Nobody knew it at the time, but Peter Glenn Cartier’s arrival at Bellin Hospital on Jan. 1, 1946, marked Green Bay’s official entry into a revolution.
Born at 6:25 a.m. that Tuesday morning, the son of Glenn and Kay Cartier was the first from Green Bay in a new generation of Americans who would forever be known as baby boomers.
By 1964, they numbered 77 million nationwide — the largest generation ever — and they transformed the world with their ideas, talents and values.
Now that the first of them has reached retirement age, baby boomers are redefining the meaning of golden years with their can-do, forever-young attitude.
All posts by Jim Zellmer
Teachers, parents set stage for Florida education war
Teachers and like-minded parents have struck first in an expected statewide battle over education changes being proposed by Gov.-elect Rick Scott’s transition team.
They have held meetings and conference calls, traded information via Facebook, planned an education summit and formed bill-writing committees to create alternative legislation.
And on Tuesday, they plan to wear red to send the new governor — and the Republican-dominated legislature — a message that they support public schools.
Glut of candidates for St. Paul school board as 41 apply
More than three dozen people have applied for an open seat on the St. Paul School Board.
The seat was left vacant in November when board member Vallay Varro stepped down to head an education non-profit. The St. Paul School Board now has to appoint someone to fill that seat for the year remaining in Varro’s term.
With the application period now closed, the district says 41 people applied. Familiar names include two former St. Paul School Board members, Al Oertwig and William Finney. Finney also used to be St. Paul’s police chief.
Video essays are a hot topic in college admissions as more schools allow them
To complete a half-dozen college applications, Morgan Malone lined up letters of recommendation, penned essays and – for George Mason University – carried around a video camera for several days.
The result was a nearly two-minute video essay that opens with Malone introducing herself from atop the sign outside Mountain View High School in Stafford County. There are clips of her walking the school’s hallways, participating in a quiz bowl and volunteering. At the end, her assistant principal jumps on a desk and shouts, “I approve this message.”
“Instead of having an application and words in an essay, they get to see me,” said Malone, 17. “Hopefully, when they are watching the video, they will get a picture of what I am like. The way I talk in the video is the same way I talk every day.”
Former Waukesha Mayor Nelson teaches English at Waukesha County’s juvenile center
Nine months after Waukesha voters gave Larry Nelson a swift kick out of the mayor’s office, denying him a second term, he’s back to teaching – if in a distinctively different place and position than the one he left four years earlier.
Nelson is the English teacher at the Waukesha County Juvenile Center, where he teaches 11- to 17-year-olds who either are in shelter care or have been court-ordered to secure detention.
“I’ve always loved teaching, and even when I was mayor I felt I was teaching on a bigger scale,” he said.
Since Nelson, 55, was granted a leave of absence from his Butler Middle School teaching job in Waukesha when he was elected mayor in 2006, the School Board allowed him to return this fall, his 31st year of teaching.
Nelson comes to work at 8 a.m. every day to find out how many students he has, and who they are, he said. He could have one, or 10. They may be around for a day, a week or a month. The longest has been two months. With much of his teaching one-on-one or in small groups, he can customize what he teaches, he said.
An Interview with Laurie H. Rogers; Author of “How the Education Establishment Has Betrayed America and What You Can Do About It”
1) Who is being “Betrayed” by the public school system in America?
The education establishment is betraying the following groups:
- The children, who aren’t getting the education they need;
- Parents, who struggle to manage bored and frustrated children, who must pay for several college remedial classes, and who sometimes wind up with students who have given up and dropped out;
- Teachers, who are micromanaged and disrespected in myriad ways by the bureaucracy and then blamed for the results;
- Taxpayers, who pay hundreds of billions of dollars each year for a largely failing K-12 education system;
- Businesses, which must recruit from other countries;
- Government agencies and military organizations that struggle to fill critical jobs with qualified Americans;
- The country, which teeters on the brink of economic and social disaster, crippled by a populace that is not acquiring sufficient skills or knowledge to properly run it or even to fully understand the challenges that face it.
The only people not being betrayed are those who feed off of our failing education system.
Unfortunately, that group gets larger every year.
Paying for learning, not system
It’s this: The money a school district gets depends on enrollment. In Milwaukee, the one place private-school choice is now offered, the Milwaukee Public Schools’ per-pupil funding is not hurt at all when kids go somewhere else (per-pupil, it increases annually). But when about 20,000 pupils go elsewhere, MPS has less money overall, since it’s teaching fewer children.
Every school district statewide is liable to this already: Wisconsin parents can enroll children in any other public school district. More than 28,000 kids do this switch annually. For every child who moves, one district loses about $6,800 and another gains it. Since some places are big losers and others big gainers, this affects districts’ budgets.
For instance, Milwaukee lost about $27 million in the latest year; other big losers were Racine, Green Bay and Madison. It made no difference to taxpayers overall, but the system moved money away from districts that parents shunned and toward ones they preferred.
The snag is transportation. Parents must take kids to their preferred district. This is tough for the poor, especially in places like Racine, where the local district includes all of suburbia as far as the edge of Oak Creek. It’s perverse when there are private alternatives in poor neighborhoods.
When Grigsby and others make their complaint, it isn’t to say that letting parents choose other schools will hurt weak districts’ budgets, else they’d be wailing about public school choice, which does just that. The complaint is that the government-run school system overall will have less money as children and their aid leave.
Area’s first dual-language immersion program under way
The first middle-school dual-language immersion program in the Madison area was started at Sennett Middle School this year and the benefits are far reaching, according to Principal Colleen Lodholz.
At Sennett, 50 percent of the students’ academic classes are taught in English and 50 percent are taught in Spanish.
“It really honors both languages,” Lodholz said. “The students are good little ambassadors in terms of modeling the importance of learning a second language and the importance of learning about another culture.”
Most of the 50 sixth grade students in the program come from Nuestro Mundo Community School — the area’s first elementary dual-language immersion program that started when they were kindergarteners — and a strong sense of community was established, Lodholz said. Lodholz sees the students looking out for each other and fewer discipline issues, she said.
Comparing K-12 Funding Adequacy Across 50 States
Wisconsin Center for Education Research, via email:
Until now, no one has tried to estimate the costs of educational adequacy across all 50 states using a common method applied in a consistent manner. UW-Madison education professor Allan Odden and colleagues have realized that goal.
In a recent report, Odden, Lawrence Picus, and Michael Goetz provide state-by-state estimates of the cost of the evidence-based model. The evidence-based model relies primarily on research evidence when making programmatic recommendations. The evidence-based approach starts with a set of recommendations based on a distillation of research and best practices. As implementation unfolds, teams of state policymakers, education leaders, and practitioners review, modify, and tailor those core recommendations to the context of their state’s situation. Odden’s report compares those estimates to each state’s current spending.
Allan Odden and colleagues have developed the first state-level analysis of education finance spending using a model with consistent assumptions across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia.
Odden and colleagues studied districts and schools that have made substantial gains in student performance. They identified the strategies used, then compared those strategies to the recommendations of the evidence-based model. The research found a strong alignment between the strategies and the resources in the evidence-based model and those strategies used by districts and schools that have seen dramatic increase in student learning.
The Evidence-Based Model and Adequacy
When experts discuss education finance, they sometimes use the term “adequacy.” Odden offers this definition: “Providing a level of resources to schools that will enable them to make substantial improvements in student performance over the next 4 to 6 years, as progress toward ensuring that all, or almost all, students meet their state’s performance standards in the longer term.”
“Substantial improvement in student performance” means that, where possible, the proportion of students meeting a proficiency goal will increase substantially in the short- to medium term. Specific targets might vary, depending on the state and a school’s current performance. Yet this goal could be interpreted as raising the percentage of students who meet a state’s student proficiency level from 35% to 70%, or from 70% to something approaching 90% and, in both examples, to increase the percentage of students meeting advanced proficiency standards. There are several approaches to estimating adequacy. They include cost functions, professional judgment, successful schools and districts, and the evidence-based approach.
…………
Using the national average compensation figures, the weighted per pupil estimated costs for adequacy using the evidence-based model is $9,641, an average increase of $566 per student on a national basis. In 30 of the 50 states, additional revenues are needed to reach the estimated cost level. In the remaining 20 states and Washington, D.C., current funding levels are more than enough.
If all states were to receive funding at the estimated level of the evidence-based model, the total cost would be $27.0 billion, or a 6.2% increase. However, the politically feasible approach would not allow using the “excess funds” from the states currently spending more than that level. Given that, the total cost rises to $47.2 billion (a 10.9% increase) to fully fund the model’s estimates.
Locally, the Madison School District spent $370, 287,471 during the 2009-2010 school year, according to the Citizen’s Budget. for 24,295 students ($15,241/student). I have not seen a Citizen’s Budget for the 2010-2011 period. Madison School District budget information.
More from the WCER article:
Nor does this research address how the funds should be allocated once they are sent to school districts. This is an important point, Odden says, because some states currently spend more than identified in this model, yet do not appear to show the gains in student performance the model suggests are possible.
Health care tops contract debates School districts focus negotiations on cost of retirees’ benefits
After years of watching escalating health insurance costs eat up and even surpass the savings provided by early retirements, some public school districts are getting tough in contract negotiations to reduce benefit levels.
The Hartland-Lakeside School Board and its teachers union went to arbitration in mid-December as district officials sought to cap insurance benefits and lower a stipend given to retiring teachers.
The Waukesha School Board has gone even further, denying almost all early retirement requests by teachers for the past two years as it advances toward arbitration in contract negotiations.
Health care cost growth has also been an issue locally.
Scottish teaching union to launch manifesto
The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) said it needed to ensure that education was at the top of the agenda for all political parties.
EIS general secretary Ronnie Smith warned that pupils would suffer most as a result of “damaging cutbacks”.
The so-called “Manifesto for Education” will be launched by union officials next month.
The union said it was keen to protect the country’s schools, colleges and universities.
Mr Smith said: “With the current financial crisis and the deep cuts to public spending, including reduced investment in education, it is vitally important that we make a stand to let the politicians know that continuing attacks on our education system cannot and will not be tolerated by the Scottish people.
Europe’s Young Grow Agitated Over Future Prospects
Francesca Esposito, 29 and exquisitely educated, helped win millions of euros in false disability and other lawsuits for her employer, a major Italian state agency. But one day last fall she quit, fed up with how surreal and ultimately sad it is to be young in Italy today.
It galled her that even with her competence and fluency in five languages, it was nearly impossible to land a paying job. Working as an unpaid trainee lawyer was bad enough, she thought, but doing it at Italy’s social security administration seemed too much. She not only worked for free on behalf of the nation’s elderly, who have generally crowded out the young for jobs, but her efforts there did not even apply to her own pension.
“It was absurd,” said Ms. Esposito, a strong-willed woman with a healthy sense of outrage.
The outrage of the young has erupted, sometimes violently, on the streets of Greece and Italy in recent weeks, as students and more radical anarchists protest not only specific austerity measures in flattened economies but a rising reality in Southern Europe: People like Ms. Esposito feel increasingly shut out of their own futures. Experts warn of volatility in state finances and the broader society as the most highly educated generation in the history of the Mediterranean hits one of its worst job markets.
A fascinating article, particularly the implications of top heavy compensation/benefit costs for older, long term workers. We see similar things in the States where dual compensation schemes significantly underpay new hires for a period of time.
Dreaming of a Debt Free College Education
Takiia Anderson and her daughter, Taje.
Student debt has overshadowed much of Takiia Anderson’s career.
After graduating from law school in 1999, she spent a decade paying off the $106,000 she’d borrowed, all while moving along the East Coast for her jobs with the U.S. Department of Labor and raising her daughter, Taje, now 13.
Now that she’s free from onerous debt payments, her top priority is to set aside enough money for Taje’s college education.
But Anderson also wants to make sure she’s on track to retire once she qualifies for a full pension at age 58.
Education in Brazil: No longer bottom of the class
IN 2000 the OECD, a group of mostly rich countries, decided to find out how much children were learning at school. At the time, only half of Brazilian children finished primary education. Three out of four adults were functionally illiterate and more than one in ten totally so. And yet few Brazilians seemed to care. Rich parents used private schools; poor ones knew too little to understand how badly their children were being taught at the public ones. The president at the time, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, saw a chance to break their complacency. Though Brazil is not a member of the OECD he entered it in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Brazil came last.
A decade on, it is clear that the shock was salutary. On December 7th the fourth PISA study was published, and Brazil showed solid gains in all three subjects tested: reading, mathematics and science (see chart 1). The test now involves 65 countries or parts of them. Brazil came 53rd in reading and science. The OECD is sufficiently impressed that it has selected Brazil as a case study of “Encouraging lessons from a large federal system”.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Forget Pep Talks; Governors Warn of Tough Times
James Hagerty & Ben Casselman:
New governors in 26 U.S. states are starting to take office with somber warnings to constituents of more tough times amid revenue shortfalls and a weak job market.
With sagging economies, soaring budget deficits and the loss of federal stimulus money, incoming governors face the deepest fiscal crisis in decades and expectations that they will remain true to campaign pledges to slash spending and taxes.
“I don’t think a grand ceremony … would be appropriate,” Andrew M. Cuomo said Saturday after being sworn in as New York’s governor. The Democrat, whose father led New York two decades ago, promised to put a lid on property taxes and shrink the state’s government.
He said budget troubles were only part of the problem in a state that also faced a “trust deficit.” “Too often government responds to the whispers of lobbyists before the cries of the people,” Mr. Cuomo said.
Madison & Middleton-Cross Plains School District 4K Agreement
Matthew Bell:
Matthew W. Bell, Legal Counsel
Attached please find a proposed intergovernmental agreement with the Middleton/Cross Plains Area School District. The proposed agreement with Middleton/Cross Plains Area School District (MCPASD) allows the District to establish a 4k site in a nursery school (Orchard Ridge Nursery School) that lies within the MCPASD’s border. The rationale for the District’s desire to do so is the fact that Orchard Ridge is within 1/4 mile of MMSD’s boundary and it serves primarily (70-80%) Madison residents. The agreement would also allow the District to serve MCPASD 4k students who chose to enroll at Orchard Ridge in exchange for direct non-resident tuition reimbursement by MCPASD to Orchard Ridge. Conversely, MCPASD will be allowed to establish 4k sites at two centers (LaPetite and Middleton Preschool) that are within MMSD’s border. MCPASD’s rational for wanting to contract with those sites is identical to MMSD’s desire to contract with Orchard Ridge (i.e. proximity and demographics of children already at the center). MCPASD would also serve MMSD residents who chose to attend those sites in exchange for MMSD directly reimbursing LaPetite and Middleton Preschool. The agreement with MCPASD is attached for your review and action.
Much more on Madison’s planned 4K program here.
Presentation of “Value Added Assessment (Outcomes)” in the Madison School District, Including Individual School & Demographic Information
Complete Report: 1.5MB PDF File
Value added is the use of statistical technique to identify the effects of schooling on measured student performance. The value added model uses what data are available about students–past test scores and student demographics in particular–to control for prior student knowledge, home and community environment, and other relevant factors to better measure the effects of schools on student achievement. In practice, value added focuses on student improvement on an assessment from one year to the next.
This report presents value-added results for Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) for the two-year period between November 2007 to November 2009, measuring student improvement on the November test administrations of the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE) in grades three through eight. Also presented are results for the two-year period between November 2005 to November 2007, as well as the two-year period between November 2006 to November 2008. This allows for some context from the past, presenting value added over time as a two-year moving average.
Changes to the Value Added Model
Some of the details of the value-added system have changed in 2010. The two most substantial changes are the the inclusion of differential-effects value-added results and the addition to the set of control variables of full-academic-year (FAY) attendance.
Differential Effects
In additional to overall school- and grade-level value-added measures, this year’s value-added results also include value-added measures for student subgroups within schools. The subgroups included in this year’s value-added results are students with disabilities, English language learners, black students, Hispanic students, and students who receive free or reduced-price lunches. The results measure the growth of students in these subgroups at a school. For example, if a school has a value added of +5 for students with disabilities, then students with disabilities at this school gained 5 more points on the WKCE relative to observationally similar students across MMSD.
The subgroup results are designed to measure differences across schools in the performance of students in that subgroup relative to the overall performance of students in that subgroup across MMSD. Any overall, district-wide effect of (for example) disability is controlled for in the value-added model and is not included in the subgroup results. The subgroup results reflect relative differences across schools in the growth of students in that subgroup.
Much more on “Value Added Assessment”, here.
A fatal failure long ago gives a new principal a mission
Jim Wilkinson took it personally when Juan Perez murdered two men.
Certainly he had sympathy for the victims, Joseph Rivera and Michael Ralston. But he didn’t know them.
The issue was Perez. Wilkinson felt he barely knew him – and that was the problem. Perez had been one of Wilkinson’s students the previous year when Perez was 15 and a freshman at Marquette University High School.
Almost everybody at Marquette High barely knew Perez. He never asked for help. He stayed to himself. He got mediocre grades, but he wasn’t failing. And he left the school after that freshman year. Instead, he got involved deeply with a gang.
A tense, angry confrontation between members of two gangs in a restaurant on Feb. 13, 1993. A slap. Insults. A couple guns. And, in short order, the teenager was receiving a 60-year sentence.
Almost 18 years later, both Perez and Wilkinson feel they have changed for the better.
Wilkes University Professors Examine Use of Text Messaging in the College Classroom
Teachers of the past had to be concerned about students passing notes in class. Today’s educators have a much greater challenge with the advent of cell phone technology, and its prevalence in the classroom. A study by two Wilkes University professors shows that texting is a greater problem than educators might believe. They also suggest that classroom management strategies can potentially minimize texting in class.
Wilkes University psychology professors, Drs. Deborah Tindell and Robert Bohlander, designed a 32-question survey to assess the text messaging habits of college students in the classroom. In total, 269 college students, representing 21 majors, and all class levels, responded anonymously to their survey.
The study showed that 95 percent of students bring their phones to class every day and 91 percent have used their phones to text message during class time. Almost half of all respondents indicated that it is easy to text in class without their instructor being aware. In fact, students frequently commented on the survey that their professors would be “shocked” if they knew how much texting went on in class.
Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines are Changing a Nation
Paul French and Matthew Crabbe:
An analysis of the growing problem of obesity in China and its relationship to the nation’s changing diet, lifestyle trends and healthcare system.
‘When Deng Xiaoping said ‘To get rich is glorious’, he probably didn’t realize that getting wealthy would make many Chinese fat… In an informative and entertaining style, French and Crabbe reveal the dark side of China’s growing middle-class: a fast increase in obesity-related illnesses such as diabetes. A great read on an important topic.’ Andy Rothman, China economist, CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, Shanghai
‘In this remarkably well researched and thought-provoking book, French and Crabbe expose a darker side of globalisation in China… Western multinationalists have submerged the Chinese consumer in a sea of chocolate and ice cream. The consequences for public health are incalculable.’ –Tim Clissold, China investment specialist and author of ‘Mr China’
‘While some people around the world agonize about the rapid spread of China’s global influence, others within China are more worried about the spread of the country’s waistlines – or at least they should be, according to this fascinating and exhaustively researched study by Paul French and Matthew Crabbe. By turns colourful, witty and alarming, this book provides fascinating insights into China’s fast-changing society.’ –Duncan Hewitt, Shanghai correspondent for ‘Newsweek’ and author of ‘Getting Rich First: Life in a Changing China’
Harvard missed signs it was being hoodwinked
It turns out that fooling the gatekeepers of the nation’s most selective university wasn’t as hard as it looks.
Adam Butler Wheeler, portrayed upon his arrest for fraud as a con artist whose brilliant forgeries landed him a coveted spot at Harvard, won over the admissions committee with an application rife with inconsistencies and an inscrutable personal essay, despite fake faculty recommendations that repeatedly praised his lucid writing.
A close examination of Wheeler’s application materials, obtained by the Globe, reveals neither a meticulous feat of deceit nor a particularly elaborate charade. At times, he was just plain careless.
A gushing letter of recommendation, purportedly from the director of college counseling at Phillips Academy, said Wheeler enrolled in the prestigious Andover prep school as a junior. The accompanying transcript, though, indicated he attended for four years.
A new stage of higher education
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School, explains how retired leaders can use their skills for social good
Surfeits of Certitude
‘Tis the season of paradox. In a widely noted op-ed in The New York Times, Judah Cohen, identified by the Times merely as “director of seasonal forecasting at an atmospheric and environmental research firm,” explained that the frigid temperatures and heavy snowfalls afflicting Europe and much of North America this year are, mirabile dictu, the result of “the overall warming of the atmosphere.” Quick-draw skeptics made the obvious retorts: (1) that advocates of the theory of global warming seem to have constructed a one-way street for interpreting data. No matter what happens in the actual atmosphere of our planet–whether temperatures rise, fall, or remain the same; ditto the level of precipitation; ditto the severity of storms–the theory of anthropocentric global warming (AGW) is vindicated. (2) the public is growing more and more jaundiced about this theoretical legerdemain; and (3) a fair amount of the skepticism now focuses on the capacity of climate scientists to be honest judges of the global warming evidence in view of the enormous amounts of money that flows their way and will continue to flow only if AGW retains its legitimacy.
How to Fail in Grant Writing
Elizabeth Jakob, Adam Porter, Jeffrey Podos, Barry Braun, Norman Johnson, and Stephen Vessey
Looking for the fast path to grant rejection?
We provide a list here of proven techniques. We gathered these in the course of serving on grant panels or as program officers, and, in some cases, through firsthand experimentation. We are biologists, but many of our suggestions will be useful to grant writers in all disciplines.
As salaries rise, Fresno State coach Pat Hill takes pay cut
Steve Wieberg, Steve Berkowitz and Jodi Upton
Pat Hill came cheap when he broke into college football coaching a little more than 3½ decades ago.
He worked his first job at a California community college without pay, making ends meet by moonlighting Tuesdays and Thursdays as a pinsetter at a bowling alley and Fridays and Saturdays, when football allowed, as a bouncer. He lived for a while in his Chevy van.
“I’ve never been a monetary guy,” he says.
The contract that will take him into his 15th season as head coach at Fresno State offers further testament.
Hill will take a more than $300,000 cut in guaranteed pay in 2011, an extraordinary concession to a school budget stretched thin by the troubled economy. His guaranteed take of $650,000 remains considerable, but he’ll have to cash in heavily on incentives to match, or even approach, his nearly seven-figure earnings in 2010.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: GAO Sees Problems in Government’s Financial Management
The U.S. Government Accountability Office said it could not render an opinion on the 2010 consolidated financial statements of the federal government, because of widespread material internal control weaknesses, significant uncertainties, and other limitations.
“Even though significant progress has been made since the enactment of key financial management reforms in the 1990s, our report on the U.S. government’s consolidated financial statement illustrates that much work remains to be done to improve federal financial management,” Acting Comptroller General Gene Dodaro said in a statement. “Shortcomings in three areas again prevented us from expressing an opinion on the accrual-based financial statements.”
The main obstacles to a GAO opinion were: (1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense that made its financial statements unauditable, (2) the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements.
Making 2011 the Year of Great Relationships
Made any New Year’s resolutions yet? Here’s an idea: Focus on the state of your relationships instead of the state of your abs.
Increasingly, experts have been telling us how important social bonds are to well-being, affecting everything from how our brains process information to how our bodies respond to stress. People with strong connections to others may live longer. The quality of our relationships is the single biggest predictor of our happiness.
With personal bonds this important, it would seem prudent to put a little work into improving them, especially if they are struggling or even just a little lackluster. And it might not hurt to forge some new ones, too.
How ‘Friend’ Became a Verb
In my 1985 sci-fi novel ‘Ender’s Game,’ a couple kids used something like the Internet to pass for experts and influence public opinion. It didn’t take long for reality to catch up.
My father-in-law is a historian, and about 20 years ago he mentioned his concern that cheap long-distance telephoning was going to make the work of future historians far harder.
“Letters are one of our best sources of information about the past, but these days nobody writes letters–they just call.”
“Yes, and I hate that,” I said. “Interrupting what I’m doing right now because this is the moment when it’s convenient for them to call.”
Little did we know that both of us were about to get our wish.
New Madison middle school (Badger Rock) will provide innovative outdoor education
Just before the holiday break, the Madison School District approved the Badger Rock Middle School. This is big and exciting news for Madison, and I hope it sounds a new tone for education in the city.
It is not new news that Madison’s school district has been struggling to maintain its national reputation for innovation and excellence. During the past two budget cycles, the district has suffered deep funding cuts and the loss of millions of dollars. And over the past five years, families have been migrating to surrounding school districts — and to private schools.
But visionary leadership and innovative charter schools such as Badger Rock may just be the answer.
The philosophy for Badger Rock is cutting edge and simultaneously a throwback to classical education. Students learn from their environment. It is a setting and style that would make Aldo Leopold proud, and that ties local curriculum to Wisconsin’s deep-seated environmental roots.
As far as I can tell, local school budgets have grown annually for decades. Ms. Joiner is referring to reductions in the increase. Spending growth slowed this year and will likely do so in the future. The Madison School District’s “Budget Amendments and Tax Levy Adoption for 2010-11” mentions 2010-2011 revenues (property taxes, redistributed state and federal taxes and grants) of $423,005,653, up from $412,219,577 in 2008-2009. The document’s 2009-2010 revenues are $489,487,261, which seems unusual. Enrollment has remained flat during the past few years (details here).
Using the College Rankings
There’s a big difference between thinking the U.S. News & World Report college rankings are of dubious value — and actually refusing to try to use them to an institution’s advantage.
That’s the conclusion of the second of a series of surveys released by the National Association for College Admission Counseling. A special NACAC committee has been conducting the series as part of an effort to study the impact of the U.S. News rankings. More survey results and a final report are expected from the panel next year.
Lunchbox Mix-up Leads to Charges for Sanford, NC Teen
An athletic and academic standout in Lee County said a lunchbox mix-up has cut short her senior year of high school and might hurt her college opportunities.
Ashley Smithwick, 17, of Sanford, was suspended from Southern Lee High School in October after school personnel found a small paring knife in her lunchbox.
Smithwick said personnel found the knife while searching the belongings of several students, possibly looking for drugs.
“She got pulled into it. She doesn’t have to be a bad person to be searched,” Smithwick’s father, Joe Smithwick, said.
The lunchbox really belonged to Joe Smithwick, who packs a paring knife to slice his apple. He and his daughter have matching lunchboxes.
“It’s just an honest mistake. That was supposed to be my lunch because it was a whole apple,” he said.
Teen kicked off campus after lunch box mix-up
A 17-year-old honor student says she has been kicked off campus for the rest of the school year, because of a mix-up with her lunch box.
In October, senior Ashley Smithwick says she got in trouble at school for the first time in her life after she mistakenly took her father’s lunch container — that’s identical to hers — to Southern Lee High School.
Her dad’s container had a three-inch paring knife inside.
“And I had just grabbed my dad’s lunch box,” Smithwick said. “I didn’t mean to. I really didn’t. I just grabbed it and went out the door.”
School leaders say during that day a faculty member discovered a student with marijuana on campus and Smithwick’s paring knife was found during a random search.
According to a written statement received by ABC11 from Lee County Schools Superintendent Jeff Moss on Wednesday, the knife was found in Smithwick’s purse, not her lunchbox.
K-12 Spending Per Student in the OECD
This chart by Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow Veronique de Rugy compares K-12 education expenditures per pupil in each of the world’s major industrial powers. As we can see, with the exception of Switzerland, the United States spends more than any other country on education, an average of $91,700 per student between the ages of six and fifteen.
That’s not only more than other countries spend but it is also more than better achieving countries spend – the United States spends a third more than Finland, a country that consistently ranks near the top in science, reading, and math testing.
Maternal Mystery: Babies Bring Joy, and Questions, in Hong Kong
The photos of triplets born into a billionaire family that were splashed across the front pages of local papers in October made for a great story.
Their proud grandfather, Lee Shau-kee, the 82-year-old chairman of property developer Henderson Land Development Ltd. and one of the richest men in Asia, held up the three baby boys swathed in blue. Next to him stood the father, Peter Lee, the bachelor vice chairman and heir apparent to the Henderson empire.
There was only one thing missing: their mother.
Power to the People: Britains Big Experiment
For those wanting a less colloquial explanation, the Big Society is an attempt to transform the relationship between the state and its citizens. Using the weapons of devolution and transparency, it seeks to empower individuals, improve public services that fail the most disadvantaged and reconnect the civic institutions that lie between the people and the state.
So why is the Big Society such a radical idea? As one of its leading proponents in government admits, it is a massive social experiment – stripping power from the state in the expectation that individuals, communities and enterprises will pick up the reins. “As in most such experiments, it is based upon instincts and understanding rather than empirical data,” he says. “It will be two to three years before we begin to see if it is playing itself out properly. But the direction of change will be remorseless and I’m confident it will transform Britain.”
This tussle between the responsibilities of state and citizens is at the centre of political struggles across the west, from France’s battles over pensions to the backlash against Washington in the US. Unsurprisingly, the Big Society ideas – far removed from the rampant individualism of the Tea Party – are being watched with growing interest by moderate Republicans.
In Britain, they fit comfortably with a nation fed up with over-bearing statism and corporate irresponsibility. The latest British Social Attitudes survey revealed growing distrust of both state and big business, combined with a desire for smaller, more local institutions.
Showdown in the Offing
Three years ago, Congress stopped then-Education Secretary Margaret Spellings dead in her tracks. Cheered on by college leaders, Senator Lamar Alexander and other lawmakers — irked by the Education Department’s aggressive attempts to regulate higher education accreditation and by what they perceived to be the executive branch’s encroachment on their turf — took several legislative steps that effectively blocked the department from issuing new rules on student learning outcomes.
The players and the issues have changed, but signs are emerging that a similar showdown could unfold early next year over the Obama administration’s plan to require for-profit colleges and other vocational programs to prove that they prepare their graduates for “gainful employment.” Exactly how such a showdown would shake out is hard to predict, but the likelihood of it taking place grew significantly in recent days.
Chinese Students: Great Thinkers or Great Memorizers?
I had wanted to put this quote in from the governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, because it made me laugh. He made this remark after the NFL postponed the Sunday football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Minnesota Vikings (which was played last night and the Vikings won). The NFL called the game off because of the danger of fans getting safely to and from the stadium because of a huge snowstorm.
“We’ve become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything,” Rendell added. “If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.”
The “doing calculus on the way down” made me laugh. But then there was this interesting piece on NPR today about Chinese education. Basically, the point is that they are great at learning and memorizing facts but not very good at analytic, problem-solving thinking. Even their principals admit this but like many bureaucratic issues, it’s recognized but no one knows what to do.
State Schools Rethink Fees
Public universities across the U.S. are arguing for freedom to reap more revenue and create more efficiencies to offset dwindling state dollars.
One way, they say, is to raise tuition. At California University of Pennsylvania, a 158-year-old state school serving 9,400 students, enrollment is rising for all but the poorest students, which, in part, has led to a novel idea: replace the “low tuition for all” policy with a market-rate policy.
University officials say students from wealthier families could afford to pay more than the average $5,804 annual tuition at the state’s 14 universities. Fresh revenue from the higher tuition, they say, could be used to offer more scholarships to help the neediest students.
Indiana Governor Daniels will offer private school voucher plan
Gov. Mitch Daniels said Wednesday he will ask lawmakers to approve an education voucher system that would let low-income students use state money to help pay for private school tuition.
aniels provided few details about his proposal – including income levels at which families would qualify or the amount they could receive – but said it will be part of his larger education agenda for the 2011 session.
The governor and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett presented part of that agenda on Wednesday to the Indiana Education Roundtable, a group of education, business and labor leaders who advise the state on school issues.
But Daniels never mentioned the voucher program there. Instead, he and Bennett focused on only a few areas: Freeing schools of regulation, recognizing and rewarding high-quality teachers and limiting the issues for collective bargaining to teacher pay and benefits.
Advocating Dave Blaska for Madison School Board
Supporters of the proposal to develop charter schools in the Madison Metropolitan School District — including “academies” segregated along lines of gender — have made a lot of noise in recent weeks about how the School Board should radically rewrite rules, contracts and objectives.
Fair enough. Let’s have a debate.
Two School Board seats will be filled in the coming spring election — those of incumbents Marj Passman and Ed Hughes.
Hughes and Passman have both commented thoughtfully on the Urban League’s Madison Prep boys-only charter school proposal.
Hughes, in particular, has written extensively and relatively sympathetically about the plan on his blog.
Passman has also been sympathetic, while raising smart questions about the high costs of staffing the school as outlined.
But neither has offered the full embrace that advocates such as the Madison Urban League’s Kaleem Caire and former Dane County Board member Dave Blaska — now an enthusiastic conservative blogger — are looking for.
Our community is certainly better off with competitive school board races.
Some Va. history texts filled with errors, review finds
Kevin Sieff, via a James Dias email:
In the version of history being taught in some Virginia classrooms, New Orleans began the 1800s as a bustling U.S. harbor (instead of as a Spanish colonial one). The Confederacy included 12 states (instead of 11). And the United States entered World War I in 1916 (instead of in 1917).
These are among the dozens of errors historians have found since Virginia officials ordered a review of textbooks by Five Ponds Press, the publisher responsible for a controversial claim that African American soldiers fought for the South in large numbers during the Civil War.
“Our Virginia: Past and Present,” the textbook including that claim, has many other inaccuracies, according to historians who reviewed it. Similar problems, historians said, were found in another book by Five Ponds Press, “Our America: To 1865.” A reviewer has found errors in social studies textbooks by other publishers as well, underscoring the limits of a textbook-approval process once regarded as among the nation’s most stringent.
Delayed Child Rearing, More Stressful Lives
A new study finds that delayed marriage and childbearing are leading to increased stress for American men and women in balancing work and family obligations.
Noting that the median age for first marriage is 28 for men and 26 for women, the study, “Family Change and Time Allocation in American Families,” says, “Delayed marriage and childbearing heighten the likelihood that the greatest child rearing demands come at the same time that job and career demands are great – particularly among the well-educated.”
The study adds, “Delayed childbearing also increases the likelihood that one’s parents may begin to suffer ill health and need assistance before one’s children are fully launched.” In other words, many men and women feel hugely stretched and stressed trying to help out their not fully independent 20-something children at the same time the health of their octogenarian parents is failing.
Post-Union Disunion
Bowling Green State University trustees justified recent sweeping changes to a key governing document as a necessary response to faculty unionization, but some professors there say the board is engaged in a retaliatory power grab.
Faculty voted in October to grant collective bargaining powers to the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and the board responded Dec. 10 with changes to the Academic Charter that eliminated numerous faculty committees and stripped professors of their existing roles in the evaluations of deans, directors and chairs.
“This set of changes is allegedly done in response to collective bargaining, but there are so many changes that go beyond that, that clearly something else is afoot,” said David Jackson, president of Bowling Green State University’s Faculty Association, the AAUP union. “It certainly appears, to us anyway, that the administration is using the collective bargaining election and the need to negotiate salaries and benefits to justify wholesale changes.”
Also of concern to Jackson and others is the elimination of the faculty’s role in determining financial exigency, which universities can invoke to dismiss tenured professors. Removing even the faculty’s advisory function in this area, as the trustees have done, constitutes “a clear taking of power,” Jackson said.
Too dumb? Too fat? Too bad
It’s been well-documented that many high school grads are now too fat to meet the U.S. military’s physical requirements. Now it turns out that many of those same kids may be too dumb.
The nonprofit Education Trust released a first-ever report this week showing that more than one in five young people don’t meet the minimum standard required for Army enlistment. Among minority candidates the ineligibility rates are higher: 29 percent. In Minnesota, the disparity for black applicants was even more startling: 40 percent were found to be ineligible. Among Hispanics in Minnesota the rate was 20 percent, but among whites, it was 14.1 percent.
This is more a distressing indictment of the U.S. education system than it is a testament to today’s Cheeto-eating, Xbox-playing youth, say the authors of the report. It strips away that illusion that the military can be an easy landing ground for those not bound for college, and it suggests that national security is at stake.
So Young and So Many Pills More than 25% of Kids and Teens in the U.S. Take Prescriptions on a Regular Basis
Gage Martindale, who is 8 years old, has been taking a blood-pressure drug since he was a toddler. “I want to be healthy, and I don’t want things in my heart to go wrong,” he says.
And, of course, his mom is always there to check Gage’s blood pressure regularly with a home monitor, and to make sure the second-grader doesn’t skip a dose of his once-a-day enalapril.
These days, the medicine cabinet is truly a family affair. More than a quarter of U.S. kids and teens are taking a medication on a chronic basis, according to Medco Health Solutions Inc., the biggest U.S. pharmacy-benefit manager with around 65 million members. Nearly 7% are on two or more such drugs, based on the company’s database figures for 2009.
Doctors and parents warn that prescribing medications to children can be problematic. There is limited research available about many drugs’ effects in kids. And health-care providers and families need to be vigilant to assess the medicines’ impact, both intended and not. Although the effects of some medications, like cholesterol-lowering statins, have been extensively researched in adults, the consequences of using such drugs for the bulk of a patient’s lifespan are little understood.
Blackboard creatives Teachers are the key to providing quality mainstream education in Hong Kong
While pointing to some school governance problems that certainly need addressing, the recent Audit Commission report on Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) schools has triggered public condemnation of these schools in the absence of proper examination of the quality of education they provide. This risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
DSS schools stand somewhere between the traditional public sector and the private sector, and were part of education reform to create a more diverse schools landscape. They are subject to less government regulation and free to set their curriculum, fees and entrance requirements. Many middle-class parents unhappy with local schools find DSS an affordable substitute. They regard it as part of their taxpayer’s right under the free education policy to attract some government subsidy for their children attending schools outside the government and aided sector.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: The West and the Tyranny of Public Debt
The history of public debt is the very history of national power: how it has been won and how it has been lost. Dreams and impatience have always driven men in power to draw on the resources of others–be it slaves, the inhabitants of occupied lands, or their own children yet to be born–in order to carry out their schemes, to consolidate power, to grow their own fortunes. But never, outside periods of total war, has the debt of the world’s most powerful states grown so immense. Never has it so heavily threatened their political systems and standards of living. Public debt cannot keep growing without unleashing terrible catastrophes.
Anyone saying this today is accused of pessimism. The first signs of economic recovery, harbingers of a supposedly falling debt, are held up to contradict him. Yet we wouldn’t be the first to think ourselves uniquely able to escape the fate of other states felled by their debt, such as the Republic of Venice, Renaissance Genoa, or the Empire of Spain.
Wisconsin State Senator Seeks to Stop 4K Funding Growth, Including Madison’s Planned Program
A Republican lawmaker wants to kill Madison’s fledgling 4-year-old kindergarten program before it even begins.
Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, said Wednesday the state shouldn’t encourage new 4K programs — now in 85 percent of the state’s school districts and with three times as many students as a decade ago — because taxpayers can’t afford them.
“We have a very difficult budget here,” Grothman said in an interview. “Some of it is going to have to be solved by saying some of these massive expansions of government in the last 10 years cannot stand.”
Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad called Grothman’s proposal “very troubling.”
“I don’t know what the 4-year-olds in Madison did to offend the senator,” Nerad said. “There are plenty of studies that have indicated that it’s a good idea to invest as early as possible.”
Last month the Madison School Board approved a $12.2 million 4K program for next fall with registration beginning Feb. 7. Madison’s program is projected to draw $10 million in extra state aid in 2014 when the state’s funding formula accounts for the additional students. Overall this year, school districts are projected to collect $223 million in state aid and property taxes for 4K programs, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
Much more on Madison’s planned 4K program, here.
It appears that redistributed state tax dollars for K-12 are destined to change due to a significant budget deficit, not to mention the significant growth in spending over the past two decades. 
The recent 9% increase in Madison property taxes is due in part to changes in redistributed state tax funds.
I spoke with a person active in State politics recently about 4K funding. Evidently, some lawmakers view this program as a method to push more tax dollars to the Districts.
Taking a Gap Year Before College
Eighteen-year-old Monika Lutz had dreams of a career helping solve economic and social problems in poor nations. So after high school, she took a year off before college to work with a company, suggested by family friends, that is trying to bring solar power to a remote village in India.
A few weeks of living in a mud hut changed her mind. Exhausted by the obstacles, she says, she told herself, “I’m not ready. I can’t dedicate my life to this yet.”
When Ms. Lutz starts college in the fall, she plans to explore other careers. “If I hadn’t gone on a gap year, I might have spent four years and $200,000 on tuition to end up in that same country and find out the same thing,” says Ms. Lutz, of Boulder, Colo.
College-admission letters are starting to roll in, but a growing number of students will decide instead to take a year off to try out potential careers or broaden their horizons. Gap-year activities range from doing volunteer work or taking classes, to working for pay, traveling or tackling outdoor adventures.
Some Data-Miners Ready to Reveal What They Know
Seeking to head off escalating scrutiny over Internet privacy, a group of online tracking rivals are building a service that lets consumers see what information those companies know about them.
The project is the first of its kind in the fast-growing business of tracking Internet users and selling personal details about their lives. Called the Open Data Partnership, it will allow consumers to edit the interests, demographics and other profile information collected about them. It also will allow people to choose to not be tracked at all.
When the service launches in January, users will be able to see information about them from eight data and tracking firms, including BlueKai Inc., Lotame Solutions Inc. and eXelate Inc.
Additional tracking firms are expected to join once the system is live, but more than a hundred tracking firms and big Internet companies including Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. are not involved.
Time for Big Cuts in Education Spending?
America spends far more on education than countries like Germany, Japan, Australia, Ireland, and Italy, both as a percentage of its economy, and in absolute terms. Yet despite this lavish government support for education, college tuition in the U.S. is skyrocketing, reaching levels of $50,000 or more a year at some colleges, and colleges are effectively rewarded for increasing tuition by mushrooming federal financial-aid spending. Americans can’t read or do math as well as the Japanese, even though America spends way more (half again more) on education than Japan does, as a percentage of income, according to the CIA World Fact Book.
In light of this, it is easy to see why some education experts like Neal McCluskey are floating the idea of “draconian education cuts” to shake up a rotten educational establishment.
These green thumbs sprout early
Children in an outdoor classroom at an East L.A. preschool use natural materials and the environment as a learning laboratory. It’s part of a national campaign to connect youngsters to the outdoors.
On a visit to a Home Depot one day, Cynthia Munoz was surprised when her 4-year-old son began clamoring to plant flowers, trees and a strawberry patch at their La Puente home. She was taken aback again when he knew exactly what tools to use in their backyard garden.
But he’d already had plenty of practice at his preschool, the Brooklyn Early Education Center in East Los Angeles. The school has an outdoor classroom, part of a growing trend in California and other states of using natural materials and the environment as a learning laboratory.
Student Loans: Legislation to Clarify Co-signer Obligations
When a student dies, the bill for his student loans often lives on – to the painful surprise and dismay of his co-signers. New Senate legislation seeks to change that, by requiring lenders to make clear the obligations of co-signers in the event of death.
Introduced yesterday, the “Christopher Bryski Student Loan Protection Act,” sponsored by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.), is the culmination of a multi-year battle fought by the Bryski family, profiled by the Journal in August. In July 2006, Christopher Bryski died at the age of 25, after an accident left him with a brain injury that put him in a persistent vegetative state for two years. Today, his parents continue to make monthly payments on the $44,500 in private student loans that Mr. Bryski took out to attend Rutgers University. The legislation introduced yesterday would require lenders to provide students and parents with more information about what happens to loans in the event of death.
A first round of student loan and financial reform legislation already passed this year but did not address what happens to private student loans in the event of a student death. Federal student loans can generally be discharged if a student dies or becomes permanently disabled. But private student lenders, such as Sallie Mae, Citibank and Wells Fargo, are not required to discharge loans in the event of death or disability, leaving co-signers, typically parents, on the hook for the balance. Two years ago, Christopher’s brother, Ryan Bryski, began talking to lawmakers about a bill. It’s an amendment to the Truth in Lending Act and the Higher Education Act of 1965.
Refusing to Play ‘Whipping Boy’
The American Academy for Liberal Education has withdrawn its petition for renewal of recognition by the U.S. Education Department’s advisory panel on accreditation, which, after having been dismantled and reconfigured, held its first meeting in over two years Wednesday.
The accreditor’s decision came as a surprise to many in attendance at the first day of meetings held by the new-look National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity. Earlier this week, AALE officials had vowed to fight the Education Department staff’s recommendation that NACIQI urge Education Secretary Arne Duncan to deny recognition for their accreditation body because of its “continued noncompliance.”
Ralph A. Rossum, chairman of the AALE board and Salvatori Professor of American Constitutionalism at Claremont McKenna College, told Inside Higher Ed that the agency decided to withdraw from the process of seeking renewed recognition because of the lack of time his agency was given by the Education Department to defend itself. He noted that AALE received the final report of Education Department staff members — which contained 45 citations of noncompliance — the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
Peking University out to lure Hong Kong’s brightest
Peking University, once the natural choice for China’s elite students, launches its biggest recruitment campaign in recent years in Hong Kong today as it and other top institutions face growing competition from the region and the world.
In a hard-sell roadshow aimed at Hong Kong students and their parents, it will hold three recruitment sessions, starting with one tonight at the University of Hong Kong.
Oklahoma’s new education chief says classes are too easy
When state schools Superintendent-elect Janet Barresi takes office, her first priority is going to be stepping up the difficulty and rigor in schools so that more kids are ready for college when they graduate.
Only 2.4 percent of students in Oklahoma’s graduating class of 2009 scored in the upper tiers of national math exams, a ratio that places the state among recently industrialized nations such as Bulgaria, Uruguay and Serbia, according to a study released this month.
State schools Superintendent-elect Janet Barresi said the study, which also ranks Oklahoma among the worst 10 states in producing top-achieving math students, should be a wake-up call against the status quo.
“Let’s quit making excuses,” she said. “Let’s accept it, and use it as a challenge, Oklahoma.”
2010 Saw A Children’s App Tsunami
Call it the chicken/egg effect, but Apple’s iPad, which has now sold over 1 million and is listed as this years most desired gift by kids (aka the chicken) has resulted in a dramatic demand for children’s apps (aka the eggs). While this new iTunes-based $.99 per app publishing model has been a shock to publishers, it’s great news for a curious child stuck in the back seat on a long trip. This year saw the release of zinc roe’s Tickle Tap Apps (like Sound Shaker), and several new titles from Duck Duck Moose, like Park Math, with adjustable age levels. If you’re interested in ebooks, have a look at two of our favorites: Bartleby’s Book of Buttons and Nash Smasher! And any doubts about the validity of the iPad in the classroom have evaporated thanks to apps like Symmetry Shuffle, Cut the Rope and Motion Math. For dessert, save some room for Smule’s Magic Piano.
Obese German children ‘should face’ classroom weigh-ins
Germany’s main school teaching body has called for classroom weigh-ins and the enforced removal of ultra-overweight pupils to combat rising obesity in society.
Josef Kraus, the DL teaching federation president, said: “When parents don’t make sure their children eat healthily and get enough exercise, then it can be the beginning of child abuse in extreme cases.” He said school doctors should take a more active role and conduct regular consultations and weight measurements of students. The should also report problem cases to authorities.
“When parental notices about overweight children are thrown to the wind, then youth services must be contacted and as a last resort there should be cuts to their parental benefits or welfare,” Mr Kraus said.
His remarks follow the release of official figures which showed that 51 per cent of Germans are considered overweight. Sixty per cent of men and 43 per cent of women have a Body Mass Index (BMI) – a measure calculated by body weight and height – of more than 25, up from 56 per cent and 40 per cent respectively in 1999.
Green Bay educators worry changes to political landscape could affect local school funding
Local educators say purse strings could tighten at both the state and federal levels when new Republican lawmakers take office in January.
And that has some school officials concerned about funding and revenue limits.
Mike Blecha, who sits on the Green Bay School Board and serves as its legislative liaison, noted that state rules limit school revenue increases to $200 per student, down from $275 in 2008-09. That means a school board’s ability to raise property taxes becomes limited.
Blecha said he’s heard the limit could be reduced to as little as $100 per student. Small, rural districts or districts with declining enrollment could be forced to shut down if levy limits fall that low, he said.
Brave new world: Teachers find benefits of digital technology
The sign on the classroom wall prohibits the use of handheld communication devices, yet on this December morning all 28 students in Lori Hunt’s algebra II class are texting on their cell phones. But these Middleton High School students are not a defiant bunch of teens.
With Hunt’s blessing, they’re using their cell phones to text answers to math problems. Every answer appears, anonymously, on a wall-mounted, interactive, electronic whiteboard all students can see.
For Hunt, it provides an instant way of knowing how many students understand the problem and can calculate the answer. For the students, it allows them to use a familiar technology to explore challenging new concepts.
Cheaters Find an Adversary in Technology
Mississippi had a problem born of the age of soaring student testing and digital technology. High school students taking the state’s end-of-year exams were using cellphones to text one another the answers.
With more than 100,000 students tested, proctors could not watch everyone — not when some teenagers can text with their phones in their pockets.
So the state called in a company that turns technology against the cheats: it analyzes answer sheets by computer and flags those with so many of the same questions wrong or right that the chances of random agreement are astronomical. Copying is the almost certain explanation.
Since the company, Caveon Test Security, began working for Mississippi in 2006, cheating has declined about 70 percent, said James Mason, director of the State Department of Education’s Office of Student Assessment. “People know that if you cheat there is an extremely high chance you’re going to get caught,” Mr. Mason said.
Some places’ integration seats vanish: Aid formula makes big players prefer open enrollment to 220
Some of the biggest players in the Chapter 220 program will not accept new minority students for the coming school year, a move likely to continue the trend of declining participation in the school integration program.
School boards for Elmbrook, Menomonee Falls and Wauwatosa, which collectively enrolled more than a quarter of all Chapter 220 students last school year, have voted to not open up any new seats to the program in the 2011-’12 school year.
The action comes as districts have increasingly favored the state’s open enrollment public school choice program as a way to attract out-of-district students – and increased state aid – to their schools.
“The reason is largely financially related,” Elmbrook School District Superintendent Matt Gibson said.
While the money that districts collect for open enrollment students comes on top of the revenue limits allowed by the state, Chapter 220 aid does not raise extra revenue for school districts. Instead, the state aid that districts receive through Chapter 220 goes toward lowering district property taxes.
Proposed bill: Make colleges’ spending public
Want to know how much the University of South Carolina spends to mow the grass on the Horseshoe? What about how much Clemson University doles out to clean the carpet in its board room?
If legislation expected to be prefiled in the state House of Representatives passes, the answer to those questions and many, many others will be a few mouse clicks away for South Carolinians. The legislation, which will be called The Higher Education Transparency Act of 2011 and which was backed by House Speaker Bobby Harrell at a press conference Wednesday, will require that public colleges and universities post every penny of their expenditures online.
Much of the schools’ spending is already posted on the Web, but Republican legislators have leaned on school officials to go further.
Wanted: Candidates for Madison school board
The spring election of 2011 is shaping up as one of the most exciting in years, with impressive fields of candidates for state Supreme Court, Dane County executive and mayor of Madison.
But that does not mean that there are enough candidates. Plenty of races for circuit judge, school board, city council and village and town government posts have attracted only incumbents. These positions form the fabric of local government. At a time when tough decisions have to be made about the scope and character of the operations these elected officials oversee, it’s important that the best and brightest contenders step forward.
Luckily, Wisconsin maintains a low bar for getting on the ballot in local races.
Tracking Students to 200 Percent of Normal Time: Effect on Institutional Graduation Rates
This Issue Brief examines institutional graduation rates reported at 200 percent of normal time, a time frame that corresponds to completing a bachelor’s degree in 8 years and an associate’s degree in 4 years. The report compares these rates with those reported at 150 percent and 100 percent of normal time for all nine institutional sectors. The purpose is to determine whether the longer time frame results in higher institutional graduation rates.
College Students on the Web
Summary:
Students are multitaskers who move through websites rapidly, often missing the item they come to find. They’re enraptured by social media but reserve it for private conversations and thus visit company sites from search engines.
College students are an important target audience for many websites. They’re young, they’re about town, they spend whatever money they have (often online), and they frequently look for many different types of information. For sure, they’re an online generation spending — or squandering — large amounts of time on the Web.
User Research
To learn how students use websites, we conducted observational research with 43 students in 4 countries (Australia, Germany, the UK, and the USA). Participants ranged in age from 18 to 24 years and included 18 men and 25 women. Our test participants attended the following educational institutions:
Charter Schools and Equal Opportunity
Remember Norman Rockwell’s stark painting of the little African-American girl being escorted into a New Orleans schoolhouse by two deputy U.S. marshals? Today that little girl, Ruby Bridges, is working to open a public charter school in that same school building, which will house a civil rights museum as well.
Wouldn’t it be strange for a civil rights figure like Bridges to join a movement that was “accelerating re-segregation by race,” as charter schools were characterized in a recent Miller-McCune.com article? Yet that’s what some critics would have us believe, though more than a million black and Latino parents have chosen charters as a way of opening doors for their own children.
Majority of U.S. Family Physicians Prescribe Placebos
Ted Kaptchuk at Harvard Medical School and colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center conducted a clinical trial and found a placebo pill without any active ingredient was better than no treatment at helping patients with irritable bowel syndrome.
The therapeutic effect observed in the IBS patients who received the placebo treatment was not the common placebo effect, which is something observed in patients who do not know they are taking a dummy pill in the first place.
In this study, the researchers actually told those on the placebo treatment that they were using a placebo pill, but not a medicine.
The study published on December 22 in PLoS ONE suggests that any placebo treatment (which at least won’t cause adverse or side effect) can be better than no treatment.
What Are Taxes For? Should the primary purpose of taxation be to support the government or maximize economic growth?
Sarah, Mitt and several tea party groups say the tax compromise with Barack Obama is a bad idea, sells out the GOP’s anti-spending promises and, worst of all, helps you-know-who’s re-election chances. But Newt, Mike and Tim think it’s a decent deal. Far be it from me to interrupt the GOP’s holiday spirit. Let us stipulate, however, that the furtive, ragged tax bill being let out the back door of a lame duck Congress proves–officially and conclusively–that tax policy in the United States has hit the wall.
A compelling, even frightening article in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal about a tax system that is a morass of extenders, extrusions, loopholes, credits and bubble-gum fixes ended with the story of a grievously ill cancer patient balancing the benefits of taking an experimental drug against the estate-tax benefits to his family of an early death.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Taxes and the Top Percentile Myth A 2008 OECD study of leading economies found that ‘taxation is most progressively distributed in the United States.’ More so than Sweden or France.
When President Obama announced a two-year stay of execution for taxpayers on Dec. 7, he made it clear that he intends to spend those two years campaigning for higher marginal tax rates on dividends, capital gains and salaries for couples earning more than $250,000. “I don’t see how the Republicans win that argument,” said the president.
Despite the deficit commission’s call for tax reform with fewer tax credits and lower marginal tax rates, the left wing of the Democratic Party remains passionate about making the U.S. tax system more and more progressive. They claim this is all about payback–that raising the highest tax rates is the fair thing to do because top income groups supposedly received huge windfalls from the Bush tax cuts. As the headline of a Robert Creamer column in the Huffington Post put it: “The Crowd that Had the Party Should Pick up the Tab.”
Arguments for these retaliatory tax penalties invariably begin with estimates by economists Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics and Emmanuel Saez of U.C. Berkeley that the wealthiest 1% of U.S. households now take home more than 20% of all household income.
‘Well-Educated’
From Examiner.com, courtesy of Hans Bader, counsel at the Competitive Enterprise Institute:
Much of college “education” is a waste of time. I learned more practical law in six weeks of studying for the bar exam and a couple summers of working for law firms than I did in three years of law school. I spent much of my time at Harvard Law School watching “Married With Children” or arguing with classmates about politics, rather than studying (much of what I did study was useless). Even students who were high on drugs had no difficulty graduating.
(Higher education is no guarantee of even basic literacy. When I worked at the Department of Education handling administrative appeals, I was dismayed by the poor writing skills of the graduate students who lodged complaints against their universities).
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Walker, Barrett seek checks on unions
They didn’t seem to agree on anything during the gubernatorial election, but Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is hoping he and Governor-elect Scott Walker can find common ground on at least one issue in 2011.
Both leaders want to rein in public employee unions – just not the same ones.
Walker, who has tangled with Milwaukee County unions as county executive, is gearing up for a clash with state workers, seeking wage and benefit cuts and threatening legislation to weaken or eliminate state unions’ bargaining rights if they won’t agree to concessions.
Barrett, meanwhile, wants Walker’s help to change another law that gives Milwaukee police unions extra bargaining leverage. The mayor also wants to block the police and firefighters’ unions from winning one of their top legislative priorities: abolishing residency requirements.
While most public employee unions backed Barrett, the Democratic nominee for governor, the Milwaukee Police Association and the Milwaukee Professional Firefighters Association endorsed Walker, the Republican. Now both unions’ presidents accuse Barrett of seeking retribution for those endorsements, a charge he denies.
The Police and the Schools
School officials across the country are revisiting “zero-tolerance” disciplinary policies under which children are sometimes arrested for profanity, talking back to teachers or adolescent behavior that once would have been resolved in meetings with parents. The reappraisals are all to the good given that those who get suspended or arrested are more likely to drop out and become entangled in the criminal justice system permanently.
The New York City Council clearly had this link in mind when it passed a new law earlier this week that will bring long overdue transparency to the school disciplinary process. Under the Student Safety Act, which takes effect in 90 days, the New York Police Department’s school security division will be required to provide clear and comprehensive data that show how many students are arrested or issued summonses at school and why. School officials will also have to provide similarly detailed information on suspensions.
Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution
The world’s first technology for writing was invented not by poets or prophets or the chroniclers of kings; it came from bean counters. The Sumerian cuneiform script–made up of symbols incised on soft clay–grew out of a scheme for keeping accounts and inventories. Curiously, this story of borrowing arithmetical apparatus for literary purposes has been repeated in recent times. The prevailing modern instrument for writing–the computer–also began as (and remains) a device for number crunching.
Dennis Baron’s extended essay A Better Pencil looks back over the entire history of writing technologies (clay tablets, pens, pencils, typewriters), but the focus is on the recent transition to digital devices. His title implies a question. Is the computer really a better pencil? Will it lead to better writing? There is a faction that thinks otherwise:
What’s High School For?
We all want more young people to attend college. Who would argue with that? Politicians and educators at all levels extol the obvious virtues, from enhanced earning potential to a greater satisfaction in life. One increasingly popular way to encourage college attendance is through dual enrollment, in which students take courses in high school for both high school and college credit.
In theory, dual enrollment enables high school students to accrue college credits for very little cost and imbues them with a sense of confidence that they can complete college work. If students can succeed in college classes while still in high school, conventional wisdom holds, they will be more likely to matriculate at the postsecondary level.
In Indiana, dual enrollment is encouraged at the highest levels, with state Education Secretary Tony Bennett maintaining that at least 25 percent of high school graduates should pass at least one Advanced Placement exam or International Baccalaureate exam, or earn at least three semester hours of college credit during high school.
In reality, though, dual enrollment may do more harm than good.
An Interview with Kaleem Caire
Caire believes the Madison community must first address its at-risk population in a radically different way to level the playing field before fundamental change can come.
“Madison schools don’t know how to educate African Americans,” says Caire. “It’s not that they can’t. Most of the teachers could, and some do, valiantly. But the system is not designed for that to happen.”
The system is also not designed for the 215 annual school days and 5 p.m. end times that Madison Prep proposes. That, and the fact that he wants the school to choose teachers based on their specific skill sets and cultural backgrounds, is why Caire is seeking to proceed without teachers union involvement.
“Ultimately,” he says, “the collective bargaining agreement dictates the operations of schools and teaching and learning in [the Madison school district]. Madison Prep will require much more autonomy.”
Many aspects of Caire’s proposed school seem rooted in his own life experience. Small class sizes, just like at St. James. Uniforms, just like the Navy. Majority African American and Latino kids, eliminating the isolation he grew up with. Meals at school and co-curricular activities rather than extracurricular, so that poor students are not singled out or left out.
Teachers the students can identify with. Boys only, in the hopes of fostering the sensitive, supportive male peer groups so critical to Caire’s evolving sense of self over the years.
Much more on Kaleem, here.
The Art of Childraising
John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist, has a lifelong fascination with how the mind reacts to and organizes information. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School–a provocative book that takes on the way our schools and work environments are designed. His latest book is a must-read for parents and early-childhood educators: Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child From Zero to Five You might ask, “What does this topic have to do with small business? Well, if you’re having issues with your kids, you’re not going to be on top of your game at the office.
Q: What’s the gist of what one should do to foster emotionally health and intellectually successful kids?
Wisconsin School choice could expand
Walker said an expansion of school choice likely would be included in the budget he introduces early next year. Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills), co-chairwoman of the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee, said she would be interested in considering bills on choice even before that.
The other co-chairman, Rep. Robin Vos (R-Rochester), said he would leave it to Walker to decide whether to include it in the budget, but he wants to address school choice at some point in the two-year legislative session.
Both legislators said they initially favored expanding the program to select areas before making it available statewide. They named Beloit, Racine and Green Bay as possibilities.
“I absolutely do not think we have the ability to expand across the state all at once,” Vos said.
Vos in 2007 wrote a budget provision that would have expanded school choice to Racine County. The Assembly, then controlled by Republicans, approved a version of the budget with that provision but it was taken out in a deal reached with Democrats who ran the Senate.
Book: A Revolutionary Adventure
Join Mattie and Josh, the sister-brother team who discover the mysterious Chaos Cave. Ghostly breezes chill their spines as they try to interpret strange petro glyphs and a note of warning. The kids stumble upon a skeleton whose bones rest around an ancient Chinese Puzzle Box. Inside the box they find a ring–a ring that will change their lives forever.
Chaos Cave transports Mattie and Josh on A Revolutionary Adventure as the kids travel through time to Boston, 1775. They encounter the evil Archie, who murdered his own brother and now seeks the ring for all the power it holds. While they desperately try to evade Archie, they must also find a way to return safely to their own time without altering the course of important historic events.
What some call cheating can help learning
My daughter is with us for the holidays, having survived her first barrage of law school exams in California. The exams were longer and more difficult than anything I ever had as a graduate student in Chinese studies. But her professors allowed students to have notes with them. This got my attention because her boyfriend at a neighboring law school was forbidden to have notes in two of his exams.
At these two institutions dedicated to equality under the law, what my daughter did during exams at one could have been considered cheating if she attended the other. What are we to make of the uneven nature of such rules, just as unpredictable as those found in our public K-12 schools? Open-book exams are okay some places, not in others. Cooperating with friends on homework is encouraged by some teachers, denounced elsewhere as a sign of declining American moral fiber.
School in patriotic storm after principal allows students to opt out of the Pledge of Allegiance
A school was at the centre of a patriotism row after the principal sent home permission slips allowing students to opt out of saying the Pledge of Allegiance.
The letter home sparked an outcry in Brookline, Massachusetts. Parents were asked to tick off whether or not they wanted their children to participate when the principal started reciting the pledge weekly over the school’s public address system.
‘It’s PC ridiculousness,’ said parent Sean Bielat. ‘Remember when the presumption was that we were all good Americans and we all loved the country and we had no problem saying, “Yes, I pledge allegiance”?’
The Education Revolution: A Town Hall Meeting In Pewaukee with Dick Morris
via a Brenda Baas email:
American 15-year-olds rank 35th out of 57 countries in math and literacy, behind almost all industrialized nations!
America shouldn’t be 35th in anything. It’s time to restore America’s exceptionalism!
Americans for Prosperity Wisconsin will host an exciting town hall with Fox News Commentator Dick Morris.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Country Springs Hotel
2810 Golf Road
Pewaukee, WI 53072
7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
You can register for this free-ticketed event under Milwaukee:http://www.eventbrite.com/directory?q=Education+revolution+&loc=United+States&page=1.
Be a part of the revolution to restore America’s exceptionalism! Dick Morris will be taking your town hall questions at The Education Revolution – Restoring American Exceptionalism Town Hall!
Fascinating.
NC education board to require 2 US history classes
North Carolina high school students soon must take and pass two American history courses to graduate.
The State Board of Education approved Thursday a revised social studies curriculum for public schools that will expand study of U.S. history from one year to two to ensure more material is covered.
Wisconsin’s academic luster fading
They called it the “Canada effect” – the phenomenon in which students from a string of states along the country’s northern border regularly beat the rest of the nation on academic tests.
As recently as 1992, only three states – all from northern climates – had significantly higher average scores than Wisconsin in fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math. No states scored significantly better than Wisconsin in fourth-grade math national assessments.
By 2009, this effect was wiped out for Wisconsin’s students. The state’s fourth grade reading scores placed statistically ahead of only 12 states and the District of Columbia. On the fourth- and eighth-grade math tests, the state’s students beat 26 states and the District of Columbia, results that could be considered slightly above average.
“We have lulled ourselves into thinking we’re really, really good,” said state Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), who will become chairman of the Senate Education Committee. “We’re OK, but we need to get better because other states are doing more at improving.”
With research showing the most important school factor in student performance is the effectiveness of classroom teachers, Wisconsin’s political and education leaders have called louder than ever for improving the quality of the state’s educators.
A few awards to mark the good and bad this year in education
The last Sunday of the year and time for our first, perhaps annual, awards for noteworthy things that hapened in education around here in 2010.
Unsung Hero of the Year Award: Robert Kattman, director of the Office of Charter Schools at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The soft spoken former North Shore superintendent has been both supportive and demanding in building a roster of a dozen charter schools authorized by the UW Board of Regents. The list includes some of the best schools in Milwaukee, such as Milwaukee College Prep, Bruce Guadalupe, Seeds of Health Elementary, Woodlands School, Veritas High School. If the charter movement was like this nationwide, there would be far less controversy about these independent, publicly funded schools. Kattman is retiring at the end of the school year. Thanks for all your efforts.
The High Standards Start Here Award: State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers. Evers quickly signed up Wisconsin to be part of the “core standards” effort to bring coherence to the mish mash of what different states want students to learn. If the follow-through is good, it will raise Wisconsin’s expectations and, one hopes, student performance in years to come.
Most Important Data of the Year Award: The urban school district results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This was the first time MPS took part and its students could be compared directly to those in 17 other central city school systems. The results were generally pretty distressing. Do we want our local education motto to be: “Thank God for Detroit – at least someone is worse than us”? The data should remain chastening and motivating to everyone involved in local education.
Memphis suburbs consider creating independent school systems
Shelby County suburban mayors are exploring options to escape the prospect of Memphis City and Shelby County schools consolidation.
“People are very clearly concerned about the integrity of the public schools that their children attend in Germantown,” said Mayor Sharon Goldsworthy.
She and a few other mayors are considering creating independent school systems in their cities. Goldsworthy said they’d have to overcome a state prohibition on Tennessee municipalities starting school systems.
“Everything needs to be examined,” Goldsworthy said. “… There are an enormous number of questions and very few answers at the moment about any of this. Our responsibility as elected officials is to get those answers as quickly as possible so we can identify the best course of action for our community.”
iTunes is Taking the Education World by Storm
Is your library out of your favorite book? Would you like to take your book home for break? Want to read your favorite book on a plane ride or road trip? University of South Florida is making this very easy now. iTunes and USF have started Lit2Go:
a collaboration between the Florida Department of Education and the University of South Florida College of Education — supports literacy by providing access to recordings of historically and culturally significant literature. The extensive collection of hundreds of audiobooks, stories, and poems, including classics such as Alice in Wonderland, Aesop’s Fables, and A Tale of Two Cities — all for free on iTunes.
Now there is no reason for not finishing your book report! Schools are making it increasingly easy to access information from several sources. It is a more efficient, a green way of teaching and learning, not to mention for free. The iTunes U world instantly expands your reach to knowledge and information. There are options to research by subject, school, and company, all at the tip of your fingers!
Florida Governor Elect Scott’s schools vision: Power to the parents
Gov.-elect Rick Scott’s education team laid out reform ideas that would give parents state money to pick schools for their children and authority to remove them from a subpar teacher’s class.
That theme echoes throughout the 20 sprawling pages of reform ideas that Gov.-elect Rick Scott’s education team unveiled this week.
Parents should get state money to pick their own schools, public or private. Parents should decide what reform model is best to jump-start their children’s school. Parents should be able to remove their child from an underperforming teacher’s class.
“The parent is the ultimate accountability,” said Patricia Levesque, a close advisor to former Gov. Jeb Bush and a leader of Scott’s education transition team. “They know what’s best for their child. To substitute someone else’s judgment . . . is wrong.”
How many minorities rejected by most selective high school?
It has been exactly a month since Jeanie Meikle, a frequent reader of this blog, asked me this good question:
“In all the articles I have read about TJ [the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, the most selective secondary school in the country] and its failures of inclusiveness, I have never seen the statistics as to how many (and %) of applicants were African American or Hispanic or what the acceptance rate of those applicants was. … So do you by any chance know what the numbers are?”
I didn’t, but I asked Fairfax County schools spokesman Paul Regnier and he got them for me. The delay in posting them is entirely my fault. All of the sports teams in Washington have been collapsing into shapeless mediocrity, and worse. I needed time to reflect on that.
The admissions statistics for the Jefferson class of 2014, this year’s ninth-graders, show there were 3,119 applicants, of which 480, or 15.4 percent, were admitted. This included 272 boys (16.4 percent of those that applied) and 208 girls (14.2 percent of applicants.)
Ending deception in school safety reports
There was something strange in The Washington Post a week ago. A chart on page A16, using data provided by the D.C. public school system, showed that in late summer and fall 2009, Spingarn High School had by far the lowest number of assaults, thefts, threats and other crimes. There were just six incidents in four months compared with an average of 31 in the other eight high schools assessed.
At that time, teachers at this allegedly safest of all regular D.C. high schools were reporting a rash of crimes and classroom intrusions. The situation became so intolerable that by January they had persuaded D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee to replace the Spingarn principal.
How could the incidents being reported by security guards under school district rules be so different from what people at the school were experiencing? Why did Rhee ignore the data in changing the school’s leadership and yet her successor, Kaya Henderson, used data from similar security incident reports last week to replace the principal at Dunbar High?
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Pensions Push Taxes Higher Cities Tap Homeowners for Revenue as Workers’ Retirement, Health Costs Rise
Cities across the nation are raising property taxes, largely citing rising pension and health-care costs for their employees and retirees.
In Pennsylvania, the township of Upper Moreland is bumping up property taxes for residents by 13.6% in 2011. Next door the city of Philadelphia this year increased the tax 9.9%. In New York, Saratoga Springs will collect 4.4% more in property taxes in 2011; Troy will increase taxes by 1.9%.
Property-tax increases aren’t unusual, in part because the taxes are among the main sources of local revenue. But officials say more and larger increases are taking hold. “This year we have seen a dramatic increase in our cities and towns having to increase property taxes” for pensions and other expenses, said Jack Garner, executive director of the Pennsylvania League of Cities and Municipalities.
Flu Spreads Easily in High Schools, Study Suggests
By outfitting students and teachers with wireless sensors, researchers simulated how the flu might spread through a typical American high school and found more than three-quarters of a million opportunities for infection daily.
Over the course of a single school day, students, teachers and staff came into close proximity of one another 762,868 times — each a potential occasion to spread illness.
The flu, like the common cold and whooping cough, spreads through tiny droplets that contain the virus, said lead study author Marcel Salathe, an assistant professor of biology at Pennsylvania State University.
Education Secretary Sees Little Difference in Teachers with Master’s Degrees
There is a major budget crunch for schools around southern Nevada. That is why some people are questioning whether teachers should be getting a bigger salary simply because they have a master’s degree.
The U.S. Secretary of Education says there’s little evidence students are getting any better education from teachers who have advanced degrees. Secretary Arne Duncan delivered a speech recently on how financially challenged districts could do more with less.
Teachers who have masters degrees typically earn $5,000 more in annual salary.
How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better
Mona Mourshed, Chinezi Chijioke, Michael Barber, via several kind readers:
“We analyzed 20 systems from around the world all with improving but differing levels of performance and examined how each has achieved significant, sustained, and widespread gains in student outcomes, as measured by international and national assessments. The report was based on more than 200 interviews with stakeholders in school systems and an analysis of some 600 interventions they carried out two strands of research comprising what we believe is the most comprehensive database of global school system reform ever assembled. It identifies the reform elements replicable for school systems elsewhere, as well as those elements that are context specific, as they move from poor to fair to good to great to excellent performance.
Among other findings, the report shows that a school system can improve from any starting point and can become significantly more effective within six years. The research suggests that all improving systems implement similar sets of interventions to move from one particular performance level to the next, irrespective of culture, geography, politics, or history. A consistent cluster of interventions moves systems from poor to fair performance, a second cluster from fair to good performance, a third from good to great performance, and yet another from great to excellent performance. Although reaching each performance stage involves a common set of interventions, systems may sequence, time, and roll them out quite differently.
The Real War on Christmas: No Teaching of Religion
It’s a holiday ritual as predictable as Santa showing up at your local mall: overheated rhetoric about the “War on Christmas.” A lowlight this year was a feature on The O’Reilly Factor about a letter from the Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union urging school districts to make holiday celebrations inclusive. Through O’Reilly’s prism, the letter — quoted selectively — was an attempt to squelch Christmas. In reality, the letter just asked school districts to avoid celebrations focusing exclusively on a single religion. It was more common sense than state-coerced atheism.
Unfortunately, once you cut through the blather on cable news, there is a real, if much less discussed, problem in that public schools are skittish about teaching much about religion. Although there is little hard data, the consensus among those who study the issue is that to the extent world religions are taught, they are treated superficially, usually with the help of just a few textbook pages that have been heavily sanitized to avoid even the hint of controversy. And that’s not good news if you believe a working knowledge of the world’s religions and their history is an important aspect of a well-rounded education.
The Case for Adoption The story of the baby boy who was floated into the bulrushes along the Nile reminds us that the instinct to care for castaway children is ancient and inborn.
This is a season that begins with the story of a couple that wanted a family. Mary and Joseph had some high-profile intervention, of course. But when modern couples who want children find themselves frustrated, their first reaction these days is often to get to a fertility clinic.
Many couples pay tens of thousands of dollars for rounds of medical wizardry instead of adopting children who are already among us, crying for our love and support. I think some of the people who choose assisted fertility may be missing out on a miracle.
I know that the impulse to bear children is deep. My wife and I tried, in the time honored way, for many years, and then with the assistance and injections of fertility experts. But at some point, the costs began to match those of an adoption and prompted us to ask, “Why are we doing this? There are already so many millions of children out there.”
Adoption is as old as Abraham-and-Sarah-style begetting. To sit at a Seder dinner holding daughters in your lap (our two girls were left along roadsides in China) and hear the story of a baby boy who was floated into the bulrushes along the Nile, reminds you that the instinct to care for castaway children is ancient and inborn. When disease, slaughter or smiting felled or scattered families, friends and even enemies took in and loved the children left behind.
The most-read man in the world
MATTHEW CARTER, a type designer and the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant, was recently approached in the street near his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A woman greeted him by name. “Have we met?” Mr Carter asked. No, she said, her daughter had pointed him out when they were driving down the street a few days before. “Is your daughter a graphic designer?” he inquired. “She’s in sixth grade,” came the reply.
Mr Carter sits near the pinnacle of an elite profession. No more than several thousand type designers ply the trade worldwide, only a few hundred earn their keep by it, and only several dozens–most of them dead–have their names on the lips of discerning aficionados. Then, there is Mr Carter. He has never sought recognition, but it found him, and his underappreciated craft, in part thanks to a “New Yorker” profile in 2005. Now, even schoolchildren (albeit discerning ones) seem to know who he is and what he does. However, the reason is probably not so much the beauty and utility of his faces, both of which are almost universally acknowledged. Rather, it is Georgia and Verdana. Mr Carter conjured up both fonts in the 1990s for Microsoft, which released them with its Internet Explorer in the late 1990s and bundled them into Windows, before disseminating them as a free download.
Why top students don’t want to teach
MckInsey Quarterly, via a Rick Kiley email:
Efforts to help US schools become more effective generally focus on improving the skills of current teachers or keeping the best and ejecting the least effective ones. The issue of who should actually become teachers has received comparatively little attention. Yet the world’s top-performing systems–in Finland, Singapore, and South Korea–recruit 100 percent of their teaching corps from students in the top third of their classes.
A McKinsey survey of nearly 1,500 top-third US college students confirms that a major effort would be needed to attract them to teaching. Among top-third students not planning to enter the profession, for example, only 33 percent believe that they would be able to support a family if they did. The stakes are high: recent McKinsey research found that an ongoing achievement gap between US students and those in academically top-performing countries imposes the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession. To learn more, read “Attracting and retaining top talent in US teaching” (September 2010).
On “Small Schools” in New York City
MARGARET WARNER: Now: making schools smaller, yet another plan to deliver better educations to urban schoolchildren.
Special correspondent John Tulenko reports from New York City, where the outgoing schools chancellor is a big supporter of the idea.
JOHN TULENKO: Two years ago, when Justin Martinez started ninth grade, he was one of 2,000 students at Bayard Rustin High School in New York City.
JUSTIN MARTINEZ, student: When you walk the halls, it’s, like, so packed. And then, when you’re in the classrooms, some kids don’t even have a seat. So, it’s like you’re standing up, you’re sitting on the floor, you’re sitting on the teacher’s desk. There are so many kids in the room that the teacher thinks you’re doing good, and you may not even understand what’s going on. That’s how bad it was.
JOHN TULENKO: Justin’s high school had a 50 percent graduation rate, but the problems there went deeper.
JUSTIN MARTINEZ: I almost got shot. I was going to my eighth period classroom, going up the stairs, and a gang came up to me, approached me, and asked me questions. And, at the end, he pointed put a gun in my face.
JOHN TULENKO: So, what did you do?
Test-driven education won’t generate future leaders
In a report based on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a test of half a million 15-year-old students in 65 countries, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned Western countries of the prospect of losing their knowledge and skill base.
In contrast, several Asian countries such as South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore outperformed most other countries. China’s Shanghai took the PISA test for the first time and ranked first in all three areas: reading, mathematics and science (The Jakarta Post, Dec. 9, 2010). The Chinese government has been lauded for its investment in human capital.
It is ironic that just as PISA is highly regarded as a prestigious measure and the world is impressed by Shanghai’s achievement, insiders’ perspectives reveal skeptical and critical thoughts of the results.
One critical response came from Jiang Xueqin, a deputy principal of Peking University High School and director of the International Division. Mr. Jiang is concerned that the “high scores of Shanghai’s students are actually a sign of weakness”.