entendi nada" (I didn't understand a thing). Only when a teacher came over and repeated my sentence to the children did we get anywhere. Very depressing.
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Before classes began at Spring Creek School near Decker, Mont., community volunteers cut back the grass, cleared tumbleweeds and made sure there were no rattlesnakes around the playground. Last week, the one-room schoolhouse opened for its six K-5 students."We all pitch in out here to support the school," says Loren Noll, a neighbor who showed up to dig weeds. Even though his 4-year-old daughter isn't old enough to attend, Mr. Noll volunteers as chairman of the school board.
In the U.S., 237 public schools had only one teacher, according to 2009 federal data, down from 463 in 1999. Most are located in remote areas. And while conditions are far from the rough-hewn rooms of "Little House on the Prairie," such schools often lack the amenities typically associated with high-quality schooling, such as computer labs, libraries, sports, art, music, nurses and psychologists.
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My mother was a public school teacher. She graduated college with a degree in elementary education and spent the rest of her life -- nearly up until the time of her death at age 50 -- teaching children. I remember the hours she spent at home working on projects, grading, and just making decorations for the classroom, and all this even though she spent most of those years as a substitute teacher.Eventually she found a niche teaching children with learning disabilities how to read. My mother worked tirelessly to see that these kids had a leg-up and didn't fall through the cracks of the system. She knew how important it is to be able not only to read, but to read well.
Through all of the time spent, hours worked, problems tackled, gold stars given, lives changed, she barely made any money. I was too young to know her exact salary but I know it wasn't much, especially given that she had three kids of her own at home. We made do -- my parents took good care of us despite what I now know were some very rough financial times. And I never heard my mom complain, not in front of us, anyway. She loved her work and the kids she worked with, and that's what mattered.
And so I know it to be the same case, far more often than not, with teachers. Teaching is not a career that is entered into lightly. It's some of the hardest, if most rewarding, work around -- all for some pretty petty cash. They're not living in mansions. Average yearly salary is just $46,390 in Wisconsin, with an average starting salary of a mere $25,222, ranking us 20th in the nation. For some perspective, that starting salary would put you under the federal poverty line for a family of five, and just barely over it for a family of four.
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Last week during Arne Duncan's Twitter Town Hall there was one phrase that keeps sticking in my mind. John Merrow asked him what his message is for teachers who feel under attack.Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's response included this:
"We have to do everything we can to support teachers. I worry about losing too much of our great young talent."
It is hard to disagree with this. I spent the last four years leading a program in Oakland designed to do just that. We created TeamScience to give novice science teachers a professional community to belong to, offering them experienced colleagues as mentors as well as workshops, curriculum and professional development. We did this because we have a huge turnover issue among our science teachers. Most of the vacancies are filled with interns from Teach For America and other programs, and three years after they start, 75% of these teachers have left the District.
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Every child deserves a great teacher. New Jersey -- which ranks among the top states in the nation in student achievement -- is making great strides in delivering on that promise.Research shows that the effectiveness of the teacher in front of the classroom is the most important in-school factor affecting student learning, and we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to our teachers for our children's success.
Precisely because teaching is an honored craft, we must recognize and respect effective educators, support teachers in their efforts to continue to develop their skills and ensure that those comparatively few individuals who are unable to improve no longer remain in the classroom.
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The former president of the teachers union in the nation's second largest school district is moving on to a new job that might surprise many: He is launching a charter school organization after often criticizing such schools in his previous role.Charters are an opportunity for teacher unions.A.J. Duffy, 67, who headed United Teachers Los Angeles for six years before he was termed out in June, said Thursday he will be executive director of the newly formed Apple Charter Academy Public Schools.
If approved by the Los Angeles Unified School District, the schools are planned to open next year, possibly as soon as February or in September at the latest, with campuses in South Los Angeles, he said.
The model he wants to create will be a radical departure from both traditional and charter schools, promised Duffy. "We want to create a system that's not just good for kids and fair to teachers, but that's revolutionary," he said.
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The Madison School District is on pace to add 300 new teachers this year -- the most in at least 19 years.Already this year, the district has hired 260 new classroom leaders, largely a response to a wave of teacher retirements prompted by a new law curtailing collective bargaining by public employees. Another 40 or so could be added throughout September.
For the thousands of students heading back to school Thursday, the turnover means both the loss of institutional memory and the potential for fresh ideas to reshape the classroom experience, Madison principals say.
"You lose a lot of knowledge around education that's critical to helping kids be successful," said Bruce Dahmen, principal at Memorial High School, which hired about 30 new teachers, including 12 first-timers. "With that change comes new opportunities. (New teachers) sometimes bring a different energy."
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National Center for Policy Analysis:
The Obama administration recently attempted a pre-emptive strike on Texas Governor Rick Perry by unleashing Education Secretary Arne Duncan to attack Texas' record on education. Duncan's arguments have generated a lot of useful discussion across the web, but Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, throws some rudimentary data analysis into the picture.If you look at Texas' simple average test scores in reading and math for fourth and eighth grade students, they're about average. But Texas' schools serve a population with several challenges, in particular many low-income and Spanish speaking children.
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An arm of the U.S. Department of Justice that mediates racial tension in communities is intervening in the debate over the achievement of racial minorities in the Madison School District.Related: the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter school.The Justice Department's Community Relations Service won't discuss its role.
But in an email announcement this week, the Urban League of Greater Madison said DOJ this summer "raised concerns about academic achievement disparities among students of color in the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) to the District's administration."
DOJ officials will participate in a meeting Wednesday called by the Urban League to discuss minority achievement, graduation rates and expulsion rates in the Madison district, according to Urban League President Kaleem Caire.
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Diane Rado, Jodi S. Cohen and Joe Germuska, via a kind Chan Stroman-Roll email:
Ariana Taylor thought she was ready for college after taking Advanced Placement physics and English at her Chicago public high school and graduating with a 3.2 GPA.First-year performance at Illinois public universities and collegesInstead, at Illinois State University, she was overwhelmed by her course load and the demands of college. Her GPA freshman year dropped to 2.7 -- and that was significantly better than other graduates from Morgan Park High School, who averaged a 1.75 at Illinois State.
"It was really a big culture shock," said Taylor, 20, now a junior who has started a mentorship program for incoming freshmen. "I had no idea what it would be like."
A Tribune analysis of data available to Illinois citizens for the first time raises fundamental questions about how well the state's public high schools are preparing their students for college. The data show these students struggle to get a B average as freshmen at the state's universities and community colleges, even after leaving top-performing high schools with good grades. In fact, public school graduates at 10 of the state's 11 four-year universities averaged less than a 3.0 GPA their freshman year.
The newly-released High School-to-College Success Report shows how Illinois public school graduates fared when they became freshmen at the state's universities and community colleges. The ACT company tracked more than 90,000 students who graduated from public high schools between 2006 and 2008, and then enrolled full-time at an Illinois university or community college that fall. The data do not include students who went to a private college or out-of-state. For each high school, families can look up average high school GPAs and grade point averages earned at each public university and community college that students attended.
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Wisconsin Reading Coaltion, via a kind Chan Stroman-Roll email:
Summary of the August 25, 2011 Read to Lead Task Force MeetingRelated: A Capitol Conversation on Wisconsin's Reading Challenges and Excellence in Education explains Florida's reading reforms and compares Florida's NAEP progress with Wisconsin's at the July 29th Read to Lead task force meeting and www.wisconsin2.org.
Green Bay, WIThe fifth meeting of the Read to Lead task force was held on August 25, 2011, at Lambeau Field in Green Bay. Governor Walker was delayed, so State Superintendent Tony Evers opened the meeting. The main topic of discussion was accountability for reading outcomes, including the strategy of mandatory grade retention. Troy Couillard from DPI also presented an overview of reading reform in Milwaukee Public Schools.
Accountability
Superintendent Evers said that Wisconsin will seek a waiver from the No Child Left Behind proficiency requirements by instituting a new system of accountability. His Educator Effectiveness and Accountability Design teams are working on this, with the goal of a new accountability system being in place by late 2011.Accountability at the educator level:
The concept of using student achievement or growth data in teacher and principal evaluations is not without controversy, but Wisconsin is including student data in its evaluation model, keeping in mind fairness and validity. The current thought is to base 50% of the educator evaluation on qualitative considerations, using the Danielson Framework http://www.danielsongroup.org ("promoting professional learning through self assessment, reflection on practice, and professional conversations"), and 50% on student data, including multiple measures of performance. 10% of the student data portion of the evaluation (5% of the total evaluation) would be based on whole-school performance. This 5% would be based on a proficiency standard as opposed to a value-added measurement. The 5% is thought to be small enough that it will not affect an individual teacher adversely, but large enough to send a message that all teachers need to work together to raise achievement in a school. The task force was asked if it could endorse whole-school performance as part of teacher evaluation. The task force members seemed to have some support for that notion, especially at the principal level, but had some reservations at the level of the individual teacher.Kathy Champeau was concerned that some schools do not have the resources to serve some children. She also felt it might not be fair to teachers, as they have no control over other teachers in the school or the principal.
Steve Dykstra said it is important to make sure any value-added system is designed to be fair.Rachel Lander felt it would be better to use value-added data for whole-school performance rather than a proficiency standard, but supported the importance of schoolwide standards.
Rep. Steve Kestell supported the 5% requirement, and questioned what the qualitative half of the evaluation would be based on. He felt perhaps there could be some schoolwide standards to be met in that part of the evaluation, also.
Tony Evers responded that the Danielson Framework was research-based observations, and that the evaluators would need to be highly trained and consistent in their evaluations.
Tony Pedriana had questions about the type of research on which the Danielson Framework is based.
Evers said he would provide further information to the task force.
Mara Brown said she cannot control what the teacher down the hall does, and that the 5% should apply only to principals.Linda Pils agreed with the 5%, but felt principals need to be watching and guiding new teachers. She agreed with Dykstra's comments on measuring growth.
Sen. Luther Olsen was concerned that the 5% portion of a teacher's evaluation may be the part that tips the balance on job retention for an individual, yet that individual has no control over whole-school performance. He understood the principle of getting everyone involved and committed to a goal, but was concerned with possible consequences.
Mandatory Retention:
The task force was asked to consider whether Wisconsin should implement a mandatory retention policy. If so, what would it look like, and if not, what can be done to make sure students are reading at grade level?After a guest presentation and discussion, the consensus of the task force was that Wisconsin should not have mandatory retention. Reasons cited were negative effects on later achievement, graduation, self esteem, and psychological well-being. Third grade was felt to be far too late to start intervention, and there needs to be more emphasis on developing teacher expertise and focusing on the responsibility of teachers, principals, and higher education as opposed to threatening the students with retention. Retention without changing the curriculum for the student the following year is pointless.
Dr. Elaine Allensworth, a director at the Consortium on Chicago School Research, joined the task force by telephone to summarize the outcomes of a mandatory retention project in Chicago. Students more than 1 year below the cut-off level on certain tested skills were retained unless they passed the test after a summer bridge program. Students identified as at-risk were given after-school tutoring during the year. Retention was thought to have three primary mechanisms that would affect student performance: motivation for students, families, and teachers to work harder, supplemental instruction after school and during the summer, and an additional year in the grade for failing students. All students in the school could be affected by the motivation and the supplemental instruction, but only the retained students by the extra year of instruction. The study found that the threat of retention worked as a positive motivator for teachers, parents, and some older students. However, there were also negatives in terms of higher-achieving students receiving less attention, more time on test preparation, and an instructional shift to focus on tested skills. The supplemental instruction, especially the summer bridge program, was the biggest positive of the retention project. There was high participation, increased personal attention, and higher-quality instruction. Retention itself had more negative effects than positive. Academic gains were either non-existent or rapidly-disappearing. Multiple year retentions resulted in a problematic mix of ages in classrooms, students unable to finish high school by age 18, and a negative overall attitude toward school.
Dykstra said it appeared that the impetus to do things differently because of the threat of retention had some benefit, but the actual retention had either no effect or a negative effect. He wondered if there was some way to provide the motivation without retention.
Allensworth agreed that the challenge was to provide a motivation without having a threat.
Pils asked if third graders could even understand the threat of retention.
Allensworth replied that they understood if teachers helped them. She also said that some schools with low-quality instruction had no way to improve student learning even with the threat of retention.Rep. Jason Fields asked how you could avoid teaching to the test.
Allensworth replied that teaching the skills on the test was productive, but not the excessive time that was spent on test-taking strategies. She also said the tendency to teach more narrowly could cause problems later in high school where students needed to be able to participate in broader learning.
Marcia Henry inquired about students who returned to their old rate of learning when they returned to the regular classroom after successfully completing the summer bridge.
Allensworth replied that the summer program used higher quality curriculum and teachers, there was more time provided with students, and the students were more highly motivated.
Dykstra asked if it was possible to determine how much of the summer gain was due to student motivation, and how much due to teachers or parents.
Allensworth said those factors could not be pulled apart.Champeau questioned whether the summer bridge program taught to the test.
Allensworth replied that it taught in a good way to the skills that the test assessed.Brown asked if intervention was provided for the first time in third grade.
Allensworth replied that some schools began providing intervention and retaining in first or second grade.Dykstra asked if the project created a situation where a majority of the school's resources were concentrated in third grade, leaving other grades short.
Allensworth said they didn't look at that, though some schools appeared to put their better teachers at certain grades.Dykstra thought it was the wrong approach to tie services and supports to a specific grade rather than a specific student.
Are some types of consequences necessary to achieve the urgency and intensity necessary for performance improvement? Should there be mandatory summer school or other motivators? The task force did not seem to arrive at a consensus on this.
Lander said schools need the resources to do early intervention, plus information on what should be done in early intervention, and this is not currently the case in Wisconsin.
Pils questioned where teachers would find the time to provide intervention. She liked the idea of after-school and summer programs as well as reading the classics to kids. Providing a model of best instruction is important for teachers who don't have that background.
Mary Read commented on Bill Gates' experience with spending a lot of money for minimal results, and the conclusion that money needs to go into teacher training and proven programs such as the Kipp schools or into a national core curriculum.
Dykstra noted that everyone agrees that teacher training is essential, but there is disagreement as to curriculum and training content. His experience is that teachers are generally unable to pinpoint what is going wrong with a student's reading. We must understand how poor and widespread current teacher training is, apologize to teachers, and then fix the problem, but not at teachers' expense.
The facilitators asked what the policy should be. Is there an alternative to using retention? Should teacher re-training be mandatory for those who need the support?Evers said that a school-by-school response does not work. The reforms in Milwaukee may have some relevance.
Olsen suggested that there are some reading programs that have been proven successful. If a school is not successful, perhaps they should be required to choose from a list of approved instructional methods and assessment tools, show their results, and monitor program fidelity. He feels we have a great resource in successful teachers in Wisconsin and other states, and the biggest issue is agreeing on programs that work for intervention and doing it right the first time.
Kestell said some major problems are teachers with high numbers of failing students, poor teacher preparation, the quality of early childhood education, and over-funding of 4K programs without a mandate on how that money is used. There has been some poor decision-making, and the kids are not responsible for that. We must somehow hold schools, school board, and individual educators accountable.
Champeau said teachers have no control over how money is spent. This accountability must be at the school and district level. More resources need to be available to some schools depending on the needs of their student population.
Lander: We must provide the necessary resources to identified schools.Dykstra: We must develop an excellent system of value-added data so we can determine which schools are actually doing well. Right now we have no way of knowing. High-performing schools may actually be under-performing given their student demographics; projected student growth will not be the same in high and low performing schools.
Pedriana: We have long known how to teach even the most at-risk readers with evidence-based instruction. The truth is that much of our teacher training and classroom instruction is not evidence-based. We need the collective will to identify the evidence base on which we will base our choices, and then apply it consistently across the state. The task force has not yet taken on this critical question.
Pils: In her experience, she feels Wisconsin teachers are among the best in the country. There are some gaps we need to close.
Pedriana: Saying how good we are does not help the kids who are struggling.
Pils: We need to have our best teachers in the inner city, and teachers should not need to purchase their own supplies. We have to be careful with a limited list of approved programs. This may lead to ethics violations.Pedriana: Referring to Pils' mention of Wisconsin's high graduation rates in a previous meeting, what does our poor performance on the NAEP reading test say about our graduation standards?
Michael Brickman (Governor's aide): There is evidence of problems when you do retention, and evidence of problems when you do nothing. We can't reduce the failing readers to zero using task force recommendations, so what should we do with students who leave 3rd grade not reading anywhere near grade level? Should we have mandatory summer school?
Henry: Response to Intervention (RTI) is a perfect model for intervening early in an appropriate way. A summer bridge program is excellent if it has the right focus. We must think more realistically about the budget we will require to do this intervention.
Olsen: If we do early intervention, we should have a very small number of kids who are still behind in 3rd grade. Are we teaching the right, most efficient way? We spend a lot of money on K-12 education in Wisconsin, but we may need to set priorities in reading. There is enough money to do it. Reading should be our mission at each grade level.
Facilitator: What will be the "stick" to make people provide the best instruction?
Dykstra: Accountability needs to start at the top in the state's education system. When the same people continue to make the same mistakes, yet there are no consequences, we need to let some people go. That is what they did in Massachusetts and Florida: start with two or three people in whom you have great confidence, and build from there.
Facilitator: Is there consensus on mandatory summer school for failing students?
Michele Erickson: Summer school is OK if the right resources are available for curriculum and teachers.Kestell: All grades 4K - 3 are gateway grades. They are all important.
Champeau: Summer school is a good idea, but we would need to solve transportation issues.
Dykstra: We should open up the concept of summer school beyond public schools to any agency that offers quality instruction using highly qualified instructors from outside the educational establishment.
Lander: Supports Dykstra's idea. You can't lay summer instruction on schools that can hardly educate during the school year.
Brown: Could support summer school in addition to, but not in place of, early intervention during the school year.
Erickson: Look at the school year first when allocating resources. Summer school is a hard sell to families.
Pedriana: Agrees with Olsen that we probably have sufficient funds for the school year, but we need to spend it more wisely. We cannot expect districts to make the commitment to extra instruction if there is no accountability at the top (including institutions of higher education). We need to resolve the issue of what knowledge and content standards will be taught before we address summer school or other issues.
Milwaukee Public Schools' tiered RTI system was presented by DPI's Troy Couillard as an example of an accountability system. MPS chose a new core reading program for 2010-11 after submitting its research base to DPI. Teachers were provided with some in-service training, and there are some site checks for fidelity of implementation. Tier 2 interventions will begin in 2011-12, and Tier 3 interventions in 2012-13. He felt that the pace of these changes, plus development of a data accountability system, student screening with MAP and other testing, progress monitoring, and professional development, has MPS moving much faster than most districts around the county on implementing RTI. DPI embedded RTI in the district's Comprehensive Literacy Plan. DPI is pushing interventions that are listed on the National RTI site, but teachers are allowed to submit research for things they are using to see if those tools might be used.
Pils: Kids in MPS are already struggling. Reading First would suggest that they have 120 minuets of reading a day instead of the 90 minutes provided in the MPS plan.
Couillard: Tier 2 intervention for struggling students will add onto the 90 minutes of core instruction.
Olsen: Can this system work statewide without DPI monitoring all the districts?
Couillard: Districts are trained to monitor their own programs.
Pils: Veteran schools with proven strategies could be paired with struggling schools as mentors and models.
Pedriana: We have no way of knowing what proven strategies are unless we discuss what scientific evidence says works in reading. The task force must grapple with this question.
Brickman: Read to Lead task force needs to start with larger questions and then move to finer grain; this task force may not be able to do everything.
Pedriana: Is there anything more important for this task force to do than to decide what evidence-based reading instruction is?Brickman: Task force members may submit suggestions for issues to discuss at the final meeting in September. Tony could submit some sample language on "evidence-based instruction" as a starting point for discussion.
Henry: The worst schools should be required to at least have specific guidelines, whether it is a legislative or DPI issue. Teacher retraining (not a 1-day workshop) is a necessity. Teachers are unprepared to teach.
Olsen: Wisconsin has always been a local control state, but one of the outcomes of the task force may be that we have a method for identifying schools that are not doing well, and then intervene with a plan. The state is ultimately responsible for K-12 education. Districts should take the state blueprint or come up with their own for approval by the state.
Erickson: Can we define what will work so districts can just do it?
Evers: MPS experience shows there is a process that works, and districts can do their own monitoring.
Dykstra: Sees value in making a list of things that districts are not allowed to do in reading instruction; also value in making a list of recommended programs based on alignment with the convergence of the science of reading research. That list would not be closed, but it should not include programs based on individual, publisher-funded studies that do not align with the convergence of the science. This could be of benefit to all districts. Even those doing relatively well could be doing better. Right now there is no list, and no learning targets. The MPS plan contains the Wisconsin Model Early Learning Standards, which contain errors. DPI needs to correct that information and distribute it right now. That would be a good example of accountability at the state level.
Couillard: The new statewide data collection system will help districts monitor their own data.
Champeau: School needs change depending on demographics. The goal should be to build decision-making capacity at the local level, not dictation from outside. We should be talking more about people than programs. Have MPS teachers been doing a better job? What will they do if their program goes away? We need to work on the underlying expertise and knowledge base.
Facilitator: There appears to be agreement that the state can intervene in failing districts.
Lander: We might have some consensus as to what teachers need to know, and then go into schools to see if they know it. If not, we need to teach them.
Pedriana: What is so bad about providing a program, with training, of course? It would help people.Facilitator: There is consensus around training of teachers.
Dykstra: Some of the distinction between training and programs is artificial. You need both.
Other things the state could require: weighting of reading in evaluation systems, grading of schools etc.
Dykstra: If giving schools grades, they should get separate grades for how they do in teaching separate content areas. In addition, everything should be reported in the best value-added system we can create, because it's the only way to know if you're doing a good job.
Pils: Doesn't like grading of schools. She has a whole folder on cheating in districts that have grading of schools and high stakes tests.Evers: Do we just want to measure what schools are doing, or do we want to use it to leverage change?
Erickson: Wisconsin has gone from 3rd to 30th on the NAEP, so of course we should be seeking change.
Walker: The idea is not to pick on failing schools, but to help them. We must be able to deploy the resources to the things that work in accordance with science and research to teach reading right.
Dykstra: We should seek small kernels of detailed information about which teachers consistently produce better results in a given type of school for a given type of student. There is a problem with reliability when using MAP data at an individual student level.
Supt. Evers talked about the new state accountability system as being a better alternative to no Child Left Behind. Governor Walker said the state is not just doing this as an alternative to NCLB, but in response to comments from business that our graduates are not well-prepared. Parents want to know what all schools are doing.Olsen: We need a system to monitor reading in Wisconsin before we get into big trouble. Our changing population is leading us to discover challenges that other states have dealt with for years.
Kestell: The accountability design team is an excellent opportunity to discuss priorities in education; a time to set aside personal agendas and look for solutions that work.
Next Meeting/Status of Report
Michael Brickman will try to send out a draft of a report the week of August 29 with his best interpretation of task force consensus items. The final meeting will be Sept. 27, perhaps in Madison, Eau Claire, or Wausau. Some task force issues will need to be passed on to other task forces in the future.
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Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:
III. The Sleeper Issue: A Collective Bargaining Agreement that Cannot Be Amended Even a Teeny, Tiny BitIf this weren't enough, there seems to be another legal issue. This is one that has not attracted much attention, but it seems to me to be a serious problem, at least over the short term.
The school district and Madison Teachers Inc (MTI) have a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that governs terms and conditions of employment for teachers and other represented staff. The plans for Madison Prep calls for working conditions and terms of employment for the school's teachers that differ in significant ways from what the CBA calls for. For example, Madison Prep plans to offer an extended school day and school year and plans to structure its pay for teachers in a different way.
In more normal times, it would be theoretically possible for the school district and MTI to enter into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) by which the parties agree to modify the terms of the CBA in some regards in order to accommodate Madison Prep's plans.
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Delivering courses in cyberclassrooms has gained broad acceptance among top college leaders, but the general public is far less convinced of online education's quality, according to new survey data released this week by the Pew Research Center, in association with The Chronicle.Just over half of the 1,055 college presidents queried believe that online courses offer a value to students that equals a traditional classroom's. By contrast, only 29 percent of 2,142 adult Americans thought online education measured up to traditional teaching. The presidents' survey included leaders of two-year and four-year private, public, and for-profit colleges and was conducted online. The public survey was conducted by telephone.
The gauge of differing perceptions comes at a critical moment for online education. Just 10 years ago, few colleges took teaching onto the Internet, and skepticism about the practice was the norm among professors and university leaders.
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Weeks after Indiana began the nation's broadest school voucher program, thousands of students have transferred from public to private schools, causing a spike in enrollment at some Catholic institutions that were only recently on the brink of closing for lack of pupils.
It's a scenario public school advocates have long feared: Students fleeing local districts in large numbers, taking with them vital tax dollars that often end up at parochial schools. Opponents say the practice violates the separation of church and state.In at least one district, public school principals have been pleading with parents not to move their children.
"The bottom line from our perspective is, when you cut through all the chaff, nobody can deny that public money is going to be taken from public schools, and they're going to end up in private, mostly religious schools," said Nate Schnellenberger, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association.
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In overwhelming numbers, Minnesota superintendents say the state education funding formula is broken and without changes education quality will diminish, according to Minnesota 2020's latest survey of school administrators.Download full report (pdf)
View online at Scribd"To maintain a high level of academic achievement in a time of shrinking state funding, school districts have cut around the edges, but after nearly a decade of underfunding and recent delayed state payments, it's getting difficult to keep cuts out of classrooms," superintendents report in the survey sent to them at the end of the 2010-11 school year.
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If you saw Waiting for "Superman," Steven Brill's tale in Class Warfare will be familiar. The founder of Court TV offers another polemic against teacher unions and a paean to self-styled "education reformers." But even for those who follow education policy, he offers an eye-opening read that should not be missed. Where the movie evoked valiant underdogs waging an uphill battle against an ossified behemoth, Brill's briskly written book exposes what critics of the reformers have long suspected but could never before prove: just how insular, coordinated, well-connected, and well-financed the reformers are. Class Warfare reveals their single-minded efforts to suppress any evidence that might challenge their mission to undermine the esteem in which most Americans held their public schools and teachers. These crusaders now are the establishment, as arrogant as any that preceded them.Brill's heroes make a high-profile gallery. They are public-school critics like former New York and Washington, D.C. schools chancellors Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee. They also include charter school operators David Levin (KIPP) and Eva Moskowitz (Harlem Success Academies), as well as alternative teacher and principal recruiters Wendy Kopp (Teach for America) and Jon Schnur (New Leaders for New Schools). Their ranks boast billionaires Bill Gates and Eli Broad, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and President Obama himself. And they don't lack for savvy, richly endowed representation. Democrats for Education Reform, a lobbying, political action, and communications campaign rolled into one, has brought them all together. Lavishly supported by the newfound wealth of young Wall Street hedge fund managers answerable to no one, DFER's troops have been working overtime to radically transform American public education.
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But when it comes to sick time for teachers who work around lots of kids known for having lots of germs, Forbes has cautioned districts to tread lightly and not make big changes if it's not necessary to balance the budget.The school districts of Hamilton and Elmbrook in Waukesha County both have modified their sick-time policies. Hamilton educators used to have about 20 sick days per year, and the new policy cuts that approximately in half, said Denise Dorn Lindberg, spokeswoman for the district.
Accrual reductionHamilton's teaching staff members used to be able to accrue a maximum of 75 sick days over the course of their career; the new maximum is 30 days - time that can be used to cover extended recovery from illness or injury. But while the bank of days went down, it's also been restructured to act more like a portable benefit, Lindberg said. For example, any unused leave acquired beyond 30 days can be converted to $125 per day and deposited in a teacher's retirement account.
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While most adults agree with President Obama that a world-class education is the most important factor in the success of America's children and status in the world, most don't think U.S. public schools provide that level of education.The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American Adults shows that 61% agree with President Obama when he says "a world-class education is the single most important factor in determining not just whether our kids can compete for the best jobs but whether America can out-compete countries around the world." Twenty-five percent (25%) disagree with that statement, while another 14% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
However, only 26% believe U.S. public schools provide a world-class education. A majority (62%) does not think American public schooling provides that level of education, while another 12% are not sure.
The survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on August 20-21, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
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It's rare to hear the word "education" from Tennessee's leaders without "reform" coming after it.Three years ago, the state began rewriting its curriculum and rethinking the way it dealt with educators. The resulting changes won Tennessee a half-billion-dollar federal grant to attempt to move students from among the lowest-achieving in the nation to the top of the pack.
The state is birthing charter schools at a brisk pace, from none seven years ago to 40 today and, some estimate, up to 20 per year moving forward.
Teachers will be judged routinely on their classroom performance and their students' test scores. Individual districts are rolling out their own reforms, such as Williamson County's invitation for students to bring their own technology and Metro Nashville's dividing of high school students into specific areas of study called academies.
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The Innovative Educator, via a kind James Dias email:
Earlier this year, I shared my disappointment with Fast Company's compilation of "13 Radical Ideas for Spending $100 Million to Overhaul Schools" The problem was that these ideas really just weren't all that radical. Even Will Richardson, who was featured in the article, commented on my blog that he agreed (see comment here). Richardson did feature a radical idea in his own blog a few years back in his post, One Town's Reform...Close the Schools. The article explains how a UK community shut down its 11 schools replacing them with dynamic learning centers that looked very different than traditional compulsory schools. According to their site, they are still going strong.The learning center idea has certainly taken off as more and more people are realizing that the compulsory, oppressive, disconnected, test-driven schools that exist today are not the best option when it comes to preparing children for success in the world.
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The 2010 elections had many obvious effects, but one of the lesser-known is that they revived the school-choice movement in a big way. Although many education writers had assumed the movement was dead, there have been far more efforts to pass school-choice programs this year than ever and, more importantly, the success rate has gone up too.This reflects the political nature of school choice, which has in modern times been promoted primarily by Republicans. Increasingly, however, Democrats, particularly minority Democrats, have begun bucking the wishes of the national teachers unions, which oppose school choice in any form.
School choice has even broken into the national consciousness with the success of such documentaries as "The Lottery" and "Waiting for 'Superman.'" These focused on parents' efforts to get their children into charter schools, which are public schools operated independently of their local school districts--and, not coincidentally, without teacher union involvement.
From the perspective of status quo supporters, charter schools are the least threatening form of school choice, because they remain public schools, meaning they cannot charge tuition and their admissions practices typically are controlled by lottery. This year has seen dramatic increases in interest in charter schools, as an alternative to regular public schools. Even the Obama administration got into the act, by making the removal of existing caps on the number of charter schools a component of states' applications for federal "Race to the Top" funds.
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Marcia Henry, via a kind Chan Stroman-Roll email:
Fifteen years ago, Wisconsin fourth-graders placed third in the country in state rankings of reading ability known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress. By 2009, our fourth-graders' scores plunged to 30th, with a third of the students reading below basic levels. The scores of minority youth were even bleaker, with 65% of African-American and 50% of Hispanic students scoring in the below-basic range.Related: Wisconsin's "Read to Lead" task force and "a Capitol Conversation" on reading.As a member of Gov. Scott Walker's blue ribbon reading task force, I am one of 14 people charged with reversing that drop. And, as a 50-year veteran educator, I have a partial solution. Let me spell it out for you: We need better teacher preparation.
How many of you remember your very best teachers? I remember Miss Hickey at Lincoln School and Miss Brauer at Folwell School in Rochester, Minn. They taught me to read.
I travel throughout the country consulting and providing staff development for school districts and literacy organizations. I've met thousands of dedicated teachers who tell me they are unprepared to teach struggling readers.
This situation is not the teachers' fault. Some teachers in Wisconsin had only one course in reading instruction. Most were never exposed to the latest research regarding early reading acquisition and instruction. In contrast, several states require three or four classes in courses that contain the latest in science-based reading instruction.
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The number of arrests and citations for incidents at Madison's four main high schools dropped last year to the lowest level in more than a decade, according to police data.Related: Madison police calls near local high schools: 1996-2006.But arrests and citations at West and Memorial were twice the number at East and La Follette -- a reversal of the situation 10 years earlier when there were more than twice as many at the city's East Side high schools.
West was the only school with an increase from the previous year.
The Wisconsin State Journal obtained the data from the Madison Police Department amid a debate over whether the Madison School District should use drug-sniffing police dogs in random sweeps of high schools. The School Board was to consider the issue Monday but delayed a vote until late September -- in part to review the arrest and citation data.
District officials say an increase in drug-related disciplinary referrals in recent years, and the use of drug dogs in area school districts, support the use of police dogs. Community surveys also have showed strong support.
Luis Yudice, the School District's security coordinator, who introduced the drug-sniffing dog proposal with the support of Madison police, is concerned drugs in schools can lead to more gang activity, fights and weapons in schools as students arm themselves in self-defense. He views the police dog policy as a possible deterrent that could prevent a crisis.
Gangs & School Violence Forum Audio/Video.
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Jeni Callan sits near the front of the school bus, listening and taking tidy notes on a legal pad.It's new teacher orientation day in the Hamilton School District, and the yellow bus carrying nearly 30 new hires for the 2011-'12 school year is winding through Waukesha County as the district's spokeswoman shouts out the history of each passing school.
Callan, 26, is about to start her dream job as a language arts teacher at Templeton Middle School and knows that her good fortune is partially attributable to an unusually high number of retirements in Hamilton at the end of the school year.
But the job market has not been so kind to other young educators hunting for work, especially those lacking credentials to teach in specialty fields such as special education, math or physics.
"This is maybe the most unusual hiring climate for teachers that I've ever seen," said Bill Henk, dean of Marquette University's College of Education.
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For a while now, I've had to get accustomed to the characterization of my 25-year teaching career with the Los Angeles Unified School District as a series of reprehensible acts on my part. As a teacher, I've been the bad guy.First, over the 16 years I taught elementary, I wanted to teach immigrant children how to speak, read and write in English. Prior to 1997 when the passage of Propostion 227 mandated that immigrant children in California should learn English, my views were considered reactionary and contrary to the best interests of Hispanic children. I was told bluntly that by refusing to teach exclusively in Spanish I was destroying the children's chances of success. One coordinator told me I was perpetuating "English as King." "No," I countered, "English is the common language of most of the world," but this was a non-starter in such circles.
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The National Education Association has always been an outlier in the world of organized labor. A member of neither the AFL-CIO nor Change to Win, the union experienced consistent and substantial growth during the same decades industrial union membership was disintegrating.The last couple of years have provided the first opportunity to observe NEA's actions during a period of declining membership. It appears the teachers' union is following the AFL-CIO model for remaining relevant despite dwindling numbers - accelerated political action.
One of the constant internal battles in the labor movement has been over organizing vs. political action. Do you devote resources to growing membership in order to increase political clout, or do you increase political contributions in order to establish a friendly organizing environment? Although there have been fits and starts in both directions, overall the latter choice prevailed.
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The start of the school year isn't normally the time for issuing report cards. But it's been an unusual and momentous year, so as the first day of classes approaches for almost every school in the state, here's a report card on what I'll call the war against the triangle.Last winter, before Scott Walker was sworn in as governor, a leading Republican told a group of people (according to a reliable person who was present) that there was a triangle that was blocking the path to educational improvement in Wisconsin and his party was going to take out each leg of the triangle.
What were the legs?
Teachers unions, particularly the Wisconsin Education Association Council. WEAC spent hugely on political campaigns and was pro-Democratic. It also was the largest lobbying force in the Capitol. WEAC represented the unwillingness of teachers organizations to change and the need to get rid of most collective bargaining matters.
The state Department of Public Instruction, which represented the status quo, overregulation of schools and how things couldn't change if they were in the hands of government bureaucrats.
Milwaukee Public Schools, which represented - well, which represented Milwaukee Public Schools. Or, to put it another way, a money pit where there was never any positive change.
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TEACHERS NOT ENOUGH? WHO KNEW?
It is settled wisdom among Funderpundits and those to whom they give their grants that the most important variable in student academic achievement is teacher quality.
However, a small number of dissenting voices have begun to speak. Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, in Academically Adrift have suggested that (p. 131) "Studying is crucial for strong academic performance..." and "Scholarship on teaching and learning has burgeoned over the past several decades and has emphasized the importance of shifting attention from faculty teaching to student learning..."
This may seem unacceptably heterodox to those in government and the private sector who have committed billions of dollars to focusing on the selection, training, supervision, and control of K-12 teachers, while giving no thought to whether K-12 students are actually doing the academic work which they are assigned.
In 2004, Paul A. Zoch, a teacher from Texas, wrote in Domed to Fail (p. 150) that: "Let there be no doubt about it: the United States looks to its teachers and their efforts, but not to its students and their efforts, for success in education." More recently, and less on the fringe of this new concern, Diane Ravitch wrote in Death and Life of the Great American School System (2010) (p. 162) that "One problem with test-based accountability, as currently defined and used, is that it removes all responsibility from students and their families for the students' academic performance. NCLB neglected to acknowledge that students share in the responsibility for their academic performance and that they are not merely passive recipients of their teachers' influence."
There are necessarily problems in turning attention toward the work of students in judging the effectiveness of schools. First, all the present attention is on teachers, and it is not easy to turn that around. Second, teachers are employees and can be fired, while students can not. It could not be comfortable for the Funderpundits and their beneficiaries to realize that they may have been overlooking the most important variable in student academic achievement all this time.
In February, when the Associated Press reported that Natalie Monroe, a high school English teacher in Pennsylvania, had called her students, on a blog, "disengaged, lazy whiners," and "noisy, crazy, sloppy, lazy LOAFERS," the response of the school system was not to look more closely at the academic efforts of the students, but to suspend the teacher. As one of her students explained, "As far as motivated high school students, she's completely correct. High school kids don't want to do anything...(but) It's a teacher's job...to give students the motivation to learn."
It would seem that no matter who points out that "You can lead a student to learning, but you can't make him drink," our system of schools and Funderpundits sticks with its wisdom that teachers alone are responsible for student academic achievement.
While that is wrong, it is also stupid. Alfred North Whitehead (or someone else) once wrote that; "For education, a man's books and teachers are but a help, the real work is his."
As in the old story about the drunk searching under the lamppost for his keys, those who control funds for education believe that as long as all their money goes to paying attention to what teachers are doing, who they are, how they are trained, and so on, they can't see the point of looking in the darkness at those who have the complete and ultimate control over how much academic achievement there will be--namely the students.
Apart from scores on math and reading tests after all, student academic work is ignored by all those interested in paying to change the schools. What students do in literature, Latin, chemistry, history, and Asian history classes is of no interest to them. Liberal education is not only on the back burner for those focused on basic skills and job readiness as they define them, but that burner is also turned off at present.
This situation will persist as long as those funding programs and projects for reform in education pay no attention to the actual academic work of our students. And students, who see little or no pressure to be other than "disengaged lazy whiners" will continue to pay the price for their lack of education, both in college and at work, and we will continue to draw behind in comparison with those countries who realize that student academic achievement has always been, and will always be, mainly dependent on diligent student academic work.
------------------------------
"Teach by Example"
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics(r)
www.tcr.org/blog
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Textbook pirates have struck again. Nearly three years after publishers shut down a large Web site devoted to illegally trading e-textbooks, a copycat site has sprung up--with its leaders arguing that it is operating overseas in a way that will be more difficult to stop.The new site, LibraryPirate, quietly started operating last year, but it began a public-relations blitz last week, sending letters to the editor to several news sites, including The Chronicle, in which it called on students to make digital scans of their printed textbooks and post them to the site for free online.
Such online trading violates copyright law, but some people have apparently been adding pirated versions of e-textbooks to the site's directory. The site now boasts 1,700 textbooks, organized and searchable. Downloading the textbooks requires a peer-to-peer system called BitTorrent, and the LibraryPirate site hosts a step-by-step guide to using it.
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UW-Madison Professor Mark Seidenberg and I had an informative conversation with two elected officials at the Capitol recently.
I am thankful for Mark's time and the fact that both Luther Olsen and Steve Kestell along with staff members took the time to meet. I also met recently with Brett Hulsey and hope to meet with more elected officials, from both parties.
The topic du jour was education, specifically the Governor's Read to Lead task force.
Mark kindly shared this handout:
My name is Mark Seidenberg, Hilldale Professor and Donald O. Hebb Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, seidenberg@wisc.edu, http://lcnl.wisc.edu. I have studied how reading works, how children learn to read, reading disabilities, and the brain bases of reading for over 30 years. I am a co-author of a forthcoming report from the National Research Council (National Academy of Sciences) on low literacy among older adolescents and adults. I'm writing a general audience book about reading research and educational practices.I am cautiously optimistic that we may see an improvement in Wisconsin's K-12 curricular standards.We have a literacy problem: about 30% of the US (and WI) population reads at a "basic" or "below basic" level. Literacy levels are particularly low among poor and minority individuals. The identification of this problem does not rest on any single test (e.g., NAEP, WKCE, OECD). Our literacy problem arises from many causes, some of which are not easy to address by legislative fiat. However, far more could be done in several important areas.
1. How teachers are taught. In Wisconsin as in much of the US, prospective teachers are not exposed to modern research on how children develop, learn, and think. Instead, they are immersed in the views of educational theorists such as Lev Vygotsky (d. 1934) and John Dewey (d. 1952). Talented, highly motivated prospective teachers are socialized into beliefs about children that are not informed by the past 50 years of basic research in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience.
A vast amount is known about reading in particular, ranging from what your eyes do while reading to how people comprehend documents to what causes reading disabilities. However, there is a gulf between Education and Science, and so this research is largely ignored in teacher training and curriculum development.
2. How children are taught. There continue to be fruitless battles over how beginning readers should be taught, and how to insure that comprehension skills continue to develop through middle and high school. Teachers rely on outdated beliefs about how children learn, and how reading works. As a result, for many children, learning to read is harder than it should be. We lose many children because of how they are taught. This problem does NOT arise from "bad teachers"; there is a general, systematic problem related to teacher education and training in the US.
3. Identification of children at risk for reading failures. Some children are at risk for reading and school failure because of developmental conditions that interfere with learning to read. Such children can be identified at young ages (preschool, kindergarten) using relatively simple behavioral measures. They can also be helped by effective early interventions that target basic components of reading such as vocabulary and letter-sound knowledge. The 30% of the US population that cannot read adequately includes a large number of individuals whose reading/learning impairments were undiagnosed and untreated.
Recommendations: Improve teacher education. Mechanism: change the certification requirements for new teachers, as has been done in several other states. Certification exams must reflect the kinds of knowledge that teachers need, including relevant research findings from cognitive science and neuroscience. Instruction in these areas would then need to be provided by schools of education or via other channels. In-service training courses could be provided for current teachers (e.g., as on-line courses).
Children who are at risk for reading and schooling failures must be identified and supported at young ages. Although it is difficult to definitively confirm a reading/learning disability in children at young ages (e.g., 4-6) using behavioral, neuroimaging, or genetic measures, it is possible to identify children at risk, most of whom will develop reading difficulties unless intervention occurs, via screening that involves simple tests of pre-reading skills and spoken language plus other indicators. Few children just "grow out of" reading impairments; active intervention is required.
Related: Excellence in Education explains Florida's reading reforms and compares Florida's NAEP progress with Wisconsin's at the July 29th Read to Lead task force meeting and www.wisconsin2.org.
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Kaleem Caire, via email
Dear Friends & Colleagues,IB interviewed Kaleem a few weeks ago.
In the last 48 hours, local media has been abuzz about the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction's decision to put a hold on our charter school planning grant. The grant application was formally endorsed in March 2011 by the Board of Education of the Madison Metropolitan School District.
Last week, DPI officials contacted us to request that our team and the leadership of the Madison Metropolitan School District meet with them to discuss how we intend to address issues related to (a) the 1972 Title IX Education Amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and (b) new federal Title IX regulations on the establishment of single sex classes, extracurricular activities and schools that took effect in 2006. This meeting has been scheduled.
DPI has publicly stated that it is not uncommon for grant awards to be delayed for various reasons. In our case, DPI wants to ensure that all parties - MMSD, DPI and the Urban League of Greater Madison - are on the same page with regard to how Madison Prep will comply with federal and state statutes relative to single sex public schools. We welcome this conversation. MMSD and the Urban League have been working together on this issue since June.
Single Sex Public Schools are Growing in the U.S.
According to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, there are presently 116 single sex public schools in the United States. The number of single sex public schools continues to grow each year. For example, the Houston (Texas) Independent School District's Board of Education recently approved an all boys and later an all girls college preparatory academy for students in grades 6 - 12. Both campuses opened this week.
There are also public charter schools such as Bluford Drew Jemison S.T.E.M Academy for boys in Baltimore, Maryland that was approved by the Board of Education of Baltimore City Public Schools without approving a similar school for girls at the same time. Bluford Drew Jameson is part of BCPS' bold and aggressive Charter, Innovative and Transformation Schools Plan to revitalize public education in the city. BCPS' efforts are being heralded nationally as they are seeing clear signs of turning around.
With Confidence, Precedent and Support, We Will Succeed
Given the successful growth of single sex public/charter schools across the country, along with our plans to comply with the new Title IX regulations and our publicly stated commitment to establish the 6-12 grade Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Women, we are confident that the issues raised by DPI will be resolved.
With your support and that of DPI and MMSD, Madison Prep will soon provide a long overdue solution to a deeply rooted pattern of academic failure and under-performance, particularly among African American and Latino boys in our community. It will also serve as a learning laboratory that informs the programs, strategies and practices of schools and educators across Greater Madison and the State of Wisconsin.
We look forward to Madison Prep producing hundreds of confident, excited and future-focused young men who are ready for college and committed to promoting the schools values - leadership, excellence, pride and service - in their community, homes, peer groups and daily lives.
Visit the website and sign our petition below.
Madison Prep 2012: Empowering Young Men for Life!
Much more on Kaleem Caire and the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school, here.
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There are two different types of charter schools in the City of Milwaukee, and by at least one measure, those not chartered by the Milwaukee Public Schools are performing better.Milwaukee's ACT scores rose in 2011, but they still weren't able to match the production of the city's non-union charter schools. In the end, the non-district charter schools left their instrumentality counterparts in the dust when it came to college readiness.
The city's non-instrumentality charter schools outperformed the MPS average when it came to the ACT, a selective college readiness test, in the past school year. These schools aren't operated or authorized by local school boards, and have been more successful in preparing students when weighed against the city's average. In the four qualifying high schools, students averaged a score of 18.8.
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Protesters have barricaded streets and burned tires in Chile's capital, Santiago, amid a 48-hour strike to press for education reform.Police and protesters clashed Wednesday, as the government tried to shut down demonstrations in some parts of the city.
Reports from Santiago say business in most parts of the city was un-interrupted, with public transportation continuing to function and traffic flowing through most streets.The strike was called by Chile's main labor union, CUT, in support of students who have been protesting for weeks for education reform and an overhaul of educational funding. In addition, strike organizers have called for tax reform and constitutional change.
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Now that Gov. Scott Walker's major cuts for public schools have been enacted, my question for my fellow educators is: What do we do next? I am sick and tired of constantly reacting to bad news and bad policy and always being in the position of having to play defense. Educators and school districts should organize to go on the offensive.Walker's budget has significantly damaged one of the best public education systems in the country. He turned half of our community members against us using false information, and now we will be fighting a public relations battle while also working harder to educate students with fewer resources.
Through all of this, we Wisconsin educators will still stand tall and deliver a top-notch education for the children of this state, regardless of what Walker has done, because that is what Wisconsin professional educators do.
My fear is that after we deliver, Walker and his minions will use the media and their bully pulpit to take all the credit for the successes that we will achieve in our classrooms. I can see the headlines now of Walker proclaiming how well his budget cuts worked because schools are performing well under his budget.
So what do we do? What should our strategy be? Here are some suggestions:
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Students who take education classes at universities receive significantly higher grades than students who take classes in every other academic discipline. The higher grades cannot be explained by observable differences in student quality between education majors and other students, nor can they be explained by the fact that education classes are typically smaller than classes in other academic departments. The remaining reasonable explanation is that the higher grades in education classes are the result of low grading standards. These low grading standards likely will negatively affect the accumulation of skills for prospective teachers during university training. More generally, they contribute to a larger culture of low standards for educators.Key points in this Outlook:
Grades awarded in university education departments are consistently higher than grades in other disciplines.
Similarly, teachers in K-12 schools receive overwhelmingly positive evaluations.
Grade inflation in education departments should be addressed through administrative directives or external accountability in K-12 schools.
When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
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Could you give our readers a short crash course to the main ideas of your book?"The Innovative University" makes the case that a "disruptive" technology, online learning, is bringing fundamental change to higher education. Traditional universities and colleges are vulnerable because their model of education was already becoming too expensive for many students. Most young students will continue to want the campus-based learning experience, but they will expect to pay less and to enjoy a combination of face-to-face and online instruction. Institutions that don't provide a hybrid will see declining enrollments. Most institutions will also have to focus more narrowly on student instruction, rather than emulating the large research universities, such as Harvard. Making these changes will be hard, given the strength of higher education tradition and the autonomy of faculty members. However, we believe that it can be done.
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Chicago Public Schools today launched their plans to extend students' time in the classroom by 90 minutes each and by two weeks each year and set up an advisory committee to figure out how it'll be done.However, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said she would decline an invitation to serve on the committee, saying in a written statement that, "this news has nothing do with helping our children and everything to do with politicizing a real serious problem."
Mayor Rahm Emanuel began pushing for a longer school day while he was on the campaign trail, saying Chicago's school day is the shortest in the nation when compared to public school systems in nine other large cities. School reform legislation passed in June allows the district to implement a longer school day in the fall of 2012 with or without the union's agreement, and CPS officials have said they would do that.
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The founder of The American Lawyer magazine and Court TV tells the story of a coalition of unlikely allies in the fight to change a school system that many parents believe is failing the nation's children. He debated education solutions with former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch.
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So far, this has been the summer of education task forces in Wisconsin.There's one addressing school accountability, another tackling how to help school districts implement new academic standards and a third devoted to improving third-grade reading proficiency. That doesn't even count other groups already in existence that are looking at reforming statewide tests or increasing teacher effectiveness.
"There's so many work groups and task forces operating right now, it's hard to keep track of them," said state Rep. Steve Kestell (R-Elkhart Lake), chairman of the Assembly Education Committee and a member of some of those task forces.
Keeping all of the task forces on track may also prove difficult.
Earlier this month, a member of the group charged with helping school districts implement new reading standards sent an open letter to members of the governor's Read to Lead Task Force expressing concerns about the approach that the state Department of Public Instruction was taking in developing a model reading curriculum. That letter was followed by another that recommended specific approaches that the task force should take. Dan Gustafson, a Madison-based pediatric neuropsychologist, said he wrote the letters because he was concerned that the DPI was moving ahead with a model reading curriculum without input from differing viewpoints on reading instruction.
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Are there hidden messages in your emails? Yes, and in everything you write or say, according to James Pennebaker, chair of the department of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Pennebaker has been a leader in the computer analysis of texts for their psychological content. And in his new book, "The Secret Life of Pronouns," he argues that how we use words like "I," "she," and "who" reveal secrets of our psychology. He spoke recently with Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook.COOK: How did you become interested in pronouns?
PENNEBAKER: A complete and total accident. Until recently, I never thought about parts of speech. However, about ten years ago I stumbled on some findings that caught my attention. In the 1980s, my students and I discovered that if people were asked to write about emotional upheavals, their physical health improved. Apparently, putting emotional experiences into language changed the ways people thought about their upheavals. In an attempt to better understand the power of writing, we developed a computerized text analysis program to determine how language use might predict later health improvements. In other words, I wanted to find if there was a healthy way to write.
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Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, via a kind reader's email:
Groups planning new charter schools and established charter schools that want to replicate their success are sharing $6 million in federal charter school grants.Matthew DeFour has more.Planning grants total $4.5 million and will go for planning activities in 23 charter schools that have already been approved by their local school board or authorizing authority. Five of those grants are going to districts that do not currently have charter schools. Five grants, totaling $625,000, will support the expansion of successful charter school models. Another seven grants, totaling $875,000, will help charter schools that are in the second year dissemination activities.
"Planning grant proposals in this round of funding are for a mix of innovative charter schools," said State Superintendent Tony Evers. "This is just what the charter school law promotes: local solutions to serve students and their families."
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After years of frustration with its own teacher-evaluation system, the second-largest school district in the country is pilot-testing a new idea against the wishes of its union.With the Obama administration offering incentives for school systems to revamp how they evaluate teachers' effectiveness, the episode with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) carries important lessons nationwide, analysts say.
The fresh approach in Los Angeles meshes with the Obama administration's efforts to use more systematic and data-driven approaches to evaluate teachers. It includes parent and student feedback, students' standardized test scores, and more detailed observations given by peers - who watch teachers and then type their observations and questions into laptop computers, then discuss their impressions the next day.
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Mary Bell, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, is quiet and thoughtful in one-on-one conversations. She's a middle-aged, cheery, bespectacled woman whose dimpled face is surrounded by a thick corona of whitish-gray hair.But when fighting for her members, Bell forcefully projects her belief in teachers' right to respect, decent pay and union representation. At a rally with tens of thousands at the Capitol on a snowy, bitter Feb. 26, Bell expressed outrage at Gov. Scott Walker's proposals for the near-total stripping of union rights for teachers, librarians, highway workers, prison guards and other public workers across the state. Yet her anger was tempered by her humor and her belief in Wisconsinites' fundamental commitment to fairness and public education.
The rhetoric Mary Bell used that day about "Wisconsin values" was no stretch for her, because she perceives herself as a typical Wisconsinite, sharply different from the image of the insular Madison insider, as Walker likes to portray his enemies.
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This site is dedicated to informing people about words that are not verbs, even though people misuse them that way. You have to pick one of the non-verbs about which this site knows:
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First, a lesson from baseball: It was roughly a year ago that Brewers fans were wringing their hands that the pitching was bad and there was little prospect for fixing that in the off-season, given a weak free agent scene and limited finances. Now, the Brewers have pitching that is basically amazing.Sometimes, things do improve dramatically. Sometimes, that happens even when there are sound arguments for why they won't.
I could write this entire column - if not a book - on why I'm pessimistic about things getting a lot better on the Milwaukee education scene. I would present a pretty sound case, too.
Maybe I'm wrong. In fact, I hope I'm wrong. I'd like to see things take off like a rocket ship.
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The state's education commissioner says she's exploring ways to make the ACT college entrance exam even higher-stakes for Minnesota students than it already is.Wednesday's release of ACT scores shows 72 percent of Minnesota high school graduates took the test. No state with that much participation scored higher. But 72 percent isn't enough for Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius, especially considering there are waivers available so students can take the test for free.
The problem, she said, is not enough students realize how crucial the ACT is.
"There are so many tests that they're taking; they don't know which is the important test," Cassellius said. "We want to have a test that actually measures their career and college readiness."
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The twentieth century is, among other things, the Age of Noise. Physical noise, mental noise and noise of desire--we hold history's record for all of them. And no wonder; for all the resources of our almost miraculous technology have been thrown into the current assault against silence.Aldous Huxley, The Perennial PhilosophyHuxley is talking about the radio and the newspaper, the carriers of noise at the start of the 20th century, but his words could just as well have been written today. Today, silence is a thing to be shunned, with the social ecosystem of apps and devices ready to help you do just that.
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I started to truly appreciate the power of early childhood Chinese-language education when our son, at the age of two, started speaking English wrong. "The blue of cup," he would say, meaning his blue cup.This wasn't a random preschool linguistic hiccup, we realized. He was trying to use Chinese syntax: "of" was standing in for the Mandarin particle "de" to turn the noun "blue" into an adjective. And his odd habit of indicating things by saying "this one" or "that one"-he was rendering the Chinese "zhege" and "neige" in English. That is, he was speaking Chinglish.
The usual arguments in favor of Mandarin education say that he should be on his way to conquering the world. An extra language, the theory goes, supplies extra brainpower, and Chinese in particular is a skill that will prepare young children to compete in the global 21st-century marketplace of talent.
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Picture the following scenario. You ask your friend to come up with a creative meal that will amaze your guests at a dinner party you are holding, but you impose some constraints. Your friend can only use the ingredients from a restrictive list and must follow the specific directions from a meal you cooked these same guests just weeks earlier.What are the odds that your friend makes something innovative? Not good. After all, you've practically defined the solution by specifying nearly all of its inputs before she can even consider what she might cook.
A far better way to generate an innovative solution is to define the outcome you need -- a five-course meal for eight -- and then allow your friend to figure out the best way to get there.
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In the field of Internet policy, 2011 has been the year of privacy. Congress has introduced six bills related to online privacy, and the Obama administration released two major reports recommending greater federal oversight of online markets. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) appears poised to step up regulatory activity on this front. State-level activity is also percolating, led by California, which floated two major bills recently.These efforts would expand regulatory oversight of online activities in various ways. Some measures would institute "Fair Information Practice Principles" (FIPPS), governing the collection and use of personal information online. Others would limit some types data collection, ban certain data or advertising practices, or create new mechanisms to help consumers block online ad-targeting techniques. Another measure would mandate websites adopt a so-called Internet "Eraser Button," which would allow users to purge unwanted personal information from online sites and services.
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Unions representing Madison teachers and Milwaukee sanitation workers sued Gov. Scott Walker on Thursday, alleging that the controversial law severely restricting the collective bargaining rights of most public workers in Wisconsin is unconstitutional.The lawsuit, brought by Madison Teachers Inc. and AFL-CIO Local 61 in Milwaukee alleges that the state legislature passed what was originally called the budget repair bill in violation of the state constitution's provision that governs special legislative sessions.
The lawsuit also alleges that the law places severe and unfair restrictions on what unions and their members can discuss with municipalities and school districts, and imposes severe wage increase limits that don't apply to nonunion workers.
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Given recent school-related political conflicts in Wisconsin, it is of interest that only 42 percent of that state's white students are proficient in math, a rate no better than the national average.Much more at www.wisconsin2.org.At a time of persistent unemployment, especially among the less skilled, many wonder whether our schools are adequately preparing students for the 21st-century global economy. This is the second study of student achievement in global perspective prepared under the auspices of Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG).
In the 2010 PEPG report, "U.S. Math Performance in Global Perspective," the focus was on the percentage of U.S. public and private school students performing at the advanced level in mathematics.1 The current study continues this work by reporting the percentage of public and private school students identified as at or above the proficient level (a considerably lower standard of performance than the advanced level) in mathematics and reading for the most recent cohort for which data are available, the high-school graduating Class of 2011.
Proficiency in Mathematics
U.S. students in the Class of 2011, with a 32 percent proficiency rate in mathematics, came in 32nd among the nations that participated in PISA. Although performance levels among the countries ranked 23rd to 31st are not significantly different from that of the United States, 22 countries do significantly outperform the United States in the share of students reaching the proficient level in math.In six countries plus Shanghai and Hong Kong, a majority of students performed at the proficient level, while in the United States less than one-third did. For example, 58 percent of Korean students and 56 percent of Finnish students were proficient. Other countries in which a majority--or near majority--of students performed at or above the proficient level included Switzerland, Japan, Canada, and the Netherlands. Many other nations also had math proficiency rates well above that of the United States, including Germany (45 percent), Australia (44 percent), and France (39 percent).
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Jeff Henriques, via email.
Many notes and links, here.
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on the 17th of never, 2011
Senator, please allow me to express my thanks for including me in these vital hearings on the readiness of our high school graduates for college work.
It would be my sad duty to report to you that if high school football coaches no longer ask their athletes to learn to block and tackle, that would fail to prepare them for college teams. Oh--wait, Senator, that is not correct. (Shuffles papers, starts over).
It would be my sad duty to report that if our high school basketball coaches no longer taught their athletes to dribble, pass, and shoot baskets, then they too would fail at basketball in college.
Oh--my apologies, Senator, that is not my testimony--just a little bad joke. Of course our high school coaches take athletics much too seriously to allow that sort of thing to happen to our kids. In fact, The Boston Globe has more than 100 pages a year on high school athletes. No, Senator, there is no coverage for high school academic achievement.
But I am sorry to have to report that our History and English teachers at the high school level no longer ask our students to read complete nonfiction books or to write substantial research papers, and naturally, this unfits them for the nonfiction books they will be asked to read and the substantial research papers they will be asked to write at the postsecondary level, in what we might call Upper Education.
The famous and influential American educator, John Dewey, wrote in 1896 that: "The centrality of reading and writing was 'one of education's great mistakes.'" In following in his footsteps, many of our educators have pushed academic reading and writing so far to the periphery of the curriculum that, for too many of our high school students, they might just as well have fallen off the edge of the flat earth of American secondary education.
The California State College System recently reported that 47% of their Freshmen were required to take remedial reading courses. Of course they can't handle nonfiction books as they have never been assigned one in their whole high school career.
I have had the privilege of publishing 956 serious (average 6,000 words) history research papers by secondary students from all over this country and from 38 other countries, and I have formed the opinion in the process that high school students are fully capable of reading complete nonfiction books and of writing serious research papers.
But it should be no surprise that so long as our educators never assign nonfiction books or ask students for research papers, they will continue to believe that their students may be able somehow to manage Calculus, European history, Latin, Chemistry, British Literature and the like, but they must still not be able, for some unexplained reason, to read a history book or write a real term paper.
While our colleges do complain, persistently, about the poor preparation in reading and writing of the students who come to them, what do they do in setting requirements for admission?
Senator, hard as it may be to believe, all the writing that colleges ask for is a 500-word "college" essay about the life of the applicant. It is hard to conceive of a more nonacademic task than that, or one more likely to retard the assignment of serious reading and writing at the high school level.
When we celebrate athletes and ignore scholars in our high schools, and when we set such low standards for the high school diploma and for college admission, we should not be surprised that more than one million of our high school graduates need to be in remedial courses when they get to college every year, and that more than half of those will never graduate.
Yes, Senator, I believe that until we take reading and writing more seriously at the secondary level, we can continue to push more and more students into college, but more and more of them will be sadly unprepared to take advantage of that academic opportunities there, and more and more of them will drop out before they graduate from college.
Thanks again for the opportunity to discuss these problems.
===============
"Teach by Example"
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
www.tcr.org/blog
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The average ACT score among the Madison School District's 2011 graduates dipped to its lowest level in 15 years, while the gap between white and minority student scores shrank for the first time in five years.Amy Hetzner:Though Madison's average score dipped from 24.2 to 23.9, district students still outperformed the state average of 22.2 and national average of 21.1. A perfect score on the college entrance exam is 36.
Madison's average scores in recent years have ranged from 23.5 in 1995 to 24.6 in 2007. The average score was also 23.9 in 2003.
With the highest percent of students taking the ACT in state history, Wisconsin's Class of 2011 posted an average score slightly above that from the previous year's graduates and maintained the state's third-place ranking among states in which the test is widespread.A few somewhat related links:Seventy-one percent of the 2011 graduates from Wisconsin private and public schools took the college admissions test, averaging a 22.2 composite score on the 36-point test, according to information to be publicly released Wednesday. The nationwide average was 21.1 on the ACT Assessment, which includes tests in English, reading, mathematics and science.
State schools superintendent Tony Evers credited the results to more high school students pursuing more demanding coursework.
"The message of using high school as preparation for college and careers is taking hold with our students," Evers said in a news release. "Nearly three-quarters of our kids said they took the rigorous classes recommended for college entry, up from just over half five years ago."
Even so, ACT reported that only 32% of Wisconsin's recently graduated seniors had test results that showed they were ready for college-level courses in all four areas. Results for individual subjects ranged from 39% readiness in science to 75% in English.
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.On November 7 (2005), Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district's student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district's success in closing the academic achievement gap "based on race".
According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, "for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we've reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap". Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level "is the original gap" that the board set out to close.
Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.
"Penelope Trunk": (Adrienne Roston, Adrienne Greenheart(
Notes and links on the recent, successful Madison Talented & Gifted parent complaint.10. Homeschool. Your kids will be screwed if you don't.
The world will not look kindly on people who put their kids into public school. We all know that learning is best when it's customized to the child and we all know that public schools are not able to do that effectively. And the truly game-changing private schools cost $40,000 a year.
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The average ACT score among the Madison School District's 2011 graduates dipped to its lowest level in 15 years, while the gap between white and minority student scores shrank for the first time in five years.Amy Hetzner:Though Madison's average score dipped from 24.2 to 23.9, district students still outperformed the state average of 22.2 and national average of 21.1. A perfect score on the college entrance exam is 36.
Madison's average scores in recent years have ranged from 23.5 in 1995 to 24.6 in 2007. The average score was also 23.9 in 2003.
With the highest percent of students taking the ACT in state history, Wisconsin's Class of 2011 posted an average score slightly above that from the previous year's graduates and maintained the state's third-place ranking among states in which the test is widespread.A few somewhat related links:Seventy-one percent of the 2011 graduates from Wisconsin private and public schools took the college admissions test, averaging a 22.2 composite score on the 36-point test, according to information to be publicly released Wednesday. The nationwide average was 21.1 on the ACT Assessment, which includes tests in English, reading, mathematics and science.
State schools superintendent Tony Evers credited the results to more high school students pursuing more demanding coursework.
"The message of using high school as preparation for college and careers is taking hold with our students," Evers said in a news release. "Nearly three-quarters of our kids said they took the rigorous classes recommended for college entry, up from just over half five years ago."
Even so, ACT reported that only 32% of Wisconsin's recently graduated seniors had test results that showed they were ready for college-level courses in all four areas. Results for individual subjects ranged from 39% readiness in science to 75% in English.
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."Penelope Trunk": (Adrienne Roston, Adrienne Greenheart(On November 7 (2005), Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district's student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district's success in closing the academic achievement gap "based on race".
According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, "for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we've reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap". Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level "is the original gap" that the board set out to close.
Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.
Notes and links on the recent, successful Madison Talented & Gifted parent complaint.10. Homeschool. Your kids will be screwed if you don't.
The world will not look kindly on people who put their kids into public school. We all know that learning is best when it's customized to the child and we all know that public schools are not able to do that effectively. And the truly game-changing private schools cost $40,000 a year.
I'm not surprised more students are taking college-readiness and remedial courses at community and four-year colleges.Video: Madison Mayor Paul Soglin on the Schools.
In the 1990s, I taught introductory composition at a private, career-oriented college and at a public university in Chicago, where it became clear that many of my students still hadn't learned the difference between "it's" and "its," for example, or proper use of a comma. Never mind critical thinking.It was especially evident at the private college that many of these high school graduates were forking over thousands of dollars so some master's level English major with no formal training in education could teach them what they should have learned for free in public school.
The experience puts "Learning to Learn Camp," Madison Area Technical College's nine-week, $478.75 incarnation of the college preparatory class, in something of a darkly comic light.
UPDATE: ACT Trends: National, Wisconsin & Madison by Jeff Henriques.
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Michigan's school accreditation system "no longer has relevance" state educators say, as every school in the state has met state criteria despite sliding backward on federal testing goals.The state Education Department released announced Monday that 79 percent of Michigan's public school buildings and 93 percent of the school districts made federal testing goals - called "adequate yearly progress" - for the 2010-11 school year.
That's down from 86 percent of schools and 95 percent of districts making AYP the previous school year.
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This is what one of Los Angeles Unified's most ambitious reform efforts looks like: about 30 people gathered in a Gardena school auditorium, watching a video of a teacher trying to get her young students to understand a John Updike poem.The viewers furiously type their observations into laptop computers and discuss their impressions of the lesson the next day. They ask open-ended questions -- "What are some possible explanations for the lack of understanding of the vocabulary?" -- all aimed at helping the teacher improve.
These training sessions are the school district's first concrete steps toward replacing its age-old teacher evaluation system, which is widely regarded as a failure. The new version is based on more detailed observations, student and parent feedback, and students' standardized test scores.
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One might easily see such a thing in a Shanghai alleyway and think nothing of it: a bundle of fabric tied up with a rope. Except that this particular bundle was screaming.I could not tell at first if the squalling child was male or female, but I knew exactly what it was doing there: a desperate mother had swaddled her newborn infant in several layers of clothing and left it alone in the winter darkness - so that it could have a chance to live.
For me, it was an all-too-familiar story: my own two daughters were abandoned at birth, left alone in a Chinese street to the mercy of strangers. But that was more than a decade ago - a decade in which China has become a powerful force in markets from natural resources to sports cars, from luxury goods to aircraft carriers. In a China of diamond iPads and gold-plated limousines were babies still ending up in anonymous alleyways?
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The U.S. Department of Education released a new analysis of state standards this week that maps the standards against federal ones to assess rigor. We don't look strong on the mapping, especially in eighth grade reading where we trail the nation.The analysis using National Center for Educational Statistics data superimposes a state's standard for proficient performance in reading and mathematics onto a common scale defined by scores on NAEP, a federal test administered to student samples in every state to produce a big picture view of American education. (This report offers a lot of data and great graphics.)
The most alarming mapping revealed that Georgia's standard for proficiency in 8th grade reading is so low that it falls into the below basic category on NAEP scoring. (We don't look in 8th grade math, either, but the feds warn that our change from QBE standards to Georgia Performance Standards undermines comparisons.)
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Would you rather have someone graduate high school with good computer skills or good character traits?I grant it's a false choice. You ought to have both, and they're not in conflict. But I ask this as a way of asking what our priorities are when it comes to educating children.
It's hard to find a school that doesn't have lots of computers these days. The intense push to load schools up with computers seems to have eased, compared with a decade ago. Money is tighter now, and many schools don't need much more because they have a lot already.
But it's not so easy to find schools that have good character education programs.
Schools are held accountable for teaching reading and math and so on. The pressure is always on for academic records for each student and for a school as a whole. But students' character? Other than attendance and discipline for behavior problems, interest in that is pretty inconsistent.
Of course, many would say, it's not the school's job to civilize children. That's the parents' job. Absolutely correct, and I think more should be done to try to get more parents to do that job.
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Some are calling it the summer of the teacher handbook.With the start of school approaching on Sept. 1, about two-thirds of Wisconsin's school districts are rushing to finalize employee handbooks to replace now-extinct collective bargaining agreements that for decades outlined duties and salaries for workers.
The passage of the state's new "Act 10" legislation - in effect for all districts that didn't extend a contract with teachers before the passage of the law - gives administrators the ability to make sweeping changes to teachers' pay scales, hours and working conditions without having to negotiate them with unions.
Some sacred cows are disappearing, such as teacher tenure, layoffs based on seniority and the guarantee of 10 years' worth of post-retirement health insurance. Other big and complex changes on the horizon include new salary structures and pay-for-performance plans.
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Even with all its flaws, I'm a proponent of public education in much the same way I remain committed to the fundamental principles of democracy despite recent events in D.C. having tested this commitment.In terms of public education, there are countless books, articles, and research projects from numerous points of view and it's clear one can find proponents and opponents to whatever perspective you may choose. One recent publication is noteworthy due to the clarity in writing and direct premise -- "Schools Cannot Do It Alone" by Jamie Vollmer, former attorney, businessman, and harsh education critic, now an advocate and consultant to education. I'd like to quote and paraphrase from this book in the following column.
He argues schools need the trust, understanding, permission and support from their communities in order to improve the public education system and increase student success. In tracing his journey from critic to consultant, he weaves an interesting tale as he encounters "blueberries, bell curves, and smelly eighth graders," and comes to two conclusions. First, we have a system problem, not a people problem. We need to modify the system in order to get the graduates we want. And second, we cannot touch the system without touching the culture of the surrounding town because everything that goes on inside a school is tied to local attitudes, values, traditions and beliefs. But in order to improve the system it's vital that we first accurately understand the system that presently exists and how it came to be.
For the first time in history the security, prosperity, and health of our nation depend on our ability to unfold the full creative potential of every child -- not just the easy ones, not just the top 20 percent of the class, and not just those who reflect our preferred values. The problem is that America's public education system was never designed to do this. As Thomas Jefferson imagined it, schools should be designed to select and sort students into two groups: a small handful of thinkers and a great mass of obedient doers. Back then most everyone was a farmer, the pace of change was slow, options were few, and only a small handful of people were paid to think.
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If you're the parent of a high-achieving high school student prepared to spend whatever it takes to send your kid to an Ivy League college, authors Claudia Dreifus and Andrew Hacker have some unlikely advice: Don't do it.Dreifus, a New York Times writer and an adjunct professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, and Hacker, a veteran political science professor at Queens College in New York, spent three years interviewing faculty, students, and administrators and crunching statistics for their book, Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids -- And What We Can Do About It. Their finding? That many of America's colleges and universities -- especially the elite -- aren't worth their tuition and serve faculty over their undergrads.
More outrageous, they say, is that tuition nationwide has jumped at more than twice the rate of inflation since 1982, so many kids graduate deeply in debt. "Tuition is probably the second-largest item you'll buy in your lifetime, after your home," Dreifus says. Given that, the authors suggest you consider the following as you bear down on the decision of where your child will spend the next four (or more) years.
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Madison Mayor Paul Soglin Interview 8.12.2011 from Jim Zellmer.
I am thankful that Madison Mayor Paul Soglin took the time to chat yesterday.Mobile (iPhone, iPad, iPod and Android) visitors, please use this link.
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In our last post, we made some estimates on potential savings in the 2011-12 budget due to over-budgeting for health insurance premiums in the wake of Governor Walker's budget.Sun Prairie's website.Our calculations were based on the following:
The cost to the district for a Family plan was estimated to be: $14,249
The cost to the district for a Single plan was estimated to be: $ 6,307
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In the drama of public education, many people seem to see school boards as wearing black hats. When is the last time you heard a positive reference to school boards in our ongoing national debate? School boards are part of the problem, right?Actually, local school boards have an essential role in education reform. More often than not, they are composed of energetic citizens who bring a passion for their communities to bear on nettlesome issues ranging from graduation rates to childhood obesity and bullying.
As a longtime school board member in New York State and chair of the student achievement committee for the National School Boards Association, I have been looking at what research says about school boards and student achievement. Does what happens in the boardroom make a difference in the classroom? The answer is yes, unequivocally.
Controlling for demographic differences, districts with high levels of student achievement have school boards that exhibit habits and characteristics that are markedly different from boards in low-achieving districts.
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We love robots - tireless, productive workhorses of the modern assembly line. But we also hate robots - sinister mechanical simulacra of the human workers they make redundant.In the latest episode in our complicated relationship with automatons and automation, it is appropriate that Foxconn should have a lead role. The Taiwanese company manufactures the chattering classes' favourite piece of science fiction come true, the Apple iPad, as well as devices for Nokia and Sony. It employs 1m people in China. It was the epicentre last year of concern about pressure on low-paid young workers, following a series of suicides at its Shenzhen factories. It is, in short, iPad users' window on to dilemmas of assembly-line politics and management that the developed world last grappled with on this scale decades ago.
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As most Coloradans know, at least those who keep up with statewide education news, the Douglas County school board recently approved -- unanimously -- a groundbreaking plan to help pay the tuition costs for hundreds of students so that they can attend private schools.This plan, known colloquially as a school voucher program, enjoys ardent support from some quarters, but vigorous opposition elsewhere.
Is such a plan useful, does it seem a wise use of taxpayer provided money, and is it available to all students?
Or, as many think, should public money earmarked for education be used exclusively for public schools to benefit all students? As with so many topics dotting the American sociological landscape, the answers lie in the murky sea of the individual's political leanings.
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The statewide teachers union led in spending on lobbying state lawmakers even before this year's fight over collective bargaining rights.The Wisconsin Education Association Council spent $2.5 million on lobbying in 2009 and 2010, years when Democrats were in control of all of state government, a report released Thursday by the Government Accountability Board showed.
WEAC is always one of the top spending lobbyists in the Capitol and they took a central role this year fighting Gov. Scott Walker's plan curbing public employee union rights, including teachers.
Back in 2009, when Democrat Jim Doyle was governor and Democrats controlled the Senate and Assembly, WEAC wasn't helping to organize massive protests but it was a regular presence in the Capitol.
Much of its lobbying in 2009 was in support of removing caps on raises for teachers during contract negotiations, a move supported by Doyle and approved by the Legislature.
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I was pleased to see the release of Education Sector's report, "Debt to Degree: A New Way of Measuring College Success," by Kevin Carey and Erin Dillon. They created a new measure, a "borrowing to credential ratio," which divides the total amount of borrowing by the number of degrees or credentials awarded. Their focus on institutional productivity and dedication to methodological transparency (their data are made easily accessible on the Education Sector's website) are certainly commendable.Related: Debt to Degree.That said, I have several concerns with their report. I will focus on two key points, both of which pertain to how this approach would affect the measurement of performance for 2-year and 4-year not-for-profit (public and private) colleges and universities. My comments are based on an analysis in which I merged IPEDS data with the Education Sector data to analyze additional measures; my final sample consists of 2,654 institutions.
Point 1: Use of the suggested "borrowing to credential" ratio has the potential to reduce college access for low-income students.
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Change is hard. So said many a politician trying to tackle problems confronting the state or nation.The president of the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), Richard Iannuzzi, is a tell-tale example of someone having real difficulty with change by showing a dark side.
Yesterday's Associated Press story on the changing landscape of public education was telling. With strengthened accountability and teacher evaluation combined with tightening resources, changes are afoot. On the one hand, Governor Andrew Cuomo is recognizing the "gravitational forces" of change and is in some ways its instigator by his focus on "improving student performance," including his push that gave more teeth to the state Regents evaluation requirements.
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Spurred by a critical state audit, the Madison School District will begin a new program this year intended to better identify and provide services for talented and gifted students.Related: A group of Madison parents filed a successful complaint related to talented & gifted services with Wisconsin's Department of Public Instruction.Using an approach similar to how it identifies and serves special education students, the district plans to categorize talented-and-gifted services into three tiers and identify where all students fit into those tiers based on a combination of test scores, grades, teacher and staff assessments, and parent and self-identification.
Students who qualify for the top tier could receive additional academic services outside of the classroom. The program also seeks to develop the potential talent of all students, especially those who may not have been identified in the past, such as English language learners and low-income students.
In the past, Madison schools have used a more ad hoc, less systematic, approach for identifying and serving students who demonstrate advanced abilities in intellect, academics, leadership, creativity, and the performance and visual arts. The district also has historically blanched at grouping students by ability.
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A superstar teacher or charismatic principal rides to the rescue! Downtrodden public school children, otherwise destined to fail, are saved! We've all seen that movie--more than once, starting with "Stand and Deliver" and "Lean on Me" in the late 1980s and more recently with documentaries like "Waiting for Superman" and "The Lottery," which brilliantly portray the heroes of the charter-school movement. And we know the villains, too: teachers' union leaders and education bureaucrats who, for four decades, have presided over schools that provide comfortable public jobs for the adults who work there but wretched instruction for the children who are supposed to learn there.65One of the heroes of this familiar tale is Dave Levin, the co-founder of the highly regarded KIPP network of charter schools (KIPP stands for Knowledge Is Power Program). But Mr. Levin would be the first to tell you that heroes aren't enough to turn around an American public school system whose continued failure has become the country's most pressing long-term economic and national security threat.
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On the pages of Time, Andrew Rotherham examines the various reform-minded groups that have sprung up within the ranks of the big-city teachers’ unions. Sarah Rosenberg at The Quick and the Ed follows suit. Rotherham calls them “insurgents” while Rosenberg refers to “a revolution.” While I applaud any publicly stated diversity of thought within NEA and AFT, I am considerably less sanguine about the prospects of major internal reform.
There are two problems. One is that in any corporate culture radical changes in direction are frowned upon, if not suppressed. In unions, whose very hallmark is solidarity, this reluctance to entertain unorthodox thought is ratcheted up several levels. The relative electoral success of NewTLA is remarkable, but such victories don’t usually result in further gains in subsequent elections. I admit we are operating in extraordinary times, so maybe things will be different and I’ll be surprised.
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The city's biggest teachers' union has called on the government to scrap its plan to introduce mandatory moral and national education classes at schools after a survey of more than 2,000 of its members found widespread opposition to the proposal.Hong Kong Professional Teacher's Union website. Much more on the Moral and National Education (MNE) curriculum, here.The pro-democracy Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union, which claims a membership of 80,000, or 90 per cent of all the city's teaching professionals, says the poll found 70 per cent were against the move.
Union officials also criticised the government for carrying out consultation over the move in a "condescending" way and called for a new round of talks.
"If we have to speak in terms of grading requirements, this document [proposing the new curriculum] would be given a `fail'," said James Hon Lin-shan, deputy director of the union's rights and complaints department.
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US Department of Education, via a kind Chan Stroman email:
State-level National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results are an important resource for policymakers and other stakeholders responsible for making sense of and acting on state assessment results. Since 2003, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has supported research that focuses on comparing NAEP and state proficiency standards. By showing where states' standards lie on the NAEP scale, the mapping analyses offer several important contributions. First, they allow each state to compare the stringency of its criteria for proficiency with that of other states.Wisconsin's oft criticized WKCE vis a vis NAEP:Second, mapping analyses inform a state whether the rigor of its standards, as represented by the NAEP scale equivalent of the state's standard, changed over time. (A state's NAEP scale equivalent is the score on the NAEP scale at which the percentage of students in a state's NAEP sample who score at or above that value matches the percentage of students in the state who score proficient or higher on the state assessment.) Significant differences in NAEP scale equivalents might reflect changes in state assessments and standards or changes in policies or practices that occurred between the years. Finally, when key aspects of a state's assessment or standards remain the same, these mapping analyses allow NAEP to substantiate state-reported changes in student achievement.
The following are the research questions and the key findings regarding state proficiency standards, as they are measured on the NAEP scale.
= 2009 NAEP Basic for grade 4 math (along with 41 other states) and grade 8 (along with 35 other states)
WKCE results showed more positive changes than NAEP results for grade 4
reading from 2007 to 2009, grade 4 math from 2007 to 2009, and grade 4 math from 2005 to 2009
NAEP results showed more positive changes than WKCE results in grade 8
reading from 2005 to 2009.
How does Wisconsin compare? Learn more, here.
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Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men (Madison Prep) is a tuition-free public charter school that will serve as a catalyst for change and opportunity, particularly young men of color. Our mission is to prepare students for success at a four year college or university by instilling excellence, pride, leadership and service.Notes and links on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy and Kaleem Caire.To achieve this mission, young men will receive an education that:
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We write frequently about the charter-school wars in New York City because the battle touches so many aspects of the effort to give children from poor families the education necessary to escape their circumstances.Today's report has good news: Results released yesterday of test scores in the New York State Assessment Program showed that the most relentlessly attacked charter schools - Eva Moskowitz's Harlem Success academies - have outperformed their public-school peers, often by a wide margin.
At all New York City's public schools, 60% of third, fourth and fifth graders passed the math exam; at Harlem Success, 94% passed. In the state language arts exam, 49% from the city schools passed compared to 78% at the charters. The 94% pass rate for the academies' black and Hispanic students surpassed the 73% pass rate for white students taking the exam in New York state.
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When the producers at Fox & Friends asked me to get up early on Saturday morning to debate the merits of students earning college credits in high school, my third thought (after "Am I being set up as the liberal stooge?" and "Will this get me on The Daily Show?") was, "Who could be against that?" The president of Belmont University, as it turns out. Here's the clip.While our education system is structured to move people along in age cohorts, some people obviously learn much faster than others. Falling behind is a problem, but so is falling ahead and getting stuck in boring classes that you don't need. As I note, we've been running AP and IB programs in for decades now-I took seven AP tests as a high school student in the mid-80s. Curiously, the object lessons of this experience often seem lost in the broader education debate. People are constantly denouncing multiple-choice "fill in the bubble" standardized tests as horribly inadequate and a tool of corporatist oppression, yet well-off progressive parents scramble to enroll their children in high schools with a full slate of AP courses. "Teaching to test" is also a horrible sin, unless, apparently, the test is AP Physics and you're angling for the Ivy League.
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Schoolteachers had better brace for eight hours of work daily. The Right to Education (RTE) Act, which specifies 45 working hours a week for teachers, including preparation hours, is reportedly about to be implemented in the state.Though school education minister Bratya Basu said he was not aware of any such development, a senior school education department official said the state government has decided on several changes in schools. For instance, the number of class hours to be put in by students in a year has been fixed. The number will be 800 for classes I to V and 1,000 for classes VI to VIII.
"Students of classes I to V will attend school for 200 days a year while those in classes VI to VIII will have 220 school days annually," said a senior school education department official.
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In a letter to constituents, and Wednesday on "Sly in the Morning", Senator Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) extolled the education-saving virtues of Act 10, saying it was "...the best thing we could do for our public schools." Grothman went on to say that "Wisconsin Schools are just not that great right now," citing recent test scores as signs of an education emergency that only eliminating collective bargaining could remedy. Specifically noting that the "...most recent test scores show that black kids have the worst scores in the country..." and "...white kids scored lower than the national average." Grothman stated his belief that collective bargaining is a roadblock to student achievement that had to be removed - for the sake of the kids. According to Grothman, there are too many "bad teachers" protected by unions that are "too hard to get rid of," and that "people shouldn't need an Education degree to teach."After speaking with Senator Grothman today two things are very clear - first, he was not very familiar with the full data from the scores, admitting that Governor Walker seemed to have "cherry picked" the scores he cited. The Senator was merely repeating the information he was given by Scott Walker, trusting its accuracy - even out of context. The other issue that was perfectly clear is that he (and the other Republicans) are behaving as puppets to Scott Walker and the Corporatics pulling HIS strings - believing every bit of misinformation being fed to them to demonize teachers and their unions. The best thing for Wisconsin and our children is for this propaganda to be exposed and debunked, so that a real debate about education can take place. For the record, this information was shared with Senator Grothman today.
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State records show that Texas school boards have paid more than $7.7 million in severance pay over the past several years to buy out the contracts of superintendents.The Dallas Morning News reported Sunday that school trustees have offered buyouts to 71 superintendents since 2005 ( http://dallasne.ws/nonEL2). Most received six-figure checks.
The deals have become a common way for school districts to for part ways with their top school administrators. Among the largest settlements in recent years were in the Richardson and Irving school districts.Though teachers have one- or two-year contracts, superintendents routinely have contracts of at least three years. School trustees also sometimes extend the contracts as shows of support during annual evaluations. To dismiss a superintendent and end the contract early requires a process that involves hearings, appeals and legal costs. So school boards choose to pay severance instead of paying salaries for the full length of superintendent contracts.
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Critics of public school "reform" say that it looks too much like a business model with education foundations that have big wallets taking control away from local communities.Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, along with his wife, Melinda Gates, founded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which had an endowment of $33.5 billion as of 2009. The foundation is "driven by the passions and the interests of the Gates family," with an education goal to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology.
Another notable figure is Los Angeles entrepreneur and philanthropist Eli Broad (rhymes with road). With his wife Edythe, Broad founded The Broad Foundations, which have assets of $2.1 billion with a mission to advance entrepreneurship for the public good in education, science and the arts.
"Priorities of some of these foundations nationally have taken precedence over parents and community members," said Pam Grundy, co-founder of Mecklenburg Acts, the local affiliate of Parents Across America. "They're trying to do a lot of things that have never been proven to work. We feel like our kids are like an experiment."
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Few things about a school seem to matter more to parents than class size. For many of us it is the litmus test for a well-run school. Small class size speaks of a school that is focused on putting resources in the right place -- not administrative retreats, paneling for the principal's office, or expensive but rarely used class-room technology. Small class size is a signal to us that a hundred smaller decisions that accompany the running of a school have been shaped with our children as a priority. As a result, a school is able to invest in an appropriate number of teachers.Classrooms with fifteen students and one teacher usually look better, too -- more controlled than classrooms with thirty kids. At best, we imagine that small classes are environments where our children will be closely observed and where teachers have the opportunity to get to know each child. We assume that in small classes our children will receive personalized attention and that learning can be sprinkled like stardust through the thoughtful, free-ranging give-and-take between student and teacher. Small class size creates an environment that invites parent involvement, as well. If your daughter is one of thirty second-graders, you know without being told that the teacher is going to be hard-pressed to remember which reading group your daughter is in, much less her progress with phonemes. It's not surprising that so many parents will move heaven and earth to get their children in schools with a low teacher-student ratio.
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Alan Borsuk, via a Senn Brown email:
At the start of this year, John Gee, executive director of the Wisconsin Charter Schools Association, was predicting that the state soon would have one of the best laws in the nation for improving the number and quality of charter schools.It's August now. There's no new law and Gee is gone as head of the group. Clearly, things haven't gone as expected this year for these important, independently operated, publicly funded schools.
Charters haven't fared as badly since January as, say, teachers unions. There are going to be more charter schools in Wisconsin this fall than ever - around 225. In Milwaukee, some weak schools are gone, some strong ones are picking up momentum, and there will be more than 10,000 kids in more than 25 charters in September. Charters are here to stay.
But the bumpy ride for charter school advocates in recent months underscores questions about how big and strong the movement is going to be.
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In this batch of e-mails you start to sense some wariness on the part of UW (and I think they should be). I think TFA is having these universities create these single-use alt certifications but will, in the end, create their own on-line teaching and cut out the middlemen. If U-ACT still exists in 5 years, I'll be surprised.David Szatmary (a financial Vice-Provost) to Stritikus; he submitted a number of questions like:
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It is often difficult to feel optimistic about the future of liberty. Those of us who value individual liberty and free markets look only at the encroachment of government in our lives. We often overlook the victories that should give us hope for the future of liberty. The school choice movement is one of the most important fights in the future of liberty, and one that we are starting to win.It is fitting to talk about this now, because July 31 would have been Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman's 99th birthday. Over fifty years ago, Friedman jump-started the school choice movement with an article called "The Role of Government in Education." In it, he laid out a plan for school vouchers that would allow parents to have a choice in where they send their children. In a 2005 interview with Reason Magazine, Friedman said, "I want vouchers to be universal, to be available to everyone. They should contain few or no restrictions on how they can be used."
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Closing arguments in the case challenging the Douglas County School District's voucher program ended three days of hearings that could halt the program in its infancy.More from the Wall Street Journal: Wall Street Journal:A standing-room-only crowd listened in Denver District Court while a legal team from the American Civil Liberties Union faced off against a team that included the Colorado Attorney General's Office to decide the fate of the district's school choice scholarship program.
Both sides agreed that any decision from Denver District Court Judge Michael Martinez will likely face an appeal, regardless of the ruling.
"There will be an appeal either way," said Michael McCarthy, a plaintiff attorney representing the Taxpayers for Public Education. "What (the school district has) done is press the envelope as far as they can. For those interested in preserving public education in this state, they have got in their face as far as they can."
In a bold bid to revamp public education, a suburban district south of Denver has begun handing out vouchers that use public money to help its largely affluent residents send their children to private and church-based schools. The Douglas County School District experiment is noteworthy because nearly all voucher programs nationally aim to help children who are poor, have special needs or are trapped in failing public schools. Douglas County, by contrast, is one of the most affluent in the U.S., with household income nearly double the national median, and has schools ranked among the best in Colorado. What do you think? Should vouchers only be used with lower-income students? Should they never be used? Do they violate the constitution?Chrystia Freeland:
One answer comes from Ivan Krastev, a Bulgarian political scientist. One of Mr. Krastev's special interests is in the resilience of authoritarian regimes in the 21st century. To understand why they endure, Mr. Krastev has turned to the thinking of the economist Albert O. Hirschman, who was born in Berlin in 1915 and eventually became one of America's seminal thinkers.Related:In 1970, while at Harvard, Mr. Hirschman wrote an influential meditation on how people respond to the decline of firms, organizations and states. He concluded that there are two options: exit -- stop shopping at the store, quit your job, leave your country; and voice -- speak to the manager, complain to your boss, or join the political opposition.
For Mr. Krastev, this idea -- the trade-off between exit and voice -- is the key to understanding what he describes as the "perverse" stability of Vladimir V. Putin's Russia. For all the prime minister's bare-chested public displays of machismo, his version of authoritarianism, in Mr. Krastev's view, is "vegetarian."
"It is fair to say that most Russians today are freer than in any other period of their history," he wrote in an essay published this spring. But Mr. Krastev argues that it is precisely this "user-friendly" character of Mr. Putin's authoritarianism that makes Russia stable. That is because Russia's relatively porous dictatorship effectively encourages those people who dislike the regime most, and have the most capacity to resist it, to leave the country. They choose exit rather than voice, and the result is the death of political opposition: "Leaving the country in which they live is easier than reforming it."
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Faced with an increasing stream of data from the Web and other electronic sources, many companies are seeking managers who can make sense of the numbers through the growing practice of data analytics, also known as business intelligence. Finding qualified candidates has proven difficult, but business schools hope to fill the talent gap.This fall several schools, including Fordham University's Graduate School of Business and Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, are unveiling analytics electives, certificates and degree programs; other courses and programs were launched in the previous school year.
International Business Machines Corp., which has invested more than $14 billion buying analytics industry companies such as Coremetrics and Netezza Corp. since 2005, has teamed up with more than 200 schools, including Fordham, to develop analytics curriculum and training.
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I'm a policy guy, not a daddy blogger. As a general rule, I don't discuss my children in this column or on my Eduwonk blog. But when TIME asked me to write about how my wife (who also works in education) and I chose our kids' elementary school, I figured why not? We are constantly besieged by friends and colleagues who want to know how we went about picking a school, as if there were some secret education-analyst methodology I was privy to. I wish that were true! But even though I don't have access to the secret sauce, I do have a pretty good sense of how to kick a school's tires. Plus, I think it would be a shame not to use all of our parental angst for the greater good. And so, as our kids start a new year at a public school, here are some lessons from our school-hunting experience that might help guide yours.Look beneath the label. "Public" or "private" doesn't really tell you much, so don't scratch a school off your list just because of how it's governed. There are terrific and lousy schools in the public, private and (publicly funded) charter-school sectors, so relying on labels alone is a big risk. Likewise, you should do more than glance at a school's test scores or demographic data. My wife and I, for instance, are both products of public schools. I went to ones in Virginia that on paper were both excellent and diverse. But in practice, there were different tracks for different students, so most of the kids in my gifted or AP classes were like me: Caucasian, middle-class, ruggedly good-looking. Well, two out of three of those anyway. My wife grew up in an Ohio district known for great academics but with no diversity. As our kids approached school age, we hoped to find a good school that was racially, ethnically and economically diverse -- a tall order given today's housing patterns and school boundaries. But most important, we wanted to find the right fit for our kids, so we were not opposed to going private if we couldn't find an option in the public sector that seemed to work for us. (See the 20 best- and worst-paid college majors.)
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Yes, we need to get rid of bad teachers. But we can't demand that teachers be excellent in conditions that preclude excellence.The kid in the back wants me to define "logic." The girl next to him looks bewildered. The boy in front of me dutifully takes notes even though he has severe auditory processing issues and doesn't understand a word I'm saying. Eight kids forgot their essays, but one has a good excuse because she had another epileptic seizure last night. The shy, quiet girl next to me hasn't done homework for weeks, ever since she was jumped by a knife-wielding gangbanger as she walked to school. The boy next to her is asleep with his head on the desk because he works nights at a factory to support his family. Across the room, a girl weeps quietly for reasons I'll never know. I'm trying to explain to a student what I meant when I wrote "clarify your thinking" on his essay, but he's still confused.
It's 8:15 a.m. and already I'm behind my scheduled lesson. A kid with dyslexia, ADD and anger-management problems walks in late, throws his books on the desk and swears at me when I tell him to take off his hood.
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Excellence in Education's PowerPoint presentation: 1MB PDF, via a kind Julie Gocey email.
Related links: Video: Governor's "Read to Lead" Task Force Meeting.
Much more on Wisconsin's Read To Lead Task Force, here.
How does Wisconsin compare? Learn more at www.wisconsin2.org
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When the AFT offers a road map on how to shut down Parent Power efforts, it offers a nice PDF document to do it. Apparently in a fit of celebration during last month's TEACH 2011 conference, the nation's second-largest teachers union offered up a presentation on how its Connecticut affiliate managed to make the state's Parent Trigger law a little less harder for parents to use. (Dropout Nation is doing everyone a courtesy by making it available for public consumption; the orginal is still available at the AFT's Web site. At least, for now.)Rick Green has more.
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The head of the USA's second-largest teachers union on Monday said local affiliates will defend the rights of teachers caught up in cheating scandals, including the one now unfolding in Atlanta. But she said cheating "under any circumstances is unacceptable."Speaking to reporters during the American Federation of Teachers' biannual training conference, Randi Weingarten said the union would "obviously" represent teachers accused of cheating "to make sure that people have some kind of fairness -- and that it's not some kind of witch hunt."
A long-awaited report released last week by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican, found teacher- or principal-led cheating in 44 of 56 Atlanta schools investigated. Investigators determined that 178 educators cheated. Of those, 82 confessed.
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During the 2011-2012 school year, as MMSD implements Response to Instruction and Intervention (RTI2) and the new district School Support Teams, the plan for delivery of Talented and Gifted Services will continue to be integrated and refined so that it accomplishes the following: 1) is both systemic and systematic in nature; 2) is collaborative; 3) is financially sustainable; 4) is fluid and responsive to student needs; S) offers appropriate opportunities for student growth and talent development; 6) addresses the comprehensive needs (academic, social and personal growth) of students; 7) is aligned with State regulations, professional standards, current research, and effective practice; and 8) provides goals and evaluation procedures to evaluate growth and suggest areas in which change is needed. This Plan for TAG Services describes the following:Much more on the recent complaint regarding the Madison School District's Talent & Gifted Update, here.
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Tax dollars soon could go to schools where teachers aren't required to be certified and where students aren't required to take the same standardized tests as their public school counterparts.That concerns Democrats, who expressed concerns about Republican school-choice measures that were the subject of a House Education Committee public hearing today.
Rep. Jim Christiana, sponsor of one bill in the education reform package, said school choice isn't about turning public schools into private ones; it's about letting parents choose where their children will be best educated.
"We're not saying students shouldn't have to take standardized tests. We're just saying the tests should be based on the curriculum you're offering," said Mr. Christiana, R-Beaver.
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National Council on Teacher Quality and U.S. News & World Report, via a kind reader's email:
Since we launched our national review of teacher preparation programs last January, we've heard a lot from schools of education about what they think about our effort.We've also heard what state and district superintendents along with ed
reform organizations around the country think: the public needs to know
which preparation programs are doing a good job and which are not.But now it's time to _[4]hear_ from those most directly affected by teacher preparation programs: teachers themselves.
We want to know how ready teachers felt on their first day of class. What do teachers value about their teacher preparation programs? What do they think aspiring teachers need to know about the programs they are considering?
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The American higher education system is plagued by two chronic problems: dropouts and debt. Barely half of the students who start college get a degree within six years, and graduation rates at less-selective colleges often hover at 25 percent or less. At the same time, student loan debt is at an all-time high, recently passing credit card debt in total volume.1 Loan default rates have risen sharply in recent years, consigning a growing number of students to years of financial misery. In combination, drop-outs and debt are a major threat to the nation's ability to help students become productive, well-educated citizens.The federal government has traditionally tracked these issues by calculating, for each college, the total number of degrees awarded, the percentage of students who graduate on time, and the percentage of students who default on their loans. Each of these statistics provides valuable information, but none shows a complete picture. A college could achieve a stellar graduation rate by passing students
along and handing out degrees that have little value in the job market, making it difficult for graduates to earn enough money to pay off their debt. Alternatively, a college could keep tuition and loan default rates low while also providing a terrible education and helping few students earn degrees. Students choosing colleges and policymakers governing higher education need an overall measure of value, one that combines debt and graduation.Education Sector has created such a measure, the "borrowing to credential ratio." For each college, we have taken newly available U.S. Department of Education data showing the total amount of money borrowed by undergraduates and divided that sum by the total number of degrees awarded. The results are revealing:
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This "everyone is saying teachers are overpaid" meme has quickly gained traction among the credulous. You can apparently attract celebrities like John Stewart and Matt Damon to rallies by playing the mom card and telling them that people are saying teachers are overpaid and it's important to push back on that notion. Great, except for the most part it's another in a long list of strawmen in the education debate. In fact, to the extent anyone in the mainstream of the education conversation is saying anything even approaching "teachers are overpaid" the conversation centers on the sustainability of current public sector benefit schemes for retirement (pdf) and health care. And while some of the "crisis" rhetoric is overblown there is a real problem with teacher pensions in some states. In the public debate that's a different issue though than cash compensation, which is what people usually discuss when they want to argue about this. So, it is worth pointing out that while teachers are not overpaid, the wages are competitive in many places. Like the pension issue, and given the structure of our education "system" like most issues, there is a a great deal of variance.
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The state is pursuing its broad mission to improve Hawaii's public school system along several fronts, but sharpening the accountability of all parties surely is one top goal. And teachers are perhaps the most important of the parties being called to account, with plans to develop a more effective way to evaluate their work.Proposing to overhaul teacher evaluations and make them more "performance-based" was a key element in the state's successful bid for a federal Race to the Top competitive grant -- specifically, to make student academic growth a factor in the teacher's score. To their credit, the Hawaii State Teachers Association leaders have said they favor it in concept.
The ongoing dispute between the union and the state administration, unfortunately, has further complicated what already was to be a complex process. However, the HSTA, which wants to reopen talks, has an opportunity to use evaluation reform as an olive branch to help restart negotiations for contract amendments.
An olive branch is clearly needed. The state imposed its "last, best and final offer," sparking an HSTA complaint that is now before the Hawaii Labor Relations Board.
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The Round Rock school district, which earned the state's second-highest academic rating in 2010, this year has two schools that failed to meet state standards, securing "academically unacceptable" labels that will stick for two years.The news comes as schools and districts across Texas see their ratings slide this year despite making academic gains. Figures released by the Texas Education Agency on Friday show that more than half of all Texas schools that had the highest rating in 2010, exemplary, fell in their ratings, and five times as many schools were deemed academically unacceptable, the lowest rating.
Locally, eight of the Austin school district's 112 rated schools missed state academic targets; last year, only one Austin school was rated academically unacceptable. Pflugerville this year has two schools rated unacceptable. Both traditional high schools in Bastrop failed to meet state standards and received the lowest rating. Hutto has two elementary schools that are rated unacceptable.
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The large ballroom in UCLA's Covel Commons resembled a bustling day-care center one recent day, as laughter rang out across the room.A boisterous game of Twister was being played in one corner, charades were set up near the refreshments and the occasional shout of "Uno!" sounded from the front.
But the participants, speaking in rapid-fire Mandarin, were not children. They were dozens of Chinese teachers in Los Angeles for a nine-day crash course to prepare them for what they consider the opportunity of a lifetime: to teach Mandarin in American schools.
In a few weeks, 176 Chinese teachers will head to kindergarten through 12th-grade classrooms across the country, from rural Kentucky towns to the tidy suburbs of Salt Lake City. Only two will remain in California, assigned to schools in Redding and Ojai.
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The fourth meeting of the Governor's Read to Lead task force took place in Milwaukee on Friday, July 29. The meeting was filmed by Wisconsin Eye, but we have not seen it offered yet through their website. We will send out a notice when that occurs. As always, we encourage you to watch and draw your own conclusions.Related: An Open Letter to the Wisconsin Read To Lead Task Force on Implementing Common Core Academic Standards; DPI: "Leading Us Backwards" and how does Wisconsin Compare? www.wisconsin2.org.Following is a synopsis of the meeting, which centered on reading improvement success in Florida and previously-discussed task force topics (teacher preparation, licensing, professional development, screening/intervention, early childhood). In addition, Superintendent Evers gave an update on activity within DPI. The discussion of the impact of societal factors on reading achievement was held over to the next meeting, as was further revisiting of early childhood issues.
In addition to this summary, you can access Chan Stroman's Eduphilia tweets at http://twitter.com/#!/eduphilia
Opening: Governor Walker welcomed everyone and stressed the importance of this conversation on reading. Using WKCE data, which has been criticized nationally and locally for years as being derived from low standards, the Governor stated that 80% of Wisconsin students are proficient or advanced in reading, and he is seeking to serve the other 20%. The NAEP data, which figured prominently in the presentation of the guest speakers, tell a very different story. Superintendent Evers thanked the task force members and indicated that this is all about "connecting the dots" and putting all of the "puzzle pieces" together. The work of this task force will impact the work going on in other education-focused committees.
The Florida Story: Guest speakers were Patricia Levesque, the Executive Director of the Foundation for Excellence in Education and the Foundation for Florida's Future, and Mary Laura Bragg, the director of Florida's statewide reading initiative, Just Read, Florida! from 2001 to 2006.
In a series of slides, Levesque compared Wisconsin, Florida, and national performance on the NAEP reading test over the past decade. Despite challenges in terms of English language learners, a huge percentage of students on free/reduced lunch, and a minority-majority demographic, Florida has moved from the scraping the bottom on the NAEP to the top group of states. Over the same time period, Wisconsin has plummeted in national ranking, and our students now score below the national average in all subgroups for which NAEP data is disaggregated. 10 points on the NAEP scale is roughly equivalent to one grade level in performance, and Florida has moved from two grade levels below Wisconsin to 1/2 grade level above. For a full discussion of Wisconsin's NAEP performance, see our website, http://www.wisconsinreadingcoalition.org.
Levesque and Bragg also described the components of the reading initiative in Florida, which included grading all schools from A to F, an objective test-based promotion policy from third to fourth grade, required state-approved reading plans in each district, trained reading coaches in schools, research assistance from the Florida Center for Reading Research, required individual student intervention plans for struggling students, universal K-2 screening for reading problems, improved licensure testing for teachers and principals, the creation of a reading endorsement for teaching licenses, and on-line professional development available to all teachers. As noted above, achievement has gone up dramatically, the gap between demographic groups has narrowed, early intervention is much more common, and third grade retention percentages continue to fall. The middle school performance is now rising as those children who received early intervention in elementary school reach that level. Those students have not yet reached high school, and there is still work to be done there. To accomplish all this, Florida leveraged federal funds for Title 1 and 2 and IDEA, requiring that they be spent for state-approved reading purposes. The Governor also worked actively with business to create private/public partnerships supporting reading. Just Read, Florida! was able to engineer a statewide conference for principals that was funded from vendor fees. While Florida is a strong local control state, reading is controlled from the state level, eliminating the need for local curriculum directors to research and design reading plans without the resources or manpower to do so. Florida also cut off funding to university professors who refused to go along with science-based reading instruction and assessment.
Florida is now sharing its story with other states, and offering assistance in reading plan development, as well as their screening program (FAIR assessment system) and their online professional development, which cost millions to develop. Levesque invited Wisconsin to join Indiana and other states at a conference in Florida this fall.
Questions for, or challenges to, the presenters came from three task force members.
DPI Update: Superintendent Evers indicated that DPI is looking at action in fours areas: teacher licensure, the Wisconsin Model Early Learning Standards, the use of a screener to detect reading problems, and implementation of the Common Core State Standards.
- Rachel Lander asked about the reading coaches, and Bragg responded that they were extensively trained by the state office, beginning with Reading First money. They are in the classroom modeling for teachers and also work with principals on understanding data and becoming building reading leaders. The coaches now have an association that has acquired a presence in the state.
- Linda Pils stated her belief that Wisconsin outperforms Florida at the middle school level, and that we have higher graduation rates than Florida. She cited opinions that third grade retention has some immediate effect, but the results are the same or better for non-retained students later, and that most retained students will not graduate from high school. She also pointed out Florida's class size reduction requirement, and suggested that the NAEP gains came from that. Levesque explained that the retention studies to which Pils was referring were from other states, where retention decisions were made subjectively by teachers, and there was no requirement for science-based individual intervention plans. The gains for retained students in Florida are greater than for matched students who are not retained, and the gains persist over time. Further, retention did not adversely affect graduation rates. In fact, graduation rates have increased, and dropout rates have declined. The University of Arkansas is planning to do a study of Florida retention. The class size reduction policy did not take effect in Florida until last year, and a Harvard study concluded that it had no effect on student reading achievement. Task force member Steve Dykstra pointed out that you cannot compare the NAEP scores from two states without considering the difference in student demographics. Wisconsin's middle school scores benefit from the fact that we have a relative abundance of white students who are not on free/reduced lunch. Our overall average student score in middle school may be higher than Florida, but when we compare similar cohorts from both states, Florida is far ahead.
- Tony Pedriana asked what kinds of incentives have been put in place for higher education, principals, etc. to move to a science-based system of instruction. The guests noted that when schools are graded, reading performance receives double weight in the formula. They also withheld funding for university programs that were not science-based.
Task force member Pam Heyde, substituting for Marcia Henry, suggested that it would be better to look at what Florida is doing rather than start from ground zero looking at guidelines. Patricia Levesque confirmed that Florida was willing to assist other states, and invited Wisconsin to join a meeting of state reading commissioners in October.
- The committee looking at licensing is trying to decide whether they should recommend an existing, off-the-shelf competency exam, or revise the exam they are currently requiring (Praxis 2). He did not indicate who is on the committee or what existing tests they were looking at. In the past, several members of the task force have recommended that Wisconsin use the Foundations of Reading test given in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
- DPI is revising the WMELS to correct definitions and descriptions of phonological and phonemic awareness and phonics. The changes will align the WMELS with both the Report of the National Reading Panel and the Common Core State Standards. Per the suggestion of Eboni Howard, a guest speaker at the last meeting, they will get an outside opinion on the WMELS when they are finished. Evers did not indicate who is doing this work.
- DPI is looking at the possibility of using PALS screening or some other tool recommended by the National RTI Center to screen students in grades K-2 or K-3. Evers previously mentioned that this committee had been meeting for 6-7 months, but he did not indicate who is on it.
- Evers made reference to communication that was circulated this week (by Dr. Dan Gustafson and John Humphries) that expressed concern over the method in which DPI is implementing the Common Core. He stated that districts have been asking DPI for help in implementing the CC, and they want to provide districts with a number of resources. One of those is the model curriculum being developed by CESA 7. DPI is looking at it to see how it could help the state move forward, but no final decision has yet been made.
Teacher Preparation: The discussion centered around what needs to change in teacher preparation programs, and how to fit this into a four-year degree.
Steve Dykstra said that Texas has looked at this issue extensively. Most schools need three courses to cover reading adequately, but it is also important to look at the texts that are used in the courses. He referenced a study by Joshi that showed most of the college texts to be inadequate.
Dawnene Hassett, UW-Madison literacy professor in charge of elementary teacher reading preparation, was invited to participate in this part of the discussion. She indicated we should talk in terms of content knowledge, not number of credits. In a couple of years, teachers will have to pass a Teacher Performance Assessment in order to graduate. This was described as a metacognitive exercise using student data. In 2012-13, UW-Madison will change its coursework, combining courses in some of the arts, and dropping some of the pedagogical, psychological offerings.
Tony Pedriana said he felt schools of education had fallen down on teaching content derived from empirical studies.
Hassett said schools teach all five "pillars" of reading, but they may not be doing it well enough. She said you cannot replicate classroom research, so you need research "plus."
Pils was impressed with the assistance the FCRR gives to classroom teachers regarding interventions that work. She also said spending levels were important.
Dykstra asked Mary Laura Bragg if she had worked with professors who thought they were in alignment with the research, but really weren't.
Bragg responded that "there's research, and then there's research." They had to educate people on the difference between "research" from vendors and empirical research, which involves issues of fidelity and validation with different groups of students.
Levesque stated that Florida increased reading requirements for elementary candidates from 3 to 6 credits, and added a 3 credit requirement for secondary candidates. Colleges were required to fit this in by eliminating non-content area pedagogy courses.
Kathy Champeau repeated a concern from earlier meetings that teacher candidates need the opportunity to practice their new knowledge in a classroom setting, or they will forget it.
Hassett hoped the Teacher Performance Assessment would help this. The TPA would probably require certain things to be included in the teacher candidate's portfolio.
Governor Walker said that the key to the effectiveness of Florida's retention policy was the intervention provided to the students. He asked what they did to make sure intervention was successful.
Levesque replied that one key was reading coaches in the classroom. Also, district reading plans, individual intervention plans, student academies, etc. all need to be approved by the state.
There was consensus that there should be a difference in reading requirements for elementary vs. secondary teachers. There was no discussion of preparation for reading teachers, reading specialists, or special education teachers.Licensing: The discussion centered around what teacher standards need to be tested.
Dykstra suggested that the Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading, written by Louisa Moats, et al, and published by the International Dyslexia Association in 2010, would be good teacher standards, and the basis for a teacher competency exam. There was no need for DPI to spend the next year discussing and inventing new teacher standards.
Champeau said that the International Reading Association also has standards.
Pedriana asked if those standards are based on research.
Dykstra suggested that the task force look at the two sets of standards side-by-side and compare them.Professional Development: The facilitators looked for input on how professional development for practicing teachers should be targeted. Should the state target struggling teachers, schools, or districts for professional development?
Rep. Jason Fields felt all three needed to be targeted.
Heyde asked Levesque for more details on how Wisconsin could do professional development, when we often hear there is no money.
Levesque provided more detail on the state making reading a priority, building public/private partnerships, and being more creative with federal grant money (e.g., the 20% of each grant that is normally carved out by the state for administration). There should be a clear reading plan (Florida started with just two people running their initiative, and after a decade only has eight people), and all the spending should align with the plan to be effective. You cannot keep sending money down the hole. Additional manpower was provided by the provision that all state employees would get one paid hour per week to volunteer on approved reading projects in schools, and also by community service requirements for high school students.
Bragg suggested using the online Florida training modules, and perhaps combining them with modules from Louisiana.
Dykstra also suggested taking advantage of existing training, including LETRS, which was made widely available in Massachusetts. He also stressed the importance of professional development for principals, coaches, and specialists.
Bragg pointed out that many online training modules are free, or provided for a nominal charge that does not come close to what it would cost Wisconsin to develop its own professional development.
Lander said there were many Wisconsin teachers who don't need the training, and it should not be punitive.
Champeau suggested that Florida spends way more money on education that Wisconsin, based on information provided by the NAEP.
Levesque clarified that Florida actually is below the national average in cost per student. The only reason they spend more than Wisconsin is that they have more students.
Rep. Steve Kestell stated that teachers around the entire state have a need for professional development, and it is dangerous to give it only to the districts that are performing the worst.
Sarah Archibald (sitting in for Sen. Luther Olsen) said it would be good to look at the value added in districts across the state when trying to identify the greatest needs for professional development. The new statewide information system should provide us with some of this value added information, but not at a classroom teacher level.
Evers commented that the state could require new teacher Professional Development Plans to include or be focused on reading.
Pils commented that districts can have low and high performing schools, so it is not enough to look at district data.
Champeau said that administrators also need this professional development. They cannot evaluate teachers if they do not have the knowledge themselves.
Dykstra mentioned a Florida guidebook for principals with a checklist to help them. He is concerned about teachers who develop PDP's with no guidance, and spend a lot of time and money on poor training and learning. There is a need for a clearinghouse for professional development programs.Screening/Intervention: One of the main questions here was whether the screening should be universal using the same tools across the state.
Champeau repeated a belief that there are districts who are doing well with the screening they are doing, and they should not be required to change or add something new.
Dykstra responded that we need comparable data from every school to use value added analysis, so a universal tool makes sense. He also said there was going to be a lot of opposition to this, given the statements against screening that were issued when Rep. Keith Ripp introduced legislation on this topic in the last biennium. He felt the task force has not seen any screener in enough detail to recommend a particular one at this time.
Heyde said we need a screener that screens for the right things.
Pils agreed with Dykstra and Heyde. She mentioned that DIBELS is free and doesn't take much time.
Michele Erickson asked if a task force recommendation would turn into a mandate. She asked if Florida used a universal screener.
Levesque replied that Florida initially used DIBELS statewide, and then the FCRR developed the FAIR assessments for them. The legislature in Florida mandated the policy of universal kindergarten screening that also traces students back to their pre-K programs to see which ones are doing a better job. Wisconsin could purchase the FAIR assessments from Florida.
Archilbald suggested phasing in screening if we could not afford to do it all at once.
Evers supports local control, but said there are reasons to have a universal screener for data systems, to inform college programs, and to implement professional development.
Lander asked what screening information we could get from the WKCE.
Evers responded that the WKCE doesn't start unitl third grade.
Dykstra said we need a rubric about screening, and who needs what type and how often.
Pedriana said student mobility is another reason for a universal screener.
There was consensus that early screening is important. Certainly by 4K or 5K, but even at age three if a system could be established. Possibilities mentioned were district-run screenings or pediatrician screenings.
Walker reminded the task force that it only makes sense to screen if you have the ability to intervene with something.
Mara Brown wasn't sure that a universal screener would tell her anything more about her students than she already knows.
Levesque said she could provide a screening roadmap rubric for the task force.
No one on the task force had suggestions for specific interventions. The feeling was that it is more important to have a well-trained teacher. Both Florida and Oregon started evaluating and rating interventions, but stopped because they got bogged down. Wisconsin must also be careful about evaluations by What Works Clearinghouse, which has some problems.
Pedriana asked if the task force is prepared to endorse a model of instruction based on science, where failure is not an option.
The facilitator said this discussion would have to wait for later.Early Childhood: The task force agreed that YoungStar should include more specific literacy targets.
Rep. Kestell felt that some district are opening 4K programs primarily for added revenue, and that there is wide variability in quality. There is a need to spend more time on this and decide what 4K should look like.
Evers said we should use the Common Core and work backward to determine what needs to be done in 4K.Wrap-Up: Further discussion of early childhood will be put over to the next meeting, as will the societal issues and accountability. A meeting site has not yet been set, but Governor Walker indicted he liked moving around the state. The Governor's aides will follow up as to locations and specific agenda. The next meeting will be Thursday, August 25. All meetings are open to the public.
Much more on Wisconsin's Read to Lead Task Force, here.
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PBIS is all the rage in school districts across the country. No...Sun Prairie didn't just dream this up all by themselves. What, exactly, is PBIS? PBIS stands for Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. It's an offshoot of the IDEA program (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). You may see/hear it as SWPBS (School-wide Positive Behavior Supports). In a nutshell, PBIS is a system of behavior modification, with three stages of intervention.Primary intervention is targeted to all students and is s system designed to clearly identify which behaviors are acceptable and which are not. Exhibiting positive behavior is rewarded in some fashion. In theory, about 80-85% of students respond to this primary level of intervention. The overall target is to develop a system in which positive reinforcements (for "acceptable/desired" behaviors) outnumber negative reinforcements (for unacceptable behaviors) by about 4:1. In this way, kids overwhelmingly see that "being good" is the place to be. You get rewards.
PBIS extends further to the 2nd tier, kids that do not respond well to these primary tactics. These kids represent about 10-15% of the population and are those that potentially are at risk for "failure", or at the very least not realizing their academic potential. This group, however is not in need of individualized attention, but rather is targeted in small groups (a modernized form of "group" therapy). The third tier, which includes about 5-10% of students, covers those students who require individualized attention to develop positive behaviors and squelch those behaviors which are not acceptable.
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With the economy forcing closer scrutiny of budgeting at all levels of government and politicians zeroing in on government workers' pay, perhaps the most visible target is education.For the most part, elementary and secondary education in the United States is funded with local tax dollars, with assists from state and federal coffers. And the biggest line-item expense? Teacher salaries. When it comes time to cut the budget, layoffs are announced, and because of union contracts teachers with seniority are favored. Usually those most recently hired are the ones who go.
But is this the smartest way to fix the budget? Dan Goldhaver, director of the Center for Education Data and Research at the University of Washington Bothell, and Roddy Theobald, a researcher at the center and a doctoral student in statistics, write in the fall issue of Education Next this subservience to union seniority rules is wreaking havoc on the education system, often axing the most energetic and creative educators in the system. Worse yet because they are the most recent hires, their salaries are at the low end of the pay scale so it takes more layoffs to meet the dollar figure necessary to reduce the budget, pushing up class size and sometimes forcing districts to eliminate subject areas and programs entirely
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Add your voice to the discussion. Click here to submit a letter or mini editorial to the Journal staff.Whatever the endeavor - be it business, athletics ... or education -nobody stays number one by staying the same.
Historically, we Iowans have prided ourselves on the quality of our schools. We have considered ourselves at or near the top in the nation.
The state's education system still gets good, passing grades, don't get us wrong, but we can and should do better in our classrooms to prepare our children for the realities and dynamics of a changing, more-global workforce. "We must," in the words of Iowa Department of Education Director Jason Glass, "have a world-class education system ..."
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Among the many prominent thinkers attending the Urban League's annual conference Thursday, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates made his case for focusing on teachers.One of the nation's oldest civil rights groups, the Urban League, is holding its annual conference in Boston this week.
Much of the conference focused on education Thursday -- specifically, the persistent achievement gap between black and Latino students and their white counterparts.
Gates has been in the education reform game for a while, pouring billions of dollars into scholarships, research and trying to improve public schools. Gates said there have been advances on most other civil rights issues, but not much progress on education.
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This is an important moment in the history of education in the state of Iowa.Margaret Crocco: Clusty Search argaret CroccoEarlier this week, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, Iowa Education Director Jason Glass and an array of educational experts offered a set of challenges to educators at the two-day Education Summit in Des Moines.
The message was simple: Things need to change if Iowa is to regain its status as one of the strongest educational systems in the nation.
Although the statistics about Iowa students' performances on the National Assessment of Educational Progress can be used to support diverse narratives about how students are performing compared with their peers across the nation, international comparisons tell an unambiguous story: American schools will need to do better if the United States is going to produce a globally competitive work force for the 21st century.
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Detroit public school teachers will take a 10 percent wage cut and pay more for health care in what the school system's manager on Friday said were "extreme measures" needed to address a financial emergency.The measures are designed to save nearly $82 million as part of the Detroit Public Schools' effort to address a $327 million deficit.
"These wage concessions and health care cost-sharing plans are being implemented because we are in an extremely difficult financial period for Detroit Public Schools," Roy Roberts, the emergency manager for the school system, said in a statement.
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Last week, the New York Times reported that in 2007, Deutsche Bank entered into an agreement with two German universities, Humboldt University and the Technical University of Berlin, to fund a mathematical laboratory. The problematic parts were the 'secret' terms: according to the article, the Deutsche Bank could not only influence the hiring process, but bank employees could serve as adjunct professors. Perhaps the most disturbing aspects of the agreement were that the bank had veto power over the laboratory's research agenda and, more importantly, "was given the right to review any research produced by members of the Quantitative Products Laboratory 60 days before it was published and could withhold permission for publication for as long as two years."
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Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:
As is becoming increasingly common these days however, mine turned out to be a minority view. Other Board members took turns identifying parts of the revision that they did not like, raising some concerns that they had previously expressed and some that were new. The general tenor of the comments was that the current format of the Code was fine but that Code should be stricter and that more violations should lead to mandatory recommendations for expulsion.About an hour into the meeting, I expressed some frustration with the proceedings (since I'm just figuring this stuff out, this video starts with eight seconds of black) :
Eventually Board members settled on deep-sixing the Work Group's proposal but adopting some (but not all) of the substantive changes reflected in the revision. For example, the aggravated theft offense was added. The change to the unintentional use of force against a staff member violation was adopted (a very good move, btw), but the change to the possession and distribution of drugs or alcohol violation was not (I think). Another change boosted the potential consequences imposed for non-physical acts of bullying or harassment.
Also on our agenda Monday night was the creation of a new Board Ad Hoc Committee on Student Discipline, Conduct and Intervention, to be chaired by Lucy Mathiak. Some Board members suggested that the revisions recommended by the Work Group and rejected by the Board might be re-considered by the members of this committee in some fashion.
I found the Board's rejection of the proposed revisions and ad hoc amending of the existing Code an unfortunate turn of events and criticized what I described as our legislating on the fly right before the vote:
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In Monday's post, I went through the DC teacher evaluation system, IMPACT, which weights value-added improvements in student scores at 50 percent of the teacher's evaluation, with the remaining half of the evaluation covering 22 areas (fit into 9 categories). Five classroom observations are held,three times by a building administrator and twice by an outside "master evaluator" who is a subject-matter expert and does not report to the building administrator.
Teachers in tested subjects are evaluated by standards different from those used for paraprofessionals, counselors, special education teachers and others in the system, with teachers in non-tested subjects having only 10 percent of their evaluation based on student scores.
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In many a twilight have I sat with government schoolteachers, discussing education. Discussion over, they gather their bags and lunch boxes, having come straight from school, and head home. Some ride back on two-wheelers, some take the bus. Their homes are often 10-20km away, not an easy commute in rural and small-town India. Next morning they will open their schools, often another 10-20km from their homes, and get back to work: teaching with passion, managing with care and dealing with the vagaries of life, with determination.These are teachers doing a good job, within every constraint that our government school system has. We have found these good teachers in every block (a typical district has three-six "blocks") that we have worked in, across 17 states. Many of them are not just good, they are exceptional.
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Gov. Terry Branstad's "education summit" highlights this state's deficiency in education. In an increasingly competitive national and global economy, students need an education to face any challenge they -- and this country -- encounter.We've made many attempts over the years to fix education. But we've all seen the No Child Left Behind Act's overemphasis on test scores, and we haven't really had time to measure how well the Iowa Core Curriculum delivers its "challenging and meaningful content to students that prepares them for success in life."
The most important thing in education is employing teachers who want to teach. One way to attract good teachers whose work is worth paying for, of course, is to raise salaries above the statewide average of $41,970.
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Mayor Rahm Emanuel certainly made news over his angry, finger-wagging scolding of NBC Chicago TV reporter Mary Ann Ahern the other day.Ahern dared ask the Rahmfather whether he'd send his kids to the public schools he controls. He reportedly became indignant, took off his microphone and ended the interview.
Later, and with great courtesy, Emanuel revisited the topic with a rival station -- which then reported the big exclusive that the mayor was sending his children to a private school.
Emanuel runs Chicago Public Schools. He's shown grit to stand publicly and admonish the teachers union to improve the product. But he decided his children will not attend the public schools.
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Dan Gustafson, PhD 133K PDF, via a kind email from the Wisconsin Reading Coalition:
WRC recommends reading the following open letter from Madison neuropsychologist Dan Gustafson to the Governor's Read to Lead task force. It reflects many of our concerns about the state of reading instruction in Wisconsin and the lack of an effective response from the Department of Public Instruction.View a 133K PDF or Google Docs version.An Open Letter to the Read-To-Lead Task Force
From Dan Gustafson, PhD
State Superintendent Evers, you appointed me to the Common Core Leadership Group. You charged that the Leadership Group would guide Wisconsin's implementation of new reading instruction standards developed by the National Governors' Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).
It is my understanding that I was asked to join the group with the express purpose of bringing different voices to the table. If anything, my experience with the group illustrates how very far we need to go in achieving a transparent and reasoned discussion about the reading crisis in Wisconsin.
DPI Secretly Endorses Plan Created by Poor Performing CESA-7
I have grave concerns about DPI's recent announcement that Wisconsin will follow CESA-7's approach to implementing the Common Core reading standards. DPI is proposing this will be the state's new model reading curriculum.
I can attest that there was absolutely no consensus reached in the Common Core group in support of CESA-7's approach. In point of fact, at the 27th of June Common Core meeting, CESA-7 representative Claire Wick refused to respond to even general questions about her program.
I pointed out that our group, the Common Core Leadership Group, had a right to know about how CESA-7 intended to implement the Common Core Standards. She denied this was the case, citing a "non-disclosure agreement."
The moderator of the discussion, DPI's Emilie Amundson, concurred that Claire didn't need to discuss the program further on the grounds that it was only a CESA-7 program. Our Common Core meeting occurred on the 27th of June. Only two weeks later, on July 14th, DPI released the following statement:
State Superintendent Evers formally adopted the Common Core State Standards in June 2010, making Wisconsin the first state in the country to adopt these rigorous, internationally benchmarked set of expectations for what students should know and are expected to do in English Language Arts and Mathematics. These standards guide both curriculum and assessment development at the state level. Significant work is now underway to determine how training will be advanced for these new standards, and DPI is currently working with CESA 7 to develop a model curriculum aligned to the new standards.
In glaring contrast to the deliberative process that went into creating the Common Core goals, Wisconsin is rushing to implement the goals without being willing to even show their program to their own panel of experts.
What Do We Know About Wisconsin/CESA-7's Model Curriculum?
As an outsider to DPI, I was only able to locate one piece of data regarding CESA-7's elementary school reading performance:
4TH GRADE READING SCORES, 2007-08 WKCE-CRT,
CESA-7 IS AMONG THE WORST PERFORMING DISTRICTS.
CESA-7 RANKED 10TH OF THE 12 WISCONSIN CESA'S.
What Claire did say about her philosophy and the CESA-7 program, before she decided to refuse further comment, was that she did not think significant changes were needed in reading instruction in Wisconsin, as "only three-percent" of children were struggling to read in the state. This is a strikingly low number, one that reflects an arbitrary cutoff for special education. Her view does not reflect the painful experience of the 67% of Wisconsin 4th graders who scored below proficient on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress.
As people in attendance at the meeting can attest, Claire also said that her approach was "not curriculum neutral" and she was taking a "strong stand" on how to teach reading. Again, when I pressed her on what these statements meant, she would only reference oblique whole language jargon, such as a belief in the principal of release from instruction. When I later asked her about finding a balance that included more phonics instruction, she said "too much emphasis" had been given to balanced literacy. After making her brief statements to the Common Core group, she said she had already disclosed too much, and refused to provide more details about the CESA-7 program.
Disregarding Research and Enormous Gains Made by other States, Wisconsin Continues to Stridently Support Whole Language
During the remainder of the day-long meeting on the 27th, I pressed the group to decide about a mechanism to achieve an expert consensus grounded in research. I suggested ways we could move beyond the clear differences that existed among us regarding how to assess and teach reading.
The end product of the meeting, however, was just a list of aspirational goals. We were told this would likely be the last meeting of the group. There was no substantive discussion about implementation of the goals--even though this had been Superintendent Evers' primary mandate for the group.
I can better understand now why Emilie kept steering the discussion back to aspirational goals. The backroom deal had already been made with Claire and other leaders of the Wisconsin State Reading Association (WSRA). It would have been inconvenient to tell me the truth.
WSRA continues to unapologetically champion a remarkably strident version of whole-language reading instruction. Please take a look at the advocacy section of their website. Their model of reading instruction has been abandoned through most the United States due to lack of research support. It is still alive and well in CESA-7, however.
Our State Motto is "Forward"
After years of failing to identify and recommend model curriculum by passing it off as an issue of local control, the DPI now purports to lead. Unfortunately, Superintendent Evers, you are now leading us backward.
Making CESA-7 your model curriculum is going to cause real harm. DPI is not only rashly and secretly endorsing what appears to be a radical version of whole language, but now school districts who have adopted research validated procedures, such as the Monroe School District, will feel themselves under pressure to fall in line with your recommended curriculum.
By all appearances, CESA-7's program is absolutely out of keeping with new Federal laws addressing Response to Intervention and Wisconsin's own Specific Learning Disability Rule. CESA-7's program will not earn us Race to the Top funding. Most significantly, CESA-7's approach is going to harm children.
In medicine we would call this malpractice. There is clear and compelling data supporting one set of interventions (Monroe), and another set of intervention that are counter-indicated (CESA-7). This is not a matter of opinion, or people taking sides. This is an empirical question. If you don't have them already, I hope you will find trusted advisors who will rise above the WSRA obfuscation and just look at the data. It is my impression that you are moving fast and receiving poor advice.
I am mystified as to why, after years of making little headway on topics related to reading, DPI is now making major decisions at a breakneck pace. Is this an effort to circumvent the Read-To-Lead Task Force by instituting new policies before the group has finished its scheduled meetings? Superintendent Evers, why haven't you shared anything about the CESA-7 curriculum with them? Have you already made your decision, or are you prepared to show the Read-To-Lead that there is a deliberative process underway to find a true model curriculum?
There are senior leaders at DPI who recognize that the reading-related input DPI has received has been substantially unbalanced. For example, there were about five senior WSRA members present at the Common Core meetings, meaning that I was substantially outnumbered. While ultimately unsuccessful due to logistics, an 11th hour effort was made to add researchers and leadership members from the Wisconsin Reading Coalition to the Common Core group.
The Leadership Group could achieve what you asked of it, which is to thoughtfully guide implementation of the Common Core. I am still willing to work with you on this goal.
State Superintendent Evers, I assume that you asked me to be a member of the Leadership Group in good faith, and will be disappointed to learn of what actually transpired with the group. You may have the false impression that CESA-7's approach was vetted at your Common Core Leadership Group. Lastly, and most importantly, I trust you have every desire to see beyond destructive politics and find a way to protect the welfare of the children of Wisconsin.
Sincerely,
Dan Gustafson, PhD, EdM
Neuropsychologist, Dean Clinic
Related:
How does Wisconsin Compare: 2 Big Goals.
Wisconsin Academic Standards
Wisconsin Teacher Content Knowledge Requirement Comparison
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Kevin Johnson, chief executive of Juniper Networks, one of the biggest network equipment makers, talks to the FT's Paul Taylor about cloud computing, innovation, video and his worries about the failure of the US education system to produce home-grown talent
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If you are passing through the halls of South High Community School in Worcester, you can always catch Joseph N. Nystrom as he high-fives students, cracks a joke and picks up crumpled pieces of paper in the hallway.A teacher at South High for about 10 years, Mr. Nystrom is well-known for actions that grab students' attention in an effort to focus them on learning and achievement. He started out as a substitute teacher and ended up making it his career.
He is the recent recipient of the All American Teacher of the Year Award, in the Massachusetts math division. He is one of 23 U.S. teachers honored by the National Math and Science Initiative. The awards recognize outstanding math, science and English teachers in NMSI's Advanced Placement training and incentive program.
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I am about to do something rash, which is to disagree with Lucy Kellaway. Last week, the fearless observer of business follies went too far: she called for PowerPoint to be banned.The prosecution's argument is simple: many PowerPoint presentations are very bad. This is true but it hardly makes the case for a ban. Serviceable tools can produce awful results in the wrong hands, as anyone who has seen me put up shelves can attest. Banning the screwdriver is not the answer.
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99K PDF, via a TJ Mertz email:
As hundreds of thousands of public school supporters gather in Washington DC the weekend of July 28 to 30, 2011, Wisconsin advocates will hold a rally in support of the Save Our Schools agenda at 3:00 PM on Saturday July 30, near the State St. entrance to the Capitol.For more information, visit: http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/ and http://saveourschoolswisconsin.wordpress.com/"Public schools are under attack. There is a need for national, state, and local action in support of our schools. Wisconsin has been ground zero in this; the Save Our Schools demands from the Guiding Principles provide a great framework to build our state movement and work to expand opportunities to learn" said education activist Thomas J. Mertz.
The Save Our Schools demands are:
Doing more with less doesn't work. "The time to act is now. While phony debates revolve around debt ceilings, students and teachers across the country are shortchanged. We need real reform, starting with finally fixing the school funding formula, and putting families and communities first. What child and what teacher don't deserve an excellent school?" said rally organizer Todd Price, former Green Party Candidate for Department of Public Instruction and Professor of Teacher Education National Louis University.
- Equitable funding for all public school communities
- An end to high stakes testing used for the purpose of student, teacher, and school evaluation
- Teacher, family and community leadership in forming public education policies
- Curriculum developed for and by local school communities
The event will feature speeches from educators, students, parents and officials, as well as opportunities for school advocates from throughout Wisconsin to connect and organize around issues of importance in their communities.
Related:
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A new analysis of the nation's schools found that Rhode Island falls below the national average for offering high-level curriculum such as Advanced Placement or talented and gifted programs, particularly in the more suburban districts in the state.Compare Wisconsin's results, here.The report, which seeks to showcase what is known as the "opportunity gap" between wealthy and high-poverty school districts, actually suggests that Rhode Island offers similar chances to be involved in specialty programs in urban schools as it does in suburban schools. In fact, in some cases, the high-level programs are more available in cities like Providence than they are in Barrington.
But the reality is the state offers very little advance programming overall, meaning that while there may not be a significant gap between the city schools and the ones from more rural areas, Rhode Island schools are still being outpaced by the rest of New England and most cases, the country.
The Numbers
The study, which was conducted by ProPublica, found that Rhode Island falls well-behind the rest of the country when it comes to offering AP tests, advanced mathematics courses and talented and gifted programming.
More students, however, are taking chemistry and physics than in other parts of the country.
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"This," says Matthew Carpenter, "is my favorite exercise." I peer over his shoulder at his laptop screen to see the math problem the fifth grader is pondering. It's an inverse trigonometric function: cos-1(1) = ?Carpenter, a serious-faced 10-year-old wearing a gray T-shirt and an impressive black digital watch, pauses for a second, fidgets, then clicks on "0 degrees." Presto: The computer tells him that he's correct. The software then generates another problem, followed by another, and yet another, until he's nailed 10 in a row in just a few minutes. All told, he's done an insane 642 inverse trig problems. "It took a while for me to get it," he admits sheepishly.
Carpenter, who attends Santa Rita Elementary, a public school in Los Altos, California, shouldn't be doing work anywhere near this advanced. In fact, when I visited his class this spring--in a sun-drenched room festooned with a papercraft X-wing fighter and student paintings of trees--the kids were supposed to be learning basic fractions, decimals, and percentages. As his teacher, Kami Thordarson, explains, students don't normally tackle inverse trig until high school, and sometimes not even then.
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As Iowa political and education leaders prepare to make sweeping changes in the state's schools, experts monitoring similar efforts across the country caution that much of what is being tried is still controversial and uncharted territory.For example:
- A growing body of anecdotal evidence and research supports the push toward longer school days and years to benefit students' academic achievement, especially among low-income or disadvantaged children. But the cost-benefit ratio of such moves remains fiercely debated and some experiments have had mixed results.
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During the past semester, a time where I constantly felt split between my academic life and my civic life, I became acutely aware of an attitude among undergraduates that perplexed me. I tried writing about it , describing what readers pointed out (in a far more articulate manner than I'd managed) was a notable lack of empathy among some students.Since I've spent the last 10 years trying to make convince higher education institutions to prioritize their students' needs and desires, these realizations about who some of the students seemed to be and especially what they seemed to believe, made me pretty depressed. Don't get me wrong: it's not that I expect students to speak and act in one voice--far from it, given how much I value the democratic process. I don't want them to share my opinions or perspectives, but rather simply want them to formulate opinions and perspectives after asking good questions and gathering and evaluating information. But what I hope for, most of all, is their recognition that they are part of a worldwide community of students, and their strength lies in that community. I hope that such a larger sense of the world will guide them to think of more than themselves, and to act for the greater good.
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A heat dome has settled over much of American education. Is Gov. Scott Walker just going to add to the stifling atmosphere? Or is Walker right that there are cool breezes in his ideas for how to increase school quality overall?First, the national perspective: You would think by now, the heat would have been drained from some of the debate about what works in education, especially when it comes to serving urban kids. People have been working on this for decades. Haven't we figured out answers yet?
In most ways, no. Even a lot of things that seem like answers haven't been brought successfully to wide use. Things that look good on paper (or in a political speech) have often accomplished little in reality. The profoundly troubling march to perpetuating educational failure, for the most part, continues.
As disappointment grows, the debates between "education reformers" and those who think the "reformers" are going in the wrong directions often have been contentious. If you follow the tweets and postings and such, you'll find occasional light but a lot of heated rhetoric. Add in this year's wars over the pay, benefits and unions of public employees, combined with the hyperpartisan nature of the times, and you have an atmosphere that should carry health warnings.
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Recently, the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) announced a redesign of all education programs within its six universities and 13 community colleges called "Ready2Teach." The TBR is initiating change in the process of preparing new teachers for public school classrooms.Although as a private college, Maryville College is not governed by the TBR, our goal in the teacher education program is to equip our teacher licensure students with research-based knowledge and skills that will facilitate the learning for all children. My concern about the June 13 Associated Press story about Ready2Teach that ran in the News Sentinel, and across the state, was the inaccuracies about how we currently prepare new public school teachers. Here are a few misconceptions:
n Education majors spend most of their time in college listening to lectures about teaching methods or education theory.
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When I was growing up, there was a special mystique about teachers. They were looked up to and respected. No matter if you liked a teacher or not, you appreciated his or her efforts to educate children and prepare them for their future, no matter what that future would be.Today, teachers are being portrayed as self-centered union lackeys who feel entitled to extraordinary benefits provided by taxpayers. Teachers appear to have suddenly morphed from members of a noble profession to members of the world's oldest profession. What a turnaround.
My teachers over the years left an indelible mark on me and the person I became. They helped shape me, gave me encouragement and taught me to think for myself and question the status quo.
My first-grade teacher was Miss Darling (honestly). She was a sweet lady who I remember for her kindness and her patience as I struggled to master the simple act of tying my shoes. It has been almost 50 years since then, but I remember her clearly, drying my tears of frustration and embarrassment and helping me practice until I could finally tie my shoes.
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There's lots of discussion regarding the pros and cons of tenure. The Trenton Times describes an instance that highlights the difficulties school districts face in dismissing tenured employees. Rayshaun Davis, a member of one of the Trenton Public Schools unions, the Business-Technical Employees Association, was assigned as a Youth Development Liaison at Trenton Central High in a program designed to "help students avoid teen pregnancy, substance abuse and other pitfalls of at-risk youth."Here's the current contract for the union.
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For nearly two decades the Tax Foundation has published an estimate of the combined state-local tax burden shouldered by the residents of each of the 50 states. For each state, we calculate the total amount paid by the residents in taxes, then divide those taxes by the state's total income to compute a "tax burden." We make this calculation not only for the most recent year but also for earlier years because tax and income data are revised periodically by government agencies.The goal is to focus not on the tax collectors but on the taxpayers. That is, we answer the question: What percentage of their income are the residents of this state paying in state and local taxes? We are not trying to answer the question: How much money have state and local governments collected?
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If you're a politician who has all kinds of things to say about public education, do voters have the right to know where you send your children to school?That's a question that seems to be surfacing a lot lately. A few weeks ago, on NBC's "Meet the Press," Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, as vicious a critic of teachers unions as exists among American politicians today, repeated his assertion that where he chooses as a parent to educate his four children (Catholic schools, as it turns out) is nobody's business.
This week, Rahm Emanuel, the newly installed mayor of Chicago, stormed out of an interview when asked the same question, which he apparently considered a violation of his privacy. Mr. Emanuel, who has also called for school reforms, is sending his children to the same private school the Obama girls once attended.
"My children are not in a public position," Mr. Emanuel testily told the local NBC reporter who asked the question. "The mayor is."
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One of the foundation's main initial interests was schools with fewer students. In 2004 it announced that it would spend $100 million to open 20 small high schools in San Diego, Denver, New York City and elsewhere. Such schools, says Mr. Gates, were designed to--and did--promote less acting up in the classroom, better attendance and closer interaction with adults.Much more on Small Learning Communities, here."But the overall impact of the intervention, particularly the measure we care most about--whether you go to college--it didn't move the needle much," he says. "Maybe 10% more kids, but it wasn't dramatic. . . . We didn't see a path to having a big impact, so we did a mea culpa on that." Still, he adds, "we think small schools were a better deal for the kids who went to them."
The reality is that the Gates Foundation met the same resistance that other sizeable philanthropic efforts have encountered while trying to transform dysfunctional urban school systems run by powerful labor unions and a top-down government monopoly provider.
In the 1970s, the Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations, among others, pushed education "equity" lawsuits in California, New Jersey, Texas and elsewhere that led to enormous increases in state expenditures for low-income students. In 1993, the publishing mogul Walter Annenberg, hoping to "startle" educators and policy makers into action, gave a record $500 million to nine large city school systems. Such efforts made headlines but not much of a difference in closing the achievement gap.
Asked to critique these endeavors, Mr. Gates demurs: "I applaud people for coming into this space, but unfortunately it hasn't led to significant improvements." He also warns against overestimating the potential power of philanthropy. "It's worth remembering that $600 billion a year is spent by various government entities on education, and all the philanthropy that's ever been spent on this space is not going to add up to $10 billion. So it's truly a rounding error."
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A new report from the Department of Social and Health Services summarizes a teenager's life and death in eight pages. After bouncing him through 22 foster homes, it concludes that caseworkers and foster parents should have had more information about the boy's history so they could have helped him.Roger Eugene Benson was in state care when he left a group home in January, walked to a freeway overpass, jumped to I-5 below and died after being struck by a van. People who witnessed the suicide were horrified. People who didn't know what was going were angry by the traffic delays caused when the Interstate was shut down during the afternoon commute.
In calling the State Patrol that day, I found out the victim was 15 years old. That struck me because I have a 15-year-old daughter. This kid, the boy who killed himself on I-5 , was somebody's son.
What went wrong in his life?
Benson was born in December of 1995. His history with the state began when he was a toddler. His mother was investigated for abuse or neglect of her children, including Benson, six times. The last time CPS was called, in May of 1998, Benson was placed in protective custody. The boy and his siblings were placed in four foster homes within three years. The longest he was in any one home was two years.
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Iowa has slid from a national leader in elementary and secondary education to an average performer over the past 20 years as other states accelerated past it, according to a state report released today.Wisconsin has slid, as well.The Iowa report card -- the first released under Republican Gov. Terry Branstad -- provides an unvarnished assessment of the state's academic performance and sounds a clarion call to improve. The report, "Rising to Greatness: An Imperative for Improving Iowa's Schools," says performance on various national and state tests show "an alarming slide toward mediocrity."
In some ways, Iowa public schools have improved over years past, but other states have surged ahead, said Jason Glass, director of the Iowa Department of Education, which produced the report.
Restoring the greatness of Iowa schools will require more than "tinkering around the edges," he said.
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National Council on Teacher Quality:
Though few would dispute its value, the job of providing apprenticeships for some 200,000 teacher candidates each year in real classrooms is a massive and complex undertaking. About 1,400 higher education institutions work with many thousands of school districts across the United States to place, mentor and supervise teacher candidates in what is popularly known as "student teaching."1Related: Teacher colleges balk at being rated Wisconsin schools say quality survey from national nonprofit and magazine won't be fair.Even as the profession pushes for more and earlier field work opportunities, student teaching is the final clinical experience.2 During the typical semester-long experience, student teaching candidates must synthesize everything they have learned about planning instruction: collecting or developing instructional materials, teaching lessons, guiding small group activities, and establishing and maintaining order--not to mention meetings with faculty and parents and, in some districts still, taking on lunchroom and playground duties. Passing (or failing) student teaching determines whether an individual will be recommended for certification as a licensed teacher.
Because few dispute the tremendous potential value of student teaching, even alternate pathways to profession, often criticized for taking too many shortcuts, generally try to provide their teaching candidates with some kind of student teaching experience, however abbreviated. Surveys of new teachers suggest that student teaching is the most important part of their teaching training experience.3
National Council on Teacher Quality website.
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You've got to be wondering what a teacher like me is doing marching against the "reform" trends. For those of you unfamiliar with my background, I graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Syracuse University. A year later, after 6-8 months of unemployment and a stint as a data entry person at an educational database firm, I went into the NYC Teaching Fellows program, an offshoot of Michelle Rhee's New Teacher Project. On the surface, I'm a perfect candidate to follow the corporatist thinking about education, and should be easily molded into the dominant thinking from elites who ostensibly believe they're going into education for the common good. All it takes is the right amount of fear, the right amount of frustration, the right amount of ignorance, and the right amount of failure to tip people into the hands of those who wish to rotate our profession backwards.Fortunately for me, I lucked out. And if you're reading this, I'm thinking the same goes for you.
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As promised, this is my follow-up post based on our trip to the Save Texas Schools conference in Austin this past weekend. It was a sobering experience. The long and the short of it is this: Texas has abandoned its children. The Governor and the Legislators in Austin have set the stage for a protracted crisis not only in education but in the State economy. With respect to the former, we can look forward to larger class sizes, the elimination of many important programs, and the placing of even more responsibility of the backs of overworked (and fewer) teachers. Texas already ranked an embarrassing 44th in education and these developments do not bode well for future of the Lone Star State. As far as the economy is concerned, every public education layoff means less income not only for those individuals, but for local businesses where they would have shopped. Indeed, the Legislative Budget Board forecast that almost 45% of job losses would actually be in the private sector (Center for Public Policy Priorities: CPPP Urges Rejection of HB1). Furthermore, the lack of a decent education will greatly reduce the future earning power of Texans. The only firms willing to relocate here will be those hoping to find a source of cheap, low-skilled laborers. Texas will become the alternative to outsourcing to an impoverished, third-world country. The stars at night no longer look so big and bright.
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First, a college education costs too much. Middle-class families can no longer afford tuition that increases faster than inflation, per capita personal income, consumer prices and even health insurance. Total student loan debt in America is $1 trillion and exceeds credit card debt. Taxpayer money stretches only so far, with health care, public safety and K-12 education claiming ever larger shares of state budgets.Second, the higher education industry is undergoing a complete restructuring. Technology is fundamentally altering how courses are created and taught while upending the cost structure of delivery. New entrants - from for-profit white-label degree providers like 2tor to nonprofits like Khan Academy - are bringing disruptive innovation.
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A National Guard school program for at-risk teenagers is scheduled to open in 2012 in eastern Kentucky.
The Appalachian Youth ChalleNGe Academy, to be housed in a renovated former elementary school, will be the second ChalleNGE school in Kentucky. Bluegrass ChalleNGe Academy at Fort Knox opened in 1999."Here in Harlan, we found a county with a school system that was willing to help make a program," said Col. John Wayne Smith, director of the Fort Knox program. "We believe that with an academy here, we will be able to get kids to come who wouldn't come to Fort Knox."
The primary recruiting area for the new program is 23 counties in eastern Kentucky, with any remaining openings being offered to teens in the Appalachian region of neighboring states, Smith said last week in the Harlan Daily Enterprise.
"I was looking at the numbers in our target population. I found that Appalachia has a higher rate of these kids, but we also found that because of positive family connections in the area, youth are hesitant to leave and come to Fort Knox. We have had a few come to us, but nothing like the numbers we should be getting," he said at a community meeting.
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"What are the right incentives to have in place for teachers?" The very question itself is jarring. It implies that teachers don't want to perform well and that they need incentives, which in today's parlance translates into rewards (money) and reprimands (fear of loss of benefits or position).Let me present a very different picture: Teachers should be regarded as and behave like professionals. A professional is a certified expert who is afforded prestige and autonomy in return for performing at a high level, which includes making complex and disinterested judgments under conditions of uncertainty. Professionals deserve to live comfortably, but they do not enter the ranks of a profession in order obtain wealth or power; they do it out of a calling to serve. Be it law, medicine, auditing, education or science, the expectation is the same: professionals should work hard to gain the requisite credentials, behave ethically as well as legally, and when they err, should take responsibility for their error and try to learn from it.
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The Madison School District has reached an agreement with its teachers union over changes to planning time -- a resolution Superintendent Dan Nerad said fits within the bounds of the state's new collective bargaining law.An earlier proposal prompted hundreds of teachers to protest at a School Board meeting in May and Madison Teachers Inc. executive director John Matthews to threaten a job action if the matter wasn't resolved.
The issue relates to changes in the district's 2011-13 collective bargaining agreement with MTI, which was approved in March before the state's collective bargaining law took effect.
In the past, disagreements over contract language were often resolved through memorandums of understanding (MOUs). But once the collective bargaining law took effect June 29, districts that approved contracts after Feb. 1 couldn't modify them through MOUs, or else they would be
Read more: http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/education/local_schools/article_82b5f386-b25e-11e0-873a-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1SblqTZYo
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Teachers' Unions: Back to the Future. Back in 1998, the Illinois Education Association commissioned the Global Business Network to assess the union's direction for the next 10-15 years and help devise options for dealing with possible scenarios. The result, a report titled The Future of the Illinois Education Association [3.1MB PDF], is a fascinating read not just for its insights into the union's strategic thinking, but for which "predictions" it got right and wrong.Fascinating.I put the scare quotes around "predictions" because GBN was explicit in stating that the possible scenarios it outlined were not predictions, but merely various possibilities for which the union should plan. As the authors put it, "After imaginatively dwelling in each scenario, participants can develop strategic options that are appropriate to managing in just that scenario."
GBN developed a matrix of four scenarios, based on the variables of strong vs. weak political environments, and strong vs. weak membership connection with the union. Each of the four contains at least some relevance to current events, although other aspects read like one of those "flying car, food pills" science fiction stories written in the 1930s about life in the 1970s.
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Last week I saw two women getting into a cab outside an office in central London. Both were in high heels and smart suits and were struggling with a flip chart, its pages flapping in the wind. The quaint sight of the large pad on aluminium legs filled me with longing for the days when people giving presentations wrote things down with felt pens on big sheets of paper.I might have forgotten this scene, were it not for the fact that the very next day I was sent an invitation to join a brand new political party in Switzerland, the Anti PowerPoint party. "Finally do something!" its slogan says.
Actually I've been quietly doing something for years: I've been declining to learn how to use the ubiquitous piece of software. As a presenter, I'm a PowerPoint virgin, though as an audience member I've been gang raped by PowerPoint slides more times than I can count.
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For example, most of our honors students place out of the first-year composition course, so it is entirely possible for them to graduate without having taken a course that involves heavy-duty writing. I would argue that the ability to write effectively is the most important skill a student should have. Is there some way to build this into an honors program before a student begins work on a senior thesis?
April really is the cruelest month. I discovered that firsthand this year, as the changes I have made during my two years as director of the University of Florida honors program began to take effect. Our application procedure, once a mere formality, now de-emphasizes standardized-test scores and has caused some students to be turned away. The resulting torrent of angry phone calls and e-mails made me dread going to work all month.May put an end to that, but it gave rise to a new stream of questions, mostly about housing. One parent made multiple requests for a layout of the honors dorm so she could ensure that her son's room location was optimal.
Has it really come to this? Are honors programs devolving into concierge services? I approach my role as director from the point of view I held as a student more than 20 years ago--that honors is a challenge to engage--but find myself confronted with parental and student expectations that honors is nothing more than a reward for a job well done in high school.
Which raises the question: Why do students want to be in our honors program? I hope they want to surround themselves with serious, like-minded peers to form a real intellectual community. But my darker suspicions about their motivation were confirmed when, during dinner with a few students, one said that the impression he'd received during his visits to the campus was that honors was like flying first class. You know: smaller classes, easier access to advising, better dorm. Further reflection led me to realize that students at universities like Florida have always been "honors students," and that the label is important to them (and their parents). Why would they accept being just a "regular" student here? I suppose that attitude is a natural outcome of today's K-12 achievement culture, but it is shocking nonetheless.
Perhaps we should not be surprised. Honors programs were created with good intentions, but it did not take long for them to be perceived as "better" than the regular university experience. Today's parents and students pursue any avenue they think will give them an advantage, beginning in elementary school; hence the proliferation of honor societies, tutoring services, test-preparation courses, and leadership programs. Students are sorted and ranked by their test scores and other metrics from the time they enter school, so they expect that the process will follow them to college.
Critics of honors programs, most notably Murray Sperber in his book Beer and Circus, say this division between "regular" and "honors" students should not exist. Sperber recalls his undergraduate days at Purdue, in the 1960s, when all classes were of reasonable size, taught by regular tenure-track faculty. State flagship institutions, he argues, should stop exploiting large numbers of undergraduates (and taking their tuition dollars) to support ever-expanding research enterprises and instead return to a focus on education. He asserts that while students would like smaller classes and more individual attention, universities cynically ply them with permissive alcohol policies and large athletics programs to keep them quiet. Honors programs, he argues, are a "life raft" for a few lucky students to navigate those treacherous seas.
I agree with some of Sperber's arguments, but I am enough of a realist to know that the ship has sailed. Business-minded legislatures are demanding more education while offering less money to pay for it. They expect flagships to produce cutting-edge research that will drive states' economies. They are also loath to authorize tuition increases, thereby forcing universities to increase class sizes and find other ways to generate revenue. So a return to the glory days is unlikely.
But Sperber misses an important point: Many students view college simply as a means to an end and are not especially engaged in the educational process. This does not make them unintelligent or unworthy of attending a selective public university, but it does not obviate the need for an honors program to challenge students who are seeking more.
So what does the future hold for honors programs at large public research universities? I suspect that those institutions that have the resources to do so (usually via endowments designated to support honors) will very likely continue much as they always have--offering small sections of lower-division courses, recruiting faculty to teach interesting electives on offbeat topics, providing specialized advising, facilitating undergraduate research. In short, offering what they advertise: a liberal-arts-college environment within a large university.
Since honors students at selective public universities meet most of their general-education requirements through advanced placement, perhaps it is time to shift the focus of the honors curriculum to the sorts of skills that these students may still need to improve. For example, most of our honors students place out of the first-year composition course, so it is entirely possible for them to graduate without having taken a course that involves heavy-duty writing. I would argue that the ability to write effectively is the most important skill a student should have. Is there some way to build this into an honors program before a student begins work on a senior thesis?
I also worry that, by skipping general-education courses, students may miss out on acquiring a deeper understanding of material they learned in high school. One step I am taking to combat this at Florida involves a new course built around the concept of justice, to be offered to all first-year students in the honors program as of next spring. The goal is to give our students a common intellectual experience that will help hone their critical-thinking and writing skills. We also encourage our students to pursue double majors, to study abroad for a semester, or to get involved in research.
But those are technical matters. In my view, a philosophical change is needed. We should move away from the notion that honors is an upgrade to first class, one to which students are entitled merely because they scored well on some dubious standardized tests. When I speak to groups of prospective students, I emphasize this point, explaining that honors is a challenge, not a reward, and that moving from high-school honors to university honors is shifting from a culture of achievement to a culture of engagement.
That should be an honors program's true function--engaging students who want to push the boundaries and helping them find ways to do it, rather than providing further empty rewards for students who jump through hoops with style.
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This has been a horrible year for teachers unions. The latest stunner came in Michigan, where Republicans enacted sweeping reforms last month that require performance-based evaluations of teachers, make it easier to dismiss those who are ineffective, and dramatically limit the scope of collective bargaining. Similar reforms have been adopted in Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, Indiana, Tennessee, Idaho and Florida.But the unions' hegemony is not going to end soon. All of their big political losses have come at the hands of oversized Republican majorities. Eventually Democrats will regain control, and many of the recent reforms may be undone. The financial crisis will pass, too, taking pressure off states and giving Republicans less political cover.
The unions, meantime, are launching recall campaigns to remove offending Republicans, initiative campaigns to reverse legislation, court cases to have the bills annulled, and other efforts to reinstall the status quo ante--some of which are likely to succeed. As of today, they remain the pre-eminent power in American education.
Over the long haul, however, the unions are in grave trouble--for reasons that have little to do with the tribulations of this year.
The first is that they are losing their grip on the Democratic base. With many urban schools abysmally bad and staying that way, advocates for the disadvantaged are demanding real reform and aren't afraid to criticize unions for obstructing it. Moderates and liberals in the media and even in Hollywood regularly excoriate unions for putting job interests ahead of children. Then there's Race to the Top--initiated over union protests by a Democratic president who wants real reform. This ferment within the party will only grow in the future.
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- Teacher-certification requirements are among the most onerous rules enforced by state education agencies and have the potential seriously to limit the scope, quality, and accessibility of virtual schooling for years to come.
- By design, certification requirements prohibit unlicensed individuals who reside within a state -- such as higher education faculty, private-sector professionals, private school faculty, and independent scholars -- from teaching virtual courses.
- States should allow their virtual schools to have the flexibility to focus on hiring candidates who possess the requisite skills and relevant knowledge and experience, rather than those who possess mandated credentials.
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DEREK BOK, a former president of Harvard, once observed that "universities share one characteristic with compulsive gamblers and exiled royalty: there is never enough money to satisfy their desires." This is a bit hard on compulsive gamblers and exiled royals. America's universities have raised their fees five times as fast as inflation over the past 30 years. Student debt in America exceeds credit-card debt. Yet still the universities keep sending begging letters to alumni and philanthropists.This insatiable appetite for money was bad enough during the boom years. It is truly irritating now that middle-class incomes are stagnant and students are struggling to find good jobs. Hence a flurry of new thinking about higher education. Are universities inevitably expensive? Vance Fried, of Oklahoma State University, recently conducted a fascinating thought experiment, backed up by detailed calculations. Is it possible to provide a first-class undergraduate education for $6,700 a year rather than the $25,900 charged by public research universities or the $51,500 charged by their private peers? He concluded that it is.
Mr Fried shunned easy solutions. He insisted that students should live in residential colleges, just as they do at Harvard and Yale. He did not suggest getting rid of football stadiums (which usually pay for themselves) or scrimping on bed-and-board.
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Following up on a recent post on college grade inflation, there's also evidence that grade inflation is taking place at America's high schools. In a study by the college entrance exam company ACT, it found evidence of significant grade inflation between 1991 and 2003 for high school students taking the ACT exam. While ACT scores remained stable between 1991 and 2003, the chart above shows that the average high school GPA increased for ever ACT composite score over that period. From the study:"Each point on each curve represents the average GPA for all students in 1991 and 2003 who earned that specific ACT Composite score. The curve for 2003 is higher at every Composite score point than the 1991 curve, which is evidence of the existence of grade inflation.
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A "satisfactory" evaluation never did much for seventh-grade teacher Susan Cox.In her 21 years teaching kids, she's earned a national board certification and a master's degree. She's taken on new projects and district initiatives. She's hoping the new evaluation system Wenatchee School District plans to pilot next year will become the next step up in her teaching.
"I can't remember how many years I've been on a short (evaluation) form," Cox said. "I'm observed once and that's it. But this is going to be very different."
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Matthew Stewart believes there is a place for charter schools. Just not in his schoolyard.http://www.hanyuschool.org/. Locally, the Verona School District offers a Mandarin immersion charter school. More, here.Mr. Stewart, a stay-at-home father of three boys, moved to this wealthy township, about 20 miles from Midtown Manhattan, three years ago, filling his life with class activities and soccer practices. But in recent months, he has traded play dates for protests, enlisting more than 200 families in a campaign to block two Mandarin-immersion charter schools from opening in the area.
The group, Millburn Parents Against Charter Schools, argues that the schools would siphon money from its children's education for unnecessarily specialized programs. The schools, to be based in nearby Maplewood and Livingston, would draw students and resources from Millburn and other area districts.
"I'm in favor of a quality education for everyone," Mr. Stewart said. "In suburban areas like Millburn, there's no evidence whatsoever that the local school district is not doing its job. So what's the rationale for a charter school?"
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A year ago, Adrian Fenty was the mayor of Washington, DC and Michelle Rhee was the chancellor of DC Public Schools. Rhee had made overhauling the DC system of teacher evaluation the centerpiece of her controversial and widely noted reforms. Instead of the standard system of seniority-based raises and nobody ever being fired for bad teaching, Rhee wanted to give the best teachers big raises and show the worst teachers the door.The American Federation of Teachers was so alarmed by the prospect of the DC teachers union acceding to this plan that AFT President Randi Weingarten shoved aside local leadership and forced Rhee into a protracted series of negotiations. But because teacher evaluation is legally excluded from collective bargaining in DC, Rhee was able to put her system in place unilaterally. After a year of evaluations under the new IMPACT evaluation system, she made good on her promise: big raises for the highest performers in a time when teacher salaries were being cut and frozen in other cities, pink slips for the lowest performers, and a one-year grace period for hundreds more "minimally effective" teachers who would be fired if they didn't improve. Unable to stop the plan through negotiations, the AFT turned to raw politics, pouring $1 million into Vincent Gray's campaign to unseat Fenty. Gray won, and Rhee's divisive tenure soon came to an end.
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Scott Walker, the governor who set the stage for a burst of educational excellence? The guy who helped teachers make their work more successful and more rewarding (at least intangibly)?Much like our exploding federalism, history will certainly reveal how Walker's big changes played out versus the mostly status quo K-12 world of the past few decades. One thing is certain: the next 10 years will be different, regardless of how the present politics play out.Goodness, turning those question marks into periods is going to be a project. It's hard to imagine how Walker's standing among teachers could be lower.
But Walker thinks that will be the verdict several years from now.
By winning (as of now) the epic battle to cut school spending and erase almost all collective bargaining powers for teachers, as well as other educational battles, Walker has changed the realities of life in just about every school in the state, including many private schools.
The focus through our tumultuous spring was on money, power and politics. Now the focus is shifting to ideas for changing education itself.
So what are Walker's ideas on those scores?
In a 40-minute telephone interview a few days ago, Walker talked about a range of education questions. There will be strong criticism of a lot of what he stands for. Let's deal with that in upcoming columns. For the moment, I'm going to give Walker the floor, since, so far this year, the tune he calls has been the tune that the state ends up playing. Here are some excerpts:
I found the interview comments on the teacher climate interesting. Watching events locally for some time, it seems that there is a good deal more top down curricular (more) and pedagogy (teaching methods) dogma from administrators, ed school grants/research and others.
Other states, such as Minnesota and Massachusetts have raised the bar with respect to teacher content knowledge in certain subjects.
Wisconsin teacher license information.
Related: 2 Big Goals for Wisconsin.
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The eldest of Pamela Fettes' three sons only recently celebrated his 15th birthday, but she is already worrying about the cost of their college education.Ms Fettes, a 46-year-old single mother, lives in Belvidere, a blue-collar town 70 miles north-west of Chicago. She earns $50,000 a year as a regional healthcare co-ordinator, putting her right at the US's median household income - although she also works two nights a week as a hospital clerk and decorates cakes on the side. She took on the extra work after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008 and getting divorced last year, both of which involved considerable expense.
Ms Fettes says she has about $200 left each month after all her bills are paid, but she is also trying to pay down $8,000 in credit card debt and has little saved up, meaning she will be unable to contribute to the cost of her sons' higher education.
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Only two years ago, Atlanta Public Schools were the toast of the educational establishment. Scores on standardized tests had been rising--skyrocketing, in some cases--for a decade. In February 2009, schools chief Beverly Hall was feted as national superintendent of the year.Two months later, dozens of Ms. Hall's teachers and principals engaged in the annual ritual required to produce such success: They cheated on the state standardized test.
The difference between 2009 and previous years of cheating (dating back at least as far as 2006, and perhaps 2001) was that reporters at my newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, questioned the schools' remarkable scores on Georgia's Criterion-Referenced Competency Test. Those articles prompted an investigation by then-Gov. Sonny Perdue, and this month the devastating final report arrived. It uncovered cheating by adults in 44 schools, covering 1,508 classes--almost all of them serving low-income, minority students.
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Stuart Rojstaczer is a retired Duke University professor who has tirelessly crusaded for several decades against "grade inflation" at U.S. universities and maintains a website with lots of historical GPA data and charts (GradeInflation.com). The chart above illustrates grade inflation at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor over roughly the last half century (data here), with the average GPA rising from 2.57 in 1951 (C+/B-) to 3.27 by 2008 (B+). The grade inflation at Michigan is similar to the national trend at most American universities over time.
Catherine Rampell at the NY Times Economix Blog writes about a new paper by Professor Rojstaczer and co-author Christopher Healy titled "Where A Is Ordinary: The Evolution of American College and University Grading, 1940-2009," published in the Teachers College Record. The main findings of the paper appear below, illustrated by this chart:
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A typical school district's reaction to tight budgets is to cut, cut, cut. While cutting education waste can sharpen focus, cutting into innovation leaves your district extremely vulnerable to competition. School districts are no longer just competing against the local private school; rather they are competing with education over the net and the global market place as well. Now more than ever we need contenders.With the right trainers, district leaders or contenders can become innovation champions for kids. Here's four ways you can step into the ring and put on the gloves for the upcoming education fight with the rest of the world.
Complete an Open Education Resource Scan - What are you paying for in your district with educational technology? What outcomes have you realized? Is there an open free alternative? Can this resource be shared among multiple users for multiple purposes? Example: Are you paying for a learning management system and creating your own content? Or, are you using a free engine and wrapping it around content not just for instruction but for professional development as well.
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Last September, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced: "Today is a great day! I have looked forward to this day for a long time-and so have America's teachers, parents, students, and school leaders."Duncan was excited about a new way of testing students, one that goes "beyond the bubble test," the standardized assessments students take every year that have long been criticized as not only useless in measuring any kind of real learning, but actually detrimental to the entire education system.
Ask most teachers, and you'll hear a litany of reasons why they detest these assessments. They contend the current tests have no bearing on student learning. They waste time that could be better spent in class (the former president of United Teachers Los Angeles, "dismisses the weeks before spring testing as 'Bubbling-In 101,'" according to a Los Angeles Times article.) They complain about having to teach to the tests, leaving them little time to try new ways of engaging students. And in some states, teachers are evaluated based on those very scores.
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The District of Columbia Public Schools has notified 413 employees of their separation as the result of IMPACT evaluations, the DCPS said on Friday.IMPACT evaluates teacher performance based on student achievement, instructional expertise, collaboration, and professionalism. Other employees are assessed based on criteria specific to their jobs.
The 413 represent just over 6 percent of the 6,500 total DCPS employees. DCPS issued separation notices based on performance and on noncompliance with licensing requirements for the 2010-2011 school year, according to a DCPS statement.
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After years spent directing the distribution of more than $1 billion from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation into hundreds of schools across the nation, Tom Vander Ark set his sights on the New York area, with a plan to create a network of charter schools of his own.Mr. Vander Ark, the foundation's former executive director of education and a national leader in the online learning movement, was granted charters in 2010 to open a high school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and two others in Newark. The New York school, Brooklyn City Prep, also got space in a public school building -- a precious and controversial commodity -- hired a principal, and welcomed applications from 150 eighth graders this spring.
But after spending more than $1.5 million of investors' money on consultants and lawyers, Mr. Vander Ark, 52, has walked away from the project, and the schools will not open as planned this fall, leaving others involved stunned and frustrated.
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The interim superintendent of Atlanta's public schools promised to reform the district and remove teachers and supervisors implicated in one of the nation's biggest cheating scandals.Erroll Davis Jr. removed the city's four area superintendents as well as two principals this week, pending further investigation into cheating on standardized tests. At the same time, a former Atlanta deputy superintendent agreed to go on paid leave from a Texas school district that hired her earlier this year.
All were named in an 800-page state report released last week that outlined widespread, systematic cheating by students, teachers and administrators on standardized tests required annually at Georgia's elementary and middle public schools. The cheating, which was intended to raise scores to meet performance benchmarks, involved practices such as teachers erasing incorrect answers on the standardized tests.
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Faculty members feeling besieged by, well, take your pick -- increased scrutiny of their productivity and the relevance of their research; broadsides against tenure; attacks on their expertise and ability to collectively bargain; or their shrinking role in the affairs of their institutions -- will no doubt find succor in a new book to be released next month.In his polemic, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters (Oxford University Press), Benjamin Ginsberg, David Bernstein Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, takes stock of what ails higher education and finds a single, unifying cause: the growth of administration.
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Clay Christensen & Henry Eyring
Clayton Christensen and Henry Eyring, building on Christensen's contribution to business, health care and K-12 education, apply Christensen's model of disruptive innovation to higher education. Unlike the many doom-and-gloom books of recent years, this work offers a hopeful analysis of the university and its traditions and how it must find new models for the future.More, here."The Innovative University" builds upon the theory of "disruptive innovation" and applies it to the world of higher education. The concept, originally introduced by Christensen in his best-selling book "The Innovator's Dilemma," holds that sustaining institutions or models exist, until change "disrupts" the traditional or "sustaining" model. In the case of higher education, the disruptor to the traditional university might be a recession, the rise of for-profit schools or the prevalence of high-quality online programs. The authors suggest that to avoid the pitfalls of disruption and turn the scenario into a positive and productive one, universities must change their institutional "DNA."
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In the typical Oregon public school classroom, students of the same age work at achievement levels that often vary by two or three grades, sometimes more.That didn't make sense to Mary Folberg. When she launched Northwest Academy, a private college preparatory school for grades 6-12 in downtown Portland, she grouped students the way she did as a dance instructor at Jefferson High, by proficiency rather than age.
That's the seismic shift Gov. John Kitzhaber wants to make in the state's public school system through a package of education bills passed by the Legislature last month.
At the heart of the package is one bill pushed by Kitzhaber to create paths from pre-school through college on which students advance at their own paces. The bill creates a 15-member Oregon Education Investment Board, chaired by the governor, to control the purse strings on all levels of education from preschool through college -- about $7.4 billion or half of the state general fund.
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Despite a competitive economy in which success increasingly depends on obtaining a college degree, one in four students in this country does not even finish high school in the usual four years.Related Madison College (MATC) links:Matthew Kelly was in danger of becoming one of them.
Tests showed he had a high intellect, but Mr. Kelly regularly skipped homework and was barely passing some of his classes in his early years of high school. He was living in a motel part of the time and both his parents were out of work. His mother, a former nurse, feared that Matthew had so little interest he would drop out without graduating.
Then his guidance counselor suggested he take some courses at a nearby vocational academy for his junior year. For the first time, the sloe-eyed teenager excelled, earning A's and B's in subjects like auto repair, electronics and metals technology. "When it comes to practicality, I can do stuff really well," said Mr. Kelly, now 19.
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Some Southern California teachers are finding ways to keep creativity in the lesson plan even as they prepare their students for standardized tests.Even as the annual state testing season bore down on her this spring, fourth-grade teacher Jin Yi barely bothered with test prep materials. The Hobart Boulevard Elementary School teacher used to spend weeks with practice tests but found they bored her students.
Instead, she engages them with hands-on lessons, such as measuring their arms and comparing that data to solve above-grade-level subtraction problems.
"I used to spend time on test prep because I felt pressured to do it," said Yi, who attended Hobart in Koreatown herself and returned a decade ago to teach. "But I think it's kind of a waste of time. The students get bored and don't take it seriously and it defeats the purpose."
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In 2006, Harvard sociologists struck a mother lode of social-science data, offering a new way to answer big questions about how race and cultural tastes affect relationships.The source: some 1,700 Facebook profiles, downloaded from an entire class of students at an "anonymous" university, that could reveal how friendships and interests evolve over time.
It was the kind of collection that hundreds of scholars would find interesting. And in 2008, the Harvard team began to realize that potential by publicly releasing part of its archive.
But today the data-sharing venture has collapsed. The Facebook archive is more like plutonium than gold--its contents yanked offline, its future release uncertain, its creators scolded by some scholars for downloading the profiles without students' knowledge and for failing to protect their privacy. Those students have been identified as Harvard College's Class of 2009.
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Here is another example of New York charter schools using their greater autonomies to develop innovative practices, in this case achieving operating efficiencies during this time where increasing pension costs are a particular concern for school districts. A recent Fordham Institute study reports that, between 2004 and 2010, district pension costs nationally increased from 12% to over 15% of salaries, amid concern that the public pension plans are underfunded.The study reports that some New York charter schools are opting out of the traditional teacher-pension system, with only 28% of the state's charters participating in the state or city teachers retirement systems (NYSTRS and TRSNYC, respectively) in 2008-9. Those that opt-out cite the high cost of employer contributions. In 2009, the annual employer contribution rate to NYSTRS was 6.19% of an employee's annual salary, and that to TRSNYC was an astonishing 30.8% (by far the highest in this six-state study).
But that doesn't mean that these charter schools are not interested in helping their employees have a more secure future. Schools that choose not to participate in public pension plans most often provide their teachers with defined-contribution plans (401(k) or 403(b)) with employer matches similar to those for private-sector professionals. Although employer contribution rates vary, they generally range up to 6% of the employee's salary. Vesting periods range from immediate vesting to five-year vesting schedules.
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In 2008, when Katherine Sprowal's son, Matthew, was selected in a lottery to attend the Harlem Success Academy 3 charter school, she was thrilled. "I felt like we were getting the best private school, and we didn't have to pay for it," she recalled.Eva Moskowitz responds, via Whitney Tilson:And so, when Eva S. Moskowitz, the former city councilwoman who operates seven Success charter schools in Harlem and the Bronx, asked Ms. Sprowal to be in a promotional video, she was happy to be included.
Matthew is bright but can be disruptive and easily distracted. It was not a natural fit for the Success charters, which are known for discipline and long school days. From Day 1 of kindergarten, Ms. Sprowal said, he was punished for acting out.
"They kept him after school to practice walking in the hallway," she said.
Several times, she was called to pick him up early, she said, and in his third week he was suspended three days for bothering other children.
The facts clearly show that Success Academies' educators are incredibly committed to serving children with special needs, we serve a high percentage, and do not push out children who don't "thrive." The Success Academies' special education population is equal to the citywide average of 12.5%. Our ELL population is 9.6%, and when you factor in children who we have successfully taught English (and are no longer ELL), we clearly educate the same children. As Winerip points out, our student attrition rate is significantly lower than our co-located schools and the citywide average.
As the paper trail examined by Winerip clearly indicates, no one pressured Ms. Sprowal to leave the school. Her son did not have an IEP until 3 years after he left the school. When the family left the school in 2008, Ms. Sprowal wrote effusive emails about how happy she was with how the school handled her situation. Three years later, after coaching from the United Federation of Teachers, his mother is now unhappy. The UFT spent five years hovering over our schools to find hordes of students who were unfairly "pushed" out, and the best they could find was a single story with a happy ending.
Most educators would agree that children are different and don't all excel in the same settings. That's why having choices is so important. Different schools are different in their approaches. Some are strict, some less strict, some have bigger class sizes, some smaller etc.. It is our obligation to advise a parent that there might be a better setting for their child.
Our schools are a work in progress, every day we try to do better for the largest number of children. While I don't believe that the school mishandled the situation, we are always working to improve how we serve children with all types of needs. For next year, we have added a 12:1:1 program at two of our schools and a Director of Special Education at the network-level who comes from the city's District 75.
What is most troubling about several of Winerip's recent columns is the suggestion that low-performing schools can't be expected to do any better. Winerip recently wrote that it wasn't Jamaica High School's fault that only 38% of its kids graduate with regents diplomas, because it gets more of the tough-to-serve kids (2% more homeless children, 6% more children with special needs). What school could possibly do better under those circumstances?
The theme is repeated in this story. 33% of 4th graders passed the state ELA test at PS 75, but public schools like PS 75 get more tough-to-serve children. (PS 75 does not, but schools like it do, he argues) When schools like ours have 86% of 4th graders passing the same test, it must be because we don't have the same kids, because schools can't possibly be expected to do that well.
Winerip also makes the argument that schools like PS 75 care about children and thus have low test scores while schools like Harlem Success Academy don't care about children and thus have high test scores.
Those are both false arguments that we must dispel if we're to improve the quality of public education. Schools with tough-to-serve children can do better and it's possible to care about children AND want them to perform well on tests.
At Success Academies, we want children to achieve at high levels AND we care deeply about their social and emotional development. We aim to create schools that are nurturing, joyful, and compelling AND that prepare children to excel in whatever their chosen field. I tell our principals, our true measure of success is whether children race through the door each morning and are disappointed to leave each day because school is just that compelling. Do we also want our children to score well on tests? Yes. High performance and joy are not mutually exclusive.
Warmly,
Eva Moskowitz
CEO and Founder
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The Atlanta cheating scandal has put a spotlight on how schools could fudge standardized tests.In California, schools are supposed to report any irregularities in testing and investigate them themselves. The state no longer collects data on erasures, one of the ways that investigators detected cheating in Atlanta. Nor does it do random audits during testing, according to USA Today.
Irregularities can range from teachers accidentally not following exact instructions on how to administer state tests to outright cheating. The state then decides if it needs to adjust school scores to discount some of the test results. California keeps the records of testing irregularities for just one year.
I last requested those records for all schools in San Diego County in April. Keep in mind, these are the school districts that followed the rules and reported irregularities, just like they are supposed to.
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How do you sell a school that doesn't exist?If you are Chris Whittle, an educational entrepreneur, you gather well-to-do parents at places like the Harvard Club or the Crosby Hotel in Manhattan, hoping the feeling of accomplishment will rub off. Then you pour wine and offer salmon sandwiches and wow the audience with pictures of the stunning new private school you plan to build in Chelsea. Focus on the bilingual curriculum and the collaborative approach to learning. And take swipes at established competitors that you believe are overly focused on sending students to top-tier colleges. Invoke some Tiger-mom fear by pointing out that 200,000 Americans are learning Chinese, while 300 million Chinese have studied English.
Then watch them come.
As of June 15, more than 1,200 families had applied for early admission to Avenues: The World School, a for-profit private school co-founded by Mr. Whittle that will not open its doors until September 2012. Acceptance letters go out this week. Gardner P. Dunnan, the former head of the Dalton School and academic dean and head of the upper school at Avenues, said he expected 5,000 applicants for the 1,320 spots available from nursery through ninth grade. "You have to see the enthusiasm," Mr. Whittle crowed.
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Letters to the New York Times:
A lively debate about charter schools, high-stakes testing and impoverished students arose as David Brooks criticized Diane Ravitch, she answered back and readers joined the fray.THE LETTER
To the Editor:
Re "Smells Like School Spirit," by David Brooks (column, July 1):
Mr. Brooks has misrepresented my views. While I have criticized charter schools, I am always careful to point out that they vary widely. The overwhelming majority of high-quality research studies on charters shows that some are excellent, some are abysmal and most are no better than regular public schools.
Some charters succeed because they have additional resources, supplied by their philanthropic sponsors; some get better results by adding extra instructional time. We can learn from these lessons to help regular public schools.
Others succeed by limiting the admission of students with disabilities and those who can't read English, or by removing those with learning problems. These students are then overrepresented in regular public schools, making comparisons between the two sectors unfair.
I don't want to get rid of testing. But tests should be used for information and diagnostics to improve teaching and learning, not to hand out bonuses, fire teachers and close schools.
When high stakes are attached to tests, people often act in ways that compromise educational values. High-stakes testing incentivizes narrowing of the curriculum, gaming the system, teaching to bad tests and cheating.
Poverty has a strong influence on academic achievement, and our society must both improve schools and reduce poverty.
Top-performing nations like Finland and Japan have taken the time to build a strong public school system, one with a rich curriculum and well-educated, respected teachers. Our desire for fast solutions gets in the way of the long-term thinking and the carefully designed changes that are needed to truly transform our schools.
DIANE RAVITCH
Brooklyn, July 1, 2011The writer is the education historian.
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Conrad Wolfram Video.
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Creating a new system of accountability for schools in Wisconsin could be a great help to parents and school districts and, thus, an important educational reform for the state. If the new system is fair and done right, it would provide plenty of clear information on which schools are achieving the right outcomes.Ideally, it would measure schools not only on whether they have met certain standards but how much students and schools have improved over a certain time period. It also would measure all schools that receive public funding equally - public, charter and voucher - so that families would have the information they need to make good choices. That's all important.
Gov. Scott Walker, state schools superintendent Tony Evers and others have signed on to create a new school accountability system and to seek approval from the U.S. Department of Education to allow the system to replace the decade-old, federally imposed one they say is broken. The feds should give that approval, and the state should move forward with this reform and others.
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Simmering tensions between the nation's largest teachers' union and a highly acclaimed national service program boiled over this week. The National Education Association vowed to "publicly oppose Teach for America (TFA) contracts when they are used in Districts where there is no teacher shortage or when Districts use TFA agreements to reduce teacher costs, silence union voices, or as a vehicle to bust unions."Teach for America is a nonprofit organization that recruits graduates from leading universities to teach for two years in some of the nation's most impoverished school districts. Study after study shows that TFA's dedicated teachers are effective in lifting achievement levels among the poor and minority students they serve. Why would the NEA want to deprive our neediest kids of good teachers?
NEA member Marianne Bratsanos of Washington, who proposed the anti-TFA resolution, complained that the volunteer group undermines schools of education and accepts money from foundations and other funders who are hostile to unions. The key complaint, however, seems to be that TFA volunteers are displacing more experienced teachers, even in districts with no teacher shortages.
Full disclosure: I'm a TFA alum. You may discount my views accordingly, but the NEA's indictment is very far from the reality I encountered on the ground teaching Language Arts to inner city kids in Charlotte, N.C.
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p>Pursuing this topic, here are some of the good or interesting papers I discovered:This UK piece reframes the David Card IV literature in terms of signaling and with UK data estimates that signaling accounts for one-third of the educational wage premium. It uses a “compulsory” instrumental variable from earlier UK schooling reforms.
Here is the Hanming Fang paper (IER): “…productivity enhancement accounts for close to two-thirds of the college wage
premium.” It uses very different techniques, based on simulations, not IV and the like.
This paper shows that rank measure in class doesn’t affect earnings, contrary to what signaling theories should predict. This may be a puzzle for learning theories as well.
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The last time Iowa was considered No. 1 overall in education, teachers faced fewer challenges in the classroom, students were more homogenous and school districts required less of them to graduate.Change is hard for most organizations. It is easy to live on the "fumes" of the past, until it is too late to change.That was 1992.
Today, as Gov. Terry Branstad endeavors to restore the state's standing as a national education leader, teachers, policymakers and politicians fiercely disagree over what it will take to get back on top. Some dispute that Iowa's students have slid dramatically in performance at all.
What the different factions do agree on is that Iowa is experiencing rapid change in the classroom: Students are significantly poorer, more urban and more diverse than they were in 1992. Course work is more rigorous than it was in the early 1990s but, in an increasingly competitive global economy, that course work is still not believed to be enough.
How does Wisconsin compare to the world? Learn more at www.wisconsin2.org
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Higher education keeps getting lower. And not just in my home state, where the core curriculum at the University of Arkansas' campus at Fayetteville is being hollowed out. It's happening all over. In Britain, the study of the humanities is being diluted, too.Happily, this sad trend has inspired a familiar reaction. Over here, as state universities cut back on required courses that once were considered necessary for a well-rounded education, small liberal arts colleges have taken up the slack. Now comes word from England that A.C. Grayling, the renowned philosopher, has joined with other free-spirited academics to start a new, private College of the Humanities.
These new schools are part of an old tradition. Isn't that how the first universities in Europe began -- as communities of scholars teaching the classical curriculum? They were founded, organized and run by the faculty, not administrators. And out of those universities came a great renaissance, the rebirth of classical education after what we now call the Dark Ages.
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Roger Pascoe, head of music at Hanover primary school in Islington, north London, says 11-year-old Gabriel Millard-Clothier throws himself into everything he does. Gabriel plays the flute, the violin and the bass recorder and has recently been awarded a £1,000 ($1,600) bursary from the London Symphony Orchestra, which means he gets a year's mentoring from a senior orchestra member. He has already played on stage at the Barbican.Gabriel's sister, Phoebe, 13, plays piano (classical and jazz) and the cello. Then comes younger sister, Honey, eight, on piano, flute and descant recorder and finally six-year-old Lucien, who plays classical guitar. Is this a typical family? Is Hanover primary an unusually musical school? Pascoe says the headteacher is keen on music and promotes it. Gabriel thinks Pascoe is an awesome teacher. On the other hand, Gabriel doesn't like to practise. "No child likes to practise," says Pascoe. "That would be strange."
Phoebe has a music scholarship at St Marylebone School in London, a top state school. Competition is intense: for entry in September 2011, the school had more than 200 applicants for eight music places.
The numbers reflect a trend: many children are taking up one, if not two or three musical instruments despite the costs, which can run into thousands of pounds for a family with two or three children and much more for someone such as the writer and broadcaster Rosie Millard, mother of the Millard-Clothier children. While she may be at the extreme end of the spectrum (her children's regime is detailed in her blog, helicoptermum.com), Millard is certainly not alone in her determination. Many parents have a quiet obsession with making their children learn music, even if they are not musical themselves.
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A state school board has set a minimum score on a language-competency test for teachers who have not mastered English.The Providence Journal reports that the state Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education voted on Thursday to set a minimum score. Education Commissioner Deborah Gist described the score as the "bare minimum'' of fluency.
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When I was in grade school, teachers came in two varieties: the "easy and nice ones" and the "mean and strict ones." We didn't even have to decide which was which. The older kids filled us in on the playground, so we always knew what we were in for next year.Now that I'm much older - and, I hope, wiser - I see how silly it was to lump all those teachers into such categories. I see how each one brought a special gift into the classroom and into my life. I wish I would have known that then and shown them the respect and appreciation they deserved.
Unfortunately, teacher labeling has returned. Not by older kids on the playground but by activists and politicians in Madison. Depending on whom you talk to, teachers are either "underpaid and upset that the government is going back on promises" or "unreasonable civil servants who won't pay their fair share."
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It's much tougher to implement the law than it is to write it -- that's the lesson educators are learning this summer as they work to implement a complicated new educator evaluation system.Some area school leaders question how fair the system can be and say they don't believe it's possible to get everything done on time with the state's strict timeline.
"The timetable is practically impossible," Watertown City School District Superintendent Terry N. Fralick said. "By and large, we feel the timetable cannot be met. But we will do our best to work on it and show good faith."
District officials will work with the Watertown Education Association and the Watertown Association of Supervisors and Administrators, the unions that cover teachers and principals, respectively. School leaders in other north country districts and across the state will be doing the same thing.
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Sweden could become the first country in Europe to offer Chinese lessons to all schoolchildren under plans floated by the Swedish education minister.Jan Björklund said giving future generations access to Chinese language tuition was crucial to national competitiveness.
"Chinese will be much more important, from an economic perspective, than French or Spanish," he told the Dagens Industri newspaper.
Other western countries have also started introducing Chinese to school curriculums in recognition of China's growing global role, but Mr Björklund's plan aims to put Sweden ahead of the pack.
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Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer:
The New York Times coverage of the recent National Education Association (N.E.A.) convention focused on the inconsequential, while paying little notice to what harbored fundamental significance. It aimed its spotlight and lingered on what it referred to as a shift in position: "... the nation's largest teachers' union on Monday affirmed for the first time that evidence of student learning must be considered in the evaluations of school teachers around the country." (The New York Times, July 5, 2011).In fact, there was little in the way of concessions by N.E.A. on this point, as The New York Times article itself conceded: "But blunting the policy's potential impact, the union also made clear that it continued to oppose the use of existing standardized test scores to judge teachers..." And the Times added that the N.E.A. went on to insist that only those tests that have been shown to be "developmentally appropriate, scientifically valid and reliable for the purpose of measuring both student learning and a teacher's performance" should be used. This qualification eliminates almost, if not all, conventional tests.
The N.E.A. is right to be cautious about basing teacher evaluations and the fate of teachers on the test scores of their students, as the Obama administration has been single-mindedly promoting. We know that students' standardized test scores are correlated above all with their economic standing. As Joe Nocera recently pointed out in an op-ed New York Times article (April 25, 2011): "Going back to the famous Coleman report in the 1960s, social scientists have contended -- and unquestionably proved -- that students' socioeconomic backgrounds vastly outweigh what goes on in the school as factors in determining how much they learn."
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Delivering her first State of Education address on Thursday, Oklahoma's new Republican Superintendent Janet Barresi urged public school administrators and teachers to rise to the challenge of budget cuts totaling $100 million this year to public schools.Barresi, a dentist and charter school organizer elected in November to replace longtime Democratic Superintendent Sandy Garrett, delivered her address to about 2,500 participants at the annual administrative conference at the Cox Convention Center.
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IT IS not exactly unusual for children to cheat at school. But Indonesians have learned recently that their teachers add a new twist to a familiar tale: ordering their own pupils to cheat, even if they do not want to. Not surprisingly, the revelation has led to an anxious debate about whether anyone can trust the grades of millions of young men and women who come onto the labour market each year in South-East Asia's biggest economy.The scandal came to light at the beginning of June when the mother of a 13-year-old boy in Surabaya, in eastern Java, told the local media that her son had been forced by his teachers to share his answers to a national exam with his classmates. The mother, Siami, first complained to the school but was ignored. So she took her story to a local radio station.
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With nearly one in six students exhibiting mental health problems and fewer specialists to monitor their behavior, Madison school and community leaders are launching new efforts to better treat student mental health.TJ Mertz advocates property tax increases to support additional Madison School District expenditures.The Madison school district is expanding services this fall, and Superintendent Dan Nerad is calling for a task force from the broader community, including health care providers, to review the issue and devise solutions.
"The need far outweighs the resources that are currently available," Nerad said.
Local experts say untreated children's mental health problems such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress can result in lower academic performance, higher dropout rates, and more classroom disruptions, truancy and crime.
The problems are often exacerbated by childhood trauma related to poverty, domestic violence and substance abuse. Madison's growing number of low-income students, who account for two-thirds of those exhibiting mental health problems, also face barriers to accessing mental health services, local experts and advocates say.
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A year ago, everyone from President Obama's education point man Arne Duncan to then Rochester schools Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard talked about the need for greater teacher accountability. Even the leaders of teachers unions were talking about the importance of holding teachers and principals accountable through more rigorous evaluations.So much can change in 365 days.
Last week, the New York State United Teachers union sued the State Education Department over teacher evaluations. The union says that the Board of Regents overreached its authority and violated state law by approving stronger regulations for evaluations than the law required.
The regulations allow school districts to double the weight given to state tests, permitting the use of test results to count for up to 40 percent of a teacher's evaluation. The law allows student test results to count for 20 percent of a teacher's evaluation.
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Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:
The provisions of the Budget Repair Bill have gone into effect. For school districts that (unlike Madison) did not extend their collective bargaining agreement with their teachers unions, it is a brand new day.In those districts, collective bargaining agreements are essentially gone and the districts have much wider discretion over compensation and working conditions for their teachers and other staff.
The Kaukauna School District is one that has taken advantage of the Budget Repair Bill provisions. Like nearly all school districts, Kaukauna now requires its teachers and staff to pay the employees' share of their retirement contributions, which amounts to 5.8% of their salary, and is also requiring a larger employee payment toward the cost of health insurance, up to 12.6% from 10%.
The district also took advantage of the expiration of its collective bargaining agreement to impose a number of other changes on its teachers. For example, it unilaterally extended the work day for high school teachers from 7.5 to 8 hours and increased the teaching load from five to six high school classes a day.
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In May 2011, state education agency representatives from New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Tennessee attended a series of workshops and briefings organized by the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE). The sessions described the changes that have taken place in Louisiana over the past six years, including the creation of the Recovery School District (RSD) that redeveloped unproductive schools in New Orleans and elsewhere, the restructuring of the LDOE, and efforts to create a new performance-based organizational culture in state and local education agencies.Presenters included LDOE staff, RSD administrators, academic observers, nonprofit service partners, and education stakeholders. There was a candid discussion of the LDOE's overall school improvement goals, steps taken to achieve those objectives, and in some cases missteps made in the effort to dramatically turn around a large number of schools in a relatively short time and to prompt improvements in all schools across the state.
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Promoters of higher education often point to differences in lifetime earnings to justify the price of higher education. Pay for an education today, and the "investment" will pay for itself over the student's lifetime. Not only will the student make more money, but his or her career will be far more satisfying.But with the cost of higher education skyrocketing, many families are beginning to question whether a college degree is worth the price. The arithmetic is persuasive. At the stock market's historical 9% annual return (nominal return over the past 50 years), $100,000 not invested in a four-year college education would be worth over $3 million in 40 years. That return would handsomely eclipse the nominal lifetime earnings difference of $1 million often quoted for college vs. high school graduates. Put aside the fact that the four-year degree is being slowly replaced by the five-year degree, which bumps the cost of higher education even higher.
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One political party in Switzerland thinks PowerPoint presentations are actually costing the country billions of dollars.The Anti-PowerPoint Party wants to ban the software from being used in Switzerland. It even compares PowerPoint to a disease.
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When course requirements at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shifted 10 years ago, faculty members in the mathematics department found themselves with a new task in their job description. Not only did they have to teach their students to solve equations; they also had to instruct them in writing and communicating effectively on the subject.This change in duties -- which mirrored similar shifts in the teaching of discipline-specific writing at other institutions -- gave rise to a host of new challenges, from the administrative to the pedagogic, said Haynes Miller, professor of math at MIT. The math faculty there had to learn how to teach the subject from a different perspective -- one in which words, not just numbers and symbols, are given emphasis.
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Heather Vogell, Alan Judd and Bill Rankin
State investigators have uncovered a decade of systemic cheating in the Atlanta Public Schools and conclude that Superintendent Beverly Hall knew or should have known about it, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned.Douglas Stanglin:In a report that Gov. Nathan Deal planned to release today, the investigators name nearly 180 educators, including more than three dozen principals, as participants in cheating on state curriculum tests, officials said over the weekend. The investigators obtained scores of confessions.
The findings suggest the national accolades that Hall and the school system have collected -- and the much-vaunted academic progress for which she claimed credit -- were based on falsehoods. Raising test scores apparently became a higher priority than conducting the district's business in an ethical manner.
Details are beginning to tumble out from a 428-page report by state investigators on alleged cheating in Atlanta Public Schools.PBS NewsHour:On Tuesday, Gov. Nathan Deal released only a two-page summary of the report showing organized, systemic cheating in Atlantic Public Schools by scores of educators, including 38 principals.
Deal says "there will be consequences" for educators who cheated and has forwarded the findings to three district attorneys as well as state and city education officials.
GWEN IFILL: Now, an exhaustive new report reveals nearly 200 educators cheated to boost student test scores in Atlanta, a problem that has surfaced in school districts across the country.The Georgia investigation commissioned by Gov. Nathan Deal found, results were altered on state curriculum tests by district administrators, principals and teachers for as long as a decade. Educators literally erased and corrected students' mistakes to make sure schools met state-imposed testing standards. And it found evidence of cheating in 44 of the 56 schools examined for the 2009 school year.
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A couple of key actions have to happen this week for Teach for America to come to Seattle Schools.One is at the Board meeting on Wednesday night. There is a state entity called the Professional Educator Standards Board (PESB) that grants educational entities the right to create conditional certificate programs. They require School Board approval has to happen prior to "applying for a conditional certficiate for a teacher candidate. Therefore, Board action is required to hire any TFA candidate if any are selected for hire by a school-based hiring team."
The second action that needs to happen is on Thursday, at the PESB meeting where the UW's College of Education will present their proposal for their teaching certificate program for TFA recruits (and only TFA recruits; no one else can apply to this program).
If you would like to let the PESB know what you think of the plan, e-mail them at pesb@k12.wa.us before Thursday.
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About a dozen members of a bipartisan, mostly volunteer organization called Common Ground file into Superintendent Tony Evers' utilitarian conference room in downtown Milwaukee. The group is exploring how to help Milwaukee's beleaguered schools, and it has scheduled a meeting with the head of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction as part of its research.How does Wisconsin compare to other states and the world? Learn more at www.wisconsin2.org.Tall, thin and gray haired, Evers has a boyish smile and a welcoming manner. He's now in a white shirt and tie, sans the suit coat he wore to an earlier meeting with suburban school officials in Pewaukee.
Common Ground, a nonpartisan coalition that includes churches, nonprofits and labor unions, has come to Evers' office today looking for advice on how best to direct its considerable resources toward helping Milwaukee students, whose performance in both traditional public schools and in taxpayer-funded voucher schools ranks at the bottom of major American cities.
After initial pleasantries and introductions are exchanged, Keisha Krumm, lead organizer for Common Ground, asks Evers a question. "At this stage we're still researching what issue we will be focusing on. But we do want to know what you can do. What's your power and influence?"
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The Madison School District will lose $6.7 million in state aid next year -- $2 million more than it anticipated -- according to estimates released Friday by the Department of Public Instruction.Related: 1983-2007 Wisconsin K-12 Spending Growth via WISTAX:The 13.5 percent cut is third-highest in the state among K-12 districts and higher than the 10 percent cut the School Board used to calculate its preliminary budget last week.
The $43.2 million in aid is also nearly one-third less than the $60.8 million the district received from the state four years ago.
Superintendent Dan Nerad said continuous cuts in state aid are hurting the quality of public education.
"School districts like ours cannot continue to be in an environment like this with increased expectations for student performance, and yet we're not willing to provide the resources," Nerad said.
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School may be out for the summer, but school choice is in, as states across the nation have moved to expand education opportunities for disadvantaged kids. This year is shaping up as the best for reformers in a very long time.No fewer than 13 states have enacted school choice legislation in 2011, and 28 states have legislation pending. Last month alone, Louisiana enhanced its state income tax break for private school tuition; Ohio tripled the number of students eligible for school vouchers; and North Carolina passed a law letting parents of students with special needs claim a tax credit for expenses related to private school tuition and other educational services.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker made headlines this year for taking on government unions. Less well known is that last month he signed a bill that removes the cap of 22,500 on the number of kids who can participate in Milwaukee's Parental Choice Program, the nation's oldest voucher program, and creates a new school choice initiative for families in Racine County. "We now have 13 programs new or expanded this year alone" in the state, says Susan Meyers of the Wisconsin-based Foundation for Educational Choice.
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Heavily Democratic Massachusetts on Friday became the latest state to curtail public workers' collective-bargaining rights, as lawmakers approved a $30.6 billion budget that gives cities and towns greater leeway to force employees to pay more for their health care.The restrictions come as states including Ohio and Wisconsin, where Republicans control the governor's office and legislature, have been attacking collective bargaining.
More-recent moves elsewhere show Democrats, long union allies, are starting to demand more savings from public employees as well. In New Jersey, the Democrat-controlled legislature recently passed cuts to pension and health-care benefits pushed by Republican Gov. Chris Christie.
In Massachusetts, House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, a Democrat, said after Friday's vote that "this common-sense reform will save $100 million for cities and towns and preserve the jobs of fire-fighters, police officers and teachers."
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U.S. officials defended their schools--blaming poor performance on the relative prevalence of immigrant families in the United States. But Schleicher and his colleagues noted that native-born Americans performed just as unimpressively. In fact, worldwide, the share of children from immigrant backgrounds explains only 3 percent of the variance between countries. A country's wealth does not predict success, either. Gross domestic product per capita predicts only 6 percent of the difference in scores. Schleicher also noticed, however, that in the U.S. in particular, poverty was destiny. Low-income American students did (and still do) much worse than high-income ones on PISA. But poor kids in Finland and Canada do far better relative to their more privileged peers, despite their disadvantages.More, from Steve Hsu.In Germany, the test became a household name and inspired a prime-time TV quiz show, The PISA Show. Even Schleicher's father began taking his work more seriously. Meanwhile, Schleicher visited dozens of schools and pored over the data. He concluded that the best school systems became great after undergoing a series of crucial changes. They made their teacher-training schools much more rigorous and selective; they put developing high-quality principals and teachers above efforts like reducing class size or equipping sports teams; and once they had these well-trained professionals in place, they found ways to hold the teachers accountable for results while allowing creativity in their methods. Notably, in every case, these school systems devoted equal or more resources to the schools with the poorest kids.
These days, Schleicher travels the world with a PowerPoint presentation detailing his findings. It seems to have more data points embedded in its scatter plots than our galaxy has stars. When his audiences get distracted by the tribal disputes that plague education, he returns to the facts with a polite smile, like C-3PO with a slight German accent. He likes to end his presentation with a slide that reads, in a continuously scrolling ticker, "Without data, you are just another person with an opinion ... Without data, you are just another person with an opinion ..."
How does Wisconsin stack up against the world? Learn more, here: www.wisconsin2.org.
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Why is the performance of students in other countries surpassing that of U.S. students? It's a question that Marc S. Tucker, president and chief executive officer of the National Center on Education and the Economy in Washington sought to answer at a May symposium focused on education reforms in other countries, including Canada, China, Finland, Japan and Singapore.Where does Wisconsin stand globally? Learn more, here: www.wisconsin2.org.The report, "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: An American Agenda for Education Reform," provides some scathing criticism of the U.S. for allowing other nations to catch up and then surpass America in K-12 education.
After the symposium, Tucker spoke about what we can learn from his group's findings. Below are excerpts of the conversation.
Q: The report indicates that countries outperforming the U.S. have developed strategies we have not. What are the key lessons about high performance we can take away from what is being done elsewhere?
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Starting this fall, the Indiana Department of Education will no longer require Indiana's public schools to teach cursive writing.State officials sent school leaders a memo April 25 telling them that instead of cursive writing, students will be expected to become proficient in keyboard use.
The memo says schools may continue to teach cursive as a local standard, or they may decide to stop teaching cursive altogether.
Greene County resident and parent Ericka Hostetter has mixed feelings about the teaching of cursive. She has three children, and two will be in public schools next fall.
"I'm right in the middle," she said, noting that she learned about it on Facebook. "I don't use cursive much. I use keyboard. I use my phone, so even for my generation, I think we use the keyboard more."
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Manteca Superintendent William Draa:
I will begin by acknowledging there are many facets of the latest California Budget that are onerous to many organizations. With that said, I will focus on the educational piece.The latest State Budget by our leaders in Sacramento has not only put education in a precarious and unknown position but also ties the hands of the very people who are supposed to protect and lead school districts.
If in January revenues fall $2 billion or more short of projections the following will happen:
School district revenues would be reduced 4 percent, or $1.5 billion (an average of $250 per student)
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Public schools aren't the only ones divided over the state's new private school voucher program that became law Friday and is supposed to be in place by the time classes start in August.Greater Lafayette private schools are split over the new system -- one that some say will expand educational opportunities but others fear could drag state regulations into the mix and restrict freedoms their classrooms currently enjoy.
A handful of Lafayette area schools will be taking advantage of the program. But with such a short time before the new school year starts, the most basic information about how to use the voucher program created by the General Assembly in April still is not available -- not even the online application form.
The process likely will face even greater delays in light of a lawsuit filed Friday in Marion County Superior Court by the Indiana State Teacher's Association. The lawsuit, which seeks an injunction to prevent the disbursement of funds under the new program, will continue to stall the process as it winds its way through the court system. All the while, private schools hoping to participate wait for answers.
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One of the many things I learned producing my film The Finland Phenomenon, was the importance of setting a very high standard for the education and training of teachers.Finland's high school teachers are required to have both a Bachelors and Masters degree in the subject they teach (e.g. - math, physics, history, etc) combined with one-year of pedagogical training with very heavy emphasis in real classroom teaching experience under the guidance of an outstanding seasoned teacher.
By contrast, most U.S. States require only a Bachelors degree from a college of education with an emphasis in the subject to be taught - and frequently that subject matter is taught by professors in the Education School, not in the actual subject department. Think of it as content and rigor "light" for teachers.
So, what should America do to apply this obvious lesson from Finland? My thoughts:
1- each U.S. State needs to cut off the supply of teachers not sufficiently prepared to teach this generation at its source. The source is colleges of education. A State legislature and Governor can change the requirements to be a teacher in their State. All it takes is courage to withstand the screams from colleges of education - the sacred cash cow of most universities.
2- To teach at the high school level, a State should require the prospective teacher to have at least an undergraduate degree in the subject they plan to teach and from the department that teaches that subject (e.g. - teaching math? Require a B.S. from the Math department).
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A few weeks back, Governor Chafee invited Deborah Gist, Rhode Island's commissioner of public schools, to sit in on his meeting, arranged by the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, with noted education historian Diane Ravitch.The two energetic foes on school reform reportedly did not get along. Ms. Gist says that Ms. Ravitch kept making points irrelevant to Rhode Island. Ms. Ravitch says Ms. Gist interrupted her discourse repeatedly, and that in encounters with the powerful in America since 1958 (such as Sen. John F. Kennedy [D-Mass.]), she had "never encountered such behavior."
She demanded an apology from Ms. Gist. They later made peace. Mr. Chafee said he saw nothing inappropriate in Ms. Gist's behavior.
Both women have egos large enough to encompass their educational ambitions -- in fact, Ms. Ravitch has two pedagogical histories under her belt. She was once on Ms. Gist's "side" on school reform. That changed, says Ms. Ravitch, after she lost confidence in testing and charter schools as the prime strategies for success, and started pushing for more respect (pay) for teachers, less reliance on tests, less hope in charter schools and more trust in -- well, so far as we can tell -- in the status quo.
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Well, that oversized Kindle didn't become the textbook killer Amazon hoped it would be, but at least one country is moving forward with plans to lighten the load on its future generation of Samsung execs. South Korea announced this week that it plans to spend over $2 billion developing digital textbooks, replacing paper in all of its schools by 2015. Students would access paper-free learning materials from a cloud-based system, supplementing traditional content with multimedia on school-supplied tablets. The system would also enable homebound students to catch up on work remotely -- they won't be practicing taekwondo on a virtual mat, but could participate in math or reading lessons while away from school, for example. Both programs clearly offer significant advantages for the country's education system, but don't expect to see a similar solution pop up closer to home -- with the US population numbering six times that of our ally in the Far East, many of our future leaders could be carrying paper for a long time to come.Brian S. Hall has more.
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Brian Slodysko and Tara Malone:
Vice President Joe Biden lambasted what he called an increasingly union-hostile "new" Republican party, during remarks delivered to National Education Association representatives today, raising the specter of high profile labor fights picked by Republican governors with public workers unions across the country.Mike Antonucci"There is an organized effort to place blame for budget shortfalls on educators and other public workers. It is one of the biggest scams in modern American history," Biden said during a speech laden with political red meat, smoothing over past disagreements between teachers unions and the Obama Administration.
"The new Republican party has undertaken the most direct assault on labor, not just in my lifetime ... but literally since the 1920s," he said. "This is not your father's Republican party. This is a different breed of cat."
Biden's remarks to one of the nation's largest teachers unions, a speech that lasted about 30 minutes, came a day before its members are expected to decide whether to cast their support behind the administration in the 2012 presidential election.
The National Education Association Representative Assembly opened this morning in Chicago with 7,321 delegates attending, which is by far the lowest number since I began covering the convention in 1998.Mike Antonucci:The atmosphere still resembles a political party convention, with speeches, confetti and deafening music, including the new NEA theme song, "Standing Strong":
"Standing strong, standing tall. Standing up for what is right and true, NEA is standing up for me and you!"
Coming soon to a Chevy truck commercial near you.
It is customary for the mayor of the host city to welcome the delegates, but since the mayor is Rahm Emanuel, NEA prudently got hold of Illinois Gov. Quinn instead. After the delegates adopted the standing rules for the assembly, it was time for NEA president Dennis Van Roekel's keynote speech.
There were two new business items (NBIs) of note debated this afternoon. The first was NBI C, submitted by the NEA Board of Directors, which directs the NEA president to "communicate aggressively, forcefully, and immediately to President Barack Obama and US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that NEA is appalled with Secretary Duncan's practice of..." and then lists 13 of Duncan's most heinous crimes, like "Focusing so heavily on charter schools that viable and proven innovative school models (such as magnet schools) have been overlooked, and simultaneously failing to highlight with the same enthusiasm the innovation in our non-charter public schools."Stephanie Banchero:
Widespread unhappiness among teachers about President Barack Obama's education policies is threatening to derail a National Education Association proposal to give him an early endorsement for re-election.Associated Press:The political action committee of the NEA, the nation's largest union, adopted a resolution in May to endorse Mr. Obama. The proposal will come before the NEA's 9,000-member representative assembly on Monday at the union's annual convention here.
The union has never endorsed a presidential candidate this early in the campaign cycle, instead waiting to make the decision during the election year. But union leaders, anticipating a tough re-election campaign, wanted to bolster support for the president early on, a move that has run into opposition from union members.
Vice President Joe Biden says the "new Republican Party" fundamentally doesn't believe in public education the way Democrats do.Much more, here."There is an organized effort to place blame for budget shortfalls on educators and other public workers. It is one of the biggest scams in modern American history," he was quoted as saying by the Chicago Tribune.
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Paul Hill, Christine Campbell, via a Deb Britt email:
A growing number of urban districts across the country are profoundly changing the role of the school district and its relationship to schools in order to bring about dramatically better outcomes for students. New York City, New Orleans, Chicago, Denver, Hartford, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., are among more than 20 districts pursuing a "portfolio strategy" of continuous improvement. These districts are creating diverse options for families in disadvantaged neighborhoods by opening new autonomous schools, giving existing schools more control of budgeting and hiring, and holding all schools to common performance standards.CRPE has been studying the development of the portfolio strategy in several cities for the past three years. This interim assessment finds that:
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It all started when my daughter, also a Madison teacher, called me. "You have to get down to the union office. We need to call people to go to the rally at the Capitol." I told her I hadn't heard about the rally. "It's on Facebook," she responded impatiently. "That's how they did it in Egypt."That Sunday rally in Capitol Square was just the first step in the massive protests against Gov. Scott Walker's infamous "budget repair bill." The Madison teachers' union declared a "work action" and that Wednesday, instead of going to school, we marched into the Capitol building, filling every nook and cranny. The excitement mounted day by day that week, as teachers from throughout the state were joined by students, parents, union and nonunion workers in the occupation and demonstrations.
Madison teachers stayed out for four days. It was four exhilarating days, four confusing days, four stressful and exhausting days.
When we returned to school the following week, I debated how to handle the days off. We had received a three- page email from our principal warning us to "remain politically neutral" as noted in the school board policy relating to controversial issues. We were to watch not only our words, but also our "tone and body language." If students wanted to talk about the rallies, we were to respond: "We are back in school to learn now."
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These days tenure for teachers is such a brawl in America's elementary and secondary schools that it's easy to forget that it's more a cornerstone of higher education. When Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, announced earlier this month that he was leaving the White House to return to the University of Chicago it was a reminder just how strong the ties -- and inducements -- of university tenure can be, and why it has recently come under fire.At colleges and universities, tenure basically bestows a job for life unless an institution runs out of money. Originally intended to shield professors from meddling by college administrators, donors or politicians, tenure has evolved into one of the most coveted perks in higher education. It signals excellence and it confers employment stability.
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Interviewed by George Plimpton and Frank H. Crowther:
In the issue of The New Yorker dated two weeks after E. B. White died, his stepson, Roger Angell, wrote the following in the magazine's "Talk of the Town" section:Last August, a couple of sailors paid an unexpected visit to my summer house in Maine: young sailors--a twelve-year-old-girl and an eleven-year-old boy. They were a crew taking part in a statewide small-boat-racing competition at a local yacht club, and because my wife and I had some vacant beds just then we were willingly dragooned as hosts. They were fine company--tanned and shy and burning with tactics but amenable to blueberry muffins and our exuberant fox terrier. They were also readers, it turned out. On their second night, it came out at the dinner table that E. B. White was a near neighbor of ours, and our visitors reacted to the news with incredulity. "No!" the boy said softly, his eyes traveling back and forth over the older faces at the table. "No-o-o-o!" The girl, being older, tried to keep things in place. "He's my favorite author," she said. "Or at least he was when I was younger." They were both a bit old for Stuart Little, Charlotte's Web, and The Trumpet of the Swan, in fact, but because they knew the books so well, and because they needed cheering up (they had done badly in the racing), arrangements were made for a visit to E. B. White's farm the next morning.
White, who had been ill, was not able to greet our small party that day, but there were other sights and creatures there to make us welcome: two scattered families of bantam hens and chicks on the lawn; the plump, waggly incumbent dog, name of Red; and the geese who came scuttling and hissing up the pasture lane, their wings outspread in wild alarm. It was a glazy, windless morning, with some thin scraps of fog still clinging to the water in Allen Cove, beyond the pasture; later on, I knew, the summer southwest breeze would stir, and then Harriman Point and Blue Hill Bay and the islands would come clear again. What wasn't there this time was Andy White himself: emerging from the woodshed, say, with an egg basket or a length of line in his hand; or walking away (at a mid-slow pace, not a stroll--never a stroll--with the dog just astern) down the grassy lane that turns and then dips to the woods and shore; or perhaps getting into his car for a trip to town, getting aboard, as he got aboard any car, with an air of mild wariness, the way most of us start up on a bicycle. We made do without him, as we had to. We went into the barn and examined the vacant pens and partitions and the old cattle tie-ups; we visited the vegetable garden and the neat stacks of freshly cut stove wood; we saw the cutting beds, and the blackberry patch behind the garage, and the place where the pigpen used to be--the place where Wilbur was born, surely. The children took turns on the old single-rope swing that hung in the barn doorway, hoisting themselves up onto the smoothed seat, made out of a single chunk of birch firewood, and then sailing out into the sunshine and back into barn-shadow again and again, as the crossbeam creaked above them and swallows dipped in and out of an open barn window far overhead. It wasn't much entertainment for them, but perhaps it was all right, because of where they were. The girl asked which doorway might have been the one where Charlotte had spun her web, and she mentioned Templeton, the rat, and Fern, the little girl who befriends Wilbur. She was visiting a museum, I sensed, and she would remember things here to tell her friends about later. The boy, though, was quieter, and for a while I thought that our visit was a disappointment to him. Then I stole another look at him, and I understood. I think I understood. He was taking note of the place, almost checking off corners and shadows and smells to himself as we walked about the old farm, but he wasn't trying to remember them. He looked like someone who had been there before, and indeed he had, for he was a reader. Andy White had given him the place long before he ever set foot on it--not this farm, exactly, but the one in the book, the one now in the boy's mind. Only true writers--the rare few of them--can do this, but their deed to us is in perpetuity. The boy didn't get to meet E. B. White that day, but he already had him by heart. He had him for good.
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In a ceremony this week, Harlem Day Charter School celebrated its 13 fifth-graders who are moving on to middle school. They represent roughly one-third of the class.The other two-thirds will have to repeat fifth grade.
That hard truth is one of many that the teachers, students and parents of Harlem Day have been confronting in recent months as the school prepares to become the city's first attempt at a takeover of a failing charter school.
Only five of 32 teachers will be returning in September. About 100 of all 247 students in the elementary school are being held back. And administrators are having tough conversations with parents about the true state of their children's academic progress. Parents are being told that students, who for years were passed from grade to grade, lack basic skills.
At Harlem Day, no students were held back last year, despite recent state tests that showed only 20% of students were on grade level in English and 25% were in math.
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>Last year, battles over charter schools dominated much of education coverage. This year, the controversy over "teacher evaluations" is poised to be the biggest fight among people with competing visions for improving public schools. For a primer on how these new teacher assessments work, don't miss Sam Dillon's recent piece in the New York Times. Reporting from Washington, D.C., Dillon found that last year the city fired 165 teachers using a new teacher evaluation system; this year, the number will top 200.D.C. relies on a relatively new evaluation system called Impact, a legacy of its former school chief Michelle Rhee, who noticed that, despite the district's low test scores, most teachers were getting nearly perfect evaluations. Rhee and the proponents of this new evaluation system feel that the old system relied too much on the subjective evaluations by the principal or a few experienced teachers. Opponents of the old system say these internal measurements are not data-driven or rigurous enough to allow principals and districts to identify struggling teachers who need assistance or to find the successful ones who deserve to be recognized and empowered.
Impact or other new evaluation systems are currently being implemented in around 20 states. The basic idea to use performance-based evaluations that use external measures such as test scores in addition to the internal measures mentioned above. Sparked by President Obama's Race to the Top grants, these "value-added" evaluations rely heavily on kids' test scores in math and reading. Teachers whose subjects are not measured by test scores are observed in the classroom. For example, D.C. teachers get five yearly classroom observations, three by principals and two by "master educators" from other schools.
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Gary W. Phillips & Tao Jiang via a Dan McGrath email:
This study describes how the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) was used for internationally benchmarking state performance standards. The process is accomplished in two steps. First, PISA items are embedded in the administration of the state assessment and calibrated on the state scale. The international item calibrations are then used to link the state scale to the PISA scale through common item linking. The second step is to use the statistical linking as part of the state standard setting process to help standard setting panelists determine how high their state standards need to be in order to be internationally competitive. This process was carried out in Delaware, Hawaii, and Oregon, and results are reported here for two of the states: Hawaii and Delaware.Review Wisconsin's position vs Minnesota, Massachusetts and Singapore, here.Key words: Equating, linking, item response theory, international benchmarking.
Introduction
In 2010, the American Institutes for Research obtained permission from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to use secure items from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for purposes of linking state assessments within the United States to the PISA scale. The OECD provided a representative sample of 30 secure PISA items in Reading, Mathematics, and Science. The PISA items covered the 2006 and 2009 PISA assessment cycles. In addition to the PISA items, the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), which is the current vender for the OECD contracted to conduct PISA, provided the international item parameters and their standard errors, as well as the linear transformations needed to link the state assessments to the PISA scale. The administration, security, and scoring of the PISA items were carried out by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) based on a License Agreement between AIR and the OECD and monitored by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
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New York's largest teachers union is suing the state Board of Regents over the state's new system for evaluating public-school teachers, a move that could derail plans by the city and hundreds of other school districts to start basing reviews on how well students perform on standardized tests.In court papers filed in state Supreme Court late Monday, New York State United Teachers claimed that education officials violated the law when they gave school districts the option of assigning significantly more weight to state assessments in their annual reviews of teachers.
Under the law, teachers could lose their jobs if their students continually fail to improve their scores on state standardized tests.
The union, a labor federation representing hundreds of thousands of teachers, claims that the regulations handed down by the Board of Regents run afoul of the evaluation law, which lawmakers approved last year and is set to take effect in July.
The union's suit is asking a judge to put the evaluation plan on hold until courts rule on whether it's legal.
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I hope you enjoyed a few days off after a busy year. To the normal craziness of spring, you probably had the heartache of considering budget cuts and layoffs.You probably work in a state and district that imposes a lot of constraints on your hiring, curriculum, materials, school hours, and facilities. After food and transportation, if your district takes more than 5% for administration your kids are getting shorted.
Let's think about the improvement levers you've been able to influence:
1) Culture: the behavior you model, the tone of your communications, and the way you deal with challenges shape the culture of your school community.
2) Goals: the way you describe and champion learning expectations for your students and goals for your staff may be your most important role. The habits of mind that you encourage could shape student thinking for decades.
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A former classroom teacher who grew up in the inner city in Milwaukee, Andreal Davis is the assistant director for equity and family involvement for the Madison Metropolitan School District. She is in charge of making sure resources are allocated fairly among schools, that students come to school prepared and that they have equal access to learning opportunities. And in a district where there are now more students of color than there are white students, and where the number of students from economically disadvantaged families is just a shade under 50 percent, an increasingly important part of Davis' job is to help teachers, students and their families work together effectively.Research shows that a strong partnership between home and school is one of the most critical elements in helping all students succeed, but when there's little common ground or cultural understanding between teachers and the families they are serving, misunderstandings and communication failures are inevitable, and can lead to rocky relationships.
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The next time some Republican wonders why the African-American community doesn't just come to its senses and start to vote the GOP ticket, point him to Pennsylvania.This past November, Republican Tom Corbett successfully campaigned for governor on a platform that included giving Pennsylvania moms and dads more options for where they can send their children to school. Given that he enjoys Republican majorities in both the House and Senate, prospects for making good on this promise were, as the Philadelphia Inquirer recently put it, "once considered a slam dunk." With just two days before the legislature takes off for the summer, however, the GOP leadership is sending mixed signals. As we go to press, school choice is in political limbo.
At the heart of this debate is Senate Bill 1. Co-sponsored by Republican Sen. Jeffrey Piccola and Democrat Anthony Williams, it would allow parents of a needy child to take the money the state pays to their home school district and apply it to the public, private or parochial school of their choice. The plan would be phased in and expanded over three years. It further includes a $25 million increase in a popular state program that gives tax credits to businesses that donate money for scholarships.
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HUNTER CLAUSS and DAN MIHALOPOULOS:
Barely six weeks after his inauguration as mayor, Rahm Emanuel faced his first open dispute Wednesday with a unionized workforce that largely opposed his candidacy.In a statement issued Wednesday afternoon, labor officials responded testily to Emanuel's public threat earlier in the day to lay off hundreds of city workers unless their unions accept his demands for unspecified "work rule changes and efficiencies."
Emanuel said his proposal would save the city $20 million, and its rejection would force him to lay off more than 600 city workers, but labor leaders shot back that the plan was "unacceptable."
The impasse came as a two-year contract concession agreement with city worker unions was set to expire Thursday. Under the deal, forged by Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2009, workers took as many as 24 unpaid days off work each year and gave up overtime pay and wage increases.
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Nancy Badertscher and Kristina Torres:
The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday approved a new law that gives Gov. Nathan Deal the power to suspend the entire Atlanta school board for jeopardizing the city district's accreditation.With that consent, state school board members will hold a hearing that involves the local nine-member board no later than July 31. They will then make a recommendation to the governor.
Deal does not have to follow the state board's recommendation. But if he suspends local members, Deal will make interim appointments and ousted board members will be allowed to appeal for reinstatement.
"I'm pleased," said House Majority Whip Edward Lindsey, R-Atlanta, who helped write the bill that gave Deal such extraordinary power over the board's future. "Now we can focus on the best needs of the 48,000 children in Atlanta Public Schools."
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Steve Gunn, via a kind reader's email:
No wonder bullying remains a persistent problem in public schools.When teachers engage in such behavior, kids can be expected to follow their example.
It's become apparent that bullying may be necessary to guarantee the survival of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's largest teachers union.
That's because state law will no longer bully on behalf of the union.
Until now, anyone who secured a teaching job at a Wisconsin public school automatically became a de facto member of the teachers union. Teachers had the option of avoiding official membership, but dues were still deducted from their paychecks and they were still represented by the union.
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by Sharona Coutts and Jennifer LaFleur:
Florida is a state of stark contrasts. Travel a few miles from the opulent mansions of Miami Beach and you reach desperately poor neighborhoods. There's the grinding poverty of sugar cane country and the growing middle class of Jacksonville. All told, half the public-school students in Florida qualify for subsidized lunches. Many are the first in their families to speak English or contemplate attending college.Wisconsin's results are here, while Madison's are here.In many states, those economic differences are reflected in the classroom, with students in wealthy schools taking many more advanced courses.
The Opportunity Gap
But not in Florida. A ProPublica analysis of previously unreleased federal data shows that Florida leads the nation in the percentage of high-school students enrolled in high-level classes--Advanced Placement and advanced math. That holds true across rich and poor districts.
Studies repeatedly have shown that students who take advanced classes have greater chances of attending and succeeding in college.
Our analysis identifies several states that, like Florida, have leveled the field and now offer rich and poor students roughly equal access to high-level courses.
In Kansas, Maryland and Oklahoma, by contrast, such opportunities are far less available in districts with poorer families.
That disparity is part of what experts call the "opportunity gap."
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Members of state teachers unions sued Thursday to block part of a law giving Gov. Scott Walker veto powers over rules written by other state agencies and elected officials.The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal skirmishes between the GOP governor and public employee unions.
In the case, parents of students and members of the Wisconsin Education Association Council and Madison Teachers Inc. challenge the law for giving Walker the power to veto administrative rules written by any state agency. That law wrongly gives Walker that power over the state Department of Public Instruction headed by state schools superintendent Tony Evers, the action charges.
"The state constitution clearly requires that the elected state superintendent establish educational policies," WEAC President Mary Bell, a plaintiff in the suit, said in a statement. "The governor's extreme power grab must not spill over into education policy in our schools."
The measure, which Walker signed in May, allows the governor to reject proposed administrative rules used to implement state laws.
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'The idea - which I have to say has affected large numbers of politicians - that you can just give people at university a certificate and, hey presto, they'll earn this amount more and the country will be x-amount richer has always seemed so bizarre to me that I have to pinch myself that so many apparently rational people believe exactly that.'
Professor Alison Wolf is a breathless speaker - as I discovered while trying to keep up during the course of our interview. But as the author of Does Education Matter? Myths About Education and Economic Growth, and more recently of the government-commissioned Review of Vocational Education, Wolf is certainly worth listening to on the plight of British universities. And nowhere is her insight more valuable than when it comes to tackling what she has called 'the great secular faith of our age' - namely, the idea that education is the key to economic growth, swelling both an individual's bank balance and expanding a nation's GDP.
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The state's most powerful political force got rolled in the 2011 Legislature.
Last week, Gov. John Kitzhaber and his allies rammed a dozen education bills through roadblocks erected by the 48,000-member Oregon Education Association.A coalition of Kitzhaber, House Republicans, a few Democrats willing to buck the teachers' union, and newly emboldened interest groups handed the OEA its biggest policy setbacks in years.
"There is a strong desire for real movement forward on education, and people were willing to break a few eggs to get there," says Rep. Chris Garrett (D-Lake Oswego), one of three Democrats who voted "yes" on HB 2301, a controversial online charter-school bill that catalyzed the breakthrough.
To be sure, OEA successfully pushed for a $175 million increase in the K-12 budget over Kitzhaber's opening proposal, and the union helped forestall any significant changes to the Public Employees Retirement System this session. But in terms of educational politics, this session saw substantive bills that have been stymied for many sessions zip through.
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After banning flavored milk, the Los Angeles Unified School District is doing something kids all over will cheer about: They issued a decree that homework can only count for only 10 percent of a student's grade. The policy goes into effect July 1.The idea behind the new rule is that it will level the playing field for students who don't have educational support at home. Also, Los Angeles isn't alone in this new approach. The Los Angeles Times reports:
In many districts, limits are being placed on the amount of homework so students can spend more time with their families or pursue extracurricular activities like sports or hobbies. The competition to get into top colleges has left students anxious and exhausted, with little free time, parents complain.
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Today marks one year since Arizona adopted the common core state standards, but you wouldn't know it based on any information provided by public officials or the press in Arizona. Indeed, you would have an impossible time finding any details about the Arizona State Board's official action to adopt the standards.Last year, I wrote about the bizarre situation where states that were completely overhauling their K-12 reading and math standards in favor of the more advanced, 21st century common core state standards were not only downplaying this standards transformation, but in some instances, also appeared to be proactively burying the information.
Arizona fell into this last group as I mentioned last July:
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As changes to collective bargaining powers for public workers take effect today, the Kaukauna Area School District is poised to swing from a projected $400,000 budget shortfall next year to a $1.5 million surplus due to health care and retirement savings.Karen HerzogThe Kaukauna School Board approved changes Monday to its employee handbook that require staff to cover 12.6 percent of their health insurance and to contribute 5.8 percent of their wages to the state's pension system, in accordance with the new collective bargaining law, commonly known as Act 10.
"These impacts will allow the district to hire additional teachers (and) reduce projected class sizes," School Board President Todd Arnoldussen wrote in a statement Monday. "In addition, time will be available for staff to identify and support students needing individual assistance through individual and small group experiences."
Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Gregory Thornton announced at a news conference this afternoon that 519 layoff notices would be issued for next school year, including 354 teachers.More on Kaukana, here.Most of the teacher cuts come at the elementary level. The district has about 125 elementary schools. The elementary schools most affected are those that lost funding for a program that reduces class sizes.
The layoffs are the result of a number of budgetary factors, including the loss of $84 million in state aid to MPS for the next fiscal year, Thornton said.
Thornton called on the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association to reconsider the district's request that teachers pay 5.8% of their salaries toward their pensions, which would have reduced the number of layoffs by about 200 teachers.
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Phil Frei and his Traveling Pie-in-the-Sky Budget Show like to compare Sun Prairie administrative costs to the state average. And we look great! That trick's not working so well anymore. As they say in the deep south, "that dog don't hunt". Heck even the new associate editor for the STAR, covering the recent budget hearing, asked if we didn't have a more realistic comparison.Madison spends $1003/student (7.8% of operating expenditures).Well... here's where we rank: 45th. Not even in the top 10%. At least when we look at Administrative costs per student.
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Yesterday, the full court for the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued two simultaneous opinions to resolve how much control grade schools and high schools may exercise over their students' off-campus, online speech. In Layshock v. Hermitage School District and J.S. v. Blue Mountain School District, the 14-judge court delivered two landmark victories for free speech, holding that school officials cannot "reach into a child's home and control his/her actions there to the same extent that it can control that child when he/she participates in school sponsored activities." In the cases, two students had been disciplined for creating parody MySpace profiles mocking their respective principals. The Third Circuit held that schools cannot punish students' online speech simply because it is vulgar, lewd, or offensive. In addition to their impact in the grade school and high school settings, these decisions further solidify the robust free speech rights that must be afforded to college students engaging in online speech.We previously blogged about Layshock and J.S. last year, when separate three-judge panels of the Third Circuit issued contrary decisions despite the very similar facts in the two cases. In Layshock, the Third Circuit had held that a then-senior in high school could not be suspended, placed in a special education class, and banned from extracurricular activities for a parody MySpace profile which described his principal as being a "big steroid freak" and belittled the size of the principal's penis, among other insults. In J.S., a different panel of the Third Circuit had held that a then-middle school honor student could be suspended, without violating the First Amendment, for her MySpace profile. J.S.'s profile parodied her principal as stating, "I love children, sex (any kind), dogs, long walks on the beach, tv, being a dick head, and last but not least my darling wife [a guidance counselor at the school] who looks like a man."
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One of the more reliable backers of the reform movement that has radically altered public schools in New Orleans is planning to retire from the state board of education.Glenny Lee Buquet, from Houma, said Monday that she will not run for another term on the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, or BESE, when elections come up this fall. Buquet has served on BESE since 1992 and is one of the six-member majority on the 11-member board that has helped push through the controversial reforms championed by former State Superintendent Paul Pastorek.
Nowhere in the state have those reforms been more far-reaching than in New Orleans. The state took over most schools in the city following Hurricane Katrina, and under the state's Recovery School District, most of those have been transformed into independent charter schools.
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Associated Press:The Indiana Department of Education is spending nearly $700,000 to develop strategies for overseeing troubled schools that don't involve a traditional school board.The work by The MindTrust is being done as the state prepares to recommend which of 18 failing public schools should be removed from district control and given to private school operators to attempt a turnaround.
All 18 schools have scored in the lowest category on the state ISTEP+ exam for five straight years. A 1999 state law allows the state to take over schools if test scores are in the lowest category for a sixth consecutive year.
The education department has paid more than $680,000 to The MindTrust in an effort to make sure none of the failing schools -- seven of which are in the Indianapolis Public Schools system -- return to the hands of a school board that will lead it back to failure.
"The fact that we have as many failed schools in IPS as we do reflects a larger issue in the overall system," David Harris, chief executive officer of The MindTrust, told the Indianapolis Business Journal. "The state doesn't want to return schools to a governance structure that isn't going to produce conditions that are optimal for success."
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I recently wrote about how having friends at work was never a priority. However, the fact of the matter is I have made some close ones - people I really respect and enjoy being around. That makes work pleasant, as we're all dealing with similar challenges together, instead of battling alone. Of course, it makes you want to go to work everyday, knowing that you're going to a place where you are liked and like the people around you.Now, I've heard anecdotes recently from a variety of schools about colleagues not being so supportive of each other, saying nasty things behind others' backs and the like. I hope no one is doing this to me, and if any of my colleagues have any kind of issue with me, that they can bring it to my attention and we can work it out.
Like everyone else, I want to be recognized for my positive attributes, and I want those to be my hallmarks and form my reputation.
We recently celebrated the end of the school year with our annual party. This one had the added wrinkle of being a defacto retirement party for some much loved members of the staff.
I was moved by the way people spoke about each retiree. I didn't expect such wonderful things to be said, and more importantly, the honorees were genuinely surprised and touched.
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Students across the U.S. are enjoying or getting ready for summer vacation, but teachers may be looking forward to the break even more. American teachers are the most productive among major developed countries, according to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data from 2008 -- the most recent available.Curriculum is certainly worth a hard look.
Among 27 member nations tracked by the OECD, U.S. primary-school educators spent 1,097 hours a year teaching despite only spending 36 weeks a year in the classroom -- among the lowest among the countries tracked. That was more than 100 hours more than New Zealand, in second place at 985 hours, despite students in that country going to school for 39 weeks. The OECD average is 786 hours.
And that's just the time teachers spend on instruction. Including hours teachers spend on work at home and outside the classroom, American primary-school educators spend 1,913 working in a year. According to data from the comparable year in a Labor Department survey, an average full-time employee works 1,932 hours a year spread out over 48 weeks (excluding two weeks vacation and federal holidays).
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A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Education Testing Service's Achievement Gap Symposium, which addressed research and solutions for our education system in Pre-K-third grade, especially for low-income, minority and African American students. What I found most interesting was a comment Jerry D. Weast, Superintendent of the Montgomery County Public Schools and one of the speakers, said: "structure drives your culture and culture drives your expectations." Weast believes the achievement gap can be solved if a district or school can establish a culture with high expectations.To do this, teachers should be mentors and role models. All children, especially minority students need someone like Mrs. Menendez, my kindergarten teacher, who told me that I would grow up to be a great lawyer one day. She also told my parents that they needed to make sure they did everything in their power to get me through high school and college. Today, my master's program is nearly done and law school is next on the schedule. Parents of minority and low-income children need this kind of one-on-one advice.
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Legislation to reform Delaware's charter school system by requiring background checks for charter founders and board members and placing the schools under tighter financial oversight got a unanimous passing grade in the House Thursday.House Bill 205, sponsored by Rep. Terry Schooley, D-Newark, was prompted by a News Journal investigation that found the state Department of Education failed to check the credentials or criminal background of the founder of Reach Academy. Reach Academy is facing closure amid serious financial problems and a fight over control of the board.
The legislation, which now moves to the Senate for consideration, would require yearly mandatory external audits for charter schools and allow the Office of Management and Budget to analyze the financial status of a struggling school and manage some of the school's finances. It also would require that decisions to close a school be made no later than January so parents can enter their children in the school-choice program and meet deadlines to get into charter schools.
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Wisconsin's "Read to Lead" Task Force convened for its second meeting last month to address teacher training and reading interventions. Here's an excellent debrief (via School Information System) from Wisconsin Reading Coalition on the discussion. And here are my notes from the gallery:
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After only about a month as top boss of Detroit Public Schools, Roy Roberts, a 72-year-old former General Motors executive and private equity firm founder, is well aware that some people already want him gone.Related: Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman's speech to the Madison Rotary Club.The district's new financial manager said he's OK with that reality, adding that differing opinions have value. His only request: Stay out of the way as he tries to turn around one of the nation's worst public school systems.
I don't care what people think about me, really ... because I know what parents are going to think," Roberts told The Associated Press during an interview in his Detroit Midtown office. "They're going to love it because I'm trying to do the right thing for their children, and you won't find a parent that doesn't want that. I'm simply going to look at a system and say 'What is the best system we can put in place to educate these kids?' I don't care about the politics."
What concerns him, he said, is a massive budget deficit and students who either don't receive a legitimate education or flee the district in search of one. Those mountainous challenges form the ridge that for decades has left the 74,000-student district on the shadowy side of progress.
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I was a little shell-shocked after reading the comments on Aeron's June 15 post. I hadn't looked at them when I wrote last week about my enjoyment of her column, and I was amazed at the vitriol. I have taught only a few brief seminars myself, and each has taken a gazillion hours of preparation, as well as intense, sustained focus and concentration during the actual teaching hours. I am in awe of real teachers' dedication and stamina.So I want to use this week's post to express appreciation for a great teacher I am in the process of taking leave of.
Three years ago, when I registered for my first singing class in over 20 years, I had to walk around the block several times to get up the courage to walk in the door. I had been traumatized by a voice teacher, until my singing voice got so small and weak it almost disappeared. I hadn't tried to sing in front of others for years, until Ben started asking me to sing with him. The thought made me so anxious I knew I needed professional help.
A friend walked me to the first class, to be sure I didn't succumb to the urge to hightail it home at the last minute. When Martha, the teacher, asked each of us to articulate what it was that we wanted from the class, all I could think to say was, "I want to be able to get through a song without passing out."
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Providence's teachers union is asking a Rhode Island education board to review a state official's decision to prohibit seniority as a basis for assigning teachers.The union says the state's education commissioner, Deborah Gist, has taken the position that using seniority alone to assign teachers doesn't comply with state regulations.
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Baltimore city schools Andres Alonso said last week that while the school district has gone to great lengths to tighten testing security, he anticipates coming before the city again to announce that more schools attempted to game the system.There are two more investigations pending, from a batch of four schools referred to the state last year. The 2011 Maryland School Assessments will be released next week.
In a news conference last week, Alonso told reporters that it may take one or two more years before cheating is eradicated from the system. He vowed, however, that at some point, "we will emerge from this conversation--it may take one or two years--but we will emerge with our heads held high."
He also indicated that Maryland's new teacher evaluation system, which is partly based on student progress, will spur a "perverse incentive to do something wrong." Baltimore is one of seven districts that will pilot the new state evaluation system in the fall.
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After months of work across the state to define multiple measures of student growth, the Delaware Department of Education has asked the United States DOE for, and - word is - will receive, permission to delay implementation of our DPAS II teacher evaluation system, which will impact the roll-out of numerous other Race to the Top reforms.The revised DPAS II evaluation system would have identified teachers as "highly-effective," "effective," "needs improvement," or "ineffective," ultimately impacting eligibility for various initiatives. Below are programs and policies that will be affected by delaying DPAS II implementation:
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The Recovery School District, a state body that oversees the majority of New Orleans public schools, is laying off more than 70 employees at its central office, part of a sweeping organizational overhaul initiated by the district's new leader.RSD officials have been saying for weeks that the district will need to downsize as it turns over more of the schools it manages to independent charter operators and closes others. That's been the RSD's strategy since it took over schools in the city following Hurricane Katrina.
But in an interview Friday, RSD Superintendent John White said the district has now begun to notify employees who will lose their jobs as a result of cutbacks, which will take the central office head count down by 35 percent, from 220 people to 144.
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Understanding the genomeThe sequencing of the 6 billion chemical "letters" of human DNA was completed in draft in 2000 and in final form in 2003. But clinical benefits have arrived more slowly than the initial hype suggested. This is mainly because the human genome actually works in a much more complex way than predicted by the late-20th-century model.
Twenty-first-century research shows that we have only 21,000 genes, one-fifth of the number predicted when the project started, and that just 1.5 per cent of the genome consists of conventional protein-coding genes. Efforts are under way to understand the vital regulatory and other functions of the non-coding regions of the genome, once dismissed wrongly as "junk DNA".
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Remember how Culver and a group of his peeps were going to explore the possibility of an elementary charter school/ Mandarin Chinese immersion program and report back to the board?Well skip the board and just sign up because we're hearing that incorporating Mandarin Chinese into the district is a done deal that will occur by the start of the 2012-1 school year.
POINT - COUNTERPOINT ON THE MANDARIN CHINESE PLANPOINT
Mandarin Chinese? Really? Don't go screamin' "xenophobia", now, but one has to wonder: Is Culver thinking that the economy is tanking so badly that we all should be brushing up on the new landlords' language? Or is he still trying to catch up with his district administrator buddy in Verona? And why are we worrying about what ANYBODY is up to instead of just focusing on our own kids?
And while we're on the subject. We're hoping that the rumors we're hearing are just that...rumors. 'Cause we'd be wondering how much it would cost John Q. TaxPayer to develop this little Mandarin Chinese program.
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Jamaal Abdul-Alim, via a kind reader's email
While a panel discussion held by The College Board on Capitol Hill this week was meant to highlight a new report on the lagging rates of educational attainment among non-White men, some of the panelists questioned the need for more research on the subject."How much data do we need?" asked panelist Dr. Roy Jones, executive director for the Eugene T. Moore School of Education's Call Me MISTER Program at Clemson University. (MISTER is an acronym for Mentors Instructing Students Toward Effective Role-models).
His remarks came after a discussion of the new report titled "The Educational Experience of Young Men of Color: A Review of Research, Pathways and Progress," co-authored by John Michael Lee Jr., a co-panelist and policy director at the College Board's Advocacy and Policy Center.
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Both the Oregon House and Senate this week passed 3 groundbreaking education bills that are now on their way to the Governor's desk to be signed into law. The bills bring more choice to Oregon's public education system and allow students to learn in schools where they best grow, learn and succeed.From the standpoint of the state Republican party, who sponsored and supported these bills, they accomplish 3 goals:
"The Legislature is on track to have its most successful session on education reform in decades," said House Education Committee Co-Chair Matt Wingard (R-Wilsonville). "Together, these reforms help promote choice, accountability and innovation in our educational system. I'm particularly pleased with the progress we've made in expanding choice for parents and their children."
- allow students to enroll in the school district of their choice
- raise the enrollment cap on virtual charter schools
- empower community colleges and public universities to create charter schools.
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Following the exploits of Madison Teachers Inc. leader John Matthews in the State Journal makes it obvious that he is a negotiator extraordinaire.Thomas Kavanagh:He's managed to have his people on one side of the "negotiating table" and at least some he helped elect on the other side, so it is not a "bargaining table" but a "collaboration table."
Maybe, however, he has gone too far in not enthusiastically promoting measuring teacher performance, as encouraged by President Barack Obama. Now it seems Wisconsin's taxpayers need to take back some of the functions, like measuring employee performance, usually ascribed to management but, through negotiation, given to the employee.
I appreciated the respect for John Matthews' achievements conveyed by Madison labor mediator Howard Bellman's comment in Sunday's article, and his concern about the possible effect of Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to destroy the Madison teachers union and public employee unions throughout Wisconsin:Bob Hartwig:"It would be like somebody watching all their paintings burn up... What he's accomplished over the years would have been just a memory."
However, that analogy fails to give consideration to the value of his work beyond creating a robust and effective union. For the artist, the joy of the creation might be lasting, but the product of his efforts would be gone. That would not be the case for what Matthew's efforts have produced.
fter encouraging Madison teachers in February to stage an illegal sick-out, which robbed children of educational opportunities and caused disruption for many parents, he now says teachers are "ready to do whatever it takes" to continue the protest of state budget reductions. He was also quoted as saying; "It's going to get down and dirty."Wow! This kind of rhetoric coming from a 71-year-old man who receives about $310,000 in annual income and benefits from union fees. Makes you ask the question: What is his priority?
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A mind is a precious thing to waste, so why are millions of America's students wasting theirs by going to college? All of us who have been there know an undergraduate education is primarily a four year vacation interrupted by periodic bouts of cramming or Google plagiarizing, but at least it used to serve a purpose. It weeded out underachievers and proved at a minimum that you could pass an SAT test. For those who made it to the good schools, it proved that your parents had enough money to either bribe administrators or hire SAT tutors to increase your score by 500 points. And a degree represented that the graduate could "party hearty" for long stretches of time and establish social networking skills that would prove invaluable later on at office cocktail parties or interactively via Facebook. College was great as long as the jobs were there.Now, however, a growing number of skeptics wonder whether it's worth the time or the cost. Peter Thiel, an early investor in Facebook and head of Clarium Capital, a long-standing hedge fund, has actually established a foundation to give 20 $100,000 grants to teenagers who would drop out of school and become not just tech entrepreneurs but world-changing visionaries. College, in his and the minds of many others, is stultifying and outdated - overpriced and mismanaged - with very little value created despite the bump in earnings power that universities use as their raison d'être in our modern world of money.
Fact: College tuition has increased at a rate 6% higher than the general rate of inflation for the past 25 years, making it four times as expensive relative to other goods and services as it was in 1985. Subjective explanation: University administrators have a talent for increasing top line revenues via tuition, but lack the spine necessary to upgrade academic productivity. Professorial tenure and outdated curricula focusing on liberal arts instead of a more practical global agenda focusing on math and science are primary culprits.
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There's a certain childlike innocence that goes along with the popular modern sport of teacher bashing. I say this because most people get over the idea that teachers are ultra-powerful beings who live unattainable lives of luxury at around the age of 7, when they realize that rumpled, coffee-stained JC Penney office apparel is not haute couture. Many critics of teachers, however, manage to hang on to this silly notion way past the time when their skulls have fully hardened.
Call me a fuzzy-headed liberal, but I just don't see the point in bashing people who help train our future workforce.Of course, the tired old canard that teachers are remorseless, mustache-twisting budget-drainers has been resurrected in the past few months - first when the governor's budget repair bill touched off mass protests among public employees, and most recently when the Wisconsin Supreme Court removed the final barrier to the bill's enactment.
Some have reacted to teachers' and other public employees' reluctance to lie down and simply accept significant cuts in compensation and the stripping of their collective bargaining rights with everything from derision to rancor.
For example, some local wags took to calling Walkerville - the protest village near the Capitol that was inhabited by disgruntled public employees and their supporters - "Entitledtown."
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Yesterday, I did an interview for the BAM network on Good Boss, Bad Boss. The content expert on line was Justin Snider, who teaches at Columbia and has in-depth knowledge about K-12 schools, as that was the focus of the conversation. Justin had great questions and comments about bosses in general (see this recent post) and about school principals in particular. I thought he made especially good comments about how the best principals are PRESENT, constantly interacting with teachers, students, and parents. He especially suggested that school principals think about where their offices are located.. are they in a place that essentially requires them to keep bumping into teachers and parents, or are they in some corner of campus that reduces the amount of interaction.
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Teacher at Work: Improving Teacher Quality Through School Design (October 2009)There is no question that high-quality teachers have an enormous impact on student achievement. Over the years, schools and districts have looked at a variety of ways to attract better teachers to public schools, especially those serving the poorest students.
"But these reforms are likely to disappoint if nothing is done to fundamentally overhaul the way the work of teachers is organized," Elena Silva argues in Teacher at Work. Better teaching, she says, will in the long run come not only from attracting a strong pool of talent and giving them boosts in pay, but from "changing the nature of the job."
In the report, Silva highlights promising models of school design, such as Generation Schools in New York City, which provides a school model that focuses on the strategic use of people and time, and calls for a new approach to addressing the teacher quality challenge in public education.
Education Sector: What drew you to this issue in the first place?
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This is our district and how it operates even during hard times.Update: I attended the joint Mayor/Superintendent event tonight (separate thread to come) but I asked the Mayor two things. One, how many staff at City Hall got a raise since he has been Mayor because the District had and, if he was hearing from powers that be about taking over the school district. (I pointed out that we RIFed teachers, laid off elementary counselors and maintenance workers with a $500M backlog in maintenance.) On the latter, he said no and that he felt that they were still in the collaboration stage with the district and it was working well. On the former he stated that the unionized city workers had been persuaded to NOT take a 2% raise but take the amount of inflation and that NO other city workers (non-unionized) had a raise. (He said he could not himself take a pay cut under City Charter but had given $10k to charities and that his staff was making less than the previous administration.)
The Superintendent jumped in and said that they gave bumps to people who got promotions. I had specifically said in my question to the Mayor that these were not for people with promotions and/or additional job responsibilities and I said that again. She then said that they had found that they hadn't been paying people what they should and gave them raises. You can imagine how that went over in the room.
Paying administrative people what they are worth in a poor economy in a district that says it has no money. It is not the fault of those people to ask for the money but it is wrong for the district to pay them more now. There's no amount of waffling that can change that.
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Three civil liberties unions plus some Douglas County parents filed a lawsuit this morning against the authorization of funds by the state treasurer to a lottery program created to subsidize scholarships to private schools--many of which are religious schools.The national Americans Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and ACLU of Colorado, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State filed the lawsuit in Denver District Court on behalf of plaintiffs who allege that the Douglas County Pilot Voucher Program disrupts the separation between church and state.
The Douglas County school board-approved Pilot Voucher Program is a scholarship lottery for 500 students to attend one of 19 private schools, but 14 of those schools are religious. In charge of implementing the state's first ever voucher program is Dr. Christian Cutter, assistant superintendent for the Douglas County School District.
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Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday defended the decision by his handpicked school board to cancel 4 percent pay raises for Chicago teachers, arguing that teachers have gotten two types of pay raises since 2003 while students got "the shaft."With a $712 million deficit, Emanuel said the Board of Education could not continue to honor a contract that satisfied everybody's concerns but the only group that really matters: Chicago Public School students.
"Teachers got two types of pay raises. People in public life got labor peace. Can anybody explain to me what the children got? I know what everybody else got," Emanuel said.
"Just a little north of 50 percent of our kids graduate. Our [test] scores haven't moved. Yet, in all that time, not one additional minute of instructional time for the children of Chicago where they can be safe and learning. . . . Our future -- which is what this is about, the mission of education -- our children got the shaft. . . . I will not accept our children continuing to get the shaft."
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In an unusually blunt assessment, the board says its academic-performance goals, particularly for disadvantaged students, "are not on track to be met."Charlie Mas has more.Each year about this time Seattle School Board members evaluate their only employee, the district's superintendent. With an interim superintendent on the job only a few months, this year had to be a little different.
In fact, you could say the board did the evaluation three months ago when they fired the previous superintendent, Maria Goodloe-Johnson, following revelations that an employee had spent money on contracts for which the district received little or nothing in return.
With Goodloe-Johnson gone and no need to attach accomplishments or failures to the superintendent or go through the agony of determining whether or not she got a raise, the board in a report at its regular meeting last week focused on what the district itself had or had not accomplished. The result was surprising and refreshingly candid language about where the district stands.
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Jon Schwartz is an elementary school teacher and runs the site Kids Like Blogs! He believes that blogs motivate students to write, read, create art, and the use of technology. See the Q & A with Jon and be sure to see the work that his students are producing.--
Q: There are many ways to incorporate technology in the classroom. What made you decide to have the children begin to blog?
A: There were several factors. One, I always had my students write a lot, whether I am teaching first or fifth grade. What happens is they end up with a huge amount of work, and I was never satisfied with how it just went in a folder at school, a binder, their desk, or got sent home. I wanted to be able to keep an efficient record of their work that could easily be referenced and shared with others. For example, they may not have written a lot in the previous year, and when their prior teachers want to see how much they have grown, with a blog, you send them a url, rather than sending over a bunch of papers (which they already have stacks of). By either having the students type on a blog, or have them write on paper and then scanning their handwritten work and art and posting it on the blog as a jpeg, you basically have an online gallery and portfolio. This can be shared with the principal who can then look it over quickly and give a quick high five to the kid as they pass in the halls.
One of the biggest advantages is that by creating an online portfolio, you are in effect creating virtual office hours. With class sizes in some cases doubling (I had a 4/5 combo class this year with 39 kids nearly equally split between 4th and 5th grade), you can imagine there is very little opportunity for one on one conferences, the time when you can give input to children on their work.
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To compile the 2011 list of the top high schools in America, NEWSWEEK reached out to administrators, principals, guidance counselors, and Advanced Placement/International Baccalaureate coordinators at more than 10,000 public high schools across the country. In order to be considered for our list, each school had to complete a survey requesting specific data from the 2009-2010 academic year. In total, more than 1,100 schools were assessed to produce the final list of the top 500 high schools.Just 12 Wisconsin high schools made the list, not one from Dane County. It would be interesting to compare per student spending (Madison spends about $14,476 per student) , particularly in light of a significant number of "southern" high schools in the top 50. Much more on United States per student spending, here. Wisconsin State Tax Based K-12 Spending Growth Far Exceeds University Funding.We ranked all respondents based on the following self-reported statistics, listed with their corresponding weight in our final calculation:
Four-year, on-time graduation rate (25%): Based on the standards set forth by the National Governors Association, this is calculated by dividing the number of graduates in 2010 by the number of 9th graders 2006 plus transfers in minus transfers out. Unlike other formulas, this does not count students who took longer than four years to complete high school.
Percent of 2010 graduates who enrolled immediately in college (25%): This metric excludes students who did not enroll due to lack of acceptance or gap year.
AP/IB/AICE tests per graduate (25%): This metric is designed to measure the degree to which each school is challenging its students with college-level examinations. It consists of the total number of AP, IB, and AICE tests given in 2010, divided by the number of graduating seniors in order to normalize by school size. AP exams taken by students who also took an IB exam in the same subject area were subtracted from the total.
Average SAT and/or ACT score (10%)
Average AP/IB/AICE exam score (10%)
AP/IB/AICE courses offered per graduate (5%): This metric assesses the depth of college-level curriculum offered. The number of courses was divided by the number of graduates in order to normalize by school size.
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Every year or two, my husband, an academic advisor at a prestigious Midwestern university, gets a call from a student's parent. Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so's son is a sophomore now and still insistent on majoring in film studies, anthropology, Southeast Asian comparative literature or, god forbid ... English. These dalliances in the humanities were fine and good when little Johnny was a freshman, but isn't it time now that he wake up and start thinking seriously about what, one or two or three years down the line, he's actually going to do?My husband, loyal first and foremost to his students' intellectual development, and also an unwavering believer in the inherent value of a liberal arts education, tells me about these conversations with an air of indignation. He wonders, "Aren't these parents aware of what they signed their kid up for when they decided to let him come get a liberal arts degree instead of going to welding school?" Also, he says, "The most aimless students are often the last ones you want to force into a career path. I do sort of hate to enable this prolonged adolescence, but I also don't want to aid and abet the miseries of years lost to a misguided professional choice."
Now, I love my husband. Lately, however, I find myself wincing when he recounts these stories.
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I think you'll know what I mean by the "higher guff" - the kind of sonorous and empty talk which often issues from the mouths of heads of state and princes. I heard a classic example recently at a British media awards ceremony from the admirable Prince Felipe of Spain. He was being courteous and diplomatic, praising the links and similarities "between our two great countries", once imperial powers and once sworn enemies. "We have so much in common," he enthused; an ironic commentary came from my neighbour, a photographer with a wicked wit: "Yes," said Michael, "we're both in deep shit." The prince can't have heard this, because he went on: "Indeed, so many of your citizens decide to move to Spain.""Yep," was the uncharitable response from Michael: "All the criminals."
The rule is that the higher the language soars, unless you're careful, the more it leaves itself open to attack from below. Shakespeare was the dramatist who knew this best, especially in the excruciating scene from Troilus and Cressida where Thersites provides a scabrous commentary on the seduction of Cressida by Diomedes. "Lechery, lechery, still wars and lechery" is his conclusion: the pretensions of the Trojan war reduced to an itch and a scratch.
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We have been discussing the issue of tracking in high school, particularly the standard system of regular (or general), honors (or advanced) and Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses. Parents in Fairfax County are resisting the school district's elimination of honors courses, leaving only a choice between regular or AP classes. I suggested the district get rid of the regular and leave only honors and AP, because research shows that the college skills taught in honors classes are also important for students who want to get a good job or go to trade school right out of high school.This generated much comment from around the country, including the two responses below from high school administrators who share the belief that they are not giving all of their students the enriched education they need. I think they provide a useful perspective from inside schools. What do you think of what they are saying?
Mike Musick is the principal of Conifer High School in Conifer, Colo. About nine percent of its students are low-income, and its AP test participation rate is high enough to rank well on my annual Challenge Index list. Amy Fineburg, an assistant principal, asked that I identify her high school only as a high-achieving one in Alabama. But I can say that its demographic and academic characteristics are similar to Conifer High's.
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The big news today is that the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee in a 9-4 vote released legislation that would increase public employee contributions to health care premiums from 1.5% to between 3.5%-35% of the premium. Higher-paid employees would contribute more and lower-paid employees would contribute less. Pension contributions would also go up by a percentage point or two, and the increases would be phased in over a few years.The bill now goes to the Assembly Budget Committee on Monday, and then to the full Senate on Thursday.
It's unclear whether Assemblywoman Sheila Oliver's proposal to have the legislation sunset after four years is still a go.
Amidst the Senate deliberations yesterday, public worker unions, including NJEA, held a smaller-than-expected rally; the subsequent news reports and editorials in today's papers largely express astonishment at the loss of power of collective bargaining units. Here's a sampling:
Vince Giordano, NJEA Executive Director, sounded both bewildered and threatening in NJ Spotlight:
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The newly seated Chicago Board of Education may have won the first battle with Chicago teachers this week when it rescinded a 4 percent pay raise, but it may also have ended a relatively peaceful era in labor relations and created a more pugnacious adversary.The Chicago Teachers Union has absorbed a number of recent setbacks. On Monday, a sweeping education bill that reformed teacher tenure and limited teachers' ability to strike was signed into law. And on Wednesday, the board unanimously nullified raises that would have cost nearly $100 million.
Some teachers and observers say that backing the union into a corner on wages and other key issues could be the spark to reinvigorate the membership.
"If you act in a confrontational way, you're poking your finger in the eye of those teachers, and very typically you generate unintended negative consequences," said Robert Bruno, director of the labor education program at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
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Students in schools of education pay a lot of attention to the problems of learning how to learn, lifelong leaning, and the like. In the absence of much knowledge of history, economics, physics, literature, foreign languages, chemistry, calculus and so on, this can degenerate into what Professor E.D. Hirsch, Jr., calls "How-to-ism," an absorption in "pedagogy" without any secure foundation in academic knowledge.
It is also the case that most graduates of our schools of education are shocked by the day-to-day problems of managing youngsters with Twitter, popular music, sports, popularity, and Grand Theft Auto on their minds. But it should be noted that it is very hard to get students interested in academic work, for instance history, if the teacher doesn't know any history herself. This problem causes some number of coaches who teach Social Studies to shy away from the Renaissance in favor of current events, which may seem more approachable both to them and their students. How 'bout those Bruins!
In the meantime, even American students who are Seniors in high school show a pitiful ignorance of the most basic knowledge of the history of their own country, as revealed in the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress report released this month.
In The Knowledge Deficit, E.D. Hirsch, Jr., tried to get across the point that teaching learning skills, for example, which pedagogy graduates are supposed to be good at, does little or nothing for helping students acquire knowledge. He argues that the only way to increase knowledge is to build on a stronger and stronger base of knowledge, not by wasting time on the dubious techniques of "Learning How to Learn."
I am convinced that one of the reasons even some students who do not require remediation in reading and writing when they get to college still fail to gain a degree after six or eight years, in part go under academically because they do not bring enough knowledge to help them understand what the professor is talking about. Their ignorance makes them feel lost. Some become determined to find the knowledge they have not been given in high school, but too many quit instead.
To be more fair to the education schools, even Harvard has had great difficulty in committing its faculty to teach certain basic areas of knowledge. The faculty tried to avoid arguing over what needed to be taught, so they fell back on allowing each department to teach "the skills" of its discipline, which they believed could be taught with any subject matter (such as that which the professor's research happened to focus on at the moment).
The problem, as pointed out in an article by Caleb Nelson in The Atlantic called "Harvard's Hollow Core," is that "One cannot think like a physicist, for example, without actually knowing a great deal of physics." Similarly, it is quite hard to think like a historian if you don't know any history.
So the whole "Learning How to Learn" paradigm collapses of its own emptiness and leads to academic failure for many students who have been offered rubrics, techniques and skills as a substitute for the academic knowledge they would need to survive in college.
The Common Core is offering national goals for knowledge. Others have critiqued their weakness in math, but I would suggest that their goals for reading in history are scarcely challenging for eight graders. Reading The Declaration of Independence and A Letter from the Birmingham Jail is not a waste of time, but for high school students, why not offer Mornings on Horseback, Washington's Crossing, Battle Cry of Freedom and The Path Between the Seas? In other words, actual history books? I cannot find out when it was decided (or by whom) that American high school students can manage European history, calculus, Latin, chemistry and so on, but cannot be expected to read through even one complete history book? How did our expectations for nonfiction reading (and gathering knowledge thereby) get so dramatically dumbed down? Of course STEM is very important, but even engineers and scientists need to read and write.
To demonstrate how far we have slid down the slope of expectations since Thomas Jefferson's day, here is an example from The Knowledge Deficit (p. 9):
"In our pre-romantic days, books were seen as key to education. In a 1786 letter to his nephew, aged fifteen, Jefferson recommended that he read books (in the original languages and in this order) by the following authors: [history] Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Anabasis, Arian, Quintus Curtius, Diodorus Siculus, and Justin. On morality, Jefferson recommended books by Epictetus, Plato, Cicero, Antoninus, Seneca, and Xenophon's Memorabilia, and in poetry Virgil, Terence, Horace, Anacreon, Theocritus, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Milton, Shakespeare, Ossian, Pope and Swift."Will Fitzhugh
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The state budget bill now in Gov. Scott Walker's hands would leave schools with roughly $900 million less in state aid and property tax authority over the next two years, state figures show.Related: Wisconsin State Tax Based K-12 Spending Growth Far Exceeds University Funding.Going beyond simple cuts in state aid to schools, the budget bill would also end up requiring many districts - perhaps two-thirds of them statewide - to cut their property tax levies, according to one analysis by a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor.
Now that the 2011-'13 budget bill stands on the verge of becoming law and the protests have died down, schools - and taxpayers - can start to digest the changes in store for them. Those range from new savings on teachers' benefits to expansions of private school voucher programs in Milwaukee and Racine.
"We're really entering a new phase in school funding," said Dan Rossmiller, lobbyist for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards. "It suggests huge challenges."
The cuts to schools are the single biggest item in the Republican budget toward closing a two-year, $3 billion budget deficit without relying on tax increases. The controversy about the cuts is likely to continue, with at least one district saying it's considering a lawsuit.
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What's wrong with this picture?Last week Democratic heavyweight George Norcross got up on a stage with Gov. Chris Christie to announce that not only does he support the Opportunity Scholarship Act (the voucher bill) but also he's opening charter schools Camden.
To add to the cognitive dissonance, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) joined forces with the nepotistic Elizabeth school board to campaign against Sen. Ray Lesniak (D-Union), the former chair of the NJ Democratic party -- and the chief sponsor of the school voucher bill.
To muddy matters further, Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex), a steadfast ally of the teachers union, looks likely to overcome her initial opposition to a health and pension benefits reform bill -- despite protestations from NJEA leaders. The legislation would require public employees, including teachers, to contribute substantially more than the current 1.5 percent of base pay toward pension and healthcare premiums. (The Assembly Budget Committee just announced it will hear the bill on Monday.)
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Let's say that instead of taking on huge debts while I was in law school, I had taken up a wicked cocaine habit. Let's say I had done loads and loads of blow from 2000 to 2007 and then went into a 12-step program. If I had been lucky enough to avoid an overdose or jail, you could argue that things would be better for me right now -- even if I had a really serious cocaine problem where I spent my all my disposable income on the drug, and even if I put a good job and a good marriage straight up my nose. If I had been through all that and then wrote an essay about the highs and the lows of doing cocaine throughout my legal career, if I was telling kids that they could overcome a wicked cocaine habit even though the consequences were severe, if I was truthfully telling people that even though I'm trying to stay clean and sober now I'm not "ashamed" of my past life, I'd have nearly everybody in my corner.Instead, I didn't have a cocaine habit in law school and beyond. I defaulted on my student debts.
Really, the smart thing to do would have been to default on all my loans, then blame it on the cocaine that I was "powerless" to stop. But instead of playing the victim, I marshaled what autonomous power I had and chose not to pay back my loans in a timely manner. I decided to go down on my own terms, not the terms set out for me in a promissory note.
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After Donna Cushlanis's son, who was in second grade, kept bursting into tears midway through his math problems, which one night took over an hour, she told him not to do all of his homework."How many times do you have to add seven plus two?" Ms. Cushlanis, 46, said. "I have no problem with doing homework, but that put us both over the edge. I got to the point that this is enough."
Ms. Cushlanis, a secretary for the Galloway school district, complained to her boss, Annette C. Giaquinto, the superintendent. It turned out that the district, which serves 3,500 kindergarten through eighth-grade students, was already re-evaluating its homework practices. The school board will vote this summer on a proposal to limit weeknight homework to 10 minutes for each year of school -- 20 minutes for second graders, and so forth -- and ban assignments on weekends, holidays and school vacations.
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As he won control of the city's public schools nine years ago this week, Mayor Bloomberg boldly promised: "We will not have to tolerate an incapable bureaucracy which does not respond to the needs of the students."Sadly, New York City isn't even close to achieving that bold vision: We learned this week that only one in three city high-school graduates is prepared for college-level work.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg's promise is being put to the test like never before.
As the school year winds down, City Hall and the United Federation of Teachers have ratcheted up an intense game of chicken over the future direction of the city's school system. What schools will look like come the fall is anyone's guess.
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The second Dem amendment includes a whole host of provisions on education.
See it here.
Here are some details, according to a summary from Minority Leader Mark Miller's office:
-increase funding to K-12 by $356 million.
-repeal expansion of the choice program.
-repeal elimination of funding for gifted and talented programs, AODA grants, and science, technology, engineering and match grants.
-Fund the Wisconsin GI Bill and tie financial aid to increases in tuition.
-Boost funding to tech colleges by $17 million annually.
-repeal a provision JFC put into the budget that would create an individual income tax credit derived from property assessed as manufacturing or agricultural property. The tax credit would kick in Jan. 1, 2013, and when fully phased in for tax year 2016 would be worth $128.7 million annually.
-- By JR RossFascinating. I wonder what's behind this?Posted by Jim Zellmer at 8:39 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Wisconsin Voucher debate reveals deep divisions about public schools
As of early afternoon Wednesday the fate of voucher schools in Green Bay is uncertain. Rumors are flying that the proposal to use tax dollars to pay families to send their children to private and religious schools in that city will be pulled from the state budget.I'm glad Susan posted these comments. Looking at the significant growth in Wisconsin K-12 spending over the past few decades along with declining performance, particularly in reading compels us all: parents, taxpayers, students, teachers, administrators and the ed school community, to think different.It's been a hot topic.
The voucher story I posted on Chalkboard last week detailed Green Bay Supt. Greg Maass' unhappy reaction to both the proposal and the abrupt legislative process that put it in the budget. It definitely struck a nerve, and drew many comments.
Some of the most interesting reactions went well beyond the issue of vouchers and whether public money should be used to fund private schools. They expressed the heart of the debate surrounding public schools, or "government" schools as some folks call them.
Are public schools failing? Who's to blame? What responsibilities does a civil society owe to children who are not our own? What kind of reforms do parents, and taxpayers, want to see?
Here are some excerpts that are revealing of the divide in the debate:
VHOU812 wrote: ...As a consumer of the public (or private) educational institutions, I am demanding more value. If it is not provided, I will push to refuse to purchase and home school. This is not what I want. I want security knowing that I am satisfied with the investment in my children's education. I don't get that feeling right now from publc schools, and that is the core of the problem that public schools need to fix. I also see that private institutions, by their nature, can make changes to respond to consumer demands very quickly, and it is clear public schools either can't, or won't.Wolfram's words are well worth considering: "You have to ask, what's the point of universities today?" he wonders. "Technology has usurped many of their previous roles, such as access to knowledge, and the social aspects."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 10:50 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Seattle Schools' Strategic Plan Update
Here is the presentation from today's Work Session on the Strategic Plan with survey results.Download the Seattle Strategic Plan update, here.
Highlights:
- 5905 responses - 64% family member, 26% teacher or school staff, 1% principals, 5% community, 4% Central Office
- By zip code - looks like a somewhat even distribution with NE - 98115 with 528 responses, SE - 98118 with 221 responses, SW - 98136 with 118 responses, West Seattle - 98116 with 182 responses and NW - 98117 with 433 responses. (There were more zip codes than those.)
- page 8 has a breakdown of coaches and costs - overall it costs $6.4M for 65.6 coaches (the salary swings are interesting)
- Professional development in math, science and reading helping teachers and students - the big answer was .... no opinion. And, out of the nearly 6,000 responses, only 3443 people answered this question. Effective/somewhat effective (families-27%/teachers-51%). Ineffective/somewhat ineffective (families-22%/teachers-28%)
- MAP test results effectiveness. Effective/Somewhat Effective (families-41%/teachers-33%). Somewhat effective/ineffective (families-45%/teachers50%). Out of 6k responses, only 3682 respondents answered.
- MAP- how many times a year should it be used? 3x- families-30%, teachers-23%, principals-40%. Hmm, looks like principals like it more than teachers. 2x -families-29%,teachers-30%, principals, 40%. That's a lot closer. And hey, they ARE reducing MAP to two times a year for 2011-2013 (winter and spring)
- NSAP. More efficient/somewhat more - families-42%/teachers 23%/principals 55%. Somewhat less/less efficient - families-27%/teachers-29%/principals-31%.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 5:28 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Wisconsin Governor Walker's Read to Lead task force met on May 31st at the State Capitol. Following are observations from WRC.
Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via email:
Governor Walker's Read to Lead task force met on May 31st at the State Capitol. Following are observations from WRC.Note: Peggy Stern, an Oscar-winning filmmaker currently working on a project about dyslexia, had a crew filming the meeting. If we are able to acquire footage, we will make it available. If you would like Wisconsin Eye to record future meetings, please contact them at comments@wiseye.org.
Format: Unlike the first task force meeting, this meeting was guided by two facilitators from AIR, the American Institutes for Research. This was a suggestion of Senator Luther Olsen, and the facilitators were procured by State Superintendent Tony Evers. Evers and Governor Walker expressed appreciation at not having to be concerned with running the meeting, but there were some problems with the round-robin format chosen by the facilitators. Rather than a give-and-take discussion, as happened at the first meeting, this was primarily a series of statements from people at the table. There was very little opportunity to seek clarification or challenge statements. Time was spent encouraging everyone to comment on every question, regardless of whether they had anything of substance to contribute, and the time allotted to individual task force members varied. Some were cut off before finishing, while others were allowed to go on at length. As a direct result of this format, the conversation was considerably less robust than at the first meeting.
Topics: The range of topics proved to be too ambitious for the time allowed. Teacher preparation and professional development took up the bulk of the time, followed by a rather cursory discussion of assessment tools. The discussion of reading interventions was held over for the next meeting.
Guests:
Dawnene Hassett, Asst. Prof. of Curriculum and Instruction and new elementary literacy chair, UW-Madison
Tania Mertzman Habeck, Assoc. Prof. of Curriculum and Instruction, UW-Milwaukee
Mary Jo Ziegler, Reading Consultant, Wis. Department of Public Instruction
Troy Couillard, Special Education Team, Wis. Department of Public InstructionNext Meetings: The Governor's office will work to set up a schedule of meetings for the next several months. Some of the meetings may be in other parts of the state.
Action: WRC suggests contacting the offices of the Governor, Luther Olsen, Steve Kestell, and Jason Fields and your own legislators to ask for several things:
Arrange for filming the next meeting through Wisconsin Eye
Bring in national experts such as Louisa Moats, Joe Torgesen, and Peggy McCardle to provide Wisconsin with the road map for effective reading instruction, teacher preparation, and professional development . . . top university, DPI, and professional organization leaders at the May 31st meeting asked for a road map and admitted they have not been able to develop one
Arrange the format of the next meeting to allow for more authentic and robust discussion of issues
Summary
Teacher Training and Professional Development
The professors felt that the five components of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) are generally taught in preparation programs, but that instruction varies widely from one institution to another. Reading course work requirements can vary from 12 credits to just one course. They also felt, as did the teachers on the panel, that there needs to be more practical hand-on experience in the undergraduate program. There was a feeling that teachers "forget" their instruction in reading foundations by the time they graduate and get into the classroom. They have better luck teaching masters level students who already have classroom experience. The linguistic knowledge means very little without a practicum, and we may need to resort to professional development to impart that information. Teachers need to be experts in teaching reading, but many currently don't feel that way. It is important, especially with RTI coming, to be able to meet the needs of individual students.Both professors and teachers, as well as others on the panel, felt a "road map" of critical information for teacher preparation programs and literacy instruction in schools would be a good idea. This was a point of agreement. Hassett felt that pieces of a plan currently exist, but not a complete road map. The professors and some of the teachers felt that teacher prep programs are doing a better job at teaching decoding than comprehension strategies. They were open to more uniformity in syllabi and some top-down mandates.Marcia Henry mentioned studies by Joshi, et al. that found that 53% of pre-service teachers and 60% of in-service teachers are unable to correctly answer questions about the structure of the English language. Tony Pedriana cited another Joshi study that showed college professors of reading were equally uninformed about the language, and the majority cannot distinguish between phonemic awareness and phonics. He also said it was very difficult to find out what colleges were teaching; one college recently refused his request to see a syllabus for a reading course. Steve Dykstra read from the former Wisconsin Model Academic Standards and the current Wisconsin Model Early Learning Standards, which contained incorrect definitions and examples of phonemic awareness. He questioned whether teachers were being adequately prepared in decoding skills. Rep. Steve Kestell was concerned with the assessment that most teachers do not feel like experts in teaching reading, and he wondered if updated techniques for training teachers would make a difference.
Sarah Archibald (aide to Luther Olsen) proposed looking at a more rigorous foundations of reading test, as found in other states, as a requirement for teacher licensure. This would be one way to move toward more uniform instruction in teacher prep programs. Steve Dykstra pointed out that a test alone will not necessarily drive changes in teacher preparation, but publishing the passage results linked to individual colleges or professors would help. Evers indicated that DPI has been looking for several months into teacher testing and licensure.
Gov. Walker asked if the ed schools were looking at the latest trends in teacher preparation to become better. The professors indicated that the ed schools confer with local districts in an effort to improve.
Supt. Evers said it was probably not a good idea that teacher prep programs across Wisconsin vary so much.
Hassett indicated that some flexibility needs to be retained so that urban and rural areas can teach differently. There was some disagreement as to whether teachers of upper grades need to be trained in reading, or at least trained the same way.Linda Pils pointed out that the amount and quality of professional development for Wisconsin teachers is very spotty. Most panel members felt that a coaching model with ongoing training for both teachers and principals was essential to professional development, but the coaches must be adequately trained. There was some discussion of Professional Development Plans, which are required for relicensure, and whether the areas of development should be totally up the individual teacher as they are now. Steve Dykstra felt that much existing professional development is very poor, and that money and time needs to be spent better. Some things should not count for professional development. Michele Erikson felt that it would be good to require that Professional development be linked to the needs of the students as demonstrated by performance data. Mary Read pointed out that coaching should extend to summer programs.
The main consensus here was that we need a road map for good reading instruction and good teacher training and coaching. What is missing is the substance of that road map, and the experts we will listen to in developing it.
Assessment
Mary Jo Ziegler presented a list of formal and informal assessment tools used around Wisconsin. Evers pointed out that assessment is a local district decision. Many former Reading First schools use DIBELS or some formal screener that assesses individual skills. Balanced literacy districts generally use something different. Madison, for example, has its own PLA (Primary Language Assessment), which includes running records, an observational survey, word identification, etc. MAP assessments are widely used, but Evers indicated that have not been shown to be reliable/valid below third grade. Dykstra questioned the reliability of MAP on the individual student level for all ages. PALS was discussed, as was the new wireless handheld DIBELS technology that some states are using statewide. Many members mentioned the importance of having multiple methods of assessment. Kathy Champeau delivered an impassioned plea for running records and Clay's Observational Survey, which she said have been cornerstones of her teaching. Kestell was surprised that so many different tools are being used, and that the goal should be to make use of the data that is gathered. Dykstra, Henry, and Pedriana mentioned that assessment must guide instruction, and Archibald said that the purpose of an assessment must be considered. Couillard said that the Wis. RTI center is producing a questionnaire by which districts can evaluate assessment tools they hear about, and that they will do trainings on multiple and balanced assessments. Dykstra questioned the three-cue reading philosophy that often underlies miscue analysis and running records. no consensus was reached on what types of assessment should be used, or whether they should be more consistent across the state. Hassett questioned the timed component of DIBELS,and Dykstra explained its purpose. Some serious disagreements remain about the appropriateness of certain assessment tools, and their use by untrained teachers who do not know what warning signs to look for.Intervention
Evers began the topic of intervention by saying that DPI was still collecting data on districts that score well, and then will look at what intervention techniques they use. Henry suggested deferring discussion of this important topic to the next meeting, as there were only 8 minutes left.Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:31 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Chicago School Board rejects 4 percent raises for teachers
Newly-seated Chicago School Board members ruled Wednesday that the cash-strapped CPS system does not have the $100 million it would cost to cover promised 4 percent raises for teachers and other union workers.Rosalind Vevea & Crystal Yednak:The unanimous decision to stop the raises from going into effect came after board members were told that nearly three-quarters of the system's teachers will still get other raises based on length of service and educational advancement -- at a cost to the district of $35 million.
The decision came during a "special meeting" called to determine if the district had enough money to fund the scheduled 4 percent raises to teachers and seven other bargaining units representing building engineers and other support staff. Under the contract, the board can reject contractual raises if it determines the system does not have the funds to pay for them.
Even without the 4 percent pay hikes, the raises most teachers will receive could range between 3 and 5 percent for those with less than 13 years in the system, and 1 percent for those with more experience, officials said.
Pleading poverty, the newly-seated Chicago Board of Education voted Wednesday to rescind a scheduled 4 percent raise for Chicago Public Schools teachers that would have cost almost $100 million.The Chicago Sun-Times:The board's unanimous decision came after it revealed that the CPS budget deficit -- which it said is now $712 million -- includes millions of dollars in previously undisclosed costs.
The yearly raises are part of the Chicago Teachers Union contract, which is in its final year, but they are only enacted if the board agrees the district can afford them. The raises have been approved each year since the current contract began in 2007.
Board president David Vitale said teacher layoffs could still occur despite the vote. The CTU and other unions whose contractual raises were affected have until 11:59 p.m. Monday to ask to re-open part of their contracts in order to negotiate around the raises.
Facing an estimated $712 million deficit, the new Chicago Board of Education cried uncle on Wednesday, voting for the first time in 20 years not to fund promised raises.Now it's time for Chicago teachers to stand up and accept reality.
Chicago teachers and the seven unions representing other school employee unions should accept the wage freeze or, at a minimum, try to negotiate less than the promised 4 percent raise.
Holding on to the pipe dream of getting that 4 percent raise -- and risking a summer of uncertainty and a possible strike at the end -- does no one, least of all Chicago students, any good.
The Board of Education simply has no more rabbits to pull from its budget hat.
We say that cautiously, knowing that CPS said much the same last year as it tried to persuade teachers to forgo their raise. And then, voila, CPS managed to fill its deficit without increasing class size or scaling back programs significantly.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:25 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:B-Schools Embrace China
Just like large companies eager to get a foothold in one of the world's most important markets, international business schools are moving into China in a big way.Eager to capitalize on demand in a fast-growing economy that has a huge need for well-trained managers, big name B-schools from Europe and the U.S. are launching and expanding M.B.A.-program collaborations with Chinese universities or going it alone with courses aimed at mid-career executives.
Experience in China is also a selling point at home, since Western students increasingly see the benefits of studying at an institution whose faculty have close-up experience of the country. Such links can also give M.B.A. students the chance to study in China for a module or a semester.
"The lure is to go and learn about what's happening, and be in the middle of the action in one of the most dynamic economies in the world," says Krishna Palepu, senior associate dean for international development at Harvard Business School. The school has had a faculty research base in China for about 20 years but now shares a new Shanghai classroom with other Harvard schools.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:10 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:June 15, 2011
"You have to ask, what's the point of universities today?" he wonders. "Technology has usurped many of their previous roles, such as access to knowledge, and the social aspects."
"THERE is no dramatic distinction between the processes of the weather and the workings of the human brain," says Stephen Wolfram, a physicist and the founder of Wolfram Research, a software company. "There isn't anything incredibly special about intelligence, it's just sophisticated computational work that has grown up throughout human history." Dr Wolfram is hardly the first scientist to compare the human brain to a computer. Alan Turing, who helped develop the precursors of today's programmable computers during the second world war, began considering the possibility of thinking machines in the 1940s. The difference is that Dr Wolfram claims to have succeeded in codifying vast areas of human knowledge and even replicating supposedly uniquely human attributes such as creativity."One of my realisations, or maybe it's just a piece of arrogance, is that the amount of knowledge and data in the world is big, but it's not that big," he says. "In astronomy, there's a petabyte--a million gigabytes--of data about what's out there in the universe. There are also swathes of data from digital cameras, Twitter feeds and even road-traffic movements. It's a bit daunting, but I soon realised that the bigger challenge is not the underlying data but the computations that get done on them."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 5:17 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:OK, So Here's Who's Running for Seattle School Board 2011
I have been trying to find the campaign websites for all the candidates running for Seattle School Board this year (candidate filings closed 5 p.m. Friday), and the final list looks something like this. Two things: there's like a ton of them and only four open seats; not all of them have a website yet.
Most of the new candidates are running because they are tired of the corruption and cronyism in Seattle Public Schools. Some want to focus on closing the achievement gap and raising test scores. Others are just sick of the influence a plethora of foundations have on education these days.
At least one of the candidates is a reluctant one who says he's running because he is tired of mediocrity in our schools and the "business as usual approach" of our school board. Another lists this thing as his campaign website. This one sued the district against its new high school math textbooks in 2009.
The incumbents say they are fed up of the same things their challengers are (of course, I mean there can only be so many problems in one district, right?).
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:12 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: States face long slog after recession
At statehouses around the country, the Great Recession is far from over: It could take years for many states to climb out of the hole and return to pre-downturn spending levels.An Associated Press examination of 50 balance sheets shows state budgets and bank accounts still ravaged by a drop in tax revenue. Many states are also facing enormous long-term pension and health care obligations. At the same time, the payout of stimulus money from Washington that helped many states in their darkest hours has come to an end.
While some states saw a modest jump in tax collections this spring, the combined revenue projected by the 50 states in the coming fiscal year - $734 billion - is still down by about $34 billion, or 5 percent, from the 2007-08 fiscal year, when the recession began.
Some states are in far worse shape. New Jersey, Nevada, Oregon, Illinois and Louisiana reported deficits that are more than 20 percent of the state general fund.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:10 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:June 14, 2011
Students Stumble Again on the Basics of History
Fewer than a quarter of American 12th-graders knew China was North Korea's ally during the Korean War, and only 35% of fourth-graders knew the purpose of the Declaration of Independence, according to national history-test scores released Tuesday.The results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed that U.S. schoolchildren have made little progress since 2006 in their understanding of key historical themes, including the basic principles of democracy and America's role in the world.
Only 20% of U.S. fourth-graders and 17% of eighth-graders who took the 2010 history exam were "proficient" or "advanced," unchanged since the test was last administered in 2006. Proficient means students have a solid understanding of the material.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 8:56 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:The ends of education reform
Diane Ravitch’s New York Times op-ed seems to have stuck in the craw of many a reformer, including Arne Duncan himself. What really burned people up was Ravitch’s “straw man” arguments: that reformers say poverty doesn’t matter, or only care about gains in student achievement. "No serious reformer says accountability should just be based on test scores. We all favor multiple measures,” Jon Schnur* complained to Jonathan Alter last week.
Rather than get defensive at Diane's defeatism, we reformers should clarify the ends that education reform can achieve.
Please. Remember the old adage, watch what we do, not what we say? The No Child Left Behind act is still the law of the land, and it most definitely rests on the principle that poverty is “no excuse” for low achievement. And it absolutely punishes schools for bad test scores alone. Diane is on firm ground when she writes:
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:50 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Some teachers more 'minimally effective' than others?
The big shoe ready to drop this summer on the DCPS labor relations front involves the estimated 550 teachers who are subject to dismissal if they receive a second consecutive "minimally effective" rating on the IMPACT evaluation system. For Mayor Vincent C. Gray and Acting Chancellor Kaya Henderson, it will be a closely watched test of their resolve to follow through on a signature initiative of the Michelle Rhee era, designed to improve teacher effectiveness by pushing poor performers out of the system.It now appears that some teachers -- most likely younger ones -- will get a reprieve from the two-strikes-and-out rule established in 2009. Earlier this week, human capital chief and IMPACT architect Jason Kamras told principals that if they had young teachers with promise who were headed for a second poor evaluation, they could apply for exceptions.
"We recognize that in some cases, a principal might want to retain a second-year teacher who has received minimally effective ratings in each of his or her first two years of teaching but has demonstrated improvement and the potential to become an effective teacher in the following year," Kamras said.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:49 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Arne Duncan's 'Plan B' May Leave 'No Child' Behind
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is signaling that he's prepared to give public schools relief from federal mandates under No Child Left Behind if Congress does not pass the law's long-awaited overhaul and re-authorization this year."This is absolutely plan B," Duncan told reporters during an embargoed conference call on Friday. "The prospect of doing nothing is what I'm fighting against."
That relief could take the form of granting waivers on test scoring to flexibility on how schools spend federal dollars. "We can't afford to do nothing," he said.
Both Republicans and Democrats agree that the mandate, signed into law in 2002 with bi-partisan support, is dated and flawed. One of the major complaints is that some schools have been labeled failures despite making improvements.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:12 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:June 13, 2011
Grading Standards in Education Departments at Universities
Cory Koedel, University of Missouri, via a kind reader's email:
Students who take classes in education departments at universities receive significantly higher grades than students who take classes in other academic departments. The higher grades awarded by education departments cannot be explained by differences in student quality or by structural differences across departments (i.e., differences in class sizes). The remaining explanation is that the higher grades are the result of lower grading standards. This paper formally documents the grading-standards problem in education departments using administrative grade data from the 2007-2008 academic year. Because a large fraction of the teachers in K-12 schools receive training in education departments, I briefly discuss several possible consequences of the low grading standards for teacher quality in K-12 schools.There is a large and growing research literature showing that teacher quality is an important determinant of student success (recent studies include Aaronson et al., 2007; Koedel, 2008; Nye et al., 2004; Rivkin et al., 2005; Rockoff, 2004).
But while there is persistent research into a variety of interventions aimed at improving teacher quality, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the primary training ground for K-12 teachers--education departments at universities.
This paper provides an evaluation of the grading standards in these education departments. I show that education students receive higher grades than do students in every other academic discipline. The grading discrepancies that I document cannot be explained by differences between education and non-education departments in student quality, or by structural differences across departments.
The likely explanation is grade inflation.
The earliest evidence on the grading-standards problem in education departments comes from Weiss and Rasmussen in 1960. They showed that undergraduate students taking classes in education departments were twice as likely to receive an "A" when compared to students taking classes in business or liberal arts departments. The low grading standards in education departments, illustrated by these authors over 50 years ago, are still prevalent today.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 5:56 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:High school education no longer one-size-fits-all
The caps and gowns haven't changed much. "Pomp and Circumstance" continues to mark the occasion. And many of those valedictorians are bound to quote "The Road Not Taken."Commencement ceremonies have remained virtually unchanged over the years. But don't be fooled. The high school experience leading up to graduation has never looked so different for American teenagers.
Everything from technology to academic innovations to the lagging economy has influenced high schools and the students they serve -- locally and nationwide.
No longer a novelty, independent charter schools will issue a record number of diplomas to students who received a new brand of education -- often in some unlikely venues, including shopping malls, museums and an old Navy boot camp.
More students than ever will graduate this year after taking some of their courses online.
And tough economic times have created a rising population of homeless students -- and programs and schools designed to educate and help them.Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:27 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:"Fix the Workforce or Die" Bucyrus Finds Skilled Labor in Texas
Not long ago, Bucyrus International Inc. stood out in Milwaukee as a veritable poster child for business opportunity and expansion. Mayor Tom Barrett singled out chief executive Tim Sullivan in his 2005 "state of the city" address: "Thank you for believing and investing in our city."And so it was awkward last week when Sullivan told a packed auditorium of civic leaders that he needed to make a "confession," something he's kept quiet for years. Finding qualified, factory-grade welders in an old-line industrial city such as Milwaukee had become arduous to near impossible. Calling himself a "killjoy," Sullivan said he quietly phoned a few contacts in Texas to see whether the Lone Star State could provide him enough welders who are qualified to piece together the colossal mining machines that Bucyrus ships to India, China and elsewhere around the world.
A delegation of senior Texas government authorities met Sullivan at the airport, including the mayor of the town of Kilgore. In a one-hour lunch, they matched Bucyrus with a ready-to-occupy factory with every possible amenity.
More important, they asked Sullivan exactly what sort of workers he needed. Sullivan said 80 with specific skill. The state gave Sullivan a guarantee that the workers would be waiting when the doors opened at the expansion site in Kilgore. State officials customized a recruitment, training and certification program. One year later, when the expansion site in Kilgore opened its doors, the 80 welders were waiting.
In the two years since then, the Texas site has more than doubled to 184 total workers and plans to keep hiring. And back in Milwaukee, Sullivan has said next to nothing in public about the Kilgore expansion.
"We have a complete disconnect between jobs and education and training," Sullivan said. In Milwaukee, "we're a long way" from replicating the feat in Texas.
"There is no stomach in this state to change the curriculum," he said. "Who is initiating education reform in the state right now? No one."
Although taxpayer-funded MATC probably is the institution best suited to address the skills mismatch, the tech school cannot bear all the blame for its inability to deliver customized workforce training, Sullivan said.
Many Milwaukee-trained welders simply are not mentally prepared by metro Milwaukee's grade schools and high schools, Sullivan said.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:24 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Grading For Learning: Grade Inflation Panacea? Or More Dr. FeelGood?
At tomorrow's (June 13) school board meeting, an "informational" agenda item will be presented regarding the switch from conventional grading/report card system to the "Grading For Learning" system throughout grades K-7. This switch will be flipped for the 2011-12 school year.Grading for Learning has been looming on the horizon for several years now. It's not something new to Sun Prairie. In fact, a number of school districts have implemented it and a number will begin implementation this year. Grading for Learning is a concept introduced by Ken O'Connor.
What is the background and research for Grading for Learning?
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:09 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:June 12, 2011
Time for year-round school in Madison
But after learning of the Madison School District's failure to adequately boost test scores under No Child Left Behind, I had to wonder: Heat or no heat, what cause for picnicking is there in the advent of a nearly three-month long break from formal learning for brains that, in their youth, are veritable sponges for knowledge?Much more on the oft-criticized WKCE, here and "Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum". It certainly is long past time for a new academic benchmark... Wisconsin students should participate in global examinations, such as TIMSS, among others.I'm less worried about my children, who have a standard pair of educated, middle-class parents. They probably won't make major academic strides over the summer, but they won't lose much ground or -- worse -- fill their free time picking up bad habits.
But here's the thing about the Madison district: Increasingly, its students aren't like my kids.
They are like the kids who live in the traditionally lower-income, higher-crime Worthington Park neighborhood. These and the kids from the tonier Schenk-Atwood neighborhood where we live share a school, but they don't necessarily share the same social, educational and financial advantages.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:59 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:1 in 4 Sun Prairie High School Seniors Graduate with High Honors!! ???
A school board member shared the following information which was received from a community member, knowing grade inflation is one of SP-EYE's hot buttons. The contributor wasn't identified, but it doesn't matter. It's a great comparison from 20 years ago to today. If these numbers are valid (and we have absolutely no reason to suspect they are not), they represent cause for alarm.Sun Prairie High School.
Class of 2011 Class of 1991 Total Students 485 300 # on Honor Roll 187* (39%) 24 (8%) * This is reportedly the lowest in the past 7-8 years! # new NHS members 80 (16%) 14 (4%) Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:18 AM | Comments (1) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:The argument against double standards in education
New York City has become the latest battleground in the national fight for education equality.In some schools, hallways serve as a stark dividing line. Classrooms with peeling paint and insufficient resources sit on one side, while new computers, smartboards and up-to-date textbooks line the other. One group of students is taught in hallways and cramped basements, while others under the same roof make use of fully functional classrooms.
New York City has increasingly resorted to co-locating charter schools inside existing public school buildings as way to cut costs. When handled improperly, co-location can lead to visible disparities, division and tension among students. In many instances, traditional students are forced into shorter playground periods than their charter school counterparts, or served lunch at 10 am so that charter students can eat at noon. The inequity is glaring, and it is certainly not lost on the students themselves.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:25 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Sasse urges Rhode Island Governor Chafee to veto Teacher retiree rehiring bills
That is the way Gary Sasse, a top-level official in the Carcieri administration -- and long-time head of the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council -- described the front-page news Friday about the Senate's votes a day earlier for bills allowing retirees to return to return to work with state pensions and paychecks."It was not that long ago that many of us spoke out against the practice of allowing retired public employees to a collect retirement check while on the state's payroll. Now it appears that the practice may be coming back. Situational expediency should not trump sound personnel practices. Based on Rhode Island history this could be a dangerous precedent,'' wrote Sasse in an email.
Now the director of the Bryant University's Institute for Public Leadership, Sasse was commenting on the Senate's approval of a bill to allow up to 50 retired school teachers and administrators to work as $500-a-day consultants to the Department of Education, without giving up their pensions. The sponsor: state Sen. Hanna Gallo, a speech pathologist in the Cranston school system.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:59 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:A Year of Drama and Hard Feelings in Education
"Today marks the beginning of a very dark week at The School District of Philadelphia," began a press release issued last Monday by the District itself. No doubt many Philadelphia school employees would agree. That day, the District issued layoff notices to 3,024 of its workers, including 1,523 of the District's approximately 11,000 teachers.
Budget problems are nothing new for Philadelphia's School District, which was taken over by the state of Pennsylvania a decade ago in part because of its chronic funding problems. Through all those difficulties, though, it has no modern history of teacher layoffs on this scale.
The moves were designed to close a $629 million shortfall in the School District's $2.7 billion budget--a gap caused by the end of federal stimulus funding and the knowledge that cuts in state funding were on the way.Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:28 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Introduction to Seattle Public Schools
I recently met with one of the several new employees at Seattle Public Schools and gave a rundown on history and culture of the District.Here's the short version:
1. There is a complete disconnect between what is said, done, and decided in the JSCEE and what happens in the schools.
The headquarters folks make bad decisions because they have no idea how those decisions will actually play out in the schools - and they don't want to know. Their decisions don't matter because they don't check to confirm they are being followed and they couldn't enforce them anyway. The schools know all of this - that the District headquarters is clueless about the realities of schools, that their decisions are horrible, that they will never come around and confirm compliance with the decision, and that they are powerless to enforce those decisions - so they simply ignore the decisions. The schools see the gap between them and the district headquarters as insulation and they work to keep it. They don't want any district interference because it is always bad. The schools work to go unnoticed by the district headquarters. Ideally, they would like the District headquarters to forget they are there. The tall blade of grass gets cut; the high nail gets hammered down. If you have ever been part of an alternative school or an advanced learning program, you've heard people say "Don't make waves, we don't want to attract the District's attention." There are very, very few examples of district intervention in a school that proved beneficial. I think the District's decision to put elementary APP in Lowell in 1997 was one. The interventions at Hawthorne and West Seattle Elementary are looking like they could buck the trend. STEM might also. If so, they would be the exceptions rather than the rule.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:23 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:June 11, 2011
5 reasons to believe progress is being made to address Wisconsin reading crisis
What if, despite everything else going on, we were able to put together a strong, multi-faceted campaign that made progress in fighting the reading crisis in our midst?Related: Wisconsin Reading Coalition.The optimist in me says it might happen, and I point to five things that are going on to support that. (Don't worry, the pessimist in me will show up before we're done.)
One: I attended the second meeting of Gov. Scott Walker's Read to Lead Task Force recently. Unlike most anything else going on in the Capitol, this was a civil, constructive discussion involving people of diverse opinions. The focus of the afternoon-long session was how to improve the way teachers are trained to teach reading.
Walker and Tony Evers, the state superintendent of public instruction, disagree strongly on some major school issues, but they sat next to each other, facing university professors, teachers, reading advocates of varying philosophies, and others. There even seemed to be some emerging agreement that the state Department of Public Instruction and university leaders could and should take steps to ensure that teachers are better trained before they get into classrooms and, once there, get more effective help in continuing to develop their skills.
The broad goal of Walker's task force is to get almost all kids reading on grade level before they leave third grade - a wonderful goal. But reaching it raises a lot of issues, including how to deal with sharply contending schools of thought on how to best teach reading.
Nonetheless, at least for an afternoon, important people were engaged in a serious discussion on a huge issue, and that seemed encouraging.
Madison School District Literacy Program; 2011-12 Proposed Budget Hearing Remarks.
Advocating a Standard Graduation Rate & Madison's "2004 Elimination of the Racial Achievement Gap in 3rd Grade Reading Scores". Well worth revisiting.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 9:26 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:University Administrators Will Outnumber College Faculty by 2014; It's Already A Reality at UM-Flint
According to Malcom Harris writing in n+1:"And while the proportion of tenure-track teaching faculty has dwindled, the number of managers has skyrocketed in both relative and absolute terms. If current trends continue, the Department of Education estimates that by 2014 there will be more administrators than instructors at American four-year nonprofit colleges. A bigger administration also consumes a larger portion of available funds, so it's unsurprising that budget shares for instruction and student services have dipped over the past fifteen years."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 5:47 AM | Comments (1) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Cuomo Urges Broad Limits to N.Y. Public Pensions
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, joining a parade of officials from across the country who are seeking to rein in spending by limiting public employees' pensions, proposed Wednesday to broadly limit retirement benefits for new city and state workers in New York.Mr. Cuomo said New York State and New York City simply could no longer afford to offer new employees the generous benefits their predecessors received.
Among the most significant changes the governor proposes is to raise the minimum retirement age to 65 from 62 for state workers, and to 65 from 57 for teachers.
"The numbers speak for themselves -- the pension system as we know it is unsustainable," the governor said in a statement. "This bill institutes common-sense reforms to bring government benefits more in line with the private sector while still serving our employees and protecting our retirees."
Mr. Cuomo's proposal escalates a battle between the first-term Democrat and a major Democratic Party constituency: public-sector labor unions.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:55 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Chinese school defies rigid exam-focused education
In most Chinese high schools, outdated rote learning is the norm. But one school in Beijing is promoting creativity and independent thinking.TESS VIGELAND: This week, we've been looking at China's higher education system -- what it takes to get into college and what happens once students get there. China's emphasis on taking tests to get ahead in society raises questions about whether those students will be creative enough to thrive in an economy based on innovation. One school in Beijing is trying to get away from the testing culture.
Our China correspondent Rob Schmitz has the final of three reports.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:49 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Legislative Update: Our Spending Authority Goes Up; Rewritten Charter School Bill Tiptoes Toward Plausibility
Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:
There's been a considerable legislative activity affecting our schools lately, with the Joint Finance Committee completing its work on the Governor's proposed budget and other legislative committees active as well.Here's an update on two developments of particular interest to those of us in Madison - the retention of school districts' ability to use property tax carryover authority to increase spending above otherwise applicable revenue limits and the most recent iteration of the Republican charter school expansion legislation working its way through committee.
Other legislative developments will have significant impact elsewhere in the state in the short run and could well affect Madison significantly in the longer run - I'm thinking of the expansion of voucher schools into all of Milwaukee County and Racine and perhaps Green Bay - but the two developments that will likely have a more immediate impact are my focus for today.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:46 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:June 10, 2011
Iowa collecting data on students who took community college classes while in high school
Education officials are collecting data on Iowa students who earn community college credits while in high school to see how well-prepared those students are for college.According to a new report by the Iowa Department of Education, more than 38,200 high school students in Iowa took classes last year for credit through community colleges, 50 percent more than five years earlier. Those students accounted for more than 25 percent of the enrollment at the state's community colleges.
The Des Moines Register reported Wednesday that the state hasn't tracked passing and failing rates, and officials don't know whether the courses are as tough as those offered at the college level. But state officials are now collecting that information, said Roger Utman, administrator for the Education Department's Division of Community Colleges and Workforce Preparation.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 4:09 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Education Psychology: When should you teach children, and when should you let them explore?
IT IS one of the oldest debates in education. Should teachers tell pupils the way things are or encourage them to find out for themselves? Telling children "truths" about the world helps them learn those facts more quickly. Yet the efficient learning of specific facts may lead to the assumption that when the adult has finished teaching, there is nothing further to learn--because if there were, the adult would have said so. A study just published in Cognition by Elizabeth Bonawitz of the University of California, Berkeley, and Patrick Shafto of the University of Louisville, in Kentucky, suggests that is true.Dr Bonawitz and Dr Shafto arranged for 85 four- and five-year-olds to be presented, during a visit to a museum, with a novel toy that looked like a tangle of coloured pipes and was capable of doing many different things. They wanted to know whether the way the children played with the toy depended on how they were instructed by the adult who gave it to them.
One group of children had a strictly pedagogical introduction. The experimenter said "Look at my toy! This is my toy. I'm going to show you how my toy works." She then pulled a yellow tube out of a purple tube, creating a squeaking sound. Following this, she said, "Wow, see that? This is how my toy works!" and then demonstrated the effect again.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 4:08 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Getting it Right on Layoffs
In a report on WNYC today, Beth Fertig described the plight of a promising young teacher who is waiting to find out if he will be laid off by the mayor. In the report she wrote, "Lee, 26, teaches third grade at PS 124 in Manhattan's Chinatown. The union contract requires the least experienced teachers to be let go first meaning that elementary teachers with less than four years' experience are most at risk."Unfortunately, this is not true. The UFT contract makes only one reference to layoffs which is to say that if they are necessary they will done in accordance with applicable state law. It is the law and not the contract that creates a seniority based system for layoffs. This is a small error in an otherwise well done report.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:25 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Public Employee Unions vs. Democratic Governors - Part 93
d an on-again, off-again relationship with Gov. John Kitzhaber. The Oregon Education Association endorsed his opponent in the Democratic primary, largely because of Kitzhaber’s “performance-based funding” proposal. When Kitzhaber won the nomination, OEA and other public sector unions bet the ranch on him.Gov. Kitzhaber’s latest proposal is a merger of the state boards dealing with K-12 and higher education, which has caused OEA some heartburn. “I am surprised and disappointed to hear that OEA has changed course and now opposes Senate Bill 909 and a package of modest education reforms that would deliver better results for students, more resources for teachers and more accountability for taxpayer dollars. For them to cling to the status quo is not in the best interest of Oregonians," said Kitzhaber in a statement.
Meanwhile in California, David Kieffer, the executive director of the state SEIU affiliate announced his opposition to Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan for a special election in September to extend and raise taxes. The state’s public sector unions are interested parties because they would be expected to fund the campaign with dues dollars.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:18 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Real Grad Rates
I love Salt Lake but having grown up in Denver it makes me nervous to have mountains in the east. I’ve also noticed that they may be more conservative here than in my new hometown of Seattle. The newspaper is reporting with some surprise today that a local anthropologist has found evidence that Darwin was on to something with that evolution stuff.
The editorial page explains that the precipitous drop in the Utah high school graduation rate is a result of all those Latino students moving in.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:17 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:An Interview with Joe Nathan: How Cincinnati, Ohio Public Schools Eliminated the High School Graduation Gap between White and African American Students
1) Joe, there seems to be a lot of good news coming out of Cincinnati in terms of increased high school graduation rates. What's happening in Cincinnati?Recently Elizabeth Holtzapple, Cincinnati Public Schools Director of Research, Evaluation and Testing, told me that the district's public schools increased overall high school graduation rates to 81.9% in 2010. That is up from 51% to 2000. She also reported the district also has maintained something major it first achieved in 2007. While continuing to increase overall high school graduation rates, CPS also has eliminated the high school graduation gap between white and African American students.
2) About how long has this concerted effort been going on?
This work has been going on for the last decade. It has involved a series of coordinated, research-based strategies, along with tremendous, creative and courageous work by people in schools, as well as the broader community. There was no single, "silver bullet."
3. What were the key strategies?
Cincinnati used several strategies. The most important included
Focusing on just a few goals (increasing overall graduation rates and reducing the high school graduation gap).
Taking educators, parents, community leaders and students to visit some of the nation's most effective urban district and charter public schools.
Focusing staff development on a few key areas: literacy, numeracy and learning to work more effectively with today's urban youth.
Increasing youth/community service so students learned they are capable of more than they thought.
Positive ongoing leadership from the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers
Holding principals accountable and replacing some in schools where there was not much progress.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:13 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Backlash: Are These End Times for Charter Schools?
Is it the best of times or end times for public charter schools? Four thousand charter-school leaders, teachers, advocates and policymakers will gather in Atlanta this month at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools' annual conference. The gathering of upstarts is larger than what many long-standing traditional-education groups can muster, but in states and cities across the country, charter schools are facing increased political pressure and scrutiny. In Georgia, the state's supreme court just ruled that the arrangements for charter schools are unconstitutional. Welcome to town! (See what makes a charter school great.)Charter schools, the first of which was created in 1992, are public schools that are open to all students but run independently of local school districts. There are now more than 5,000 of them educating more than a million students. Charter schools range in quality from among the best public schools in the country to among the worst. That variance is proving to be a political Achilles' heel for charter schools, fueling a serious backlash. (See "KIPP Schools: A Reform Triumph, or Disappointment?")
In New York City, the NAACP joined the teachers' union in a lawsuit that would have the effect of curbing charter-school growth. That sparked a protest by families in Harlem, and the NAACP was roundly criticized for its stance, which apparently owes more to politics than kids.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:11 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:June 9, 2011
Time to Make Professors Teach My new study suggests a simple way to cut college tuition in half.
No sooner do parents proudly watch their children graduate high school than they must begin paying for college. As they write checks for upwards of $40,000 a year, they'll no doubt find themselves complaining loudly about rising college costs--even asking: "Is it worth it?"It's a legitimate question. As college costs have risen wildly, the benefits of the degree seem less and less clear. Larger numbers of college graduates are taking relatively low-paying and low-skilled jobs.
The good news? There are ways to greatly ease the burden and make college more affordable, according to new data from the University of Texas at Austin.
In a study for the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, Christopher Matgouranis, Jonathan Robe and I concluded that tuition fees at the flagship campus of the University of Texas could be cut by as much as half simply by asking the 80% of faculty with the lowest teaching loads to teach about half as much as the 20% of faculty with the highest loads. The top 20% currently handle 57% of all teaching.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 5:29 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Special education advocates press Oakland Schools to hire more experienced teachers
In the last two years, teaching candidates from Oakland Teaching Fellows and Teach for America pretty much had a lock on all open special education positions in the Oakland school district.All but three of the 70 new hires during that time period were teachers placed in Oakland schools through one of those two programs, according to a report the school district released today.
But district staff say in the report that is about to change:
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:53 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:MPS board votes to ask union for pension concession to save jobs
The Milwaukee School Board voted Tuesday night to ask the teachers union for up to a 5.8% pension contribution, which potentially could be done under legislation passed last week by the Legislature's budget committee. That legislation, if passed by the full Legislature, would allow districts to enter into side agreements without reopening contracts.If the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association agreed to the pension contribution, the $19.2 million generated could save 198 teaching positions, including 51 positions in the Student Achievement Guarantee in Education, or SAGE, program, according to district estimates. That program allows an 18-to-1 student-to- teacher ratio in kindergarten through third grade at schools with qualifying low-income children.
The pension contribution savings also could restore 22 nurses and one nursing supervisor position, plus 27 art and music teachers, said Board President Michael Bonds, who proposed that the union be approached for the concession as the board wrestled with its budget for the 2011-'12 fiscal year.
"This is a golden opportunity to save jobs, help our kids, and it's consistent with state law," Bonds said after the meeting.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:27 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Report says L.A. principals should have more authority in hiring teachers
School principals should be able to hire any teacher of their choosing, and displaced tenured teachers who aren't rehired elsewhere within the system should be permanently dismissed, according to a controversial new report on the Los Angeles Unified School District. The report will be presented Tuesday to the Board of Education.The research, paid for largely by funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, offers a roadmap for improving the quality of teaching in the nation's second-largest school system, with recommendations strongly backed by L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:51 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Grading Schools: How to Determine the 'Good' From the 'Bad'?
Now we grade the students, but how do we determine if a school is "good" or "bad"?NewsHour Education Correspondent John Merrow explores the question in this report.
JOHN MERROW: Reading is the foundation of all learning. But according to the nation's report card, only 33 percent of fourth-graders are competent readers.
At this elementary school in New York City, 33 percent would be good news. Last year on the state reading test, only 18 percent of fourth-graders were on grade level, strong evidence of a failing school.
STUDENTS: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
JOHN MERROW: By contrast, this school is filled with enthusiastic students. Teachers provide a supportive and nurturing environment.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:44 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Wisconsin Governor Walker plans to link job training money, local education reform
Gov. Scott Walker on Thursday will announce a new policy to disburse hundreds of millions of dollars in federal job training funds each year - and will link the funds to reforms of local education curriculums.The disclosure came Wednesday morning from Tim Sullivan, chief executive officer of Bucyrus International and the chairman of the Governor's Council on Workforce Investment, a state advisory panel. Sullivan spoke at a meeting of the Milwaukee 7 economic development group.
Under the current system, federal job training funds, disbursed by multiple federal agencies, are paid directly to five state agencies, which in turn have established formulas to spend their share.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:25 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:N.J. Nears Deal to Cut Pensions, Benefits
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Senate legislative leaders have reached a deal to cut pensions and benefits for current public employees, according to a person familiar with the matter.The deal would require workers to pay more of their salaries into the pension system, give up annual cost-of-living increases and pay a percentage of their health care premiums in a tiered system based on their salary, this person said. New employees would have to work longer to get full benefits. Current retirees would not be affected by the deal, nor will people who have at least 25 years in the system.
Top Democratic lawmakers appear to support the proposal. Senate President Stephen Sweeney, who is also a private-sector labor leader, believes he has the votes in his caucus to make it work, according to a person familiar with the matter. It's unclear whether Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver is on board with the deal -- one legislative source said she was -- and if she would be able to muster enough votes in the Assembly, which has been more of an obstacle to Christie's agenda.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:20 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:The Dangerous Mr. Khan
Bill Gates likes Salman Khan a lot, so much so that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is streaming cash to his Khan Academy, an internet silo of over 2,100 free, downloadable video tutorials on Calculus, Physics, Organic Chemistry, et al. Mr. Khan's Academy only has a "faculty of one," but my own students enjoy Mr. Khan's glib teaching style, and they consult his clips on quadratic equations, conic sections, and those hated word problems involving railroad trains. So is the Khan video approach a "disruptive technology" which undermines the existing deathbed educational model by doing it faster, better, and cheaper? Mr. Gates thinks so. "It's a revolution," he enthuses. "Everyone should check it out." (www.khanacademy.org) Wearing his education reformer hat, Mr. Gates declares himself "superhappy."Much more on the Khan Academy, here.
Mr. Khan, then, by all reports, is an entertaining, trustworthy, and helpful tutor of math and science. However, when he essays history, it's a different story and one that exposes something disquieting about a hidden potential of Internet learning, especially if, as some predict, The Khan Academy is the future of education.
Curious about Mr. Khan's take on something non-science, I pulled up his video "U.S. History Overview 3--World War II to Vietnam"
The screen looks like a squashed, two-dimensional schoolroom; you see a combined blackboard and bulletin board with colorful squiggly dates on a scroll down timeline, random photos (Hitler, Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin, mushroom cloud), and tiny maps. Mr. Khan remains offscreen but writes or circles things onscreen with his pointer and provides his signature breathless voiceover.Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:18 AM | Comments (2) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:June 8, 2011
The Cheap Schools Plan
e are rapidly on course to create a dual-level school system for Wisconsin students. In smaller cities and rural and suburban areas, school systems will continue to spend about $10,000 per pupil. That is a bit less than the national average of $10,499, as a recent Census Bureau report found.But in big cities such as Milwaukee and Racine, and perhaps in Green Bay and Beloit, more and more students will be educated at choice schools that spend about $6,400 per pupil. These school systems tend to have students who are poorer, more likely to have learning disabilities, and they are typically the most challenging to teach. Yet Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislators propose to spend less than two-thirds of the average per-pupil spending in other schools in the state and nation.
This situation, I might add, is not simply the fault of Republicans. Many Democrats, in hopes of killing school choice, have adamantly opposed spending more on vouchers in the past, so the per-pupil rate has always been absurdly low. On the other side are Republicans who can't lose with school choice: It undercuts public schools and lowers the number of teachers union members in cities such as Milwaukee. And it allows them to portray themselves as reformers trying to do something about failing schools.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 4:43 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Rhode Island High Schools Rank Worst in the Country
Rhode Island is one of only a handful of states to not have a single school included in the Washington Post's annual High School Challenge, a ranking of more than 1,900 high schools throughout the country.The reason: Rhode Island students are significantly behind the national average when it comes to taking Advanced Placement (AP) exams, and near the bottom of the country when it comes to passing them. In the class of 2010, only 17.9 percent of Ocean State students took an AP exam (compared with 28.3 percent nationally) and just 10.9 passed (compared with 16.9 percent nationally), according to a report issued by the College Board.
According to The Post, the formula used to rank the schools was to "divide the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or other college-level tests a school gave in 2010 by the number of graduating seniors." The goal wasn't to measure to overall quality of the schools, but simply to track how well they are preparing "average students" for college.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:41 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:June 7, 2011
Madison Teachers, Inc. head: Time to get 'down and dirty'
"They're ready," Matthews said afterward, "to do whatever it takes."Much more on John Matthews, here. Madison Teachers, Inc. website and Twitter feed.After 43 years as executive director of Madison Teachers Inc., Matthews is in the spotlight again after encouraging a four-day sick-out that closed school in February. The action allowed teachers to attend protests at the Capitol over Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to curb collective bargaining by public employees. The matter remains in the courts, but it prompted a hasty contract negotiation between the district and union.
Teachers aren't happy about some of the changes, and Matthews is preparing for a street fight.
"It's going to get down and dirty," Matthews said, alluding to the possibility of more job actions, such as "working the contract" - meaning teachers wouldn't work outside required hours - if the School Board doesn't back off changes in the contract. "You can't continually put people down and do things to control them and hurt them and not have them react."
Moreover, the latest battle over collective bargaining has taken on more personal significance for Matthews, whose life's work has been negotiating contracts.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 9:36 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:What is a college education really worth?
Did Peter Thiel pop the bubble? That was the question on the minds of parents, taxpayers and higher education leaders late last month when the co-founder of PayPalannounced that he was offering $100,000 to young people who would stay out of college for two years and work instead on scientific and technological innovations. Thiel, who has called college "the default activity," told USA Today that "the pernicious side effect of the education bubble is assuming education [guarantees] absolute good, even with steep student fees."He has lured 24 of the smartest kids in America and Canada to his Silicon Valley lair with promises of money and mentorship for their projects. Some of these young people have been working in university labs since before adolescence. Others have consulted for Microsoft, Coca-Cola and other top companies. A couple didn't even have to face the choice of putting off college -- one enrolled in college at age 12 and, at 19, had left his PhD studies at Stanford to start his own company.
Of course, Thiel's offer isn't going to change the way most universities do business anytime soon. These 24 kids represent the narrowest swath of the country's college-bound youth. (Though it's important to note: When we talk about America having the greatest system of higher education in the world, these are the kind of people we're bragging about.)
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:28 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Social Darwinism
In May 1846, a year and a half before gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill, several extended families and quite a few unattached males headed with their caravans from Illinois to California. Due to poor organization, some bad advice, and a huge dose of bad luck, by November the group had foundered in the deep snows of the Sierra Nevada. They came to a halt at what is now known as Donner Pass, and, in an iconic if unpleasant moment in California's history, they sat out winter in makeshift tents buried in snow, the group dwindling as survivors resorted to cannibalism to avert starvation.From an evolutionary point of view, what makes the story interesting is not the cannibalism -- which, in the annals of anthropology, is relatively banal -- but who survived and who did not. Of the 87 pioneers, only 46 came over the pass alive in February and March of the next year. Their story, then, represents a case study of what might be termed catastrophic natural selection. It turns out that, contrary to lay Darwinist expectations, it was not the virile young but those who were embedded in families who had the best odds of survival. The unattached young men, presumably fuller of vigor and capable of withstanding more physical hardship than the others, fared worst, worse even than the older folk and the children.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:26 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:State school official blasts voucher program expansion to Green Bay
State Superintendent Tony Evers on Monday blasted the Legislature's budget committee for its late-night vote Friday to expand to Green Bay a program that allows students to attend private and religious schools at taxpayer expense.The voucher expansion should be removed from the state budget and "a true local public debate needs to occur," Evers said in a statement. He also referred to the budget committee's vote to include Racine in the voucher program Thursday night.
"Raising taxes on the citizens of Green Bay and Racine in the dead of night, without public hearings or the support of their locally elected school officials echoes the type of non-representative, undemocratic actions taken by the English parliament against the American colonists through their stamp and tea taxes," Evers said.
He raised several questions about the action Friday night by the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee to include in the state budget an expansion of the school voucher program for Green Bay.
Green Bay property taxpayers are now on track to pay millions for private and religious schools, Evers said. "At the same time, their public school system is being cut $40 million, which will certainly raise class sizes and reduce educational opportunities for public school students."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:03 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Claims of Discrimination By Milwaukee Public Schools Pop Up Again in ED Drug Case
In March, it was announced with much fanfare that the Milwaukee teachers' union was dropping it's controversial Viagra lawsuit against MPS.However, the MacIver News Service has learned that the effort to force MPS to provide coverage for erectile dysfunction treatments has arisen again, albeit in a different venue.
The Milwaukee Teachers Education Association's (MTEA) decision earlier this year came just eight months after filing their August of 2010 suit in Milwaukee County Circuit Court wherein they argued that the board's policy of excluding erectile dysfunction drugs from their health plan coverage was discriminatory against men.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:02 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:June 6, 2011
DPI Report: Madison Schools Are Out of Compliance on Gifted and Talented Education
In response, Superintendent Nerad directed West to start providing honors courses in the fall of 2010. West staff protested, however, and Nerad retracted the directive.Much more on the Madison parents complaint to the Wisconsin DPI, here.Community members sent another petition in July, 2010-this time signed by 188 supporters-again calling for multiple measures of identification and advanced levels of core courses for 9th and 10th graders at West. This time there was no response but silence.
In the meantime, Greater Madison Urban League President Kaleem Caire told us: "The law is there for a reason. Use it."
So, after years of trying to work with the system, we filed a formal complaint with the DPI in September, 2010. Little did we know what upheaval the next months would bring. In October, the district administration rolled out its College and Career Readiness Plan; teachers at West agitated, and students staged a sit-in. In February, our new governor issued his reform proposal; protesters massed at the Capitol, and school was called off for four days.
In the meantime, the DPI conducted its investigation. Though our complaint had targeted West for its chronic, blatant, willful violations, the DPI extended its audit to the entire Madison School District.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:01 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Are we creating dual school systems with charters, vouchers?
Recently I participated in a panel discussion following a showing of the film " Waiting for Superman ." The film is deeply moving. Only a heart of granite would remain unmoved by the plight of the children and caretakers as they learn they would not get into their schools of choice.In the discussion, Jim Johnson, a UNC-Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler Business School professor and founder of the Union Independent School in Durham, made a crucial observation. He noted that the debate around public charter schools versus traditional public schools, or private versus public schools, deflected us from the underlying issue: the plight of children who have no adult advocates.
As Johnson pointed out, despite failing to win a place in their school of choice, the students featured in the film all had a least one adult in their lives who knowledgeably advocated for them and cared deeply about their learning opportunities.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 4:14 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Md. teacher evaluation redesign bogs down
Last summer, Maryland won a $250 million federal grant with a promise to build a model to evaluate teachers and principals that would be "transparent and fair" and tie their success for the first time to student test scores and learning.Now, the state that prides itself on cutting-edge practices and top-in-the-nation schools is struggling -- along with every state or school system that has ever tried -- to come up with a reliable formula for improving the teacher workforce and rooting out the lowest performers.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:10 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Temporary pay cut approved by Los Angeles teachers
Members of the Los Angeles teachers union voted overwhelmingly to approve a temporary salary reduction in exchange for sparing thousands of jobs, the union announced Saturday.The vote, which took place Thursday and Friday, means that the Los Angeles Unified School District's swollen class sizes will not increase next year and that the vast majority of teachers, nurses, librarians and magnet school coordinators -- who run popular special programs -- are likely to keep their jobs.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:06 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Why the Democratic Party Has Abandoned the Middle Class in Favor of the Rich
The first is this: Income inequality has grown dramatically since the mid-'70s--far more in the US than in most advanced countries--and the gap is only partly related to college grads outperforming high-school grads. Rather, the bulk of our growing inequality has been a product of skyrocketing incomes among the richest 1 percent and--even more dramatically--among the top 0.1 percent. It has, in other words, been CEOs and Wall Street traders at the very tippy-top who are hoovering up vast sums of money from everyone, even those who by ordinary standards are pretty well off.Second, American politicians don't care much about voters with moderate incomes. Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels studied the voting behavior of US senators in the early '90s and discovered that they respond far more to the desires of high-income groups than to anyone else. By itself, that's not a surprise. He also found that Republicans don't respond at all to the desires of voters with modest incomes. Maybe that's not a surprise, either. But this should be: Bartels found that Democratic senators don't respond to the desires of these voters, either. At all.
It doesn't take a multivariate correlation to conclude that these two things are tightly related: If politicians care almost exclusively about the concerns of the rich, it makes sense that over the past decades they've enacted policies that have ended up benefiting the rich. And if you're not rich yourself, this is a problem. First and foremost, it's an economic problem because it's siphoned vast sums of money from the pockets of most Americans into those of the ultrawealthy. At the same time, relentless concentration of wealth and power among the rich is deeply corrosive in a democracy, and this makes it a profoundly political problem as well.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:09 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:June 5, 2011
Voucher schools to expand amid questions about their performance
If Gov. Scott Walker's budget is passed with recommendations approved Thursday by the Joint Committee on Finance, there will be more students in more voucher schools in more Wisconsin communities.Related:But critics of school voucher programs are hoping legislators will look long and hard at actual student achievement benefits before they vote to use tax dollars to send students to private schools. They also suggest that studies that have touted benefits of voucher programs should be viewed with a careful eye, and that claims that graduation rates for voucher schools exceed 90 percent are not just overly optimistic, but misleading.
"The policy decisions we are making today should not be guided by false statistics being propagated by people with a financial interest in the continuation and expansion of vouchers nationwide," wrote state Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts, D-Middleton, in a news release Friday.
Pope-Roberts is particularly critical of statistics that school choice lobbyists and pro-voucher legislators are using that claim that 94 percent of school voucher students graduated from high school in four years.
It's good news, she says, but it tells a very selective story about a relatively small subset of students who were studied. That graduation rate reflects only the graduation rate for students who actually remained in the voucher program for all four years: Just 318 of the 801 students who began the program stayed with it.
Per student spending differences between voucher and traditional public schools is material, particularly during tight economic times.
- The story behind the Milwaukee school choice study: The results are more complicated than they are sometimes portrayed.
- Many notes and links.
- Milwaukee Voucher School WKCE Headlines: "Students in Milwaukee voucher program didn't perform better in state tests", "Test results show choice schools perform worse than public schools", "Choice schools not outperforming MPS"; Spend 50% Less Per Student
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 10:26 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Class Struggle: India's Experiment in Schooling Tests Rich and Poor
Instead of playing cricket with the kids in the alleyway outside, four-year-old Sumit Jha sweats in his family's one-room apartment. A power cut has stilled the overhead fan. In the stifling heat, he traces and retraces the image of a goat.In April, he enrolled in the nursery class of Shri Ram School, the most coveted private educational institution in India's capital. Its students include the grandchildren of India's most powerful figures--Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress party President Sonia Gandhi.
Sumit, on the other hand, lives in a slum.
His admission to Shri Ram is part of a grand Indian experiment to narrow the gulf between rich and poor that is widening as India's economy expands. The Right to Education Act, passed in 2009, mandates that private schools set aside 25% of admissions for low-income, underprivileged and disabled students. In Delhi, families earning less than 100,000 rupees (about $2,500 a year) qualify.
Shri Ram, a nontraditional school founded in 1988, would seem well-suited to the experiment. Rather than drill on rote learning, as many Indian schools do, Shri Ram encourages creativity by teaching through stories, songs and art. In a typical class, two teachers supervise 29 students; at public schools nearby, one teacher has more than 50. Three times a day, a gong sounds and teachers and students pause for a moment of contemplation. Above the entrance, a banner reads, "Peace."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 4:49 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:What does the future hold for education in Wisconsin?
Mr. Educational Landscape Watcher here, with his jaw hanging open while he thinks about a few questions that boil down to this: What next?In January, Gov. Scott Walker told a convention of school board members and administrators from around Wisconsin that he was going to give them new tools to deal with their financial issues. Naïve me - I thought he meant bigger hammers and saws.
It turned out Walker was thinking along the lines of those machines that can strip-mine most of China in a week.
Goodness gracious, look at where things stand less than five months later, with more earth moving and drama ahead. Every public school in Wisconsin will be different in important ways because of what has happened in Madison. The private school enrollment in the Milwaukee and Racine areas will get a boost, maybe a large one. The decisions many people make on schooling for their kids are likely to be changed by what has happened in Madison. And then there's the future of Milwaukee Public Schools (he said with a shudder).
As the Legislature's budget committee wraps up its work, let's venture thoughts on a few questions:
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:26 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Update on The Madison School District's High School Curriculum Alignment
In 2008, MMSD received a 5.3 million dollar grant Smaller Learning Communities Grant from the federal government. This grant is known locally as Relationships, Engagement, and Learning (REaL). Work to date has focused on developing teacher capacity, aligning curriculum, improving instructional practice all for the end goal of improving student achievement. During the 2010-11 school year, MMSD unveiled a comprehensive process plan for aligning curriculum PrK-12 with specific focus on the four high schools. The attached report serves as a status update on the MMSD High School Curriculum Alignment Process.Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:59 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Energy industry shapes lessons in public schools
In the mountains of southwestern Virginia, Gequetta Bright Laney taught public high school students this spring about a subject of keen interest to the region's biggest employer: the economics of coal mining."Where there's coal, there's opportunity," Bright Laney told her class at Coeburn High School in Wise County.
Her lessons, like others in dozens of public schools across the country, were approved and funded by the coal industry. Such efforts reflect a broader pattern of private-sector attempts to influence what gets taught in public schools.
Eager to burnish its reputation, the energy industry is spending significant sums of money on education in communities with sensitive coal, natural gas and oil exploration projects. The industry aims to teach students about its contributions to local economies and counter criticism from environmental groups.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:52 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Madison School District Dual Language Immersion Program Evaluation
Daniel A. Nerad, Superintendent:
In Winter 2011, the Center for Applied Linguistics conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the dual language immersion (DLI) programs in the Madison Metropolitan School District, including a charter school with DLI implemented K-5, three elementary schools just beginning implementation, and one middle school site with DLI in sixth grade. The goal of the evaluation was to gather sufficient information for strategic planning to adjust any program components that are in need of improvement, and to strengthen those areas of the programs that are already in alignment with best practices. This report provides feedback on student outcomes, things that are going well, and recommendations for the short-, mid-, and long-term.Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:06 AM | Comments (2) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Madison School District Fine Arts Task Force Update
Laurie Fellenz, Teacher Leader- Fine Arts:
High School course sequence and alignment by course title across the four large high schools is nearly complete. All course titles will be fully aligned by 2011-12. This allows us to look at fine arts courses that are being offered at all of our high schools and what courses are more building-specific. Fine Arts Leadership Teams and High School Department chairs have discussed the equity (and inequity) across the attendance areas, and these two groups will offer recommendations during the 2011- 12 school year to improve access for all students to a wide variety of high school fine arts offerings.Much more on the Fine Arts Task Force, here.Through the new Curricular Materials budget process now managed by Curriculum & Assessment (formerly ELM), the purchase of the Silver Burdett Making Music series for all elementary schools began this spring. All kindergarten books have been purchased, and 1" grade materials will be purchased with the 2011-12 Curriculum Materials budget. The decision was made to purchase one grade at a time so that all elementary schools have equitable resources.
Funds from the Curricular Materials budget and the Fine Arts Task Force allocation were used to purchase REMO World Music Drumming instruments and curriculum forall32elementaryschools. Schools were assessed on their current inventory- some schools received full sets and some schools will divide sets based on need. All schools will receive the full complement o f curriculum materials, and professional development in 2011-12 will include world music drumming and drum circles.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:02 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:June 4, 2011
Madison School District Literacy Program Evaluation
Lisa Wachtel, Executive Director of Curriculum & Assessment:
2010-11 was the first year in which a formal curricular review cycle has been initiated. According to the program review cycle approved by the MMSD Board of Education, literacy was the first area to be reviewed. As a part of an intensive first year (Year 1) review cycle, the Literacy Evaluation and Recommendations were presented to the Board in February, 2011. At the March, 2011 Board meeting, a panel presentation was made in addition to sharing updated action plans and budget implications. Additional budget clarifications were made at the April, 2011 Board meeting.
Recommendations Requested on June 6, 2011It is recommended that the Board approve the Literacy Program Evaluation: Findings and Recommendations.
It is recommended that the Board approve $611,000 to support the Literacy Program Evaluation recommendations. $531,000 of this amount is included in the Superintendent's 2011-12 Balanced Budget Funding for READ 180 in the amount of $80,000 is included in the recommended funding for additions to the 2011-12 cost-to-continue budget (memo dated May 16, 2011) from cost savings measures.
It is recommended that the Board approve the plan to purchase learning materials to support literacy in the amount of $415,000. In October, 2011, the Board requested a plan to outline the purchase. This plan supports the Literacy Evaluation Recommendations, including K-12 literacy instructional materials, Dual Language Immersion, and equity purchases. Funding for the $415,000 purchases is included in 2010-11 contingency accounts (Fund 10) transferred to Curriculum & Assessment (Fund 10) to supplement the Instructional Learning Materials Budget (ELM).
Supporting Documentation
The full report, K-12 Literacy Program Evaluation: Findings and Recommendation for Continual Improvement of Literacy Achievement & K-12 Alignment was submitted by courier to the Board on February 22, 2011. This document is in a 3-ring binder, and is not being re-sent in this packetA summary document, titled Recommendations, Cost Considerations and Plan Description (dated March 17, 2011) provides more detail regarding how the action steps are being carried and reflects the most current budget requests totaling $611,000.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:25 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Madison School District Math Task Force Update
During the 2010-2011 school year, the Mathematics Division of Curriculum and Assessment (C&A) focused on implementing recommendations regarding Middle School Mathematics Specialists. Additionally, progress has been made in working towards consistent district-wide resources at the high school level.Much more on the Math Task Force, here.Recommendations #1 - #5:
Recommendations #1-#5 focus on increasing mathematical knowledge for teaching in MMSD 's middle school teachers of mathematics. These recommendations address our workforce, hiring practices, professional development, partnerships with the UW and work with the Wisconsin DPI to change certification requirements.The C&A Executive Director, C&A Assistant Director, Deputy Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Schools and Mathematics Instructional Resource Teacher met with Human Resources to discuss the implementation of the district-wide expectation for the hiring and retention of Math Specialists. This team created wording to be inserted into all middle school positions that state expectations for teachers involved in teaching mathematics.
The Mathematics Instructional Resource Teacher from Curriculum and Assessment has visited middle schools across Madison to share information with teaching staff and answer questions regarding the Middle School Math Specialist professional development program and the associated expectation for middle school teachers of mathematics. The resource teacher has also met with the Middle School Math Leadership Academy, and the Learning Coordinators to share information and answer questions. A website was created to provide easy access to the needed information. (A copy of the website is attached as Appendix E.)
The Middle School Math Specialist Advisory group that includes UW Mathematics, UW Mathematics Education, Education Outreach and Partnerships, and Madison Metropolitan School District has met throughout the year to provide updates, guidance to the development of the Math Specialist program, and continual feedback on the courses and implementation.
The first cohort of classes in the Middle School Math Specialist program being offered at UW-Madison began in August of20!0. During the first year, the three courses were co-taught by representatives from UW-Mathematics (Shirin Malekpour), UW- ( Mathematics Education (Meg Meyer), and MMSD (Grant Goettl). A total of22 MMSD teachers participated, with seven completing one course, two completing two courses, and ten completing all three offered courses. The topics of study included number properties, proportional reasoning, and geometry.
The first cohort will continue into their second year with eleven participants. The topics of study will include algebra and conjecture. The first cohort will complete the five course sequence in the spring of 2012.
The second cohort is currently being recruited. Advertising for this cohort began in March and sign-up began in April. This cohort will begin coursework in August of 2011. In the first year they will participate in three courses including the study of number properties, proportional reasoning, and geometry. This cohort will complete the five course sequence in the spring of 2013.
The tentative plan for facilitation of the 2011-2012 courses is as follows:
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:18 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Some Illinois public school teachers earning six-figure salaries
Want to wind up making at least six figures as a public school teacher?Send your resume to Highland Park or Deerfield High School, both in Township High School District 113.
The district -- which has no teachers union -- boasted the highest average teacher pay in the state last school year, at $104,737.
More than half of all District 113 full-time teachers -- 55 percent to be exact -- pulled down at least $100,000 in total compensation, including benefits and extra pay for extracurricular activities.
"I would love it if we weren't number one," said District 113 School Board President Harvey Cohen. "Our goal isn't to say, 'Lake Forest pays $50,000 so we'll go $60,000.'
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:05 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:High Tech MCAT Cheating
Two B.C. men are facing criminal charges for allegedly attempting a high-tech scam to cheat on a medical school entrance exam using secret cameras, wireless transmitters and three tutors, who at first did not realize they were being duped.According to documents filed in provincial court in Richmond, B.C., Josiah Miguel Ruben and Houman Rezazadeh-Azar are each facing six charges including theft, unauthorized use of a computer, using a device to obtain unauthorized service and theft of data.
Police allege that on Jan. 29, Rezazadeh-Azar sat down in a room at the University of Victoria to write the Medical College Admissions Test, or MCAT, run by the Association of Medical Colleges.
Police allege he used a pinhole camera and wireless technology to transmit images of the questions on a computer screen back to his co-conspirator, Ruben, at the University of British Columbia.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:49 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Eva Moskowitz, Harlem Success And The Political Exploitation Of Children
As educators, one of our defining beliefs is the principle that we do not use the students entrusted in our care as a vehicle for promoting and accomplishing our political agendas. We hold to this core value even when the political agendas we are pursuing involves causes that will better the lives of those young people, such as full funding for day care centers and schools. When communities and families send their young to us to be educated, they trust that we will exercise the authority given to us as teachers responsibly: we do not manipulate young people into political action they do not fully understand, but educate them into the skills and knowledge of democratic citizenship, in order that one day they will be prepared to make and act on their own informed choices of political action.So when Eva Moskowitz and her Harlem Success Academies turned out students and parents to support the closing of district schools at the February meetings of the Panel for Educational Policy, many of us present were shocked at the way in which 5 year old and 6 year old children were sent to the microphones to speak words they clearly did not understand, put into their mouths by adults who called themselves educators, even as they ignored our most fundamental professional ethics. But if we were paying attention, we would have seen that this crass political exploitation of children is actually a consistent behavior of Moskowitz and Harlem Success.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:08 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:June 3, 2011
Aspen Institute Highlights Teacher Union and School District Collaboration
oday the Aspen Institute examined the historic partnership in Pittsburgh between the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers (PFT) and Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) through release of a research paper and at a panel discussion.Panel moderator and executive director of the Aspen Institute Education & Society Program Ross Wiener underlined that an adversarial relationship between management and labor is not inevitable if both sides are committed to maximizing student outcomes by providing the best-equipped, most effective teachers.
The partnership between PPS and the PFT is a powerful example of what's possible when districts and unions honestly confront the issues, and when leaders on both sides are willing to change. "Pittsburgh's pursuit of an ambitious reform agenda through cooperative efforts offers a powerful counterpoint to the current focus on union-district discord," said Wiener. "While collaboration can't substitute for a substantive improvement agenda, there's every reason to believe we'll make more progress when people are working together. Genuine collaboration will look different in every context, but there are important lessons in Pittsburgh's journey."
Hosted by the Aspen Institute Education & Society Program, the panel discussion was based upon release of its newest report: "Forging a New Partnership: The Story of Teacher Union and School District Collaboration in Pittsburgh." The report, authored by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff writer Sean Hamill, provides an in-depth look at the breakthrough collaboration that took place in Pittsburgh over the past five years. The report also highlights important principles applicable to other districts across the US.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 4:51 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Why DFER is the most important advocacy group in the US
Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) may be the most important advocacy group in America.In the long run, education is the issue that will most determine this country's role in the world.
In the long run, it will be the position of the leaders of the Democratic party, state by state and in congress, that will determine the quality of education in America. Democrats have historically supported increased spending but not always measures that increase quality. DFER makes the case in its statement of principles:
A first-rate system of public education is the cornerstone of a prosperous, free and just society, yet millions of American children today - particularly low-income and children of color - are trapped in persistently failing schools that are part of deeply dysfunctional school systems. These systems, once viewed romantically as avenues of opportunity for all, have become captive to powerful, entrenched interests that too often put the demands of adults before the educational needs of children. This perverse hierarchy of priorities is political, and thus requires a political response.Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:06 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Trading K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Students for Employees: Teacher Count Up, Student Count Down
With politicians and education policy-makers preoccupied by budget cuts and layoffs, it is easy to overlook why we find ourselves in this position. Fortunately, the U.S. Census Bureau rides in to remind us.Each year the bureau publishes a comprehensive report on public school revenues and expenditures. Coupled with education staffing statistics from the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data, it gives us a fundamental picture of the finances and labor costs of the American public school system.
The latest Census Bureau report provides details of the 2008-09 school year, as the nation was in the midst of the recession. That year, 48,238,962 students were enrolled in the U.S. K-12 public education system. That was a decline of 157,114 students from the previous year. They were taught by 3,231,487 teachers (full-time equivalent). That was an increase of 81,426 teachers from the previous year.
This is not new information. We knew last October that the entire public education workforce - teachers, principals, administrators and support workers - grew by more than 137,000 employees during the recession.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:59 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Chinese whispers
A British language teacher claims he can teach people to speak Putonghua in just two days. Can it be done?''In theory," says language teacher Paul Noble, forming a steeple with his fingers in true professorial style, "you should learn Chinese today and tomorrow quicker than anyone has ever learned it on the planet."
In theory, because I'm the first student to take his intensive two-day course in Putonghua, which he is teaching me with his wife, native speaker Chou Kaiti, in the basement of a north London art gallery. If their prototype course works as well as they are hoping, then two days from now I will, as the spiel on Noble's website boasts, "have learned to speak Chinese the way it is really spoken".
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:57 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:RI schools chief: Cooperation key to school reform
The state's top education official told lawmakers Wednesday that it will take more than money and standardized tests to improve Rhode Island's public schools.In an address to a joint session of the state House and Senate, Education Commissioner Deborah Gist said parents, teachers and elected leaders must work together to increase student performance and turn out graduates ready for jobs or college.
"To transform our schools, we must also transform the culture," she told lawmakers. "We need to speak out in support of public education and the things we believe in, but we should not question the good intentions of those with whom we disagree. We must never let our dialogue and discourse become toxic."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:42 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Save the Frogs: California High School Bans Dissections
ids, step away from the scalpels.
In a win for animal rights activists, foregoing the formaldehyde-laced high school rite of passage, Rancho Verde High School in Moreno Valley, California will swap real frogs for their virtual counterparts. In exchange for a minimum five-year commitment, the school will receive free software courtesy of animal-rights groups who advocate for the virtual curriculum.While the school's assistant principal, Kevin Stipp, said the virtual lesson will not be the same as performing the dissection on a real animal, he told the Riverside Press Enterprise, "it's not so drastically different that the kids won't get something out of it."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:14 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:June 2, 2011
Newspaper's lawsuit seeks sick notes for Madison school teachers during protest
The Madison School District failed to follow state law when it denied the Wisconsin State Journal access to more than 1,000 sick notes submitted by teachers who didn't show up for work in February, according to a lawsuit filed by the newspaper Thursday.The lawsuit, filed in Dane County District Court, asks the court to force the district to release the notes under the state's open records law, which requires government agencies to release public documents in most circumstances.
The lawsuit says the sick notes are public records because the public has a special interest in knowing how governments discipline employees, who are ultimately responsible to the public.
"We can't know if things were dealt with appropriately if we can't see the underlying documents on which decisions were made," said April Rockstead Barker, the newspaper's lawyer.
Dylan Pauly, a School District lawyer, declined comment until she had a chance to review the lawsuit.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 8:25 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:For-Profit Colleges: First and Last Victims of Higher Education 'Bubble'?
The for-profit college boom looks an awful lot like the subprime mortgage bubble. But it's the differences that can teach us how to change the market for higher education.In the 2000s, home prices went on an historic tear. Easy credit backstopped by government loan guarantees and securitized by Wall Street created excess demand for residential investment. "Fringey" market players like exurban developers and subprime lenders finally blew the bubble past the breaking point.
When a bubble watcher like Vikram Mansharamani looks at the market for higher education, he can't help but find parallels. Historic price increase? College inflation outpaces health care inflation. Easy credit? Total financial aid for college has doubled since 2002. Fringey market players? For-profit schools stand accused of luring low-income students into government-sponsored debt to obtain degrees of questionable value. Easy money, moral hazard, artificial demand? Check, check, check.
But the parallels between the housing bubble and education have their limits. The Great Recession started with a domino of broken promises and failed expectations. Families stopped paying back mortgages, banks wrote down mortgage-backed assets, contagion spread. In education, the domino line is shorter. If students don't pay back their loans to the federal government, the government just pays itself the difference. The only way for the market to change is for Washington to change the market.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:51 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:At Elite School, Longer Classes To Go Deeper
At 10:35 a.m. on a Wednesday, six seniors at the Calhoun School, a progressive private school on the Upper West Side, were discussing the role of social class in "Year of Wonders," a historical novel about an English village hit by the plague in the 17th century.At noon, the students were still at it. They had moved on from deconstructing the novel, by Geraldine Brooks, to hashing out topics for research papers in the science and social studies class, called Disease and Society: one wanted to tackle 17th-century grave digging in London; another would explore the obligation midwives had to report illegitimate children. Throughout, they had staged only one mutiny, asking to work elsewhere because the classroom was first too cold, then too intellectually stifling (requests denied).
If the subject matter was a bit unusual for high school students, the amount of time they had to grapple with it was more so -- 2 hours 10 minutes, in what is called a class block. Long blocks became standard this year at Calhoun, as part of a radical attempt to alter the structure of the school day and school year.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:47 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Why not honors courses for all?
Parents in Fairfax County have proved themselves one of the largest and most powerful forces for innovation in American education. But they have taken a wrong turn in their effort to save the three-track system--basic, honors and AP/IB-- in the county's high schools.Many Fairfax parents actively oppose the elimination of honors courses in upper high school grades. They don't want to leave their children with the choice of just the basic course or the college level Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate version. "Let's keep choices on the table," West Potomac High School parent Kate Van Dyck told me.
They can win this fight and keep the honors courses, but it will take some courage and imagination. Instead of insisting on the old three tracks, tell the schools to keep the honors option and eliminate the basic course.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:13 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:STEM: Changemakers Competition due 8/3/2011
Carnegie Corporation of New York:
Solving the world's most pressing challenges will require innovations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (also called STEM). From climate change to fiscal meltdowns, renewable energy to eradicating diseases, from food security to global and local health, the STEM disciplines are at the very center of our quest to improve our lives and the condition of our world.If we are to bring new ideas to long-standing problems and new talent to emerging opportunities, we need to educate all of our young people to higher levels of understanding in the STEM fields. Despite the heroic efforts of our nation's best teachers and principals, our schools are ill-equipped to do that: According to international comparisons, U.S. students ranked below 22 countries in science and below 30 countries in math. And yet our communities are filled with many of the world's most talented professionals in these fields. They work in hospitals, universities, and museums; biotech, engineering, and architecture firms; graphic-design and urban-planning studios; hedge funds, banks, and computer-software, gaming, and pharmaceutical companies. They just rarely directly impact our public schools.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:11 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Let me say this about that: Powerpoint in School.....
Let me say this about thatDaughter comes home from school in the usual mood, with a smile and offhand assurances that school was fine and everything's fine and so on and so forth, but: for moment I catch her staring into the Void, a shadow on her features, and it's time for the parental probe: what's the matter? Oh nothing. C'mon. Something's the matter. You know I'll ask until I get it. Nothing's the matter. i can tell. Nothing - well, there was this one thing.
And so it transpired that she did not get the score in Technology class she thought she deserved, at least relative to the other Powerpoints the kids had done. They had do a PP on an animal. As far as she could tell she had the same amount of content, and applied transitions to the bullet points, which no one else did. Then she said that the kids who got higher marks used all kinds of transitions between the slides, and she only used a fade, so maybe that was it, but that was STUPID.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:11 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:June 1, 2011
Madison School District Final Audit Report: Gifted and Talented Standard
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction:
On September 20,2010, eight residents of the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) filed a complaint (numerous others were listed as supporting the complaint) alleging the school district was not in compliance with the Gifted and Talented (G/T) standard, Wis. Stat. sec. 121.02(1)(t), that requires that each school board shall "provide access to an appropriate program for pupils identified as gifted and talented." Based upon this complaint, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (department) initiated an audit pursuant to Wis. Admin Code sec. PI 8.02. The purpose ofthe audit was to determine whether the school district is in compliance with Wis. Stat. sees. 121.02(1)(t) and 118.35, and Wis. Admin. Code
sec. PI 8.01(2)(t)2. The investigation focused on three core content areas: English/language arts; science; and social studies; in particular at the 9th and 1oth grade levels, per the letter of complaint.The department informed the school district of the audit on October 13, 2010, and requested information and documentation for key components of the G/T plan. The school district provided a written response and materials on November 29, 2010 and supplemental materials on December 21 , 2010.
On January 25 and 26, 2011, a team of four department representatives conducted an on-site audit which began with a meeting that included the school board president, the district administrator, the deputy superintendent, the secondary assistant superintendent, the executive director of curriculum and assessment, the interim Talented and Gifted (TAG) administrator, an elementary TAG resource teacher, a secondary TAG resource teacher, and legal counsel. After this meeting, the team visited East, West, LaFollette, and Memorial High Schools. At each of these sites, the team conducted interviews with the building principal, school counselors, teachers, and students. At the end ofeach ofthe two days the department team met with parents.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 9:28 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Waiting for a School Miracle
TEN years ago, Congress adopted the No Child Left Behind legislation, mandating that all students must be proficient in reading or mathematics by 2014 or their school would be punished.Teachers and principals have been fired and schools that were once fixtures in their community have been closed and replaced. In time, many of the new schools will close, too, unless they avoid enrolling low-performing students, like those who don't read English or are homeless or have profound disabilities.
Educators know that 100 percent proficiency is impossible, given the enormous variation among students and the impact of family income on academic performance. Nevertheless, some politicians believe that the right combination of incentives and punishments will produce dramatic improvement. Anyone who objects to this utopian mandate, they maintain, is just making an excuse for low expectations and bad teachers.
To prove that poverty doesn't matter, political leaders point to schools that have achieved stunning results in only a few years despite the poverty around them. But the accounts of miracle schools demand closer scrutiny. Usually, they are the result of statistical legerdemain.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 9:26 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Statement by State Education Chiefs Supporting the National Council on Teacher Quality's Review of Colleges of Education
Foundation for Excellence in Education, via a Kate Walsh email:
Today, the following members of Chiefs for Change, Janet Barresi, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Information; Tony Bennett, Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction; Steve Bowen, Maine Commissioner of Education; Chris Cerf, New Jersey Commissioner of Education; Deborah A. Gist, Rhode Island Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education; Kevin Huffman, Tennessee Commissioner of Education; Eric Smith, Florida Commissioner of Education; and Hanna Skandera, New Mexico Public Education Department Secretary-Designate, released a statement supporting the National Council on Teacher Quality's colleges of education review.Related: Georgia, Wisconsin Education Schools Back Out of NCTQ Review"Great teachers make great students. Preparing teachers with the knowledge and skills to be effective educators is paramount to improving student achievement. Ultimately, colleges of education should be reviewed the same way we propose evaluating teachers - based on student learning."
"Until that data becomes available in every state, Chiefs for Change supports the efforts of the National Council on Teacher Quality to gather research-based data and information about the nation's colleges of education. This research can provide a valuable tool for improving the quality of education for educators."
Public higher education institutions in Wisconsin and Georgia--and possibly as many as five other states--will not participate voluntarily in a review of education schools now being conducted by the National Council for Teacher Quality and U.S. News and World Report, according to recent correspondence between state consortia and the two groups.When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?:In response, NCTQ and U.S. News are moving forward with plans to obtain the information from these institutions through open-records requests.
In letters to the two organizations, the president of the University of Wisconsin system and the chancellor of Georgia's board of regents said their public institutions would opt out of the review, citing a lack of transparency and questionable methodology, among other concerns.
Formally announced in January, the review will rate education schools on up to 18 standards, basing the decisions primarily on examinations of course syllabuses and student-teaching manuals.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 11:13 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:How Valuable is a College Degree?
Most parents dream of seeing their kids graduate from a good college. The assumption is that the vaunted degree will guarantee a successful career, the closest thing to being financially stable, and ultimately, a happy, fulfilling life.But a number of authors and high-profile businesspeople and entrepreneurs are debunking the notion that college is the best solution. They're questioning whether paying tens of thousands of dollars and investing four or five years in an institution should be the default for young people when so many more options exist. With free, high-quality education available to anyone, is college necessary? These folks say no.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:36 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Gainful employment
Against all logic and growing opposition from both sides of the political spectrum, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) seems poised and determined to proceed with the new Gainful Employment regulations, which would serve as a guidepost for their issuance of federal student loans for private sector colleges. The proposed Gainful Employment regulations would require that career education providers and programs provide students for "gainful employment" in recognized occupations.To determine if these programs are eligible, ED wants to tie its federal loans to students' debt-to-income ratio as well as the repayment rates of the for-profit institution. While there has been much debate over the origin of this proposal, its impact could not be more clear: for-profit colleges would suffer and, more significantly, low-income and minority college enrollment would drop precipitously.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:29 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:The Saddest Tweet of Them All: We have failed to educate. We must do more.
I've been watching as UW Madison moves into the post-NBP phase of life (wait, there is life after NBP?). In particularly, I'm finding the (re)framing of recent events by NBP proponents both fascinating, and disturbing.Spin is, to some degree, expected. We can't blame Chancellor Martin for trying to save face, or Governor Walker for that matter.
What I didn't expect, and what upsets me most, is the self-righteousness evident in those who proclaim "we accomplished something here." Something, they claim, UW System did not. Could not. Would not.
Sad and short-sighted, perhaps, but not surprising. On the other hand, a recent tweet from a Madison student stopped me in my tracks. On Saturday he wrote, "No #UWNBP. Disappointing. Looks like we have to be tied to the poor decisions #UWSystem makes." Surprised at his statement, I responded, "Ever been to System? Ever met anyone there? Why do you follow blindly what u r told? #UWNBP #UWSystem." To which he replied "It's fun to make assumptions."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:15 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Controversial DeForest, WI School Administrator Raises
The pressure is off of district administrators and the school board here in Sun Prairie, because of the shocking cajones of the DeForest Board of Education and DeForest Area School District Administrators.While we're getting worked up --and justifiably so--- about our own district administration on the cusp of getting 1.6% increases in the midst of tight times, the DeForest Administration Team ---with the support of the Board of Education-- awarded themselves titannic raises under the guise of "Dane County Market Equity" adjustments. The raises are retroactive to January 1, 2011. For appearances sake--you just KNOW they'll spin this in budget documents--- their salaries are being frozen for 2011-12. Geeeee whiz! With those increases, they should be frozen permanently.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:04 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 31, 2011
Walker should take bulls-eye off the backs of teachers
Gesturing like a conductor, the Van Hise Elementary teacher exhorted her third-graders for answers while deftly involving a special-needs youngster.I was in class as part of the Foundation for Madison's Public Schools' "principal for a day" program, and I recall thinking: This would be a really tough job to do well day after day.
Teachers have always impressed me, apparently a lot more than they do Scott Walker.
The Republican governor continues to wage his cynical campaign against labor unions representing teachers and other public employees. The conflict rumbles on, with a judge ruling last week that the legislative vote to extinguish collective bargaining rights violated the state's open meetings law.
The collateral damage to the morale and reputations of Wisconsin's 60,000 or so classroom teachers seems of no concern to Walker and his allies inside and outside the state.
In fact, based on recent Walker press releases, teachers and teachers unions remain a prime target. In terms of there being a bulls-eye on teachers' backs, just consider last week.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 5:42 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:MIT Supporting High School Science Sims
Stacie Bumgarner is a research scientist in the Biology Department at MIT. She leads school outreach efforts for the Office of Educational Innovation & Technology. She is working with JFY Networks to expand the use of two sophisticated science simulations to high school students in Boston:Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:20 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:GOP looks at N.J. school strategy
ew Jersey Senate Republicans have been asked to consider taking a unified position on public education, including removing the state Supreme Court from school-funding decisions and granting the Legislature the power to determine what it means to provide a "thorough and efficient" education in public schools.A Republican strategy memo laid out Friday in an e-mail from Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr. to his caucus asked fellow GOP senators for feedback on a three-pronged education plan after Tuesday's Supreme Court order requiring the state to invest $500 million more in 31 poor school districts.
The plan includes supporting a constitutional amendment that would end judicial involvement in school-funding decisions and give the state wiggle room to reduce funding in lean budget years. The resolution, sponsored by Sen. Steven Oroho (R., Sussex) and cosponsored by the other 15 members of the GOP caucus, was introduced in January but hasn't gained traction. It would require voter approval.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:22 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 30, 2011
Revenge of the geeks: What made them outsiders in high school makes them stars in the world
Many popular students approach graduation day with bittersweet nostalgia: excitement for the future is tempered by fear of lost status. But as cap-and-gown season nears, let's also stop to consider the outcasts, students for whom finishing high school feels like liberation from a state-imposed sentence.Alexandra Robbins is the author of "The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School."In seven years of reporting from American middle and high schools, I've seen repeatedly that the differences that cause a student to be excluded in high school are often the same traits or skills that will serve him or her well after graduation.
Examples abound: Taylor Swift's classmates left the lunch table as soon as she sat down because they disdained her taste for country music. Last year, the Grammy winner was the nation's top-selling recording artist.
Students mocked Tim Gunn's love of making things; now he is a fashion icon with the recognizable catchphrase "Make it work."
J.K. Rowling, author of the bestselling "Harry Potter" series, has described herself as a bullied child "who lived mostly in books and daydreams." It's no wonder she went on to write books populated with kids she describes as "outcasts and comfortable with being so."
For many, says Sacred Heart University psychology professor Kathryn LaFontana, high school is the "first foray into the adult world where [kids] have to think about their own status." And for teenagers, says LaFontana, who studies adolescent peer relationships and social status, "the worst thing in the world is to be different from other people; that's what makes someone unpopular."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 4:35 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Catching up on national high school ranks
We did not have room for everything I wanted to include in the big package of lists and stories that make up the new Challenge Index rankings of America's high schools. I moved the list this year from Newsweek--where we often called it "America's Best High Schools"-- to washingtonpost.com, where its new title is "The High School Challenge."My editors were right not to jam in too much material. It is not always easy to find the features that are there. Please consider this a short guide to finding the inside stuff that many readers of this blog crave and that will give them more ammo to fire at me. I also provide below the Catching Up list of local schools with low Advanced Placement passing rates, something my editors and I agreed would work better on my blog.
Use this link to get to the main ranked lists, one for national and one for the Washington area. This link will take you to the Public Elites list, the schools that did not make the main lists because they were too selective. Here is the link to the full unabridged Frequently Asked Questions, which I made into a blog post. And here is the national Catching-up list.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:13 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 29, 2011
Teaching methods: Applying science to the teaching of science
AS DOES much else in the universe, education moves in cycles. The 1960s and 1970s saw a swell of interest in teaching styles that were less authoritarian and hierarchical than the traditional watching of a teacher scribbling on a blackboard. Today, tastes have swung back, and it is fashionable to denigrate those alternatives as so much hippy nonsense.But evidence trumps fashion--at least, it ought to. And a paper just published in Science by Louis Deslauriers and his colleagues at the University of British Columbia suggests that at least one of the newfangled styles is indeed superior to the traditional chalk-and-talk approach.
Dr Deslauriers's lab rats were a group of 850 undergraduate engineering students taking a compulsory physics course. The students were split into groups at the start of their course, and for the first 11 weeks all went to traditionally run lectures given by well-regarded and experienced teachers. In the 12th week, one of the groups was switched to a style of teaching known as deliberate practice, which inverts the traditional university model. Class time is spent on problem-solving, discussion and group work, while the absorption of facts and formulae is left for homework. Students were given reading assignments before classes. Once in the classroom they spent their time in small groups, discussing specific problems, with the teacher roaming between groups to offer advice and respond to questions.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 5:49 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Help students by rejecting the self-interested
With few exceptions, Americans spend more on public education than anyone else in the world, but we get some of the worst results. The reason is that most of our public education systems do not properly teach students what they need to know.That's it. There is no magic. And the federal takeovers, the jazzy new technology, Bill Gates' money, the data-gathering, reform, transformation, national initiatives, removal of teacher seniority, blaming of parents, hand-wringing in the media, and budget shifting won't change that simple fact.
In all of the local, state and federal plans for reforming and transforming public education, I see the bureaucracy growing, the taxpayer bill exploding, the people's voice being eliminated, good teachers being threatened with firing or public humiliation, and students not being taught what they need to know.
A May 25 Wall Street Journal article says some schools now charge parents fees for basic academics, as well as for extracurricular activities, graded electives and advanced classes. Those are private-school fees for a public-school education, and that's just wrong.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 4:54 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Call for revolution in English teaching: Professor says multilingual teachers who grew up speaking Cantonese provide a better model for Hong Kong children than native English speakers
English should be taught in Hong Kong by multilingual teachers, not native English speakers, according to a Hong Kong education professor who is organising an international conference on English as a lingua franca, being held in the city."It's a revolutionary shift that we're arguing for, and it's that the multilingual way becomes the linguistic model for teaching kids English here, not that of a native English speaker," says Andy Kirkpatrick, chair professor of English as a professional language at the Hong Kong Institute of Education.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 4:11 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Beyond the School: Exploring a Systemic Approach to School Turnaround
Joel Knudson, Larisa Shambaugh & Jennifer O'Day
Educators have long grappled with the challenge presented by chronically underperforming schools. Environments that consistently fail to prepare students for higher levels of education threaten opportunities for high school graduation, postsecondary education, and career success. The U.S. Department of Education reinforced the urgency of reversing sustained poor performance in early 2009 when it identified intensive supports and effective interventions in our lowest-achieving schools as one of its four pillars of education reform. However, federal and state policies have often situated the cause--and thus the remedies--for persistent low performance at the school level. This brief uses the experience of eight California school districts--all members of the California Collaborative on District Reform--to suggest a more systemic approach to school turnaround.We explore the district perspective on school turnaround by describing several broad themes that emerged across the eight districts in the California Collaborative on District Reform. We also profile three of these districts to illustrate specific strategies that can create a coherent district-wide approach to turnaround. Building on these district perspectives, we explore considerations for turnaround efforts in the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:55 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 28, 2011
The story behind the Milwaukee school choice study: The results are more complicated than they are sometimes portrayed.
John F. Witte and Patrick J. Wolf:
The past few weeks have seen a lively debate surrounding the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and Gov. Scott Walker's various proposals to expand it. It is time for researchers to weigh in.For the past five years, as mandated by state law, we have led a national team in a comprehensive evaluation of the choice program. Our study has applied social science research methods to carefully matched sets of students in the choice program and in Milwaukee Public Schools. Whenever possible, we have used measures that are applied consistently in the public- and private-school sectors, generating true apples-to-apples comparisons.
This is what we have learned:
Competitive pressure from the voucher program has produced modest achievement gains in MPS.
The three-year achievement gains of choice students have been comparable to those of our matched sample of MPS students. The choice students are not showing achievement benefits beyond those of the students left behind in MPS.
High school students in the choice program both graduate and enroll in four-year colleges at a higher rate than do similar students in MPS. Being in the choice program in ninth grade increases by four to seven percentage points a student's prospects of both graduating from high school and enrolling in college. Students who remain in the choice program for their entire four years of high school graduate at a rate of 94%, compared with 75% for similar MPS students.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 9:26 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Wisconsin Governor's Read to Lead Task Force 5/31/2011 Meeting
via a kind reader's email:
Notice of Commission Meeting
Governor's Read to Lead Task Force
Governor Scott Walker, Chair
Superintendent Tony Evers, Vice-Chair
Members: Mara Brown, Kathy Champeau, Steve Dykstra, Michele Erikson, Representative Jason Fields, Marcia Henry, Representative Steve Kestell, Rachel Lander, Senator Luther Olsen, Tony Pedriana, Linda Pils, and Mary Read.Guests: Professors from UW colleges of education
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 1:00pm
Office of the Governor, Governor's Conference Room 115 East State Capitol Madison, WI 53702
Welcome and opening remarks by Governor Walker and Superintendent Evers.
Introductions from task force members and guest members representing UW colleges of education.
A discussion of teacher training and professional development including current practices and ways to improve.
Short break.
A discussion of reading interventions including current practices and ways to improve.
A discussion of future topics and future meeting dates.
Adjournment.
Governor Scott Walker
Chair
Individuals needing assistance, pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act, should contact the Governor's office at (608) 266-1212, 24 hours before this meeting to make necessary arrangements.Posted by Jim Zellmer at 11:36 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: An American Agenda for Education Reform; Advocating Benchmarking
This paper is the answer to a question: What would the education policies and practices of the United States be if they were based on the policies and practices of the countries that now lead the world in student performance? It is adapted from the last two chapters of a book to be published in September 2011 by Harvard Education Press. Other chapters in that book describe the specific strategies pursued by Canada (focusing on Ontario), China (focusing on Shanghai), Finland, Japan and Singapore, all of which are far ahead of the United States. The research on these countries was performed by a team assembled by the National Center on Education and the Economy, at the request of the OECD.Well worth reading. I thought about this topic - benchmarking student progress via the oft-criticized WKCE during this past week's Madison School District Strategic Planning Update. I'll have more on that next week.A century ago, the United States was among the most eager benchmarkers in the world. We took the best ideas in steelmaking, industrial chemicals and many other fields from England and Germany and others and put them to work here on a scale that Europe could not match. At the same time, we were borrowing the best ideas in education, mainly from the Germans and the Scots. It was the period of the most rapid growth our economy had ever seen and it was the time in which we designed the education system that we still have today. It is fair to say that, in many important ways, we owe the current shape of our education system to industrial benchmarking.
But, after World War II, the United States appeared to reign supreme in both the industrial and education arenas and we evidently came to the conclusion that we had little to learn from anyone. As the years went by, one by one, country after country caught up to and then surpassed us in several industries and more or less across the board in precollege education. And still we slept.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 7:58 AM | Comments (1) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: College, There's an App for That: How USC Built a 21st Century Classroom
"Everything about this program pushes definitions about what is a semester, what is the university, what is a classroom, and where do the faculty belong?"I thought about this (the accelerating move away from Frederick Taylor [Blekko | Britannica | Clusty] style 19th Century education that we still seem to spend buckets of money on) while attending this week's Madison School District Strategic Plan 2 year review. More on that meeting next week.In the spring of 2008, John Katzman, the founder of the Princeton Review, approached the Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program at at the University of Southern California with a revolutionary idea. USC could increase its graduates by a factor of ten without building another room.
Every year, California adds 10,000 new teachers. And every year until 2008, USC graduated about 100. The school felt "invisible." How could it build influence without new buildings? Katzman said his new project, 2tor, Inc, an education technology company, promised a solution. Forget the brick and mortar, and go online, he said. USC was skeptical. Surely, no Web program could possibly deliver an in-classroom quality of instruction.
Katzman disagreed. I have something to show you, he said.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:36 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Shifting Trends in Special Education
Janie Scull, Amber M. Winkler, Ph.D.:
In this new Fordham Institute paper, analysts examine public data and find that the national proportion of students with disabilities peaked in 2004-05 and has been declining since. This overall trend masks interesting variations; for example, proportions of students with specific learning disabilities, mental retardation, and emotional disturbances have declined, while the proportions of students with autism, developmental delays, and other health impairments have increased notably. Meanwhile, at the state level, Rhode Island, New York, and Massachusetts have the highest rates of disability identification, while Texas, Idaho, and Colorado have the lowest. The ratio of special-education teachers and paraprofessionals to special-education students also varies widely from state to state--so much so that our analysts question the accuracy of the data reported by states to the federal government.Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:30 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Intervention From On High
When two faculty members disagree about issues related to research, is it right for an administrator to intervene?A faculty committee at the University of California at San Diego examined that question in a report this week that finds that a dean responded to a dispute between two professors by telling one not to publish or speak out about the other's research. And that order, the committee concluded, violated basic principles of academic freedom.
"Faculty members' rights to study, re-analyze, and publish controversial scholarly materials cannot be abridged," says the report from the UCSD Committee on Academic Freedom. "These rights to academic freedom cannot be administratively revoked to prevent possible future breaching of professional norms. In our view, the campus administration's fundamental responsibility is precisely to protect the right of faculty members to research and publish scholarly work even when others, on or off campus, find the work or its conclusions controversial or objectionable."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:47 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Opposing points of view: For students' sake, schools should retain best teachers, no matter the years of experience
Michael Lomax & Michelle Rhee:
When times are tough, as they are now, and schools need to reduce their teacher rolls, the importance of teachers in our children's education demands that we keep the best.It seems like common sense, Management 101, for any organization, company or agency that wants to do a better job in tough times. Your employees are your most important assets. So if some have to go, which ones do you keep? You save the best.
That commonsense rule of thumb should apply to schools and teachers. Research shows there is not a single school-based factor that has more of an impact on student learning than the quality of a child's teacher.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:27 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 27, 2011
Is College (Finally) Ready For Its Innovation Revolution?
If a college student today stepped into a time machine and traveled back to Plato's Academy of ancient Athens, she would recognize quite a bit. Sure, it might take some time to master ancient Greek and the use of stylus on wax, but she would eventually settle into a familiar academic routine. Senior scholars across a range of subjects like astronomy and political theory would lecture, pose questions, and press answers to a small group of attendants. Junior attendants would listen, answer, and defend responses.That a class in 2011 resembles a lecture from 2,300 years ago suggests that two millennia of technological upheaval have only brushed the world of academics. Some professors use PowerPoint, and many schools manage their classes with online software. But even these changes don't fully embrace the potential of Web, mobile, and interactive technology.
"The present resistance to innovation [in education] is breathtaking," Joel Klein writes in The Atlantic this month. The former chancellor of the New York City Department of Education was writing about public high schools, but he might as well have been talking about universities. Despite college costs rising faster in college than any institution in the country including health care, we have the technology to disrupt education, turn brick and mortar lecture halls into global class
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 5:23 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'
When the government gathers or analyzes personal information, many people say they're not worried. "I've got nothing to hide," they declare. "Only if you're doing something wrong should you worry, and then you don't deserve to keep it private."The nothing-to-hide argument pervades discussions about privacy. The data-security expert Bruce Schneier calls it the "most common retort against privacy advocates." The legal scholar Geoffrey Stone refers to it as an "all-too-common refrain." In its most compelling form, it is an argument that the privacy interest is generally minimal, thus making the contest with security concerns a foreordained victory for security.
The nothing-to-hide argument is everywhere. In Britain, for example, the government has installed millions of public-surveillance cameras in cities and towns, which are watched by officials via closed-circuit television. In a campaign slogan for the program, the government declares: "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear." Variations of nothing-to-hide arguments frequently appear in blogs, letters to the editor, television news interviews, and other forums. One blogger in the United States, in reference to profiling people for national-security purposes, declares: "I don't mind people wanting to find out things about me, I've got nothing to hide! Which is why I support [the government's] efforts to find terrorists by monitoring our phone calls!"
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:04 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:1.9% Washington teacher pay cut: Lawmakers strike budget deal
Pay for teachers would be cut 1.9 percent and for school administrative staff by 3 percent over the next two years under a budget agreement released by lawmakers on Tuesday.The pay cuts, worth $179 million, are part of more than $4 billion in cuts lawmakers are proposing as a way to close a roughly $5 billion budget shortfall.
The size of pay reductions for educators was a key area of disagreement during budget negotiations over the past several months.
A briefing on the proposal was scheduled for 10 a.m. The legislation still has to be voted on in the House and Senate.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:14 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 26, 2011
After Hartland teachers agree, union blocks insurance switch
Teachers in the Hartland-Lakeside School District have agreed to switch health insurance providers to save the district $690,000, but the executive committee of a union that represents Arrowhead High feeder schools is blocking the change, officials say.Faced with a $1.2 million reduction in state aid for the 2011-12 school year, the School Board has been looking at ways to reduce costs and avoid program cuts and increases in class sizes, Superintendent Glenn W. Schilling said Tuesday.
The board determined it could achieve some saving by switching teachers' health insurance from WEA Trust, the nonprofit company started 40 years ago by the state's largest teachers union, to another provider when the contract expires on June 30.
In the end, the board and teachers - after a series of joint meetings to study the issue - agreed to go with United Healthcare.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:29 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Rewriting the textbooks: When science gets it wrong
THE business of gaining understanding of the world about us rarely follows a simple path from A to B. False starts, dead ends and U-turns are part of the journey. Science's ability to accept those setbacks with aplomb - to say "we got it wrong", to modify and abandon cherished notions and find new ideas and explanations that better fit the emerging facts - is what gives it incomparable power to make sense of our surroundings.It also means we must be constantly on our toes. While revolutionary new ideas such as evolution by natural selection, or quantum physics, are once-in-a-generation occurrences, the sands of science are continually shifting in less dramatic ways. In the following, we focus on nine recent examples - a tweak of a definition here, a breaking or weakening of a once cast-iron concept there - that together form a snapshot of that process in action.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:59 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Will our children earn less than we do?
How much did your parents earn when they were your age? Unless you buck the trend, the answer is less than you earn. But now, for the first time in decades, it's not clear if the same will apply to your children. From the US to Germany, living standards for typical households had stopped rising long before the economic downturn. It is time to step back from the anxieties over cuts to ask: have we stopped getting richer?Even posing that question may feel counter-cultural. Our expectations have been shaped by the rhythm of late 20th-century capitalism: occasionally there are recessions and incomes fall, but then recovery comes and wages rise. Put simply, it has long been safe to assume that national economic growth leads to widespread personal gain.
But recent economic history complicates that assumption. In the five-year period before the downturn, while the overall British economy grew by 11 per cent, average wages were already flatlining. Disposable income per head fell in every English region outside London from 2003 to 2008. During a supposed national boom time, Britain's households were drawing a bust. A half-decade trend doesn't, of course, put us on an ineluctable path towards longer-term stagnation. But it should shake us out of complacency.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:55 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Murdoch signals push into education
Rupert Murdoch signalled that News Corp, the media group he heads, is to make a significant new push into the education technology market, in a high-profile speech to the e-G8 conference of internet entrepreneurs and European policymakers in Paris.Describing education as the "last holdout from the digital revolution", Mr Murdoch outlined a vision for personalised learning and more engaging lessons delivered by the world's best teachers to thousands of students via the internet.
"The same technologies that transformed every other aspect of modern life can transform education, provide our businesses with the talent they need to thrive, and give hundreds of millions of young people at the fringes of prosperity the opportunity to make their own mark on this global economy," he said.
With Joel Klein, the former New York schools chancellor hired by News Corp in November, Mr Murdoch has visited pioneering educational schemes and classrooms worldwide, including South Korea, California and Sweden.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:53 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 25, 2011
Priority should be kids' reading, not politics
Since being named to Gov. Scott Walker's Read to Lead Task Force, I have come under some political scrutiny by those who oppose the governor's conservative agenda, most notably his attempt to disenfranchise teachers of their right to bargain collectively. Evidently, there are some who feel that it is acceptable to thwart an initiative that seeks to remedy the deplorable state of reading achievement in our state and use it as a weapon to extract some measure of political redress.I am willing to take political heat for my participation on the panel, but the fact that I must is symptomatic of why we have been stymied in our efforts to address a public health issue of pandemic proportions and leave countless children as collateral damage in the process.
Having been both a teacher and administrator, and having served several stints as my school's union representative, I am naturally opposed to any action that would reduce teacher benefits and marginalize due process protections. But such issues have no place in any discussion that seeks to address how we set about the task of building competent readers. While we have much to accomplish in that regard, there are those who would claim otherwise even though:
Two-thirds of state fourth-graders cannot demonstrate age-appropriate reading ability.
Wisconsin's rank for that same cohort has dropped precipitously over the past decade - from 3rd to 30th among all states and the District of Columbia.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 5:09 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Urban Education Ph.D. Approved for IU School of Education at IUPUI
Indiana University School of Education:
The Indiana Commission for Higher Education has approved a new Urban Education Studies Ph.D. to be offered by the IU School of Education at IUPUI starting in fall 2012. This is the first doctorate degree in education to be offered entirely on the IUPUI campus. The degree will be one of just a handful of urban education doctorates in the country, focused on preparing researchers to study schools in complex urban environments. Faculty and students in the program will conduct community-based research designed in partnership with P-12 schools and community organizations. It will be the only urban education doctoral program in the state of Indiana.
as
"IUPUI's Ph.D. in urban education program is a distinctive, research-oriented degree program, and the first of its kind in Indiana," said IUPUI Chancellor Charles R. Bantz. "The interdisciplinary focus will prepare scholars who are capable of making significant contributions to improve urban education."Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:20 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 24, 2011
Madison Teachers lobby School Board to keep planning time
Hundreds of teachers packed the Madison School Board meeting Monday night to protest changes in their contract next year related to planning time for elementary school teachers.Some speakers reminded the board that elementary school planning time was a key issue in the 1976 teachers strike that closed school for two weeks. Tension among teachers is already heightened because of state initiatives to curtail collective bargaining and reduce education funding.
"Compensation has been reduced, morale is low, stress is high," Lowell Elementary teacher Bob Arnold said. "Respect and support us by preserving our already inadequate planning time."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 8:16 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Districts asked to name teachers who used sick time during protests
School districts across the state are being asked to release the names of teachers who called in sick during protests in February at the Capitol, a move that led to closures for a day or more in many districts.It's unclear how many of the state's 424 districts received requests, but several conservative groups have made public records requests for teacher names. Most districts have released them.
But the Madison School District denied several requests, saying the release could risk the safety of teachers and students, and disrupt morale and the learning environment in schools.
And the s, the state's largest teachers union, used a similar argument in asking a La Crosse County judge to quash the release of teacher names in the La Crosse and Holmen districts.
The judge recently blocked the release of names in Holmen and may rule soon on the La Crosse case.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 8:02 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Breakfast of Champions? Not in These Schools (Chicago)
When Mayor Rahm Emanuel's new Chicago Board of Education swings into action, it should not mark the occasion with a private dinner.The members should have breakfast together in any of several thousand elementary school classrooms. There, they will get a glimpse of the mess they have inherited. Bring antacids and a nutritionist.
A Breakfast in the Classroom program approved by their predecessors is completing its mandatory rollout. All that can be said with certitude is that it has shortened instructional time in a system with the shortest school day and year of the nation's 50 largest districts.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:45 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Why Every Student Should Learn Journalism Skills
How do we make schools more relevant to students? Teach them the skills they need in the real world, with tools they use every day. That's exactly what Esther Wojcicki, a teacher of English and journalism at Palo Alto High School in Palo Alto, Calif., is attempting to do with the recent launch of the website 21STcenturylit. I interviewed Esther about the site, and how she hopes it will serve as a useful tool for both students and educators.How do you describe the mission for 21STcenturylit?
Wojcicki: The mission of 21STcenturylit.org is threefold: It is to teach students how to be intelligent consumers of digital media, how to be skillful creators of digital media, and to teach students how to search intelligently. We are living in an age when digital media and new digital tools are revolutionizing the world. Schools need to help students learn these skills, not block and censor the Internet.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:12 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Middleton School Board Paying $300K After Porn Firing
The decision to fire a teacher for viewing porn at school has cost the Middleton school board about $300,000 in legal fees.A teachers' union filed a grievance after the seventh-grade teacher at Glacier Creek Middle School was dismissed.
Ellen Lindgren, the president of the Middleton-Cross Plains School Board, said the board hates spending its limited cash on lawyers, but it's doing so because the community supports firing teachers who view porn at school.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:22 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:A Longer School Day, or a Better School Day?
Time is a valuable thing. I often wish I had more of it. I can pretty much say with confidence that you, Reader, probably wish you had some more too.I don't like to waste people's time. I don't believe that any of us who engage in something we love want to either. When I form my lessons, teach a classroom full of high school students, or present information to my colleagues, I don't want others to wish they were somewhere else. Learning is at its best when students are engaged. Engagement can look like a variety of things: a student hard at work on his or her own composition, a thoughtful classroom discussion about ethics, participation in the school science fair, or designing an exercise regimen in P.E.
Teachers do not believe that what we teach is a waste of time. We can engage students easily when things are important to us.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:13 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:How to reform education: The answer song
This week thousands of Arizona high school seniors will don caps and gowns and receive their high school diplomas, while others who successfully completed 12 years of schooling but failed the state's infamous AIMS test will be left feeling dejected and betrayed by our failing public education system. How can students pass all 12 grades and not pass the high-stakes test? What happens to these students now? These are but a few symptoms of Arizona's broken educational system.Perhaps also reflecting on graduation day and the state's failing school system, the Arizona Republic recently published an editorial on education reform: 5 vital ways to reform K-12 education.
The five suggestions read like a right-wing wish list: 1) competition; 2) high expectations; 3) quality teachers; 4) intelligent use of technology; and 5) private sector involvement. Not surprisingly, the editorial was written by Craig R. Barrett, former CEO of Intel and current president and chairman of BASIS, a system of charter high schools.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:11 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 23, 2011
Money Lessons for Every High-School Graduate
Zac Bissonnette via a kind reader's email:
When Felipe Matos enrolled in the New York Institute of Technology to study graphic design, he never thought that degree would be the very thing that prevented him from pursuing his dream career.But more than $50,000 in student debt later, he has found himself working as an assistant building manager in New York City -- with half his salary going toward debt repayment.
"In order to get into my field, I'd have to intern," says Mr. Matos, adding that his dream job would be at Pixar, the cutting-edge animation studio. But in order to avoid defaulting on his loans, he has had to defer his dreams. "I often get depressed because I always wanted to make cartoons and 3D animations for a living but can't," he says. His debt load also is affecting his life plans beyond his career: "I have a very loving and serious girlfriend, but I'm afraid we can't have kids or get married until we are in our late 30s."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 7:55 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Protecting Students from Learning
I attended Mumford High School in Detroit, from the fall of 1964 through June of 1967, the end of a period known to some as the golden age of education, and to others as an utter failure.Raymond
I attended Mumford High School in Detroit, from the fall of 1964 through June of 1967, the end of a period known to some as the golden age of education, and to others as an utter failure. For the record I am in the former camp, a product of an era which in my opinion well-prepared me to major in mathematics. I am soon retiring from a career in environmental protection and will be entering the teaching profession where I will teach math in a manner that has served many others well over many years and which I hope will be tolerated by the people who hire me.
I was in 10th grade, taking Algebra 2. In the study hall period that followed my algebra class I worked the 20 or so homework problems at a double desk which I shared with Raymond, a black student. He would watch me do the day's homework problems which I worked with the ease and alacrity of an expert pinball player.
While I worked, he would ask questions about what I was doing, and I would explain as best I could, after which he would always say "Pretty good, pretty good"--which served both as an expression of appreciation and a signal that he didn't really know much about algebra but wanted to find out more. He said he had taken a class in it. In one assignment the page of my book was open to a diagram entitled "Four ways to express a function". The first was a box with a statement: "To find average blood pressure, add 10 to your age and divide by 2." The second was an equation P = (A+10)/2. The third was a table of values, and the last was a graph. Raymond asked me why you needed different ways to say what was in the box. I wasn't entirely sure myself, but explained that the different ways enabled you to see the how things like blood pressure changed with respect to age. Sometimes a graph was better than a table to see this; sometimes it wasn't. Not a very good explanation, I realized, and over the years I would come back to that question--and Raymond's curiosity about it--as I would analyze equations, graphs, and tables of values.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 5:39 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:The Math of School Heartbreak in Levittown
WHEN he first introduced cuts at a public meeting last month, Samuel Lee, the superintendent of the Bristol Township School District, was plainspoken and direct. He did not say that everyone would pull together and the children would get the same great education, but, rather, that worthy programs would be dismantled and young teachers would lose jobs. "Everything that is going to be presented tonight is not good for our kids," he said as about 300 teachers, parents and students looked on. "We are heartbroken."I grew up in blue-collar Levittown, and have written about it several times for this newspaper as a window into national sentiment. The community was deeply skeptical of Barack Obama early in 2008, then voted for him in huge numbers in the fall. In 2010, the local Democratic congressman was turned out of office amid a wave of national anger over the economy.
Over the past several weeks, I have watched as local officials and community residents confronted a budget shortfall that threatens to reverse hard-won gains in schools that once performed poorly. But I did not hear much of the polarization, argumentation and point-scoring that the cable news universe reflects as the totality of our civic discourse. In Levittown, this time around, the mood is one of sadness, loss and resignation. "We're all struggling in this community," W. Earl Bruck, an electrician, and chairman of the board's budget committee, told those at the meeting. "I can tell you that I've been out of work for 56 weeks."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:46 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Standardized test scores shouldn't be the only measure of a teacher's performance. But they should be one of the measures
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
Republicans in the state Legislature want to allow school boards in Wisconsin to use teacher evaluations, which are based partly on the results of students' standardized test scores, as part of the criteria for firing or disciplining educators.We have some concerns about the details, but it is a good idea to hold teachers accountable for their work and to make state test scores part of that process.
At the moment, student test scores can be used as part of a teacher evaluation but cannot be a basis for dismissal. While poor results on state tests never should be the sole reason for firing or disciplining a teacher, it makes little sense not to consider them as part of a holistic evaluation.
Developing meaningful evaluations is difficult, though, and the Legislature should work with teachers as well as administrators and the state Department of Public Instruction to ensure that this bill considers their perspectives.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:36 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Republican Profs Award More High and Low Grades Than Democratic Profs
We study grading outcomes associated with professors in an elite university in the United States who were identified -- using voter registration records from the county where the university is located -- as either Republicans or Democrats. The evidence suggests that student grades are linked to the political orientation of professors: relative to their Democratic colleagues, Republican professors are associated with a less egalitarian distribution of grades and with lower grades awarded to Black students relative to Whites.Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:19 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Behind Grass-Roots School Advocacy, Bill Gates
Sam Dillon, via a kind reader's email:
A handful of outspoken teachers helped persuade state lawmakers this spring to eliminate seniority-based layoff policies. They testified before the legislature, wrote briefing papers and published an op-ed article in The Indianapolis Star.The Gates Foundation has funded many initiatives, including the controversial "small learning community" program.They described themselves simply as local teachers who favored school reform -- one sympathetic state representative, Mary Ann Sullivan, said, "They seemed like genuine, real people versus the teachers' union lobbyists." They were, but they were also recruits in a national organization, Teach Plus, financed significantly by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
For years, Bill Gates focused his education philanthropy on overhauling large schools and opening small ones. His new strategy is more ambitious: overhauling the nation's education policies. To that end, the foundation is financing educators to pose alternatives to union orthodoxies on issues like the seniority system and the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:39 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Stand up for children, education
Gregory Thornton, Milwaukee Schools' Superintendent:
The Milwaukee School Board and I recently had an unusual conversation. It came at the end of a meeting on our proposed budget. Struck by the sadness of the parents and teachers who had testified on the devastating impacts, and in dismay over the massive cuts to state funding offered by our governor, we came down to a question that summed up the past weeks: What do you do when the facts are not enough?We have made considerable progress academically and financially. The 2009 McKinsey & Co. report listed potential cost savings for Milwaukee Public Schools in six areas. Efforts to trim costs for textbook purchases, food service, transportation, employee benefits and facilities were already underway when this report was released. Since 2009, the district has addressed each area and, as a result, at least $50 million has been or is scheduled to be saved.
Academic achievement is a priority. Fifty-seven percent of our schools increased their reading scores. Forty-three percent improved in math. Data released by the state Department of Public Instruction this spring shows MPS outperformed Milwaukee voucher schools on the state's test, even though the district serves a much higher proportion of students with disabilities.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:37 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Whose Failing Grade Is It?
Lisa Belkin, via a kind reader's email:
SINCE the subject today is schooling, let's start with a quiz:1. A third grader in Florida is often late for class. She tends to forget her homework and is unprepared for tests. The teacher would like to talk to her parents about this, but they fail to attend parent-teacher conferences. The teacher should:
a) fail the student.
b) fail the parents.
2. A middle-school student in Alaska is regularly absent, and his grades are suffering as a result. The district should:
a) fail the student.
b) fine the parents $500 a day for every day the student is not in school.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:34 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 22, 2011
Nead to Read
The reading experts and government leaders on Wisconsin's "Read to Lead" task force are taking a close look at student reading achievement in Wisconsin schools. The meetings of the task force are open to the public; my "live tweeted" notes from the April 25, 2011 inaugural meeting are here:Much more on the Wisconsin Read to Lead task force, here.Posted by Jim Zellmer at 4:13 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Will Wisconsin, teachers union have smarts to act in kids' interest?
Who loves the baby?Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett asked that at a forum of civic leaders last week.
In the biblical story, two women claiming to be the mother of the same baby take their dispute to King Solomon. He calls for a sword so he can split the baby in two and give each woman half. One woman tells him to go ahead. The second tells him to give the baby to the first so the child can live. Solomon, of course, awards the baby immediately to the second. A true mother would sacrifice just about anything, even maternal rights, to let her child live.
What does this have to do with the next couple of years for students in Milwaukee Public Schools?
This: If people act with wisdom, maturity and a willingness to sacrifice for the good of kids, there could be significant relief from cuts that will negatively affect just about all 75,000-plus students. The list could start with easing the looming big jumps in average class size.
The sacrifice part would fall largely on MPS teachers. But it would put them in line with what is almost surely going to happen to the large majority of teachers across the state.
The wisdom part would have to start with Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislative leaders. Willingness to budge on ideological points hasn't been one of their most visible traits in recent months.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:17 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:How Do Unions Affect State Budgets?
Many questions have arisen from recent political events about the power of unions. In a new working paper published today, Mercatus scholar Eileen Norcross, compiled research on unions and clears up some misconceptions about the difference between private and public sector unions and how they work."The main differences between public and private sector come from economics," said Norcross. "Private sector unions can raise their wages, but not their employment. By contrast, public sector unions can increase both wage and employment outcomes."
The result, says Norcross, is that public sector unions can grow the size of budgets, while private sector unions are constrained by the profitability of the firm.
"Unlike private sector unions, public sector unions rely not only on collective bargaining, but also leverage their political influence to achieve these gains," said Norcross. "In fact, empirical studies indicate the political activity of unions may be more effective than collective bargaining at raising employment."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:09 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:The MIT factor: celebrating 150 years of maverick genius
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has led the world into the future for 150 years with scientific innovations. Its brainwaves keep the US a superpower. But what makes the university such a fertile ground for brilliant ideas?Yo-Yo Ma's cello may not be the obvious starting point for a journey into one of the world's great universities. But, as you quickly realise when you step inside the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), there's precious little about the place that is obvious.
The cello is resting in a corner of MIT's celebrated media lab, a hub of techy creativity. There's a British red telephone kiosk standing in the middle of one of its laboratories, while another room is signposted: "Lego learning lab - Lifelong kindergarten."
The cello is part of the Opera of the Future lab run by the infectiously energetic Tod Machover. A renaissance man for the 21st - or perhaps 22nd - century, Machover is a composer, inventor and teacher rolled into one. He sweeps into the office 10 minutes late, which is odd because his watch is permanently set 20 minutes ahead in a patently vain effort to be punctual. Then, with the urgency of the White Rabbit, he rushes me across the room to show me the cello. It looks like any other electric classical instrument, with a solid wood body and jack socket. But it is much more. Machover calls it a "hyperinstrument", a sort of thinking machine that allows Ma and his cello to interact with one another and make music together.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:50 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Summary of Illinois Senate Bill 7
Strike RightsIllinois General Assembly.Fact finding: The creation of a three panel board that will look at the final offers from the Board of Education and CTU, publish those offers and study the validity of the different claims. The fact finding process will take over 75 days to complete.
If fact finding does not produce a resolution, then CTU members can vote to strike. In order to authorize a strike 75% of all our bargaining unit members must vote for it.
Attainment of Tenure
Under last year's PERA law, 4 ratings were established: excellent, proficient, needs improvement and unsatisfactory in a four-year probationary period. To achieve tenure, a teacher must have:
3 consecutive years of excellent ratings grants immediate tenure within 3 years.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:45 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Several New Jersey school districts to test new method of teacher evaluations
The state Department of Education says a handful of public school districts will be picked to test new teacher evaluations beginning in September, with the bulk of New Jersey's 616 districts implementing the achievement-based reviews the following year.Gov. Chris Christie has been pushing for revisions that would center teacher evaluations on student performance and teaching practices. Under the new system, teachers will be rated on a four-tiered scale from highly effective to highly ineffective. They will be rewarded or remediated based on their ranking and could be fired after two consecutive years of ineffective ratings.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:39 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 21, 2011
Gift Card, Anyone? The Anatomy of a Fiasco
Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:
I am in favor of a less adversarial and more collaborative and forward-looking relationship between the school district and MTI. I think it is unfortunate that the union seems to perceive that it is in its best interests to portray the school district administration as hostile to teachers. I would like to see a world where the union views itself less in an adversarial role as a bulwark against the administration's exploitation of teachers and more collaboratively as partners with the district in figuring out better ways to improve student learning.Much more, here.From my perspective, my proposal - which, if adopted, would only have amounted to a gesture - wasn't intended to help persuade teachers to abandon their union. Instead, I'd hope that it may convey the message that, even when the administration and School Board disagree with teachers' positions and adopt policies that make their jobs harder, we are not the enemy. We want to work together collaboratively in pursuit of better results for our students.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 5:23 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Oregon Board of Education raises reading benchmarks despite concerns about the impact on instruction
The State Board of Education today approved higher reading benchmarks for elementary and middle school students beginning this September.Related: Problems in Wisconsin Reading NAEP Scores Task Force.Four of the board's seven members spent several minutes voicing concerns about becoming too focused on test scores and the dangers of raising standards without supporting increased classroom time, improved instruction and student engagement.
Yet, the new rates passed 6 to 0 with chairwoman Brenda Frank abstaining.
Board members say despite concerns, it's critical to raise standards as states move towards a common curriculum and to give students and their parents a more honest assessment of whether the students are on track to graduate on time.
Right now, state leaders say meeting reading benchmarks in third or fourth grade doesn't mean that a child is likely to be on track in high school as well.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 4:36 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Food Is Political Says Outspoken Chef Alice Waters
According to food revolutionary Alice Waters, what we choose to eat says as much about our values as the way we vote. In an interview with WSJ's Alan Murray, the author and chef outlines her vision for thoughtful eating and sustainable farming, while accusing corporations of having little interest in health and nutrition.Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:28 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Fund gifted education
Ohio lawmakers are prepared to cut gifted education by a whopping 89 percent within the state's new education budget. Truly, today's economy means we all have to cut back, but why are gifted students targeted to take the biggest hit? Why are they singled out as not deserving an equal and appropriate education?We are fortunate in the Marion City School District. We have not fallen victim to this unfair budget cut. Superintendent Barney and the school board have chosen to continue to serve our gifted students next year. For that, I am thankful. I must, however, be realistic. With monies being cut so dramatically, for how long will our district be able to maintain this service? Now is the time to let our legislators in Columbus know how important gifted service is. After all, public education is education for all children. Cutting funding for one specific group more deeply than any other group is simply unfair and unacceptable.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:27 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Oakland schools among the first in California to track student absenteeism
It's a concept a kindergartner could understand: Children won't learn if they miss too much school.Few would disagree, yet most school districts don't actually monitor the number of days that each child is absent. Schools track truancy (unexcused absences), and they count the number of children who show up each day. But they don't report chronic absenteeism, or the percentage of children who miss at least 10 percent of the school year, excused or unexcused.
"You can have a kid in kindergarten rack up a ton of excused absences, but they're missing a lot of school," said Hedy Chang, director of Attendance Works, a national and state initiative to promote awareness of the issue.
Chang presented her research Friday at an education forum in Sacramento hosted by Tom Torlakson, state superintendent of public instruction.
The Oakland school district became one of the first in the state to actively monitor chronic absenteeism, and the results have been sobering. Chang's analysis showed that 14 percent of all district students and more than 20 percent of African-American students missed at least 18 days of school last year. The report found the highest percentages of chronically absent children to be concentrated in West Oakland, an economically distressed area with high rates of violence, asthma and housing instability.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:05 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 20, 2011
Madison School District Literacy Program; 2011-12 Proposed Budget Hearing Remarks
We urge the Board of Education to approve and implement the initiatives and budget proposed for the school-wide literacy program [Public Appearance Remarks]. It is deplorable that heretofore there has been no systematic plan to address the reading and writing shortcomings of the District. These shortcomings are the most fundamental causative factor contributing to the poor achievement performance of our students. The proposed design of systemic changes to the curriculum, instructional strategies, engagement of teachers, support staff, students and parents/other adults and the realignment of financial and other resources will result in measurable student growth. Board adoption of the $650,000.00 2011-12 budget considerations is an absolute necessity of the very highest priority.
Our thanks and compliments to the Board and the administration for undertaking the assessment of literacy in the District. However, the Board must take a greatly increased leadership role in demanding the vigorous evaluation and assessment all programs, services and personnel throughout the District. There must be demonstrable commitment and evidence of the systematic implementation of the strategic objective of the five-year District Strategic Plan to address the woefully inadequate and insufficient data upon which to make decisions about curriculum, instruction and performance of students and staff.
The Board must not give any support for an increase in property taxes in finalizing the 2011-12 budget. Nor, is there any justification for using any amount of "under-levy carry-over" if such authorization should be re-instated by the state. There is no evidence to support an increase in taxes. We must be able to prioritize the expenditure of revenues available within the limits established. The Board has already demonstrated it cannot effectively manage its allocations to areas of highest need to strengthen the impact on curriculum, instruction and performance affecting student learning. Until and unless the Board can demonstrate a higher and more effective level of leadership with its decisions and priorities it cannot be trusted with more money that will only get the same results.
We support an increase in allocations for maintenance and electrical infrastructure up-grades conditional upon 1) re-allocation of existing funds to these areas; 2) clear and enumerated priorities, established in advance, for maintenance projects that are specifically related to safety issues; and 3) electrical infrastructure up-grades specifically related to priorities established for improvements and expansion of technology as identified in the Technology Plan for use in student learning, instruction, business services and communications with the public.
The Board must not give approval to the proposed amendment for providing staff with year-end bonuses. This is absolutely the wrong message, for the wrong reasons at the wrong time. It cannot be justified in 'rewarding' those staff who wrongfully abdicated their responsibilities in the classroom to the students; by insulting those staff who did attempt to fulfill their responsibilities; as well as insulting the parents and students harmed by those detrimental actions. It would be far better to allocate the 'savings funds' to resources actively and directly impacting student learning. The Board must make a commitment to providing leadership toward academic improvements and to creating a working culture of mutual trust and collaboration with employees and taxpayers.
For further information contact: Don Severson, donleader@aol.com 577-0851
Posted by Don Severson at 8:38 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:How to destroy a school system
There is something horribly fascinating about watching Wisconsin Republicans discuss their plans for our state's school system.Related: Problems in Wisconsin Reading NAEP Scores Task Force and Wisconsin needs two big goals.First, they swing the bloody ax:
Last week, Walker went to Washington, D.C., to give a speech to school-choice advocates at the American Federation for Children. He started off by reading a Dr. Seuss book, and talking about how "every kid deserves to have a great education."
- The biggest budget cuts to our public schools in state history, nearly $900 million. Kerchunk.
- A bill to create a statewide system of charter schools whose authorizing board is appointed by Scott Walker and the Fitzgeralds, and which will funnel resources out of local schools and into cheapo online academies. Kerchunk.
- Lifting income caps on private-school vouchers so taxpayers foot the bill to send middle- and upper-income families' kids to private school. Kerchunk.
- Then comes the really sick part. They candy-coat all this with banal statements about "reforms" that will "empower" parents and students and improve education.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 8:37 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:A personal view: environmental education -- its content and delivery
Paul R. Ehrlich, via a kind reader's email:
Arguably, no challenge faced by humanity is more critical than generating an environmentally literate public. Otherwise the present "business as usual" course of human affairs will lead inevitably to a collapse of civilization. I list obvious topics that should be covered in education from kindergarten through college, and constantly updated by public education and the media. For instance, these include earth science (especially climatology), the importance of biodiversity, basic demogra- phy, the problems of overconsumption, the fact that the current economic system compels producers and consumers to do the wrong thing environmentally, and the I=PAT equation. I also summarize less well-recognized aspects of the environmental situation that are critical but are only rarely taught or discussed, such as the nonlinear effects of continued population growth, the impacts of climate disruption on agricultural production, and the basic issues of human behavior, including economic behavior. Finally, I suggest some of the ways that this material can be made a major focus of all education, ranging from using environmental examples in kindergarten stories and middle school math to establish an international discussion of the behavioral barriers to sustainability.Global human society is challenged in a way never before seen in human history. For the first time, humanity is fundamentally altering global ecosystems in ways that can threaten the continuation of our social order. The struggle to develop appropriate modes of behavior compatible with maintaining vital ecological processes is the great challenge of the twenty-first century. Educational systems are pivotal to meeting this challenge by equipping people with the knowledge and values to understand and address the human predicament. Thus, environmental education needs to be a vital component of all educational processes in developed nations from kindergarten to doctoral studies and continuing through the use of mainstream and social media.
However, in my view, environmental education is given much too little attention in the school systems of the USA and other rich nations, and is often poorly timed and structured when it is delivered. The situation is only marginally better in colleges and universities, despite the good efforts of environmental educators. Perhaps the best evidence for the inadequacy of environmental education is that "out of the classroom, people have failed to make the link between their individual actions and the environmental condition" (Blumstein and Saylan 2007, 2011). A basic problem is educational systems for the young are designed to fill people with various packages of "tailored" knowledge, and then send them "out in the world" to use that knowledge, especially to make a living. There is too little systematic thought given to the ever-changing needs of responsible citizens facing the culture gap--the enormous and growing gulf between the non-genetic information possessed by each individual society and that possessed by society (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 2010).
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 4:48 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Portland school bond: Hard-earned lessons in Portland's bond nail-biter
Portland isn't the kind of city to have nail-biting elections over school taxes. Levies "coast to victory" in the news headlines here. A special income tax will "pass easily by wide margins," even during an economic downturn.Bonds pass, too -- until this week, when Portland voters narrowly rejected a $548 million capital bond and upended conventional wisdom about their loyalties and limits. This man-bites-dog result provides some invaluable lessons for the district and its campaign team as they regroup for the next bond effort.
Starting with this lesson: Never take voters for granted. Listen to what they're saying now -- not what they've said in the past.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:25 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Mixed grades for 'green' Spokane school
Lincoln Heights Elementary School has lights that turn off when rooms are empty, thermostats that automatically set temperatures back at night and carbon dioxide sensors in the gym to circulate air only when it's occupied.It was constructed to "green" building standards, which cost Spokane Public Schools nearly $460,000 extra for the South Hill facility.
But the energy savings aren't what the district thought they would be, a discovery that other owners of green buildings are making all over the state, a new report from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee says. Seven of nine public buildings built to green standards and studied by committee staff fell short of the energy goals they were designed to meet.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:24 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Close bad charters faster
The D.C. Public Charter School Board might soon close the Ideal Academy Public Charter School, more than a year and a half after I told it to.When I made that suggestion in a December 2009 column, Ideal was a prime example of a charter school overdue for termination. Its high school, after four years, had shown that most of its students would be better off elsewhere.
"Of the 31 sophomores who took the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System test in math last spring," I said then, "only 25.8 percent scored at the proficient level or above. Only 38.7 percent reached that level in reading. Among secondary schools [in the District], only six regular schools and two charter schools had lower math proficiency rates. Only 11 regular schools and three charters were worse in reading proficiency."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:22 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:California Governor Puts the Testing Juggernaut On Ice
California Governor Jerry Brown has taken a big step towards reducing the testing mania in the nation's most populous state. Up until his administration we have been on an accelerated path towards the comprehensive data-driven system that test publishers and corporate reformers have convinced leaders is needed to improve schools. But in the May budget outline from Brown's office, he makes it clear he is putting on the brakes.From the Thoughts on Public Education blog comes this:
Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing to suspend funding for CALPADS, the state student longitudinal data system, and to stop further planning for CALTIDES, the teacher data base that was to be joined at the hip with CALPADS.What is even more encouraging is the explanation Brown offers, which shows a great deal of understanding of these issues. The document states:Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:20 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 19, 2011
Ranking America's High Schools; Challenging All Students
Since 1998, The Post's Jay Mathews has ranked Washington-area public high schools using the Challenge Index, his measure of how effectively a school prepares its students for college. In 2011, the Post expanded its research to high schools across the United States.Jay Matthews: Behold the power of challenging all high school students -- not just the A teamThe formula is simple: Divide the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or other college-level tests a school gave in 2010 by the number of graduating seniors. While not a measure of the overall quality of the school, the rating can reveal the level of a high school's commitment to preparing average students for college.
West Potomac High School in Fairfax County and Oakland Mills High School in Howard County are as close as schools come to being twins. Both are in affluent counties and serve ethnically and economically diverse populations. Forty-seven percent of West Potomac students and 52 percent of Oakland Mills students are black or Hispanic. Thirty-eight percent at West Potomac and 31 percent at Oakland Mills are from low-income families.Middleton is the only Madison area high school to make the list.But when I indulge in my obsessive comparison of schools by their college-level course programs, significant differences emerge. Oakland Mills often bars students from taking Advanced Placement classes if they don't have B's in previous courses. West Potomac lets in everyone who signs up and pays the test fees. The AP test participation rate at West Potomac is three times what it is at Oakland Mills, but the passing rate on tests at the Fairfax school is lower: 61 percent, compared with 78 percent at Oakland Mills.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 9:39 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:School board member Ed Hughes wants to give some docked pay back to Madison teachers (Proposal Withdrawn Later in the Day)
Hughes is making the proposal [56K PDF Ed Hughes Amendment] as an amendment to the district's budget.Jay Sorgi:Funding would come from the $1.3 million windfall the district will get from docking the pay of 1,769 teachers who were absent without an excuse on one or more days between Feb. 16-18 and 21.
The district closed school during those four days because of the high number of staff members who called in sick to attend protests over Gov. Scott Walker's proposed changes to public sector collective bargaining.
"Under the circumstances it seemed to me the school district shouldn't necessarily profit from that, because the teachers agreed to make up the time in a way that took away planning time for them," said Hughes, who is considering a run for school board president when new officers are elected Monday.
Hughes is also proposing increasing the district's proposed property tax levy for next year by about $2 million to pay for maintenance and technology projects and any costs associated with the district's implementation of a state-imposed talented-and-gifted education plan.
"It seems goofy that we give away $1 million and then raise property taxes [50K PDF Ed Hughes Amendment]," board member Lucy Mathiak said.
If a school board member in Madison gets his way, the district would used money it saved when teachers forced schools to shut down during the budget debate to award end of the year bonuses to teachers.Additional links:WTMJ partner station WIBA Radio in Madison says that teachers in Madison would receive $200 gift cards as year-end bonuses.
"Whenever we can, we need to show some kind of tangible appreciation for the extremely hard work our teachers and staff do," said Ed Hughes, a member of the Madison school board.
"They've had a particularly tough year as you know, given that they kind of became political footballs in the legislature. We're ending up slashing their take home pay by a substantial amount, pretty much because we have to."
Related: 5/26/2005 MTI & The Madison School Board by Ed Hughes.
- David Blaska adds quotes from Mr. Hughes, here.
- School board member withdraws controversial gift card proposal.
- Don Severson talks with Vicki McKenna on the proposal (35mb .mp3)
- What's behind the teacher gift card proposal? by Susan Troller
- TJ Mertz summarizes today's brief Madison School District budget meeting.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 8:48 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:The Quiet Revolution in Open Learning
In the late days of March 2010, Congressional negotiators dealt President Obama's community-college reform agenda what seemed like a fatal blow. A year later, it appears that, remarkably, the administration has fashioned the ashes of that defeat into one of the most innovative federal higher-education programs ever conceived. Hardly anyone has noticed.Obama originally called for $12-billion in new spending on community-college infrastructure and degree completion. The money was to come from eliminating public subsidies to for-profit banks that made student loans. But late in the process, some lawmakers insisted that savings that had already occurred, because of colleges' switching into the federal direct-loan program in anticipation of the new law, didn't count as savings. Billions were pulled off the table, and the community-college plan was shelved.
Two days later, negotiators found $2-billion. But they could spend it only on a U.S. Department of Labor program restricted to workers who had lost their jobs because of shifts in global trade. The fit with the president's expansive agenda seemed awkward, and the amount was pennies on the original dollar. Cynical commentators called it a "consolation prize."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:39 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Burying the Bias in Teacher Data Reports, Part II
A few weeks ago I posted a report on Edwize about biases in last year's Teacher Data Reports. Teachers of high performing math students are 35 times more likely to fall at the bottom of the teacher ranking than at the top. [1]Shortly after that, the DOE placed a document on its website that asserts that "...teachers of high-performing students are as likely to have high value-added scores as low value-added scores."
To me, call me crazy, this is unlikely to be true. First of all DOE charts found in the very same document seem to contradict that (more on that in a minute). What's more, DOE used a broad definition of "teachers of high-performing students," and also included some reports that were so unreliable they were not issued to teachers. Let's go through this step by step.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:11 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Democrats Want to Direct Additional Wisconsin Taxes to K-12 Spending
Assembly Democrats today proposed using more than half of the new money in last week's bolstered revenue projections to increase K-12 funding in the state budget, charging that Republicans have failed to distinguish between priorities that can wait and those that cannot."We are actually fighting for the very future of public education," Rep. Fred Clark, D-Baraboo, said at a press conference outside the Capitol this morning. Clark is running against GOP Sen. Luther Olsen in a potential recall election.
Dems proposed directing $356 million more toward school aids in the budget after LFB projections added $636 million to state coffers over the next biennium last week. Their proposal would also reserve $200 million of that revenue to repay the Patients Compensation Fund, $100 million to pay down some state debt and $20 million to increase aid to technical colleges.
Wisconsin State Tax Based K-12 Spending Growth Far Exceeds University Funding.Understanding UW Debate: Relative State Support Down, State Regs Remain.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:02 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Know Your Madisonian: 40-year teacher has seen many changes
Of the six Madison School District principals retiring this year, Cathy McMillan has logged the most years of service with the district at 39 years.Her 40-year career in education began as a sixth-grade teacher in Baltimore. Since moving to Madison in 1972, she has taught at the elementary, middle and high school levels, worked in district administration, and served as principal at Hawthorne Elementary School and for the past four years at Franklin Elementary School.
Q: Why did you decide to become an educator?
A: I remember my sixth-grade and first male teacher, Mr. Wiskita, inspired me to pursue my interest in math and science. Once I got into the classroom I was hooked. I wanted to see that all students enjoyed learning -- especially math. I wanted girls to love math and consider math-related careers.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:01 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 18, 2011
Top 10 Questions/Comments Made By My Third Graders During Their First Ever Set of ELA and Math State Exams
(aka "Why Teaching In a Testing Grade May Cause Premature Aging," or "Why I Have Band-Aids On All My Fingers From Nervously Picking Off the Cuticles While Proctoring")
10. "Why do we have to use a #2 pencil?"
9. (Directions read by me: "You may not speak to each other while the test is being administered." Student:) "What does 'administered' mean?"
8. "I don't get how to show my work for this part."
7. (The test directs students to continue working when they see the words GO ON at the bottom of the page and to stop working when they see the word STOP. On the ELA, students get ten minutes per passage and have to STOP before being directed to move on. On the math exam, they get 60 minutes to do all 40 questions, no STOPping. On the math exam, one student asked:) "When is it gonna say STOP?!"
6. "But none of these choices are right."
5. "But both of these choices are right."
4. "Can I look this word up in the dictionary?"Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:36 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Seattle's Ingraham parents 1, Seattle Schools 0
Parents, teachers and students have been in shock since the Seattle School District's interim Superintendent decided to fire a popular principal for little reason, they thought. They fought. They won.This afternoon Superintendent Susan Enfield reversed her decision about dismissing Ingraham Principal Martin Floe, and sent the high school's staff this letter:
When I was appointed Interim Superintendent, it was with the clear charge to strengthen opportunities for all students to learn. You asked me to bring high levels of transparency and accountability to this effort. The decision I made last Tuesday about the leadership of Ingraham High School Principal Martin Floe reflects my efforts to realize these commitments.However, I also know that a good leader listens. After extensive conversations with Ingraham High School staff and the community, I have decided to renew Mr. Floe's contact for the 2011-12 school year, under the condition that he continue on a plan of improvement, which I, along with his Executive Director, will monitor throughout the year.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:18 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Teachers Swap Recipes
In every school in America, in three-ring binders and file folders, sit lesson plans--the recipes that guide everyday teaching in the classroom. Like the secrets of talented cooks, the instructional plans of the best teachers have much to offer their creators' colleagues. But while the plans are increasingly digital, they are still not easily shared across classrooms, nor, especially, across districts or states. Even when these plans are accessible, they are often not organized in a way that makes them easy to use, understand, or customize.Now, a host of new web sites, from A to Z Teacher Stuff to Lesson Planet to Lessonopoly, are trying to solve that problem and make it easier for teachers to share, find, and make better use of lesson plans and accompanying materials. One, TeachersPayTeachers, a sort of Craigslist for educators, says it has paid more than $1 million in commissions to teachers, who have sold everything from classroom hand puppets to lesson plans on the Civil War. The site even hosts a "lesson plan on demand" auction, in which teachers advertise for, say, 4th-grade materials on Texas history and other teachers bid to fulfill the request.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:11 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 17, 2011
Madison schools 'don't want to wait' for a crisis
Responding to an increase in violence, drugs and gang activity in and around schools, the Madison School District is considering a broad effort to improve building security, including the use of drug-sniffing dogs in high schools next year.The district also is proposing to lock the main entrances of middle school buildings during the day. Other recommendations include redesigning main entrances at West and Memorial high schools and adding surveillance cameras to all elementary and middle schools, district security coordinator Luis Yudice said.
"We are not doing this because we believe we have severe problems in our schools (or) because we experienced a tragedy in our schools," Yudice said. "We don't want to wait until there's a crisis. We want to get ahead of the game."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 8:41 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:School choice advocates spend freely on politics, WEAC Spending
A rural legislator who received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from out-of-state school choice advocates took flak back home for supporting expansion of a Milwaukee voucher program when his own school district is struggling financially.Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators by Steven Walters:According to a story in the Sauk Prairie Eagle last week, an aide to Rep. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, had to use a gavel to bring order back to a budget listening session at Sauk Prairie Memorial Hospital on May 6.
Marklein, a freshman Republican legislator, was asked if campaign contributions were influencing his support for two pieces of recent school choice legislation which provide public tax dollars for families to spend in private schools in Milwaukee. This, at the same time that the River Valley School District, which Marklein represents, has been forced to cut programs and staff and is facing more cuts in Gov. Scott Walker's budget.
How much do election-year firewalls cost to build? For the state's largest teachers union, $1.57 million.Wisconsin Teachers Union Tops Lobbying Expenditures in 2009, more than Double #2That's how much the Wisconsin Education Association Council said last week it will spend trying to make sure four Democratic state senators are re-elected - enough, WEAC hopes, to keep a Democratic majority in the 33-member state body.
Although there are 15 Democratic candidates running for the state Senate, and 80 Democrats running for the state Assembly, the latest WEAC report shows that the teachers union is placing what amounts to an "all in" bet on saving just four Democratic senators who are finishing their first terms.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 8:39 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Reforming Districts Through Choice, Autonomy, Equity, and Accountability: An Overview of the Voluntary Public School Choice Directors Meeting
Betheny Gross, Robin Lake, via a Deb Britt email:
In February 2011, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) convened a conference to help districts implementing school choice under the U.S. Department of Education's Voluntary Public School Choice program. The conference, sponsored by the Department of Education, provided grantees access to the most current knowledge from district and charter leaders and school choice researchers on how to effectively implement public school choice.The conference focused on the most pressing issues faced by localities committed to public school choice. Panelists addressed how choice districts can
actively manage the supply of schools in the district,
make careful decisions about the allocation of resources across these now independent schools,
build fair and transparent enrollment systems,
effectively communicate to all parents about their choices, and
invoke creative solutions to ensure that students with special needs are well served in these diverse schools.Posted by Jim Zellmer at 8:28 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Is College Worth It? College Presidents, Public Assess Value, Quality and Mission of Higher Education
This report is based on findings from a pair of Pew Research Center surveys conducted this spring. One is a telephone survey taken among a nationally representative sample of 2,142 adults ages 18 and older. The other is an online survey, done in association with the Chronicle of Higher Education, among the presidents of 1,055 two-year and four-year private, public and for-profit colleges and universities. (See the our survey methodology for more information.)Valerie Strauss has more.Here is a summary of key findings from the full report:
Survey of the General Public
Cost and Value. A majority of Americans (57%) say the higher education system in the United States fails to provide students with good value for the money they and their families spend. An even larger majority (75%) says college is too expensive for most Americans to afford. At the same time, however, an overwhelming majority of college graduates (86%) say that college has been a good investment for them personally.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 4:33 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Fairfax teacher Sean Lanigan still suffering from false molestation allegations
Sean Lanigan's nightmare began in January 2010, when the principal at Centre Ridge Elementary School pulled him out of the physical education class he was teaching and quietly walked him into an interrogation with two Fairfax County police detectives.He had no warning that a 12-year-old girl at the Centreville school had accused him of groping and molesting her in the gym.
The girl, angry at Lanigan about something else entirely, had made the whole thing up. But her accusations launched a soul-sapping rollercoaster ride that still hasn't ended.
"Emotionally, a part of me has died inside," Lanigan said in a recent interview. "I'm physically and mentally exhausted all the time, how the whole process has been dragged out to this date. It certainly has affected the quality of life for me and my family at home."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:01 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 16, 2011
Test scores could end a Wisconsin teacher's job
School boards across Wisconsin could use teacher evaluations - which rely in part on the results of students' standardized state test scores - as part of the reason for dismissing and disciplining educators, according to legislation considered by the Assembly and Senate education committees Monday.Senate Bill 95 proposes modifying 10 state mandates so that local school districts have more flexibility to decide what's best for their communities, said Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), a co-sponsor of the bill with Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills).
The legislation covers a wide berth of areas - from allowing school boards to offer physical education credit to high school students who participate in one season of an extracurricular sport, to changing the way a state-funded class-size reduction program is implemented in the elementary grades - but was criticized by some legislators who thought it was too hastily brought to a hearing Monday.
Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) noted that details about the bill were released only one business day earlier, on Friday, by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
"I'm pretty sure if there had been more notice on this, this room would have been packed," she said, looking at the meager crowd of about 30 people.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 10:08 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Wisconsin Senate Bill 95 Testimony
Much more on Wisconsin Senate Bill 95, here.Thank you for this opportunity to testify on Senate Bill 95.
Due to time limitations — both the time allotted here and the very, very short time between the release of the Bill on Friday and the scheduling of this hearing for today — I will be confining myself to only two of the topics covered in this wide ranging measure. Those are the dilution of the Student Achievement Guaranty in Education (SAGE) and the use of student standardized test scores as a determinant of educator employment conditions. I will note that I believe every section of this Bill should be thoroughly sifted and winnowed.
Before directly addressing the proposals on SAGE and the use of student standardized test scores, I’d like to say a few things about the broader trend in educational thinking and policy in Wisconsin.
Not too long ago Senator Olson chaired a Special Committee on Review of State School Aid Formula. I sat though most of the meetings of that committee. Although little came of it, there was a sense of optimism and ambition in the work of that committee, a sense that we can and should do better. This spirit was captured in the title of the presentation by Professor Alan Odden “Moving From Good to Great in Wisconsin: Funding Schools Adequately and Doubling Student Performance,” (paper of the same title here) . It should be added that Doctor Sarah Archibald, who is anow dvising Senator Olson, was part of that work.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 5:18 PM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:What do teachers want?
Readers of this blog or of my book, The Influence of Teachers, know that I believe that the harsh criticism of teachers and their unions is largely undeserved. I also believe it is hurting public education.In the clamor, the voices of regular classroom teachers are difficult to hear, which is why I am devoting this blog to them. With apologies to Sigmund Freud, "What do teachers want?"
Some answers to that question can be found in recent surveys by Met Life and the Gates Foundation/Scholastic. I include some of those findings below.
Renee Moore, a veteran teacher who is certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, says it's all about respect. "Highest on my list," she wrote, "would be more respect for the professional expertise of teachers, particularly for those of us who have shown consistently, year-after-year that we are highly accomplished teachers."
That seems to be consistent with a Met Life finding that most teachers feel they are being ignored. "A majority of teachers do not believe that teachers' voices are being heard. Seven in ten teachers (69%) disagree with the statement that "thinking about the current debate on education, teachers' voices in general have been adequately heard."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:26 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Grading teachers
Elizabeth Ling & Jocelyn Huber:
Gov. Cuomo yesterday wrote Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the state Board of Regents, urging a drastic change of direction as the state Education Department develops a new teacher-evaluation system. The governor's right: The first draft of that system deserves an F.It seems Tisch got the message. Soon after the governor's letter went public, she released a statement committing to an overhaul of the evaluation system.
Cuomo's recommendations address many of the problems and offer a good starting point to build upon. Now it's up to Tisch and the Regents to adopt them in earnest when they meet Monday.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:24 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Wisconsin Voucher expansion is threat to public education
here's a train coming, folks. And, unlike the proposed Madison-to-Milwaukee rail, this train really is high-speed.If we're not paying attention, it could end up crippling public education in Wisconsin.
Gov. Scott Walker had already included in his 2011-13 budget proposal a plan to change the Milwaukee school voucher program, which allows low-income students to attend private schools on the taxpayers' dime.
It would eliminate the enrollment caps; expand it to include schools in all of Milwaukee County, not just the city; and phase out income limits, opening the program to middle- and high-income families.
The Assembly last week passed a separate bill that eliminated the caps and the Milwaukee-only school requirement.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:21 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 15, 2011
BioMathematics
Biology used to be about plants, animals and insects, but five great revolutions have changed the way that scientists think about life: the invention of the microscope, the systematic classification of the planet's living creatures, evolution, the discovery of the gene and the structure of DNA. Now, a sixth is on its way - mathematics.Maths has played a leading role in the physical sciences for centuries, but in the life sciences it was little more than a bit player, a routine tool for analysing data. However, it is moving towards centre stage, providing new understanding of the complex processes of life.
The ideas involved are varied and novel; they range from pattern formation to chaos theory. They are helping us to understand not just what life is made from, but how it works, on every scale from molecules to the entire planet - and possibly beyond.
The biggest revolution in modern biology was the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA, which turned genetics into a branch of chemistry, centred on a creature's genes - sequences of DNA code that specify the proteins from which the gene is made. But when attention shifted to what genes do in an organism, the true depth of the problem of life became ever more apparent. Listing the proteins that make up a cat does not tell us everything we want to know about cats.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:31 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Wisconsin Voucher program needs accountability
The children of Milwaukee deserve a quality education regardless of whether they attend Milwaukee Public Schools, a charter school or a private school through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.A key element to support quality is transparency. Clear, easy to understand and readily available information, including test score results, helps parents and the public evaluate their schools. Traditional public and charter schools throughout the state have been using publicly reported test score results and other data to drive school improvement for years. This transparency was extended to the voucher program through laws enacted in the 2009-'11 budget.
This fall, for the first time, students attending private schools through the state's voucher program had their academic progress assessed with the same statewide tests as their public school peers. Results reported this spring showed that some public, charter and private schools in Milwaukee are doing very well, but too many are not providing the education our children need and deserve.
We believe that students in the voucher program, receiving taxpayer support to attend private Milwaukee schools, must continue to take the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination. Standardized tests, including the WKCE, do not paint an entire picture of a student, and many private schools participating in the voucher program take other quality tests. We need to put all the schools in MPS, charter and choice programs on a common report card.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:31 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Speaking Up in Class, Silently, Using the Tools of Social Media
Wasn't it just the other day that teachers confiscated cellphones and principals warned about oversharing on MySpace?Now, Erin Olson, an English teacher in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, is among a small but growing cadre of educators trying to exploit Twitter-like technology to enhance classroom discussion. Last Friday, as some of her 11th graders read aloud from a poem called "To the Lady," which ponders why bystanders do not intervene to stop injustice, others kept up a running commentary on their laptops.
The poet "says that people cried out and tried but nothing was done," one student typed, her words posted in cyberspace.
"She is giving raw proof," another student offered, "that we are slaves to our society."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:28 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Yale in Singapore: Lost in Translation
On March 31, Yale University announced final plans to open its first joint campus, in partnership with the National University of Singapore, to be known as Yale-NUS College. The Web site of the new, yet-to-be-built campus was launched immediately. It features Potemkin-village photographs of smiling students, presumably posing as future Yale-NUS students. So as of now, for the first time since 1701, there will be two Yales. (The old one should henceforth be called "Yale-New Haven," to avoid confusion.)On April 11, in Singapore, President Richard C. Levin of Yale, along with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and the president of the National University of Singapore, signed the agreement establishing the Yale campus in the city-state, and they unveiled architectural plans for the new campus. In New Haven, faculty recruitment has begun, reportedly in an atmosphere of "enthralled" enthusiasm. But the Yale-NUS venture raises troubling questions about the translation of academic values and freedoms into a repressive environment.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:26 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Four Questions About Creative Writing
1. Why do people hate creative writing programs so much?Well they don't really, not everyone, or there wouldn't be so many of them--hundreds. From modest beginnings in Iowa in the 1930's, MFA programs have spread out across the land, coast to coast, sinking roots in the soil like an improbably invasive species of corn. Now, leaping the oceans, stalks have begun to sprout in countries all around the world, feeding the insatiable desire to be that mythical thing, a writer. Somebody must think they're worth founding, funding, attending, teaching at.
But partly in reaction to their very numerousness, which runs afoul of traditional ideas about the necessary exclusivity of literary achievement, contempt for writing programs is pervasive, at least among the kind of people who think about them at all. In fact, I would say they are objects of their own Derangement Syndrome. Logically, any large-scale human endeavor will be the scene of a certain amount of mediocrity, and creative writing is no different, but here that mediocrity is taken as a sign of some profounder failure, some horrible and scandalous wrong turn in literary history. Under its spell, a set of otherwise fair questions about creative writing are not so much asked as always-already answered. No, writing cannot be taught. Yes, writing programs are a scam--a kind of Ponzi scheme. Yes, writing programs make all writers sound alike. Yes, they turn writers away from the "real world," where the real stories are, fastening their gazes to their navels. No, MFA students do not learn anything truly valuable.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:29 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:On "Parents with Options"
A "dagger," said the well-meaning man, "in the heart of public education." That man, who superintends Green Bay's public school system, was reacting to word that Gov. Scott Walker proposed letting parents statewide have the same option poor Milwaukeeans now have - to take their state school aid to a private school, if they choose it.Parents with options: That was the violence that Greg Maass, that superintendent, was talking about. I don't mean to single out Maass. He colorfully phrased the apocalyptic view that many others had toward Walker's idea. A writer for The Progressive, the left-wing Madison magazine that figures we peaked in about 1938, tiresomely said it was "war on education."
Right: To increase options is to war on education. Actually, though, that is the heart of the complaint of the public school establishment. Giving families more control over where they can get a publicly funded education necessarily means less control for those in charge of what had been the only place you could get one.
But will Walker's idea kill off public education? Unlikely: Incumbent school systems already live with publicly funded competition.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:10 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 14, 2011
Wisconsin Bill OKs teacher discipline for bad school test scores
School districts would be able to use standardized test scores as a factor in disciplining or firing teachers under a Republican bill made public Thursday and scheduled for a public hearing Monday.TJ Mertz has more.Currently, districts can use the scores to evaluate teachers, with certain limitations, but not to discipline or fire them.
The bill comes after the state lost out on federal education funding in part due to limitations in how districts can judge teaching performance, and as a state task force develops a plan to better evaluate teachers.
In addition to the teacher evaluation changes, the bill sponsored by the chairmen of the Senate and Assembly education committees also would allow students to receive physical education credit for playing after-school sports, allow athletics suspensions based on police records and alter funding rules for certain programs, among other things.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:30 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Wisconsin school districts rank low on transparency
When it comes to transparency, Wisconsin school districts are like the kids who spent all night playing video games and the next morning pray that their teachers won't call on them in class. They are falling behind, offering few of the answers that parents and taxpayers deserve.Wisconsin's 442 school districts have earned an overall grade of D on disclosure, according to an analysis conducted by Sunshine Review. The analysis tests the information publicly available on district websites against a 10-point transparency checklist in areas ranging from budgets to criminal background checks on employees.
The Madison Metropolitan School District - one of the state's largest - did a little better, earning a C-minus.
Want to know basic information, such as what taxes are levied by your school district or how much money it receives from the state and the federal government? Sorry, but chances are you live in a district that does not list tax data on its website - 73% fail to do so.
Nearly two-thirds of school districts neglect to post their current budget along with budgets from previous years so taxpayers can compare spending from year to year. Less than 2% of districts post audits of their finances and performance online or disclose a schedule of upcoming audits.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:17 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Higher-education bubble Blowing up grad school
THERE'S a debate going on (Sarah Lacy on Peter Thiel, William Deresiewicz, Annie Lowrey, Matthew Yglesias and even our own Schumpeter and Lexington) about whether the American higher-education market is failing, perhaps in the way the housing market failed (leaving average people with huge overhangs of debt for assets that turn out not to be worth what they thought they were worth), or perhaps in the way the health-care system is failing (sucking up an ever-bigger slice of the national income for services that don't seem to be providing significantly higher value). Brad DeLong writes that he doesn't understand why competition in higher education doesn't seem to work to keep prices down: why doesn't Yale cut tuition by $5,000 per year to suck top students away from Harvard, or why doesn't Berkeley offer an out-of-state programme for an extra $3,000 per year to suck top students away from the Ivies? And then he makes this very interesting point:Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:26 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Some in D.C. wonder if rigorous charter school can meet poor students' needs
The Washington region is a hot zone of student achievement, with leading high schools offering a plethora of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes to prove that theirs is a rigorous path to college.But next year, a public charter school will open in the nation's capital that raises the concept of academic rigor to a new level. Seventh-graders will take Algebra I and Latin. AP courses will not be an option for high school students -- they'll be the heart of the curriculum.
To graduate, students will be required to complete at least eight AP courses and pass six exams.
The school, to be known as Basis DC, replicates a model developed in Arizona and represents a potential turning point for a charter sector in the District that has grown explosively in the past decade but yielded uneven results.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 1:19 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 13, 2011
Class Size: What Research Says and What it Means for State Policy
Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst & Matthew M. Chingos:
Class size is one of the small number of variables in American K-12 education that are both thought to influence student learning and are subject to legislative action. Legislative mandates on maximum class size have been very popular at the state level. In recent decades, at least 24 states have mandated or incentivized class-size reduction (CSR).The current fiscal environment has forced states and districts to rethink their CSR policies given the high cost of maintaining small classes. For example, increasing the pupil/teacher ratio in the U.S. by one student would save at least $12 billion per year in teacher salary costs alone, which is roughly equivalent to the outlays of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the federal government's largest single K-12 education program.
The substantial expenditures required to sustain smaller classes are justified by the belief that smaller classes increase student learning. We examine "what the research says" about whether class-size reduction has a positive impact on student learning and, if it does, by how much, for whom, and under what circumstances. Despite there being a large literature on class-size effects on academic achievement, only a few studies are of high enough quality and sufficiently relevant to be given credence as a basis for legislative action.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 4:36 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Illinois Overhaul of Schools Gains, Despite Turmoil
Legislation that would make it easier to dismiss ineffective teachers statewide and allow mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel to lengthen the Chicago school day unanimously passed an Illinois House committee Wednesday, despite objections by the Chicago Teachers Union.The measure, passed unanimously by the state Senate in April, now goes before the full House.
Lawmakers are pursuing passage of a separate "trailer" bill intended to help defuse a dispute that erupted last week when union officials charged the legislation was changed at the last minute without their knowledge.
Chicago Teachers Union officials object to passages in the legislation that would curb their bargaining rights and limit their ability to strike.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:05 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:Education Bill Fight Puts Spotlight on Chicago Schools Union Chief
As legislators prepared to move a sweeping overhaul of state education law through the Illinois House this week, the Chicago Teachers Union's sudden turnabout on the bill is raising questions about the union's role in negotiations and the leadership ability of its untested leader, Karen Lewis.When the education bill passed the Illinois Senate unanimously last month, the support of the states' teachers unions seemed to signal an unprecedented, collaborative effort to reform education policy. Lewis and the leaders of the state's other two major teachers' unions had agreed to substantial changes on tenure, evaluations and bargaining procedures. But last Wednesday the Chicago Teachers Union membership voted to consider pulling its support, claiming that language curbing collective bargaining rights was inserted into the bill without its knowledge and amounted to an "atomic bomb."
"The recent steps they've taken have certainly concerned a number of the entities they've dealt with in Springfield," said Darren Reisberg, deputy superintendent for the Illinois State Board of Education, who participated in the bill's negotiations.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 2:12 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 12, 2011
The New Normal of Teacher Education
Between 1900 and 1940, America's normal schools, noncollegiate teacher-training institutions with an emphasis on practical education, gave way to university-based teacher education. Today the nation is moving in the opposite direction.The first of the public normal schools, educating primary-school teachers, was established in 1839. By 1900 there were more than 330 normals, public and private, enrolling over 115,000 students. Their programs, originally a year long and later longer, included academic subjects but emphasized pedagogy and in-school training.
The rise of the high school and the advent of accreditation and education-professional associations in the late 19th century brought the normal-school era to a close. Higher education determined that the preparation of secondary-school teachers, which required mastery of subject matter, should preferably occur on campus, and so colleges and universities began to create their own teacher-education programs.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 5:17 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:The Humanities, Done Digitally
A few months back, I gave a lunchtime talk called "Digital Humanities: Singular or Plural?" My title was in part a weak joke driven primarily by brain exhaustion. As I sat at the computer putting together my remarks, which were intended to introduce the field, I'd initially decided to title them "What Is Digital Humanities?" But then I thought "What Is the Digital Humanities?" sounded better, and then I stared at the screen for a minute trying to decide if it should be "What Are the Digital Humanities?" And in my pre-coffee, underslept haze, I honestly couldn't tell which one was correct.At first this was just a grammatical mixup, but at some point it occurred to me that it was actually a useful metaphor for something that's been going on in the field of late. Digital humanities has gained prominence in the last couple of years, in part because of the visibility given the field by the use of social media, particularly Twitter, at the Modern Language Association convention and other large scholarly meetings. But that prominence and visibility have also produced a fair bit of tension within the field--every "What is Digital Humanities?" panel aimed at explaining the field to other scholars winds up uncovering more differences of opinion among its practitioners. Sometimes those differences develop into tense debates about the borders of the field, and about who's in and who's out.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:16 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:A second language for every high school student, Stanford's Russell Berman says
All high school students should be fluent in a language other than English, and it's a matter of national urgency. So says Russell Berman - and as president of the Modern Language Association (MLA), his opinion carries some clout."To worry about globalization without supporting a big increase in language learning is laughable," the Stanford humanities professor wrote in this summer's MLA newsletter, in an article outlining the agenda for his presidency.
In conversation, he is just as emphatic, calling for "a national commitment to ramping up the quality of education."
"Budget attacks on language programs from the Republicans and Democrats are just the contemporary form of a xenophobia that suggests we don't need languages - and it's deeply, deeply misguided."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 3:13 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:May 11, 2011
Wisconsin Governor Walker: Budget could expand school choice to other cities
Patrick Marley and Jason Stein:
Gov. Scott Walker wants to bring voucher schools to urban areas beyond Milwaukee, and predicts lawmakers will approve that expansion by the end of June."I think one of the things between now and the time we finish this (state) budget off at the end of June, we're going to be able to add and go beyond the boundaries of the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County. We're actually going to be able to add communities like Racine and Beloit and even Green Bay . . . because every one of those communities deserves a choice as well, and with this budget that's exactly what they're going to get," Walker said in a Monday speech to school choice advocates in Washington, D.C.
The proposal comes at a time when Walker is proposing cutting public schools by $841 million over two years and injects a new campaign issue into attempts to recall nine state senators.
A day after Walker made his comments, the Assembly planned to eliminate the cap on the number of children who can participate in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. The 20-year-old system allows low-income children to use taxpayer-funded vouchers worth $6,442 each to attend private schools in Milwaukee, including religious schools.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at 4:39 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:In an improbable corner of China, young scientists are rewriting the book on genome research.
Lab technicians at the Beijing Genomics Institute in Shenzhen, China. Clockwise from upper left: Zhi Wei Luo; Wan Ling Li; Zi Long Zhang; and Yu Zhu Xu.The world's largest genome-mapping facility is in an unlikely corner of China. Hidden away in a gritty neighborhood in Shenzhen's Yantian district, surrounded by truck-repair shops and scrap yards prowled by chickens, Beijing's most ambitious biomedical project is housed in a former shoe factory.
But the modest gray exterior belies the state-of-the-art research inside. In immaculate, glass-walled and neon-lit rooms resembling intensive care units, rows of identical machines emit a busy hum. The Illumina HiSeq 2000 is a top-of-the-line genome-sequencing machine that carries a price tag of $500,000. There are 128 of them here, flanked by rows of similar high-tech equipment, making it possible for the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) to churn out more high quality DNA-sequence data than all U.S. academic facilities put together.
"Genes build the future," announces a poster on the wall, and there is no doubt that China has set its eye on that future. This year, Forbes magazine estimated that the genomics market will reach $100 billion over the next decade, with scientists analyzing vast quantities of data to offer new ways to fight disease, feed the world, and harness microbes for industrial purposes. "The situation in genomics resembles the early days of the Internet," says Harvard geneticist George Church, who advises BGI and a number of American genomics companies. "No one knows what will turn out to be the killer apps." Companies such as Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Intel have already invested in genomics, seeing the field as an extension of their own businesses--data handling and management. "The big realization is that biology has become an information science," says Dr. Yang Huanming, cofounder and president of BGI. "If we accept that [genomics] builds on the digitalization of life, then all kinds of genetic information potentially holds value."
