May 11, 2008
Minnesota's Teacher of the Year
AP:
Carleen Gulstad, who teaches 8th and 9th grade language arts at Hopkins North Junior High School, was named Minnesota's Teacher of the Year on Sunday.Gulstad said in an interview that she tries to see each student as an individual.
"Every kid counts. Every kid has a story. And every kid has value," she said.
The Teacher of the Year honor is awarded annually by the teachers union Education Minnesota, which cited her commitment to teaching students good communication skills as well as how to interact positively in a diverse and changing world.
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May 10, 2008
On Madison's Lack of a 4K Program
In Madison, where schools Superintendent Art Rainwater in a 2004 memo described 4K as potentially "the next best tool" for raising students' performance and narrowing the racial achievement gap, years of study and talks with leaders of early childhood education centers have failed to produce results.Related:"It's one of the things that I regret the most, that I think would have made a big impact, that I was not able to do," said Rainwater, who is retiring next month after leading the district for a decade.
"We've never been able to get around the money," said Rainwater, whose tenure was marked by annual multimillion-dollar budget cuts to conform to the state's limits on how much money districts can raise from local property taxpayers.
A complicating factor was the opposition of Madison Teachers Inc., the teachers union, to the idea that the 4K program would include preschool teachers not employed by the School District. However, Rainwater said he's "always believed that those things could have been resolved" if money had been available.
Starting a 4K program for an estimated 1,700 students would cost Madison $5 million the first year and $2.5 million the second year before it would get full state funding in the third year under the state's school-funding system.
In comparison, the entire state grant available to defray Wisconsin districts' startup costs next year is $3 million — and that amount is being shared by 32 eligible districts.
One of those districts, Green Bay, is headed by Daniel Nerad, who has been hired to succeed Rainwater in Madison.
"I am excited about it," said Madison School Board President Arlene Silveira, who is envious of the 4K sign-up information that appears on the Green Bay district's Web site. "He's gone out and he's made it work in Green Bay. That will certainly help us here as we start taking the message forward again.
Madison's inability to start 4K has gained the attention of national advocates of 4K programs, who hail Wisconsin's approach as a model during the current national economic downturn. Milwaukee, the state's largest district, long has offered 4K.
"It's been disappointing that Madison has been very slow to step up to provide for its children," said Libby Doggett, executive director of Pre-K Now, a national nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., that campaigns for kindergarten programs for children ages 3 and 4.
"The way 4K is being done in your state is the right way."
- Marc Eisen: Missed Opportunity for 4K and High School Redesign
- MMSD Budget History: Madison's spending has grown about 50% from 1998 ($245,131,022) to 2008 ($367,806,712) while enrollment has declined slightly from 25,132 to 24,268 ($13,997/student).
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A Look at the Chicago Teachers Union
CTU one of the most conflicted, colorful organizations out there – having their dirty laundry aired on District 299.Drama and infighting is better than anything on reality TV – “Real World, CTU” – but about a serious issue.
Happy May Day – appropriate and timely for this discussion
WHAT”S BEEN HAPPENING
Scads of comments this winter and spring about what’s going on inside the teachers union.
Makes sense – there are tens of thousands of Chicago teachers, as well as teachers in training and parents with kids in CPS schools – directly affected by what happens in CPS and within the CTU.
Most recently: Letter sent to me in which Stewart complains about being treated rudely by her own Secretary (Linda Porter), elected on a slate with MS last spring.
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May 9, 2008
Student Tests and Teacher Grades
Suppose a swimming instructor told his 10-year-old students to swim the length of the pool to demonstrate what he'd taught them, and half of them nearly drowned? Would it be reasonable to make a judgment about his teaching ability?Clusty search: John Merrow.Or suppose nearly all the 10-year-old students in a particular clarinet class learned to play five or six pieces well in a semester? Would it be reasonable to consider their achievement when deciding whether to rehire the music teacher?
These questions answer themselves. Only an idiot would overlook student performance, be it dismal or outstanding.
However, suppose test results indicated that most students in a particular class don't have a clue about how to multiply with fractions, or master other material in the curriculum? Should that be considered when the math teacher comes up for tenure?
Whoops, the obvious answer is wrong. That's because public education lives in an upside-down universe where student outcomes are not allowed to be connected to teaching.
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Teacher Content Knowledge Exams: Connecticut's Reading Requirement
Aspiring early childhood and elementary school teachers will have to prove they know how to teach reading on a test the State Board of Education has added to Connecticut's teacher certification requirements. The change, which was made Wednesday, comes amid worries about stagnating or declining student reading scores statewide and concerns that not all state teachers know the mechanics of teaching reading.Related by Jason Kottke regarding Malcolm Gladwell's forthcoming book:"This sends a message to teacher preparation institutions that they need to make sure they have a focus on the art and science of teaching reading," state Department of Education spokesman Tom Murphy said.
Introducing a test on teaching reading was among the recommendations offered by educators at a reading summit the state education department held last fall. Legislators also have pushed for adding a test on reading instruction to certification requirements.
A more material example is teachers. Gladwell says that while we evaluate teachers on the basis of high standardized test scores and whether they have degrees and credentialed training, that makes little difference in how well people actually teach.
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Red ties and boys' pride: Sowing the seeds of good schools in the Midwest
EVERY weekday, 300 boys gather in a gym on Chicago's South Side. They are all black. More than 80% are poor. Over the past few weeks Chicago has seen a surge in gang violence. But here boys stand in straight lines. Each wears a blazer and a red tie. And in unison they begin to shout their creed: “We believe. We are the young men of Urban Prep. We are college-bound.”Urban Prep Charter Academy opened in 2006, part of an effort to bring 100 new schools to Chicago's bleakest areas by 2010. Richard Daley, the city's mayor, announced Renaissance 2010 (“Ren 10”) in 2004; Chicago's business leaders created the Renaissance Schools Fund (RSF) to help support it. Backers of this ambitious scheme hope it will spur competition across the school district. On May 6th RSF held a conference to discuss the “new market of public education”.
At the core of Ren 10 is the desire to welcome “education entrepreneurs”, as RSF calls them. Ren 10 lets them start schools and run them mostly as they choose (for example, with longer days and, in some cases, their own salary structure); it also sets the standards they must meet. Schools receive money on a per pupil basis, and may raise private funds as well.
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May 8, 2008
Accelerated Math in Maryland Middle Schools
The most noticeable change is a dramatic increase in students taking accelerated math classes in the middle years, an initiative that seems to have spread to every school system in the region. Educators view math acceleration as a gateway to advanced study in high school and, in turn, to college. Higher-level math classes have helped middle schools cultivate a community of students similar to those in honors and Advanced Placement high school classes.Barry Garelick references Montgomery County's experiment with Singapore Math. About Singapore Math. More here.At Samuel Ogle Middle School in Bowie, the number of students taking Algebra I, a high-school-level course, has doubled from 60 to 120 in the past two years.
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Teacher Opposed to Standardized Tests Reconsiders
As part of Weekend Edition Sunday's monthlong education series, we hear from teacher Chela Delgado. She once hated standardized tests and didn't want to make her students take them, but then she started listening to some of the children's parents. Her commentary reveals how families in under-resourced schools are pursuing what they see as best for their kids.audio
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Six Books a Week: Harlem parents are voting for charter schools with their feet
THOSE who had won whooped with joy and punched their fists. The disappointed shed tears. Some 5,000 people attended April 17th's Harlem Success Academy Charter School lottery, the largest ever held for charter schools in the history of New York state. About 3,600 applied for 600 available places, and 900 applied for the 11 open slots in the second grade.The desperation of these parents is hardly surprising. In one Harlem school district, not one public elementary school has more than 55% of its pupils reading at the level expected for their grade. And 75% of 14-year-olds are unable to read at their grade level. So Harlem parents are beginning to leave the public school system in crowds.
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Priya Venkatesan Interview
Review correspondent Tyler Brace conducted the following two interviews with Prof. Priya Venkatesan after news broke here on Saturday afternoon that she was threatening to sue seven students from her Writing 5 classes. Prof. Venkatesan—now of Northwestern University—is currently still planning to sue the College. —A.S.Joseph Rago:...............
DR: Thanks for that. Why do you think a pretty significant amount of your students did complain about you? Why do you think that is?
PV: I think that sometimes when you have some students and some instructors they mix like oil and water. That could just be the explanation. It happens all the time, Tyler. Sometimes when a person goes into a corporation, they mix like oil and water. Sometimes when a person goes into a fellowship at a research institution like the one that I’m at now, the supervisor and the fellow mix like oil and water. It just happens a lot.
Often it seems as though American higher education exists only to provide gag material for the outside world. The latest spectacle is an Ivy League professor threatening to sue her students because, she claims, their "anti-intellectualism" violated her civil rights.Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will "name names."
The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.
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May 7, 2008
Madison La Follette Principal Joe Gothard helped turn around his alma mater
John Broome lasted just four months as principal of La Follette High School.Much more on La Follette here.Under pressure due to escalating fighting at the 1,710-student east side school and hearing far-reaching complaints from parents and staff over his management style, Broome resigned in December 2006. Veteran district administrator Loren Rathert came out of retirement to finish the school year as interim principal.
So when Joe Gothard took over as principal last September, it was no secret that he was entering a difficult situation.
"Actually it was really bad," says Jamison Vacek, a member of a Lancer senior class that has had four principals in four years. "There were fights almost every day at the school when we had those other principals."
But ask students, staff and observers about La Follette now, and there seems a consensus that Gothard has helped put the school on the right path.
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May 6, 2008
I Know What You Did Last Math Class
ON school days at 2 p.m., Nicole Dobbins walks into her home office in Alpharetta, Ga., logs on to ParentConnect, and reads updated reports on her three children. Then she rushes up the block to meet the fourth and sixth graders’ buses.But in the thump and tumble of backpacks and the gobbling of snacks, Mrs. Dobbins refrains from the traditional after-school interrogation: Did you cut math class? What did you get on your language arts test?
Thanks to ParentConnect, she already knows the answers. And her children know she knows. So she cuts to the chase: “Tell me about this grade,” she will say.
When her ninth grader gets home at 6 p.m., there may well be ParentConnect printouts on his bedroom desk with poor grades highlighted in yellow by his mother. She will expect an explanation. He will be braced for a punishment.
“He knows I’m going to look at ParentConnect every day and we will address it,” Mrs. Dobbins said.
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May 5, 2008
Making Teacher Hiring Less Comfortable
For those who still think helping children learn is everybody's top priority in our schools, let me cite a disturbing dispute over where to send several hundred teachers at 23 D.C. schools that are about to be closed for inadequate enrollment.D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee wants the principals of her remaining schools to decide which of those excess teachers they will hire, within the limits of a contract that guarantees them jobs somewhere in the system. Urban schools don't work if all adults in each building don't agree on what must be done to make them work. There is no chance of that shared vision if each principal is not allowed to pick the players on his or her team.
Unfortunately, many kind and well-intentioned teachers and parents in the District and other cities have a different view. Their first priority is not so much that children learn, but that they feel secure and comfortable. They want those excess teachers to accompany the students they know at their current school to whichever school the children are transferred to. That way, they say, the kids will have an easier and more comfortable transition.
Some members of the Washington Teachers' Union, which is in the midst of a leadership fight, also say they fear Rhee is resisting this more genial approach because she wants to get rid of any teachers who can't find principals who want them.
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May 4, 2008
2008-2009 Madison School Board Budget Discussion
Monday evening's (5/5/2008) meeting agenda (PDF) includes a discussion of the proposed $367,806,712 budget. It will be interesting to see what type of changes to retiring Superintendent Art Rainwater's last budget are discussed. Perhaps, a place to start would be the report card initiative from the District's curriculum creation department (Teaching & Learning). Watch a presentation on the proposed "Standards Based" report cards. Contact the Madison School Board here comments@madison.k12.wi.us
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May 3, 2008
In Praise of Milwaukee's High School Anti-Violence Program
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Editorial:
An anti-violence program at six Milwaukee high schools continues to show progress, and that is good news for Milwaukee Public Schools and especially for students in those schools.Suspensions and both violent and nonviolent incidents continue to decline since Violence-Free Zones were implemented at South Division, Marshall, Bay View, Custer, North Division and Washington high schools, according to organizers for the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, a Washington, D.C.-based group that is working with MPS. If the program continues to show progress, MPS should consider expanding it beyond those schools.
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May 2, 2008
Introduction to a standards-based system . . . assessment
Madison School District Department of Teaching & Learning:
The Wisconsin Model Academic Standards (WMAS) articulate what students should know and be able to do in each curricular area. Community leaders and staff in the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) elaborated upon these state standards to frame district curriculum and instruction.Curriculum can be thought of as the planned educational experiences taught in each subject area at each grade level. Standards-based instruction focuses on teaching the knowledge and skills which support students' continual progress toward meeting the standards.
This article focuses on assessment, the process of using multiple strategies to measure student learning.
The remainder of this article will use mathematics as an example of a content area to demonstrate the use of standards-based assessment. MMSD teachers assess the content standards (i.e., number and algebra) as well as the process standards (i.e., communication, problem solving, and reasoning).
Research indicates that in addition to quizzes and tests, a variety of daily assessment tools (i.e., questioning, observations, discussions, and presentations) are needed to create a more thorough picture of what a student understands.
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April 28, 2008
Madison School Board Discusses Discipline, Safety, Cell Phones and Code of Conduct
Watch the discussion via this video
Channel3000:
The Madison School Board met on Monday night to discuss a new positive behavior support plan as well as a new code of conduct for students who attend Madison public schools.Tamira Madsen:The code of conduct has been under review for months by a committee who made recommendations to the board in a special meeting on Monday.
The meeting is especially timely after the highly publicized recordings of students fighting at Toki Middle School came to light last week.
Committee members will recommend making a few major revisions or additions to the code, including specifically banning voice or image recording.
Board members discussed safety, discipline and cell phones, which were all topics of importance that applied to the Toki situation, reported WISC-TV.
Madison's new student code of conduct targets cell phones. Secret or hidden recordings are a serious offense that could get a student suspended or expelled.
"Cell phones and video cameras are being used in very wrong ways, to take pictures of tests, to film fighting, to record kids in the locker room, that's just not acceptable," said school board president Arlene Silviera. "I think we have to be very specific in the use of these types of devices -- what can and what cannot be done."
In an effort to give principals and administrators a chance to exercise discretion to expel a student who brings a weapon besides a gun to school, Madison school district officials are considering alterations to the language in the student codes of conduct.Recommended revisions were discussed at Monday night's School Board meeting.
The current rule for a first offense states that a student who has a weapon on school grounds besides a firearm, pellet gun or BB gun and isn't carrying the weapon with an "intent to cause harm to another" will receive a five-day suspension. After a second offense, a student could face an expulsion recommendation.
The rule revision would give principals and administrators the option to expel the student for a first-time offense.
Dan Mallin, who works in legal services with the Madison Metropolitan School District and is a member of the committee drafting changes to the codes of conduct, said the rule change is meant to take into account a variety of circumstances.
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April 27, 2008
Obama on Teacher Merit Pay
I think that on issues of education, I have been very clear about the fact, and sometimes I have gotten in trouble with the teachers union on this, that we should be experimenting with charter schools. We should be experimenting with different ways of compensating teachers. That –WALLACE: You mean merit pay?
OBAMA: Well, merit pay, the way it has been designed I think that is based on just single standardized test I think is a big mistake, because the way we measure performance may be skewed by whether or not the kids are coming in the school already three years or four years behind.
But I think that having assessment tools and then saying, you know what, teachers who are on career paths to become better teachers, developing themselves professionally, that we should pay excellence more. I think that’s a good idea. So –
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Fairfax County Schools to Review Grading Practices
Fairfax County school officials have agreed to review their grading policies in response to parents' concerns that relatively stringent standards mean their children are losing out on scholarships and college admissions.More than 2,800 parents and students signed an online petition urging the school system to adopt a 10-point grading scale and give extra weight for honors, Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes. The current system requires a score of 94 or higher for an A, and gives no extra credit to honors courses. AP courses are given half a point.
Many competing school systems, including Montgomery County, give A's for lower scores and graduate students with similar backgrounds but higher GPA's, the parents contend. Their concerns come as competition for admission to big-name colleges is at a high and tuition more expensive than ever.
Louise Epstein, president of the Fairfax County Association for the Gifted, said the current policies are unfair. "They cost families money and reduce good opportunities for students just because they go to Fairfax schools," she said.
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April 24, 2008
Madison's Sennett Middle School Discipline Climate & Security Cameras
But her enthusiasm for the cameras pales in comparison to a new district-wide middle school program started this year called Positive Behavior Intervention Support, or PBIS."This is very good for kids -- very, very good," Lodholz said.
The PBIS program uses positive behavior support coaches like Sennett's Jennifer Tomlinson. She works with students, teachers and staff to teach positive behavior skills to students.
Often the behavior is rewarded and promoted by the students themselves, through handmade posters or activities aimed at showcasing such behaviors, WISC-TV reported.
Officials said the key is to actually instruct kids how to behave correctly, be it through mediation sessions, classroom instruction or other innovative approaches.
"We need to teach kids how to be accountable for their actions and that's what we're doing through this system," Tomlinson said.
Lodholz said the program helps offer instruction to students on how they should be behave. She said the PBIS program builds upon other Sennett school strategies and that it all seems to be working.
Last year incidents of misconduct at Sennett totaled 1,706, and 1,169 suspensions were handed out.
But in the 2007-08 school year to date, with the cameras and new program, Sennett's seen more than 730 fewer misconduct incidents -- at 973 -- and only 94 suspensions.
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Toki Middle School Security/Safety Update
This school year some parents, teachers and staff have complained about increasing safety and violence issues at Toki, including bad behavior at the school.More here and here.Last March, after a packed PTO meeting, school district officials added another security guard and a "dean of students" to help keep the peace. A positive behavior curriculum program was initiated as well.
"We certainly have a greater comfort level with where the school is headed at this point," Yudice said.
However, some said that a couple of recent fights at the school posted on YouTube.com show the problems haven't gotten any better.
PTO President Betsy Reck said teachers have told her things have not improved, despite the extra efforts the last month or so. She said many believe more needs to be done.
"It's a typical, almost daily, occurrence, the fights at Toki," Reck said. "It's a very sad sort of affairs over there right now that they cannot get that under control."
Last week, police were called to the school for two fights, which apparently were caught on video by students and posted recently on YouTube.com. They have since been removed from the site.
Andy Hall & Karen Rivedal review local school policies on video capture and internet access.
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April 23, 2008
Some HOPE Scholarship recipients need remedial help in college
Despite earning B averages in high school, at least one in 10 HOPE Scholarship recipients receives some type of remedial help during the first year of college.Put simply, some college freshmen who seemed to excel in high school still need help in basic math and English.
Twelve percent of college freshmen who have the HOPE Scholarship, awarded to Georgia students who graduate from high school with at least a B average, received learning support in fall 2006, according to the University System of Georgia.
The reasons why run the gamut, with blame placed at the state level all the way down to the student.
"It's hard for me to say the causes of that," said Dana Tofig, a spokesman for the Georgia Department of Education.
But part of the reason for the state's continuing overhaul of the public schools' kindergarten through 12th grade curriculum is to get students out of remediation and make them more prepared for college work, he said.
"The curriculum">curriculum before was way too broad and way too vague," Tofig said.
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"The Schools Aren't Teaching Our Kids What They Need to Know"
Ignorance in the United States is not just bliss, it’s widespread. A recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core found that a quarter could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900.Common Core of Data."We have one of the highest dropout rates in the industrialized world," said Allan Golston, the president of U.S. programs for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In a discussion over lunch recently he described the situation as "actually pretty scary, alarming."
Roughly a third of all American high school students drop out. Another third graduate but are not prepared for the next stage of life — either productive work or some form of post-secondary education.
When two-thirds of all teenagers old enough to graduate from high school are incapable of mastering college-level work, the nation is doing something awfully wrong.
Mr. Golston noted that the performance of American students, when compared with their peers in other countries, tends to grow increasingly dismal as they move through the higher grades:
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Student Fights At Toki Middle School Posted Online
Disturbing video showing girls engaged in vicious fights on the Toki Middle School grounds popped up on the popular Web site YouTube.More from Kathleen Masterson.The video, which was posted on April 19, featured a fight between girls outside the school and one from inside the building.
Madison police confirmed that they responded to fights at Toki on Thursday, April 17 and one on Friday, April 18, but can't say whether the fights were the same ones posted online.
"School staff are very aware not only of the videos, but of the things that happened," said Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater. "The students have been identified and are being dealt with through the discipline system in the ways that are appropriate for what the incident was."
That discipline could include suspension. Rainwater said the incidents are so new the discipline process is still ongoing.
The incidents come one month after extra security was added to the school in the form of an additional security guard and a dean of students to deal specifically with problematic students.
The additional safety measure came at the request of Toki parents who felt the school was unsafe with escalating violence all year.
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April 22, 2008
Adult Workers Have a Lot to Learn Online
Children are fantastic little learning machines. They are hardwired to play with ideas and absorb knowledge. Adults, alas, are not. That is why the challenge of adult education and lifelong learning is more difficult – and ultimately more important – than childhood education. Societies that are serious about raising their standard of living should focus on enhancing the productivity of parents rather than boosting teenage test scores.Continuing our technology & education discussions. Related posts: on technology spending in Milwaukee and Lauren Rosen Yaezel on Technology in the Madison Schools.The economic rationale is clear. Ageing populations of Europe, China and North America increasingly enjoy long and healthy lives. Yet as they grow older, wealth creation depends on the ability to acquire and convert information, skills and technologies into new value. In this environment, hard-won expertise, rather like expensive capital equipment, often depreciates with astonishing speed. The cruel “human capital” jibe, that many workers do not have 20 years’ experience but one year’s experience 20 times over, has assumed new poignancy.
The premise that quality education during life’s first two decades matters more than for decades four and five has become literally counterproductive. Demographic realities and dynamic economies have made “ageing adults” today’s most underappreciated – and underappreciating – capital asset class.
Improving returns on that asset requires neither great sums of money nor greater flights of imagination. The key is to rethink and reorganise how busy but anxious adults can benefit from education and training opportunities. Technology makes meeting that challenge far more affordable, entrepreneurial and compelling. Adult education is a market ripe for rapid global transformation.
Brittanica on Adult Education.
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Columbus, Stoughton Granted Startup Funds for 4-Year-Old Kindergarten; Background on Madison's inaction
Related: Marc Eisen on Missed Opportunity for 4K and High School Redesign.School districts in Stoughton, Columbus, Deerfield, Sauk Prairie and Janesville were among 32 statewide named Monday to receive Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction grants to start kindergarten programs for 4-year-olds.
But it may not be enough for at least one area district.
Getting 4-year-olds enrolled in kindergarten is a key step to raising student achievement levels and graduation rates, particularly among children from low-income families, national research has shown, DPI spokesman Patrick Gasper said.
School districts' efforts to launch 4K programs have been hampered because it takes three years to get full funding for the program under the state's school-finance system, according to DPI.
That's what these grants are supposed to address with $3 million announced for 4K programs to start this fall.
Columbus, one of the school districts that qualified for the grant, would get an estimated $62,814 to enroll 87 children this fall.
The good news is that the feds refused to fund the school district's proposal to revamp the high schools. The plan was wrongheaded in many respects, including its seeming intent to eliminate advanced classes that are overwhelmingly white and mix kids of distressingly varied achievement levels in the same classrooms.Madison Teachers Inc.'s John Matthews on 4 Year Old Kindergarten:This is a recipe for encouraging more middle-class flight to the suburbs. And, more to the point, addressing the achievement gap in high school is way too late. Turning around a hormone-surging teenager after eight years of educational frustration and failure is painfully hard.
We need to save these kids when they're still kids. We need to pull them up to grade level well before they hit the wasteland of middle school. That's why kindergarten for 4-year-olds is a community imperative.
As it happens, state school Supt. Elizabeth Burmaster issued a report last week announcing that 283 of Wisconsin's 426 school districts now offer 4K. Enrollment has doubled since 2001, to almost 28,000 4-year-olds statewide.
Burmaster nailed it when she cited research showing that quality early-childhood programs prepare children "to successfully transition into school by bridging the effects of poverty, allowing children from economically disadvantaged families to gain an equal footing with their peers."
For many years, recognizing the value to both children and the community, Madison Teachers Inc. has endorsed 4-year-old kindergarten being universally accessible to all.Jason Shephard on John Matthews:This forward-thinking educational opportunity will provide all children with an opportunity to develop the skills they need to be better prepared to proceed with their education, with the benefit of 4- year-old kindergarten. They will be more successful, not only in school, but in life.
Four-year-old kindergarten is just one more way in which Madison schools will be on the cutting edge, offering the best educational opportunities to children. In a city that values education as we do, there is no question that people understand the value it provides.
Because of the increasing financial pressures placed upon the Madison School District, resulting from state- imposed revenue limits, many educational services and programs have been cut to the bone.
During the 2001-02 budget cycle, the axe unfortunately fell on the district's 4-year-old kindergarten program. The School Board was forced to eliminate the remaining $380,000 funding then available to those families opting to enroll their children in the program.
This includes its opposition to collaborative 4-year-old kindergarten, virtual classes and charter schools, all of which might improve the chances of low achievers and help retain a crucial cadre of students from higher-income families. Virtual classes would allow the district to expand its offerings beyond its traditional curriculum, helping everyone from teen parents to those seeking high-level math and science courses. But the union has fought the district's attempts to offer classes that are not led by MTI teachers.It will be interesting to see where incoming Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad takes this issue.As for charter schools, MTI has long opposed them and lobbied behind the scenes last year to kill the Studio School, an arts and technology charter that the school board rejected by a 4-3 vote. (Many have also speculated that Winston's last minute flip-flop was partly to appease the union.)
"There have become these huge blind spots in a system where the superintendent doesn't raise certain issues because it will upset the union," Robarts says. "Everyone ends up being subject to the one big political player in the system, and that's the teachers union."
MTI's opposition was a major factor in Rainwater's decision to kill a 4-year-old kindergarten proposal in 2003, a city official told Isthmus last year (See "How can we help poor students achieve more?" 3/22/07).
Matthews' major problem with a collaborative proposal is that district money would support daycare workers who are not MTI members. "The basic union concept gets shot," he says. "And if you shoot it there, where else are you going to shoot it?"
At times, Matthews can appear downright callous. He says he has no problem with the district opening up its own 4K program, which would cost more and require significant physical space that the district doesn't have. It would also devastate the city's accredited non-profit daycare providers by siphoning off older kids whose enrollment offsets costs associated with infants and toddlers.
"Not my problem," Matthews retorts.
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April 21, 2008
Seminar tries to clear up confusion about inclusion
Julie Maurer hopes to see a day when parents of children with special needs, parents like her, don’t have to advocate for their children in public schoolMaurer hopes the system changes and schools accept children, like her daughter, Jenny, as easily as children who will never carry a label like “learning disabled” or “emotionally disabled.”
Maurer’s daughter, now 20, attends the University of Wisconsin-Parkside after graduating from Racine Unified.
A small group of parents, educators and disability advocates spent a few hours Saturday at the United Way of Racine County, 2000 Domanik Drive, with University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee education professor Elise Frattura, clearing up the confusion of including special education students in regular education classrooms.
Those years, from elementary school through high school, were marked by Maurer’s struggles to get her daughter into regular classrooms instead of being isolated from the rest of the children her age.
A preschool teacher encouraged Maurer to read the federal special education law, so as to understand what she should expect her daughter to receive in school.
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More on Technology Education
"If we don't teach this to them," Joan Fecteau, an MPS instructional technology leader, told me, "then we are doing as much of a disservice as not teaching them to read or write."Lauren Rosen Yeazel's recent words generated some interesting discussion on technology and schools.But you can't teach driving by sitting at a desk. You have to get behind the wheel. Let's give kids hands-on experience under teacher supervision.
Fecteau not only teaches students but teachers as well. "Some teachers don't know enough about the Internet to understand how to avoid viruses and tracking devices. For example, clicking on a pop-up window can lead to malicious spyware or unintended Web pages being displayed."
It is apparent to parents that most kids are far beyond their teachers' and parents' understanding. The one institution that has the mission to teach is not keeping up. We need to give schools the nod and the resources to do it - which is code for funding. Oh, no, did I say that?
In my view, technology, per se, is not the core issue. Critical thinking and knowledge come first, then tools. Tools we purchase today will be long obsolete by the time our children graduate (maybe this argues for some technology presence in high school). Ideally, our schools should have fast fiber and wireless (open) networks, and as Momanonymous noted, perhaps teacher compensation might include a laptop/mobile device allowance.
I am generally against teaching kids powerpoint, particularly before they've mastered the art of writing a paper.
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On Toronto's Homework Reform
On April 16th 2008, Toronto Canada became one of the first jurisdictions in North America to pass a substantive homework reform policy.The policy reduces the homework burden on middle school and high school students and all but eliminates homework in the elementary grades. In addition, homework will no longer be allowed during vacations.
The new policy mandates that teacher’s co-ordinate their efforts and that the homework that is sent home is “clearly articulated and carefully planned” and “require no additional teaching outside the classroom”.
This policy is a major breakthrough for those of us who have been advocating for homework reform.
When I started to write this it was intended to be a “how to” guide for anyone who wanted to replicate what we have achieved in Toronto. But when I read it it seemed preachy.
I guess what I really want to communicate is, just start. Every situation is different, every school board is different, and every community is different, but just start somewhere.
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April 19, 2008
Suburban DC Schools Reject Metal Detectors
In spring 1991, after a teenage girl stabbed a classmate in the cafeteria of an Anacostia school, the D.C. Board of Education voted to install metal detectors at the front entrances of 10 middle and high schools.No other school system in the region has embraced the technology, even as metal detectors have multiplied in courthouses, museums and other public buildings across the region over the past two decades.
Many school officials view metal detectors as costly, impractical and fallible. To suburban parents, they conjure up images of armed camps. Even at Albert Einstein High School in Kensington, where three loaded guns were found in a locker last week, consensus is building against them.
"I don't want my son to come to school through metal detectors. That's prison," said Alex Colina, speaking to several hundred other parents at a community meeting Monday night.
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April 17, 2008
Sadly, kids' struggle with writing goes on
In light of West High School Principal Ed Holmes's budgetary decision to shut down the Writing Lab after almost 40 years in existence, I share this recent column from Barbara Wallraff, who writes the column Word Court.
America's eighth-graders and high school seniors got their writing "report cards" the other day -- the results for the writing part of the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress were announced. Just a third of eighth-grade students and a quarter of high school seniors are "proficient" in writing. Oh, dear! And yet federal authorities consider this encouraging news -- that's how bad the situation is.
Granted, the average scores are a few points higher than they were when the test was given in 2002. And the improvement is almost across the board, at least among the eighth-graders. Students in every ethnic group except American Indians are doing better, and the gap white and black eighth-graders is narrowing. Also granted, better is better -- and mountains of behavior modification research demonstrate that praising successes is a more effective way to bring about change than criticizing failures.
But still, isn't cheering because a third of the kids are doing well like congratulating ourselves that we made it a third of the way to the finish line in a race? Or that we managed to pay a third of our bills? Speaking of thirds, a 2003 survey by the College Board concluded that a third of employees at America's blue-chip corporations are pretty bad at writing and need remedial training. And speaking of writing, can everybody see the handwriting on the wall? The message is terribly disheartening. Writing isn't just a skill that people tend to need to earn a good living -- it's one of our basic means of communication.
The question is what to do about the two-thirds or three-quarters of our young people who are less than proficient. Keeping on doing whatever we've been doing isn't suddenly going to start yielding different results. Admittedly, the sorry state of America's writing skills is a vast, long-term problem to which experts have devoted whole careers. So who am I to propose a solution?
Writing is different from other skills. In math, you either get the concept or you don't. In history, you either know who did what when or you don't. But writing isn't right or wrong, just better or worse. Learning to write is something each of us does individually, in our own way -- which makes me suspect that sweeping initiatives, no matter how brilliant and well-funded (hah!), aren't what's needed.
May I suggest, instead, that anybody who has the time , energy and interest in young people encourage them, one at a time, to write -- and read? (Reading skills and writing skills go hand in hand.) Ask kids to write you emails. Lend them a favorite book , and tell them what the book has meant to you. Ask them about what they've been reading.
If you're a parent, you're probably doing this for your own kids, and you probably know the statistics about what a huge advantage it gives kids if their parents take an interest in their education. If you're only, or also, a concerned citizen -- well, there are plenty of kids who aren't lucky enough to be growing up in your family. Wouldn't it make you proud to help a few of them?
For more:
- The Nation’s Report Card: Writing 2007
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - State black 8th-graders rank worst in nation in writing
- New York Times - In Test, Few Students Are Proficient Writers<
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - 'Worst' rank doesn't belong to kids alone
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Unready in MA
Many Mass. graduates unprepared in college
Thousands need remedial classes, are dropout risks
By Peter Schworm
Boston Globe Staff / April 16, 2008
Thousands of Massachusetts public high school graduates arrive at college unprepared for even the most basic math and English classes, forcing them to take remedial courses that discourage many from staying in school, according to a statewide study released yesterday.
The problem is particularly acute in urban districts and vocational schools, according to the first-of-its kind study. At three high schools in Boston and two in Worcester, at least 70 percent of students were forced to take at least one remedial class because they scored poorly on a college placement test.
The study raises concern that the state’s public schools are not doing enough to prepare all of their students for college, despite years of overhauls and large infusions of money.
The findings are also worrisome because students who take remedial courses, which do not count toward a degree, are far more likely to drop out of college, often without the skills needed to land a good job. That has broad implications for the state’s workforce, economy, and social mobility.
The report, conducted jointly by the state Departments of Elementary and Secondary Education and Higher Education, found that the problem crossed socioeconomic lines. One third of high school graduates in suburban Hanover took remedial classes, as did 27 percent of graduates in Lynnfield and Needham.
“This is a statewide problem,” said Linda M. Noonan, managing director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, a nonprofit group that supports tougher educational standards to create a better workforce. "There's something systemic that we're not doing to get these kids ready to do college-level work."
High school administrators said they welcomed the new information, and pledged to use it to make the high school diploma a true sign of readiness for college.
"If you're a good district, this is information you want," said Paul Schlichtman, who coordinates research, testing, and assessment for the Lowell schools, where about half of graduates who went on to a state college or university in Massachusetts took remedial classes. "Your high school diploma needs to be a credential for a two- and four-year school, and it's something that we take very seriously."
The study tracked more than 19,000 students who graduated from public high schools in 2005 and attended an institution within the state's higher education system. Overall, it found that 37 percent of the graduates enrolled in at least one remedial course in their first semester in college. In many urban districts, a majority of the graduates studied took at least one remedial class their first year.
Among the roughly 8,500 students in the study who attended community colleges, nearly two-thirds took a remedial course. Many college administrators blame remedial courses for the high dropout rate at the state's two-year schools.
The results also cast doubt on the MCAS exams as a predictor of college readiness at a time when state education leaders are urging high schools to require a more rigorous course load to boost MCAS scores, as required under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
High school students who received special education instruction in high school, low-income and limited-English speaking students, and Hispanic and African-American students, were more likely to enroll in remedial classes, the study found.
The report marks the first time education researchers have detailed how public high school graduates from individual school districts perform in Massachusetts public colleges. State education officials distributed the reports last week to nearly 300 high schools across the state, and hope the information will spur improvements.
"We're hopeful high schools will regard this very seriously," said Paul Reville, chairman of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, who will take over as the state's education secretary in July. "This tells us that higher standards are necessary. We're not fully preparing students for non-remediated college work."
The report showed that students who barely pass the MCAS tests are far more likely to take college remedial classes. For example, half of students who scored a "needs improvement" on the 10th-grade MCAS math test were forced to take developmental math classes, as opposed to 20 percent who received the score "proficient."
In November, state education officials unanimously approved a recommended core high school curriculum in response to growing concerns about the number of students taking remedial classes. The recommended program includes four years of English, four years of math, three years of science, and three years of history.
Beginning this fall, students who do not reach the proficiency level on the English and math MCAS exams will be required to take more core classes and periodic tests to gauge their progress. Reville also said administrators have discussed giving high school seniors college placement tests.
Patricia F. Plummer, commissioner of the Department of Higher Education, said research has shown that students who take math and English in all four years of high school are far more likely to succeed in college.
"It's tremendously discouraging for them to be in college and not taking college-level work," she said. "And in terms of economic development, we can't afford to lose them."
More than ever, students need college education and training to compete for entry-level positions and launch a good career, Plummer said.
Education officials said they were encouraged by one finding: 80 percent of first-time, full-time students enrolled for a second year of college in 2006.
At Bunker Hill Community College, educators said the MCAS had not improved performance on college placement tests, and that some high school graduates show up woefully unprepared for basic college work.
"I haven't seen any significant change," said Deborah Barrett, the college's coordinator of student assessment. "It's very frustrating for students. They think that they've graduated from high school, they passed the MCAS, so they're ready for college."
Almost 90 percent of Bunker Hill students end up taking remedial math, and 63 percent take remedial English. Some graduates are writing at such a poor level that they must take the most introductory remedial class, she said. Only 20 percent of students complete their remedial work within two years, she said.
Educators and researchers said the study suggested that students who merely pass are not necessarily ready for college.
"The dirty little secret is that MCAS doesn't test 10th grade skills, much less college skills," said Robert Gaudet, an education researcher at the University of Massachusetts' Donahue Institute. "Passing is not that hard, it's getting to proficient that's tougher."
Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
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April 15, 2008
How to Lay Off a Teacher of the Year
When the new grandiose Lincoln High opened to students this year, it attracted too many students. It also attracted a young teacher from Chula Vista, Guillermo Gomez.I met Gomez at the teacher's lounge during lunch at Lincoln High recently. Gomez and his colleagues were planning marches and various ways to get their students to express their displeasure with proposed school budget cuts around the state -- cuts that, if fully implemented as proposed, would mean 913 school teachers would be laid off districtwide.
Gomez would be one of them. A year and a half ago, dressed in black formal wear and smiling, the young teacher accepted one of the four awards given each year to the "teachers of the year" in the county. He had been a teacher for 10 years at Vista Square Elementary School in Chula Vista.
Despite his success, the opportunity to teach at Lincoln High School's new School of Social Justice intrigued him, and Gomez moved not only into a classroom with older kids but into a new school district -- San Diego Unified. He says he took a $10,000 pay cut for the chance to teach at Lincoln.
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April 14, 2008
Texas Student Writing
She basically just writes about her feelings on anything of her choice and often is encouraged to just make things up as long as it is flowery and emotional. This is apparently what they look for on TAKS."
---
"It is no wonder that college professors think our Texas high-school graduates are not ready for college. The brutal fact is that they are not ready."
"An Expose of the TAKS Tests" (excerpts)
[TAKS: Texas Assessment of Knowledge/Skills
ELA: English/Language Arts]
by Donna Garner
Education Policy Commentator EducationNews.org
10 April 2008
....Please note that each scorer spends approximately three minutes to read, decipher, and score each student's handwritten essay. (Having been an English teacher for over 33 years, I have often spent over three minutes just trying to decipher a student's poor handwriting.) Imagine spending three minutes to score an entire two-page essay that counts for 22 % of the total score and determines whether a student is allowed to take dual-credit courses. A student cannot take dual-credit classes unless he/she makes a "3" or a "4" on the ELA TAKS essay...
...The scorers spend only about three minutes scanning the essays and do not grade students down for incorrect grammar, punctuation, spelling, and capitalization unless the errors interfere significantly with the communication of ideas. Students are allowed to use an English language dictionary and a thesaurus throughout the composition portion of the test, and they can spend as much time on the essay as they so choose...
On April 5, 2008, a worried parent sent me the following e-mail:
Hi Donna,
“Our 3rd graders are taking a district wide 4th grade writing benchmark this week...Because (name of her daughter) was sick, I got to see her initial work because the teacher sent it home to be redone. What do you know... the comments on it were ‘not catchy enough’; ‘how did this make you feel’; and ‘needs more adjectives.’ The only thought organization was a ‘word web’ (looks like a wheel w/different paragraphs relating to the main topic on the spokes...At this point (3rd grade) the kids should be learning how to do research for papers, how to organize their thoughts for the papers, and how to draft the papers. My kids know none of this. But they sure are learning about flowery, descriptive writing (with little organization behind the writing)! I will be tutoring them over the summer on how to put together and write both research and persuasive essays in order to get them ready for private school in the fall since this is what they are learning in the private schools.”
...POINT #7: A CONVERSATION WITH A SCORER
Several years ago I had a unique dialogue with an experienced ELA TAKS scorer (grader). In the course of our e-mails, she revealed that she had never been a teacher. In fact, she said that most of the scorers were not teachers because the ELA TAKS is given in February. She stated that 200+ scorers were usually required per grade level (4th, 7th, 9th, 10th, and exit level). She said that she had a degree in English, but her e-mails to me were filled with grammatical/usage errors. She told me that she worked for Pearson Educational Measurement which had a contract with the TEA to score both the multiple-choice and short-answer portions and that the graders were hired and trained based upon TEA requirements.
POINT #8: WRITTEN COMPOSITION ABUSES
More important than any other problem with the ELA TAKS is that the test drives classroom instruction. “Whatever is tested is what teachers are going to teach.” Because the TAKS essay is overly weighted (i.e., “2 Rule” and conjunctive policy), students and their teachers do not see a real reason to spend much time on correct grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. Therefore, in their compositions and in their speaking, students are not being expected to follow standard English. Playing the “TAKS game” has become more important than paying attention to basic writing skills.
Texas public-school English teachers used to teach their students the four different modes of paragraph writing—expository, persuasive, descriptive, and narrative. Students could easily understand these terms: expository exposes facts; persuasive persuades; descriptive describes; and narrative tells a story.Students learned how to weave smoothly all four modes of writing into their compositions as needed.
Along came the ELA TAKS, and personal victimization narratives became the norm. Instead of students’ writing solid fact-based persuasive essays with good argumentative content and a substantial amount of expository information based upon actual knowledge, students are now taught to emote.
“Voice” has become the big factor toward a student’s receiving a “4.” Voice is a literary term that basically means “personality.” Students have learned the way to “play the TAKS game” is to reveal something personal about themselves, give their opinions and feelings, and tap into an emotion usually through explaining how they have been a victim of society. Students’ compositions have to demonstrate uniqueness in order to catch the grader’s eye, and many students have learned to fabricate persona. This informal style welcomes dialect, poor grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. I have received e-mails from experienced teachers who have told me they had minority students with serious syntax problems who made passing grades on the TAKS essay yet had other students with good writing skills who failed.
This is an example of an essay prompt from the TAKS Released Version, Exit Level, July 2006: “Write an essay explaining the value of the small, everyday events of life.” The more students can spin their tales of adversity, the higher their TAKS essay grades will be—even if students have to make up examples. In essence, Texas schools are teaching students to lie.
Then when Texas students get to college and have to write their first formal expository or persuasive compositions, they simply saturate them with “voice,” personal opinions, experiences, and emotions—no real fact-based substance or deep content. It is no wonder that college professors think our Texas high-school graduates are not ready for college. The brutal fact is that they are not ready.
One concerned parent of a college student told me recently that she is very worried about the dumbing down of her daughter’s college course. The daughter is a student in a major Texas university. So many of the students in her class have not written formal research papers that the professor has been forced to lower his expectations. Now the students present their research in a poster format. The student puts together his/her poster, displays it, and answers questions orally.
Just a few weeks ago, an assistant superintendent in a Central Texas school district sent me the following e-mail:
Donna,
“Our students had to score a ‘3’ on the ELA Exit Level essays in order to be eligible for English 1301/dual credit at MCC (Community College). Last Monday the professor came to school to sit down with each individual and explain why he had scored their papers so low. They were covered in red marks, and our students were crushed by the grades. He wanted no flowery and fluffy language but wanted substantive persuasive and expository content!”
These students take the ELA TAKS in February, school ends in May, and in August they have to be ready to write to a new style under much more rigorous expectations. This school year, the teachers will have less time to prepare these dual-credit students because the TAKS ELA has been moved to March...
On October 23, 2007, the Houston Chronicle ran a story telling about a writing program between the University of Texas and college-bound seniors at Houston Jack Yates High School. Jim Warren, a University of Texas postdoctoral fellow, is coordinating the program. “Jim Warren...noted even accomplished writers can be in for an unpleasant surprise when they hit a mandatory freshman writing course at UT. ‘We were getting a lot of students who were under-prepared to read and write as we asked them to do...Warren said most high school students have little experience with analytical writing because they’re coached to master narrative skills needed to score well on TAKS tests. But narrative sentences...won’t cut the mustard in college rhetoric courses.’”
This is a comment posted by “A Parent” on EdNews.org on April 3, 2008:
Comment #15 (Posted by A Parent) Rating:
“...My daughter is a public school student, and we plan to pull her out of school at the end of this year. We will enroll her in a highly respected and rigorous private school. While her English class is very “fun” and she likes her teacher, we feel she is learning almost nothing about writing and the class reads very little. Nearly all of the writing she does is something called an “OP”. She basically just writes about her feelings on anything of her choice and often is encouraged to just make things up as long as it is flowery and emotional. This is apparently what they look for on TAKS. We’re not experts, but this doesn’t seem to teach her how to think logically (but then again she is a teenager). We have not seen a single essay that is persuasive or expository, and we are worried that she will not learn how to write papers correctly for college someday. We have not seen any instruction that teaches her to organize her thoughts or support a thesis coherently. I wish I could say that this is an off year, but most of her English classes have been like this. When we see that so many college students need remediation in English, reading and math it is a little scary...”
===============
"Teach by Example"
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
Consortium for Varsity Academics® [2007]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
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April 12, 2008
Lacking Credits, Some Students Learn a Shortcut
Dennis Bunyan showed up for his first-semester senior English class at Wadleigh Secondary School in Harlem so rarely that, as he put it, “I basically didn’t attend.”But despite his sustained absence, Mr. Bunyan got the credit he needed to graduate last June by completing just three essay assignments, which he said took about 10 hours.
“I’m grateful for it, but it also just seems kind of, you know, outrageous,” Mr. Bunyan said. “There’s no way three essays can possibly cover a semester of work.”
Mr. Bunyan was able to graduate through what is known as credit recovery — letting those who lack credits make them up by means other than retaking a class or attending traditional summer school. Although his principal said the makeup assignments were as rigorous as regular course work, Mr. Bunyan’s English teacher, Charan Morris, was so troubled that she boycotted the graduation ceremony, writing in an e-mail message to students that she believed some were “being pushed through the system regardless of whether they have done the work to earn their diploma.”
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April 10, 2008
Technology in the Madison Schools
I am the parent of 2 children, one in first grade and the other soon to enter Kindergarten. I recently registered my child for Kindergarten where I was handed a very helpful folder with lots of great information in it. It had pictures of children learning in various contexts and text touting the wonderful education Madison children receive. The curious thing is that in the center of the folder is a picture of children using computers that are most likely more than 10 years old. Across the picture in large print it says "Welcome to Madison's Award Winning Schools!" Opposite the picture is a paragraph stating that there is a 4 to 1 computer ratio and that computers are integral to the K-12 instructional program. While I don't doubt all this to be true, just how old is that computer that is "integral" to my child's instructional program? Is my child getting the experiences that meet today's standards for knowledge in this area? While this is just a picture, it caused me to look around my daughter's school and to talk to a few teachers. What I learned was appalling.
Many teachers do their grades at home, not because of time, but because their classroom computer is so old and slow that it freezes on them or times out during an upload and they lose all of their data. I was stunned and confused. We as parents have been hearing about this new system that will allow us better access to seeing how our kids are doing in school and yet the teachers can't even enter data from their classrooms. Should we not be embarrassed as a district? Can we really claim truth in the text filled folds of the aforementioned folder?
I know there are many academic standards which drive curriculum. These standards also include technology standards. In fact the federal government through Title II Part D Enhancing Education Through Technology Program allocates funds to the DPI for which school districts can then apply for grants with the specific goal to:
"improve student academic achievement through the use of technology in elementary and secondary schools. It is also designed to assist every student – regardless of race, ethnicity, income, geographical location, or disability – in becoming technologically literate by the end of eighth grade, and to encourage the effective integration of technology resources and systems with professional development and curriculum development to promote research-based instructional methods that can be widely replicated."
Perhaps MMSD does apply for funds, but if so, where are they? Do they not make it to our elementary schools? Are they being used for something else? How are our students to become technologically literate by the end of 8th grade when the equipment they have to work on is so slow and out dated that rather than being productive it becomes an exercise in frustration? If it isn't an exercise in frustration my suspicion is the programs that are being used and taught to our kids are yesterday's technology rather than today's, as that is the only technology that could perhaps run on their current machines. I'm sure students are learning some keyboarding skills and drawing tools which are important. But, are they getting access to working with digital photos, video, creating their own publications, Internet search skills for researching topics they are studying, learning about authors whose books they are reading, participating in Project Lemonade (http://projectlemonade.blogspot.com/) and many other educational ventures appropriate for elementary students? I'd be surprised if any of this could be done successfully on the equipment currently in the classroom and in many of the elementary computer lab classrooms throughout the district.
Madison won awards for educational excellence but that was long ago. It is now 2008, what are we doing to keep up? We can't keep riding on our old fame. I'm glad to see so many new faces in the school board and perhaps with a new superintendent at the helm we will be in a better position to start "catching up" to where we should be if we are living up to the spirit of the language on our "welcome to MMSD" folders.
Thoughts of a concerned parent...
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NY Legislators Balk at Tying Teacher Tenure to Student Tests
In the latest rebuke to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s agenda, state lawmakers have decided to bar student test scores from being considered when teacher tenure determinations are made.Legislators said the move was the final detail negotiated as part of the budget, which they expect to complete on Wednesday. It was a setback to efforts by the mayor and former Gov. Eliot Spitzer to hold teachers accountable by using student performance data, and a boon for the teachers’ unions, which hold enormous influence over the political process in the capital.
The new language being prepared for the state law says that for the next two years student scores will not be considered in decisions on teachers’ tenure; in the meantime, a commission is to be created to study the issue.
The move was denounced Tuesday night by the Bloomberg administration.
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Schools ignored abuse warnings for 2 decades
Seattle Public Schools will pay $3 million for failing to act on dozens of warnings that a popular teacher was molesting some of his fifth-grade students, a pattern that lasted two decades.Related by Doug Erickson & Andy Hall: Former Waunakee educational assistant wasn't reported by the Madison Schools.The most abused girl will receive $2.5 million, which her attorney said will be the largest reported settlement paid by a school district in Washington to a single victim in a sex-abuse case.
Under the settlement, approved Monday in King County Superior Court, the district acknowledged negligence in failing to protect two girls from Laurence "Shayne" Hill, 58, who has admitted to molesting at least seven girls while teaching at Broadview-Thomson Elementary in North Seattle.
The girls' lawyers said the district protected Hill even though at least 15 teachers and staff members made at least 30 reports to administrators that he was grabbing girls' buttocks and having them sit on his lap, sometimes in darkened classrooms, since the mid-1980s.
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April 9, 2008
Toronto School Board Considers Scaling Back Homework
After three months of reviewing research on homework and meeting with parents, principals, and teachers, the Toronto, Canada, School District Board is now taking a very close look at a new proposed homework policy. The proposal focuses on quality, not quantity, suggests that homework in the early grades be limited to reading, talks at length about the value of family time, and recommends that all homework assignments be differentiated.The draft proposal, although not perfect, is one of the very best I’ve seen short of those recommending abolition of homework and is definitely worth reading. If you’re trying to change homework policy in your community, there is very good language that you might want to adopt. Read it here [PDF].
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April 6, 2008
Eighth Grade Vocabulary List: 1978
Well worth reading [1.2MB PDF]:
rivulet: A small stream or brook. The ancient rivulet was conducted according to customs that were centuries old. The children enjoyed wading in the rivulet. The manuscript needed only minor rivulets before publication. A pleasant rivulet trickled through the fields.Related: Dick Askey: Content Knowledge Examinations for Teachers Past and Present and NAEP writing scores - 2007 along with an article by Alan Borsuk. A Touch of Greatness:firth: A narrow inlet or arm of the sea. (A firth may refer to any narrow arm of the sea or more particular to the opening of a river into the sea. Because the coast of Scotland is dotted with so many firths, the word has come to be associated with that country.) The soldier explored the firths that cut into the coastline. The young child was severely reprimanded for having committed the firth. After swimming across the firth, he was completely exhausted. The coast was cut with many narrow firths, which were ideal hideouts for smugglers.
You won’t find ten-year old children reciting Shakespeare soliloquies, acting out the Cuban Missile Crisis or performing Sophocles plays in most American classrooms today. But Albert Cullum’s elementary school students did all this and more. Combining interviews with Cullum and his former students with stunning archival footage filmed by director Robert Downey, Sr., A TOUCH OF GREATNESS documents the extraordinary work of this maverick public school teacher who embraced creativity, motivation and self-esteem in the classroom through the use of poetry, drama and imaginative play.Regarded by academics as one of the most influential educators of the 1960s and ‘70s, Cullum championed what is, by today's standards, an unorthodox educational philosophy: the belief that the only way teachers can be successful with children is to speak directly to their hearts and to their instinctive and largely ignored capacity to quickly understand and identify with the great personalities, ideas and emotions found in classical literature. To that end, Cullum regularly taught his elementary school children literary masterpieces, exposed them to great works of art and engaged them in the events of world history. Without leaving the classroom, his students visited King Tut's tomb, attended joint sessions of the U.S. Congress, operated on “bleeding” nouns in his "grammar hospital," and clamored to play the timeless roles of Julius Caesar, Lady Macbeth and Hamlet.
When Cullum was an elementary school teacher in the New York City suburbs during the 1960s, his friend Robert Downey helped film several student plays and classroom events. In A TOUCH OF GREATNESS, these lush black and white films, with original music created by Tom O'Horgan, capture the work of this radical teacher and his students’ love of learning.
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April 3, 2008
2007 "Nation's Report Card - Writing" Now Available
National Center for Education Statistics:
This report presents the results of the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) writing assessment. It was administered to a nationally representative sample of more than 165,000 eighth- and twelfth-graders from public and private schools. In addition to national results, the report includes state and urban district results for grade 8 public school students. Forty-five states, the Department of Defense schools, and 10 urban districts voluntarily participated. To measure their writing skills, the assessment engaged students in narrative, informative, and persuasive writing tasks. NAEP presents the writing results as scale scores and achievement-level percentages. Results are also reported for student performance by various demographic characteristics such as race/ethnicity, gender, and eligibility for the National School Lunch Program. The 2007 national results are compared with results from the 2002 and 1998 assessments. At grades 8 and 12, average writing scores and the percentages of students performing at or above Basic were higher than in both previous assessments. The White -- Black score gap narrowed at grade 8 compared to 1998 and 2002 but showed no significant change at grade 12. The gender score gap showed no significant change at grade 8 compared with previous assessments but narrowed at grade 12 since 2002. Eighth-graders eligible for free or reduced-price school lunch scored lower on average than students who were not eligible. Compared with 2002, average writing scores for eighth-graders increased in 19 states and the Department of Defense schools, and scores decreased in one state. Compared with 1998, scores increased in 28 states and the Department of Defense Schools, and no states showed a decrease. Scores for most urban districts at grade 8 were comparable to or higher than scores for large central cities but were below the national average. Trend results are available for 4 of the 10 urban districts.36% of Wisconsin 8th grade students scored proficient and advanced, tied for 9th best. Complete Report: 3.9MB PDF File.
About one-third of America’s eighth-grade students, and about one in four high school seniors, are proficient writers, according to results of a nationwide test released on Thursday.Joanne offers notes and links.The test, administered last year, showed that there were modest increases in the writing skills of low-performing students since the last time a similar exam was given, in 2002. But the skills of high-performing eighth and 12th graders remained flat or declined.
Girls far outperformed boys in the test, with 41 percent of eighth-grade girls scoring at or above the proficient level, compared with 20 percent of eighth-grade boys.
New Jersey and Connecticut were the two top-performing states, with more than half their students scoring at or above the proficient level (56 percent in New Jersey, 53 percent in Connecticut). Those two and seventeen other states ranked above New York, where 31 percent of students wrote at the proficient level.
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If You Text in Class, This Prof Will Leave
Some professors threaten to confiscate students’ cell phones if they go off during class. Laurence Thomas has his own approach to classroom distractions. If the philosopher at Syracuse University catches a student sending text messages or reading a newspaper in class, he’ll end the class on the spot and walk out. It doesn’t matter if there is but one texter in a large lecture of hundreds of students. If you text, he will leave.Last week, when a student in a large lecture — in the front row no less — sent a text message, Thomas followed through on his threat (as he had done just a few days earlier). And he then sent the university’s chancellor, his dean, and all of the students an e-mail message explaining his actions and his frustration at the “brazen” disrespect he had received in class. In the e-mail, he noted that the student who sent the text message is Cuban, and that last year, two Latino students had started to play tic-tac-toe during his class.
While Thomas noted that white students are also rude, he expressed frustration that — especially as a minority scholar himself — he would be treated in this way. “One might have thought that for all the talk about racism and the good of social equality, non-white students would be particularly committed to respecting a black professor,” Thomas wrote.
Thomas followed up with a second e-mail, noting that at least one parent of a student had complained about two classes being called off. “Everyone has to understand that respect is a two-way street. I respect you, as I endeavor to do and you respect me. My experience has been that confronting students directly and asking them to stop has virtually no effect. I walk out to underscore the importance of what this means to me,” he wrote.
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April 2, 2008
Informative, Not Scripted
American Educator 350K PDF:To some readers, “clear, specific content” may sound like a euphemism for “script.” But Core Knowledge demonstrates that standards could—and should—be heavy on content and light on pedagogy. By clarifying what to teach, but letting teachers decide how to teach, Core Knowledge supports good instruction.Instead of writing a typical standards document, Core Knowledge developed a bare-bones “sequence” of content for grades K-8. It then developed a detailed teacher handbook for each grade that provides key information—like vocabulary, background knowledge, and connections to other subjects. Teachers can use the sequence to quickly see what is taught in the grades above and below theirs, and the handbook to guide their lesson planning and teaching. Here, we show the full fourth-grade language arts sequence, which includes speeches by Patrick Henry and Sojourner Truth, and the speeches section of the fourth-grade teacher handbook (p. 34-37).
The handbooks have some teaching suggestions, but they do not mandate any particular way of teaching, and they don’t offer anything that even resembles a script. But don’t just take it from us, read what two teachers have to say about it. We asked Kethkeo Vichaiyarath and Xia Lee to discuss how they have used the handbook as they developed lessons on the speeches. Both have nine years’ experience and currently teach fourth grade at Phalen Lake Elementary in St. Paul, Minn. Nearly 70 percent of the students are English language learners and roughly 90 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Core Knowledge provides Kethkeo and Xia the rich content their students need. —Editors
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April 1, 2008
How to Disagree: An Attempt at a "Disagreement Hierarchy"
The web is turning writing into a conversation. Twenty years ago, writers wrote and readers read. The web lets readers respond, and increasingly they do—in comment threads, on forums, and in their own blog posts.Many who respond to something disagree with it. That's to be expected. Agreeing tends to motivate people less than disagreeing. And when you agree there's less to say. You could expand on something the author said, but he has probably already explored the most interesting implications. When you disagree you're entering territory he may not have explored.
The result is there's a lot more disagreeing going on, especially measured by the word. That doesn't mean people are getting angrier. The structural change in the way we communicate is enough to account for it. But though it's not anger that's driving the increase in disagreement, there's a danger that the increase in disagreement will make people angrier. Particularly online, where it's easy to say things you'd never say face to face.
If we're all going to be disagreeing more, we should be careful to do it well. What does it mean to disagree well? Most readers can tell the difference between mere name-calling and a carefully reasoned refutation, but I think it would help to put names on the intermediate stages. So here's an attempt at a disagreement hierarchy:
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What's Missing from Math Standards? Focus, Rigor and Coherence
Why do some countries, like Singapore, Korea, and the Czech Republic, do so much better than the United States in math? I've heard all sorts of reasons; diversity and poverty top the list. But after some 15 years conducting international research, I am convinced that it's the diversity and poverty of U.S. math standards—not the diversity and poverty of U.S. students—that are to blame.The single most important result of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is that we now know that student performance is directly related to the nature of the curricular expectations. I do not mean the instructional practices. I mean the nature of what it is that children are to learn within schools. (In the U.S., the curricular expectations are usually referred to as standards; in other countries they are known by various names.) After all, what is more central to schooling than those things we, as a society, have chosen to pass on to our children?
The TIMSS research has revealed that there are t