This bothers the Finnish government. “As a country that thinks its future is purely dependent on its know-how, we cannot afford average results in universities,” says Jyrki Katainen (pictured), the finance minister.
This is my last appointment before I fly back to London, and Mr Katainen is telling me that his government thinks greater independence and a bit of capital may help the country’s universities to specialise and innovate. So it has offered any universities willing to set up charitable foundations a deal too good to refuse: any money they raise by 2010, the government will top up by 2.5 times as much.
Finland is hardly the only country worried about the global reputation of its universities. As with schools, the advent of international rankings has made list-watchers of everyone. The Shanghai Jiao Tong and THE rankings are enormously important both for universities, which are increasingly reliant on international students, and for countries, who take their positions on the charts quite seriously.
All posts by Jim Zellmer
Robert F. Kennedy at the 1965 Hearings about the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
In honor of RFK on the 40th anniversary of his death, I offer excerpts from the transcripts of the hearings on ESEA in 1965. RFK called for accountability among educators and proposed national testing to make sure that those receiving federal funds were using it improve student learning.
He proposed NCLB 35 years before Bush did. To be fair, NCLB is just the reauthorization of ESEA with a new name.
It was conceived to send federal dollars to offer more educational opportunities to disadvantaged students, and was packaged as part of LBJ’s larger War on Poverty. Student failure in school was linked to adult poverty, so Congress got to work to pass Johnson’s bill to help educate poor kids.
This is from the hearing on ESEA, by the Senate Education subcommittee, 89th Congress. Congress was considering whether to spend an additional $1 billion in the following year to improve education, which would double federal spending on schools. Most of the additional money would go to Title I.
Mary Olsky, EAGLE School co-founder, decides to retire
Twenty-six years ago, Mary Olsky was looking for a more challenging educational environment for her children. What ultimately happened has helped thousands of students over the years.
“I didn’t see this happening,” she said recently of Eagle School, which she co-founded with Betty Connor in 1982. Olsky is stepping down as co-director of the school, which now has 182 students, 20 teachers and six to 10 parent aides, and an expansive building at 5454 Gunflint Trail in Fitchburg.
In the 1980s, Olksy had recently moved to the Madison area with her husband and four children, ages 4 to 10, from Chicago. She thought Madison would provide a better educational environment for her children, but was disappointed.
Shortly after meeting Connor, they visited several schools around the country and rented a room in Hoyt School, which the district had closed and was renting rooms to a variety of organizations. They collected materials from a variety of sources and started with 12 students, including two of her children.
By 1985, they had outgrown their space and moved to another former school in Madison. One of the parents was a developer and helped them purchase land and build a school in Middleton. After adding two additions, they purchased land in Fitchburg and constructed the current building.
“We had sworn that we’d never have more than 100 kids or build our own building. What happened has become part of our general philosophy, which is to see problems and try to solve them instead of being rigid,” Olsky.
Milwaukee’s $1.2 Billion School Budget increases by 0.25%
A $1.2 billion budget that would keep trends generally on the same track in Milwaukee Public Schools for the coming school year was advanced early Wednesday by the Milwaukee School Board budget committee.
Those trends include substantial declines in enrollment, tightening services in many schools and an ever-growing portion of students with special needs.
hey also include increased emphasis on math instruction, health services for students and nutrition programs, including widely available free breakfast.
Board members and administrators avoided making any projections on the property tax implications of the budget, leaving that highly charged matter to the fall, when the proposal will be revised to reflect the state of finances just before property tax bills are calculated.
The proposal made in April by Superintendent William Andrekopoulos was in line with a directive from the School Board that the increase in total spending on operations be held to 0.25% for next year.
Related:
- Madison’s 2008/2009 $367M budget
- K-12 Tax & Spending Climate
On Madison’s High School Curriculum
Mitch Henck discussion: MP3 audio file. Recorded 6/2/2008. Henck discussed incoming Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on January 29, 2008 – MP3 file.
Vicki McKenna visits with Jay Greene on School Vouchers
MP3 audio file. Recorded April 29, 2008. Clusty Search: Jay Green.
Kenosha District losing money on investment
A controversial investment to help fund retiree benefits has cost the Kenosha Unified School District $214,000 more than it has earned since 2006, according to an analysis by an independent consultant for the Pleasant Prairie School Commission.
Those losses will continue to mount, by about $52,000 per quarter, unless the investment’s value rebounds or the district shores up the investment by contributing millions of dollars more, the analysis found.
“People who got into this should have realized there were some flaws in the program,” said Gene Schulz with financial adviser Piper Jaffray & Co. to the commission Thursday. “I’m assuming they never even knew these flaws existed.”
Officials with Kenosha and four other Wisconsin school districts that invested millions of borrowed dollars in collateralized debt obligations to help fund employee retiree benefits have insisted they protected themselves in the deals. CDOs are bundles of debt that can range from corporate bonds to subprime mortgages
Fairfax County Schools Report on Student Behavior
Fairfax County School Board members said they are likely to abandon a staff report that showed racial and ethnic gaps in some measures of student behavior, including in the demonstration of “sound moral character and ethical judgment.”
The board had delayed an April vote to approve the report after concerns were raised that findings were based on subjective measures, such as elementary report card data, and that they would fuel negative stereotypes.
Board member Phillip A. Niedzielski-Eichner (Providence) said yesterday that he plans to propose at a June 19 meeting that a vote on the report be postponed indefinitely. Several board members have indicated their support, he said.
Board member Martina A. Hone (At Large) said that the original report is “fatally flawed” and that it doesn’t make sense “to work on fixing it.” She said she is pleased with the way the board is rethinking it. “I think we have come out a stronger school board,” she said.
Fearing for Massachusetts School Reform
via a kind reader’s email – David A. Mittell, Jr., a fascinating look at the political sausage making and special interests behind, or blocking school “reform”:
THE (Deval) PATRICK administration is big on reform when it comes to organizational charts, which in the to and fro of politics are accidents of history; are aesthetically displeasing to social scientists; and more often than not downright inefficient. It is the last point that deserves attention. The Patrick administration seems partly inhabited by people concerned with the second point and partly by people impatient for more power to do what they want by direct administrative order, rather than having to cajole semi-autonomous boards and authorities.
Mitt Romney had plans along the same lines and was pleased with himself when, early in his term, he was able to persuade the legislature to eliminate the notoriously inefficient Metropolitan District Commission and transfer its functions to the Department of Conservation and Recreation. How much actual efficiency was achieved is debatable.
Mr. Romney also tried to eliminate the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. As a Republican governor he had no chance of eradicating this termites’ nest, despite its many public failings. Thereafter, wisely, he resolved to do what he could with the rusty tools that hehad. The danger of persisting in trying to clean up the flow chart in the face of political opposition was that, even had he succeeded to some extent, he would have spent his whole term doing it. Redirectin the mission of state government would have been lost.
With more than a third of his own term gone by, Mr. Patrick faces the same conundrum. He too wants to put the Turnpike Authority and all other transportation-related agencies under his direct control. That will need a column of its own. Here I want to deal with his partly completed effort to put all education-related agencies under his control.
Critics, especially those concerned about the foundering success of the Education Reform Act of 1993, see an attempt by the governor to gut the aspects of education reform that his political supporters in the education establishment do not like. On a partial list of suspected “gutters” are assorted state bureaucrats, the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents and the Massachusetts Teachers’ Association.
That’s not my list and I do not endorse it. But the evidence to date is that the critics have the politics right. Not only does Governor Patrick seem to be moving to quash some of the most hopeful aspects of education reform, appointed minions are acting on his behalf in petty and vindictive ways:
Toyota Chief: Refrain from Using PowerPoint
An article that got some attention in Japan last week was this one (in Japanese), which says the Toyota Motor Corporation CEO Katsuaki Watanabe urged employees to show self-restraint and stop the wasteful practice of using PowerPoint for the creation of documents (what I call slideuments). The CEO made this statement while talking about the need to reduce costs at Toyota. He is reminding employees to be cost conscious and he used the practice of using PowerPoint as an example of waste. Watanabe said that (in the good old days?) they used to use one piece of paper to make a clear point or proposal, or to summarize an issue, but now everything is in PowerPoint, he says, which uses many sheets of paper and expensive colors…but it’s a waste. The CEO is not saying that PowerPoint is necessarily harmful (he does not mention its use for actual presentations), but he is saying printed “documents” made with the presentation tool tend to have less content, less clarity, and yet use more paper/ink and take more time. In the context of a challenging economy and an atmosphere of reducing costs, what would you say of any business practice that (1) takes more time, (2) costs more money, and yet (3) appears to be less effective? In the spirit of kaizen (continuous improvement), even if the waste is small, it must be eliminated.
The Poverty of PowerPoint by Gregory McNamee:
Many forces are at work in the dumbing-down of the world: censorship, historical amnesia, the collapse of general education, doctrinaire domination of the airwaves and other media outlets, the spread of religious fundamentalism, creationism, and other forms of ignorance.
And then there’s PowerPoint.
Microsoft’s market-leading “slideware”—software that produces virtual transparencies for use in public presentations—is responsible for “trillions of slides each year,” writes the statistician, publisher, and design guru Edward R. Tufte in his provocative booklet The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. And not just any old slides. PowerPoint’s popular templates, Tufte argues, are responsible for an explosion in useless data stupidly displayed, for these ready-made designs “usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis.”
What happened after California abolished bilingual education
TEN years to the day after California banned teaching in any language other than English, Erlinda Paredes runs through a new sentence with her kindergarten class. “El payaso se llama Botones”, she intones—“the clown’s name is Buttons”. When a pupil asks a question in English, she responds in Spanish. It is an improbable scene. But the abolition of bilingual education has not worked out in quite the way anybody expected.
Before 1998 some 400,000 Californian children were shunted into classes where they heard as little as 30 minutes of English each day. The hope was that they would learn mathematics and other subjects in their native tongue (usually Spanish) while they gently made the transition to English. The result was an educational barrio. So that year Ron Unz, a software engineer, sponsored a ballot measure that mandated teaching in English unless parents demanded otherwise. Proposition 227 passed easily, with considerable support from Hispanics. Voters in two other states, Massachusetts and Arizona, have since followed suit.
In Santa Ana, a mostly poor Latino city in Orange county, the number of children in bilingual classes promptly halved. Demand would have been even less had schools not prodded parents to request waivers for their children. In the past few years demand for bilingual education has fallen further. This year 22,000 pupils in Santa Ana are enrolled in “structured English immersion” programmes, where they hear little but that language. Just 646 are taught bilingually.
Follow the Special Ed Money
Jay Greene is dubious about Response To Intervention — trying to educate children well so they’re not diagnosed as learning disabled — because he thinks schools have an incentive to put kids in special ed.
Essentially, RTI frees-up money to get schools to do what they presumably should have been doing already — providing well-designed instruction in the early grades. Unless we think that the main impediment to well-designed instruction was that schools lacked the funding to do it, diverting 15% of special education money to early-grade instruction will not get them to do anything significantly different from what they were already doing.
More on Finland’s Schools
THE OECD’s PISA studies are exhibit A for the excellence of Finland’s schools. Finland routinely comes top, or occasionally second, in tests every three years of 15-year-olds’ abilities in reading, mathematics and science. It is impressive, but the suspicious-minded (or perhaps just the begrudgers?) wonder if it is really all down to brilliant schools.
I have a suspicion of my own. When I lived in Finland in the 1990s I learnt rather little Finnish (they speak great English, and I’m lazy), but I learnt to read words and say them correctly in about half an hour. Each letter corresponds to one sound, and only one; there are no exceptions and no combinations of letters that make different sounds, like “sh” or “th”. If a letter is repeated, it is simply said for twice as long. Is it, perhaps, just easier to learn to read and write in Finland than practically anywhere else?
A School Milwaukee’s District Could Learn From
There is a school on Milwaukee’s near south side that should be a beacon of light to the many schools in the Milwaukee Public Schools that are having trouble keeping about 50% of their students in attendance and graduating.
It is Notre Dame Middle School, a Catholic school for girls in fifth through eighth grade. I tutored there for almost two years, and it was a great experience.
The school accepts Hispanic girls from that area who have spent the first few years of elementary school at MPS. Few come from what could be called “advantaged” homes. Most struggle with their studies. Many of them speak only Spanish at home because that is the only language their parents know. Then they must adjust to English the next morning when they return to school.
In spite of these challenges, the school shows an impressive record, with 96% of the girls graduating from high school after they leave Notre Dame and 76% of those continuing with a post-secondary education. How do they do it when more advantaged students drop out of school rather than apply themselves
S.F. voters OK $198 parcel tax for schools
San Francisco teachers hoping for a significant pay raise celebrated Tuesday night as 70 percent of city voters passed a $198 annual school parcel tax.
Proposition A, which required two-thirds voter support to pass, had 80,000 yes votes to 35,000 no votes with all precincts reporting.
The parcel tax was one of 16 Bay Area school measures on Tuesday’s ballot, including 10 parcel taxes, which all require two-thirds support, and six facilities bonds, which need 55 percent of the yes votes to pass.
Late in the evening, 10 of those measures were winning.
San Francisco’s 20-year parcel tax will pump about $29 million into city schools each year – primarily improving teacher pay and training as well as increasing funding for technology and local charter schools.
The parcel tax kicks in on July 1 and expires in 2028.
Meaningful school funds reform talk
Wisconsin Senator Dale Schultz:
Wisconsin devotes nearly 50 percent of all state general tax dollars to the purpose of educating students. A top goal for me is to ensure the public schools of our region receive their fair share of that state aid. As state and local budgets tighten and competition for resources intensifies, our mutual goal will be to protect education funding so our youth are prepared for success and we continue to attract top-notch educators.
A group I helped form in 2006 reviewed our current funding system and recommended fixes to help our schools. That nonpartisan committee had broad representation, including school administrators, board members, UW researchers and legislators. Gary Andrews and Nancy Hendrickson from our region graciously provided strong voices for the interests of small, rural districts.
It was gratifying when some concepts advanced by the committee became provisions in the state budget, including easing state aid losses when student enrollment declines. Committee members showed that a focus on solutions without divisive bickering can produce real-world, helpful ideas.
I hope that same spirit of compromise carries over to next session. It’s encouraging to see renewed interest at the Capitol to tackle school funding reform in 2009. Governor Jim Doyle in his State of the State address early this year signaled his willingness to participate in school funding talks. I appreciate his willingness to lead and look forward to joining him to improve how our schools are funded.
Real World Skills School Projects
When a local businessman asked teacher Dick Anderson if his woods technology students could build a covered bridge, Anderson said “sure.”
He envisioned an ornamental garden structure.
Instead, what the client wanted — and what the high school students built — is a 14-ton, 44-foot long timber-frame covered bridge that spans a ravine and can carry fully loaded trucks.
$10M for Math in Milwaukee
Milwaukee Public Schools officials got the assurance they were seeking when Gov. Jim Doyle said Wednesday that he will release $10 million to improve math instruction in Milwaukee next year.
Although the money was included in the budget approved last fall, Doyle had the option of not awarding it. After Doyle used his veto powers recently to require a $270 million cut in spending next year, MPS leaders were concerned the $10 million might be chopped.
Doyle used an eighth-grade classroom at the Lincoln Center of the Arts, an MPS middle school on the lower east side, to announce he was awarding the money, which is to be used to pay for more than 100 math teaching positions.
High school, city farm to build “green” garage
A partnership between a city farm and a Milwaukee trade school will build an urban agricultural training space atop a “green” garage in the Riverwest neighborhood, complete with year-round, rooftop garden.
The project, called Growing Spaces, is a joint venture of the non-profit farm Growing Power Inc., 5500 West Silver Spring Road, and Bradley Tech High School, 700 S. 4th St. Details are to be announced at a 3 p.m. press conference today at the school.
Bradley Tech seniors in carpentry, electrical and plumbing classes will build the 3.5-bay garage beside a private home in Riverwest, starting in the fall. The homeowner, Kate Halfwassen, will coordinate the project and lease the garage back to Growing Power in what amounts to at least a five-year donation of the space, Halfwassen said Tuesday.
On Finland’s Schools
I AM feeling nostalgic. I spent two years in Finland in the late 1990s on a European Union post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Jyvaskyla in central Finland, and haven’t been back since. I wonder how much things will have changed—the country had only just joined the European Union back then, and has since joined the euro and experienced an economic boom.
First stop this morning is Kulosaari comprehensive school, in a suburb of Helsinki. Finnish comprehensives teach children from seven to 16; after that almost all youngsters spend another three years in either grammar or vocational schools.
Kulosaari school is lovely. The children are calm (far calmer than those at my son’s primary school in Cambridge, England) and talk to adults respectfully, but as equals.
Dan Wood, from Maidstone in England, one of two native English speakers on the staff, teaches children in the school’s bilingual programme. He has been in Finland for ten years now, and has no intention of leaving. “My mum works in a school at home,” he tells me. “I really just don’t want to go back to that system, the stress of school inspections.”
Seattle School Board’s New Goals
The Seattle School Board approved a five-year plan Wednesday that sets specific targets for raising test scores, graduation rates and even the number of credits earned by ninth-graders.
By 2012, for example, the district wants 88 percent of third-graders to pass reading on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, and 95 percent of the 10th-graders to do the same. Some of the most ambitious goals are in math and science, especially a passage rate of 80 percent on the science section of the 10th-grade WASL. In spring 2007, 33 percent passed.
To reach those and other goals, the plan calls for everything from better math and science instruction, to more consistency in what’s taught from school to school, more tests to track student progress, and hiring teachers earlier so classes don’t start the year with substitutes.
District officials have described the goals as ambitious, but achievable. And some of the most ambitious ones simply match what’s required under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, or reflect increasingly tough graduation requirements for high-school students.
Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson at Wednesday’s School Board meeting said her plan doesn’t cover everything, but that a strategic plan is meant to focus on “deficits.”
Education in Sweden
I SPEND my second day in Sweden with representatives of Kunskapsskolan, Sweden’s biggest chain of independent schools (it has 21 secondaries and 9 gymnasiums). It has recently been awarded a contract to open two “academies”—independent state schools—in London, and I have been intrigued by what I’ve heard about its highly personalised teaching methods.
At Kunskapsskolan Enskede, a few kilometres from the centre of Stockholm, I am met by Christian Wetell, its head teacher, and Kenneth Nyman, the company’s regional chief. They explain the “voucher system” from which they make their money. For each pupil the school teaches, it receives from the local government what it would have spent educating the pupil in one of its own schools; in return, independent schools cannot charge anything extra, and must accept all students who apply. Provided schools follow Sweden’s national curriculum, they have wide latitude in their methods and pacing.
Kenneth sheds an interesting light on the thorny comparison with Finland. You have to look, he says, at what sort of students each country’s system wants. Sweden aims to produce socially conscious generalists. The Finnish system, by contrast, drives rather narrowly at academic success.
Referendum’s Reprise
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Editorial:
Faced with growing numbers of students, what should school officials in Hartford and Germantown do to provide adequate school facilities?
One is tempted to ask just what part of “no” school officials in Germantown and Hartford don’t understand.
Faced with the rejection by voters of a school building referendum in April, the Germantown School Board probably will try again in November with the same referendum. Meanwhile, in Hartford, officials haven’t given up their quest for a new school despite being shot down twice – in November and April referendum balloting – by a 2-1 or better ratio.
Some consider their efforts arrogance and a slap in the face to voters. Maybe. But maybe it’s a sincere attempt to find the best answer to a simple challenge faced by both communities.
Germantown and Hartford schools are a part of growing communities that every year are adding more subdivisions with families that include children. Those kids have to be educated somewhere. And as families grow, classrooms grow and become crowded. School officials in both districts contend that they need new elementary schools to cope with that growth.
Hard to find a job, but not an internship
Even as they trim their payrolls, companies are keeping one eye on the future by stocking up on summer interns.
Employers, in a sign that they are looking beyond the current economic slowdown, are using intern programs to help build their junior ranks. Certainly interns can provide cheap and eager labor. But they also bring fresh ideas and allow companies to build their talent pools, experts said. Firms are hiring a larger number of their entry-level workers from their intern pool, so they are looking to lure top college students well before graduation.
“We’re seeing growth every year in the number of interns being hired,” said Camille Luckenbaugh, research director for the National Association of Colleges and Employers. “One reason companies are looking to hire is to fill their talent pipeline. They are looking five to 10 years down the road.”
Experimental audio/visual therapies help some schools teach students to focus
A small but growing number of schools are using experimental therapies to retrain students’ hearing and vision, in essence reteaching them to hear and see. It’s a bid to reverse problems with the ability to focus and learn brought on by years of excessive TV, poor nutrition and, for some, in vitro drug exposure.
At Gordon Parks Elementary School, a charter school in Kansas City, Mo., 60% of kindergartners in 2004 failed a visual-skills test. Most had 20/20 vision, but they struggled to focus on moving objects, track lines of print and refocus from near to far.
That fall, Gordon Parks began regular lessons in visual skills. Therapist Cheryl Steffenella says dangerous neighborhoods and the ubiquity of TV and video games means many of her students “aren’t doing kid things” — climbing trees, jumping and running — that help develop visual and motor skills. Even playing video games that require a lot of eye movement exercises children’s vision minimally, she says.
Education Stories, Inspiring or Otherwise
In the season of sheepskin and mortarboard, report card and honor roll, I have reached my own commencement. After four years, this is my last education column, as I move on to other journalistic endeavors.
The greatest gifts this assignment gave me were a passport to watch the magic of the classroom and the opportunity to join in a public discussion. Again and again, I saw how a school can contain the whole world. I think of the football team at Dearborn High, in a Detroit suburb with a large Arab-American community. There, several dozen Muslim players faithfully held to the Ramadan fast while making a successful run to the state playoffs in 2005. The Middle East met Middle America, and there was no clash of civilizations about it.
I think, too, about the students at Stanford who shed the cocoon of their affluent privilege to tutor the university’s custodians, many of them immigrants from Mexico, in the English language. The instruction went both ways, as the students discovered firsthand the sacrifice and integrity of those otherwise invisible men and women who collected their trash.
Prevention called cure for school violence
Communities and schools should take a preventive approach to school violence rather than focus solely on punishing students who have behavior problems, experts said yesterday at a summit on school violence.
Students are looking for structure, high academic expectations, and teachers who understand and can communicate with them, said Ivan J. Juzang, a consultant who gave the keynote address at the daylong meeting at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Providing those basics will make schools safer, he said.
The summit was organized by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings and State Superintendent of Schools Nancy S. Grasmick after several high-profile incidents of violence in schools this year, including the beating of a Baltimore teacher that became nationwide news after it was recorded on a student’s cell phone and posted on the Internet.
The summit was called to find solutions to the problems of school violence, but the conversation among participants and speakers focused more broadly on the need to intervene in the lives of troubled children as early as elementary school. The participants included legislators, teachers, school board members, community leaders, parents and students from across the state.
Related:
- Gangs & School Violence Forum
- Corwin Kronenberg SIS links, Clusty Search
- Cell phone video of a local school fight was recently posted online.
“Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum”
Peter Sobol on the 2007 Wisconsin DPI State test results (WKCE):
The results for the WKCE test administered in November 2007 were finally released on May 30th. That is more than six months after the test was given. Worse, the data files containing the detailed results that can be used for proper statistical analysis of the results are STILL not available for download. Assessments are information that degrades over time. The fact that it takes six months to get the data out (whatever its other shortcomings) cheats the taxpayers of the full value of their investment.
At the very least the WI DPI should be embarrassed by the fact it takes this long to release the test results. Personally I find it outrageous. I had an email exchange with DPI officials concerning this long delay and the loss of value, this is an excerpt from part of that response (italics mine):… The WKCE is a large-scale assessment designed to provide a snapshot of how well a district or school is doing at helping all students reach proficiency on state standards, with a focus on school and district-level accountability. A large-scale, summative assessment such as the WKCE is not designed to provide diagnostic information about individual students. Those assessments are best done at the local level, where immediate results can be obtained. Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum.
Does anyone else find the fact that the state issues WKCE results to individual students surprising given the above statement?
The Madison School District, together with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research is using local WKCE results for “Value Added Assessment“.
Much more on the WKCE here.
Minnesota recently administered their first online science test.
Accelerated Math Adds Up To a Division Over Merits
Next fall, 26 of the sharpest fifth-grade minds at Potomac Elementary School will study seventh-grade math. The rest of the fifth grade will learn sixth-grade math. Fifth-grade math will be left to the third- and fourth-graders.
Public schools nationwide are working to increase the number of students who study Algebra I, the traditional first-year high school math course, in eighth grade. Many Washington area schools have gone further, pushing large numbers of students two or three years ahead of the grade-level curriculum.
Math study in Montgomery County has evolved from one or two academic paths to many. Acceleration often begins in kindergarten. In a county known for demanding parents, the math push has generated an unexpected backlash. Many parents say children are pushed too far, too fast.
Sixty Montgomery math teachers complained, in a November forum, that students were being led into math classes beyond their abilities.
Related links:
- Math Forum Audio, Video and Links.
- West High School Math teachers letter to Isthmus
Property taxes jump 3.8%, most in 3 years
The property tax bill on the typical Wisconsin home rose 3.8% last year – the biggest increase in three years, officials said Monday.
But fall levy limits on local governments, more state aid and slowing home values should prevent another boost like that this December, they said.
The Legislative Fiscal Bureau told legislators that property taxes on the median-valued home, which was assessed at $170,305 last year, totaled $2,838 – a $105 increase over the previous year. In each of the previous two years, the increase was less than 1%.
The $105 increase was up by about $10 from what lawmakers and Gov. Jim Doyle expected in October when they adopted the current state budget.
But the 3.8% increase was more than the inflation rate last year, which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated at 2.8%.
State Budget Director Dave Schmiedicke said he expects the owner of a typical Wisconsin home to open a December tax bill that will go up less than 1%, which he called “a very small increase.”
Related Links:
- Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance:
Compared to the prior year (fiscal 2005), Wisconsin taxes were up slightly, from 12.1% to 12.3% of income, but the 50-state rank fell from eighth to 11th. The state’s tax burden was 5.5% above the U.S. average (11.6%). Since the late 1950s (see diagram, over), the Badger State’s tax burden and rankings have ranged from lows of 9.7% (1958) and 18th (1960) to highs of 15.8% (1973) and first (1964).
- Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau Memorandum – 32K PDF. TJ Mertz comments on the tax increase.
- Channel3000:
Taxes paid to schools are by far the largest chunk of a homeowner’s tax bill. They increased 7.4 percent this year.
The next two largest parts of a tax bill also went up: Municipal tax levies increased 5 percent, and county levies grew 4.5 percent. - K-12 Tax & Spending Climate
- New York Governor proposes 4% cap on annual school property tax increases.
Their 3 R’s include running
Midday recess at Riverside Elementary School had reached a cacophonic pitch Monday, with students tossing assorted balls through the air, when a class of kindergartners added to the mix by bolting around the play area.
Far from scolding the children, their teachers encouraged the activity.
What happens on this vast plot of gravel, the thinking goes, can be as important as what goes on inside the classroom.
“When you’re talking about education, you have to look at the whole child,” Riverside counselor Kara Baker said, “because if they’re not well, they’re not going to learn.”
That focus on wellness has won the school recognition over the past two years, as a Governor’s School Health Award silver-level winner.
Riverside was the only Waukesha County school to receive the award in 2008. James Fenimore Cooper School in Milwaukee was a gold award winner.
Oxford just gave state education an F
Oxford wants £1.25 billion. That is the target of the biggest fundraising drive in the university’s history, announced last week.
This sum would, the university said, enable it to “sustain and enhance” its reputation and provide “security in a world of uncertain state funding and growing global competition
It didn’t mention directly what is almost certainly one of its biggest ambitions: to use the loot to slip away from the ever-tightening squeeze of the Government.
Our Government, like some town hall functionary of limited comprehension but relentless ambition, has long regarded the clever clogs at Oxford with the deepest suspicion. It has rightly suspected that, with Oxford’s fabled reputation for independent thinking, the university might not be suitably subservient to the New Labour mania for centrally imposed targets.
Students find the ’08 presidential race is not politics as usual
It was the first week of February, and Jesse Sharkey’s students were doing the math.
They were not amused.
Most of his juniors and seniors at Chicago’s Senn High School are Barack Obama supporters — Obama is from Chicago, after all. So they wanted to know why Obama, who had won 14 of 22 states on Super Tuesday, had barely scored more delegates than Hillary Clinton.
(Answer: Democrats award delegates based on percentage of votes received.)
And why was he still behind in the total count? And what’s a superdelegate anyway?
Community College Transfer Mess
Like many community college students, Josie Showers saw her classes at Jefferson Community and Technical College in Louisville as the first step toward a four-year degree. She was among the nearly half of American students who start college in two-year community schools. They are told if they work hard, their state’s four-year colleges will be happy to accept them as transfers and cheer them on to graduation. But Showers, like many others, discovered those four-year schools are not as helpful as she had been led to believe.
After she transferred to the University of Louisville as a 27-year-old political science major, she was told she could not get her bachelor’s degree until she had taken the university’s pre-algebra class. That made no sense to her. She had already taken an algebra course, learning concepts more advanced than pre-algebra, at her community college. Sorry, she was told. Rules are rules. That kind of red tape cost her an extra semester and $4,000 before she could graduate.
Education for Peace
When it was becoming clear that the tide of World War II was turning, after Battle of Midway, after Battle of Stalingrad, when Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps was on the run, an unknown, first-term congressman introduced a resolution that would help shape the post-war world.
The freshman congressman was J. William Fulbright, Democrat of Arkansas. His resolution was only one sentence, as “plain as an old hat,” said Life magazine at the time: “Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring) that the Congress hereby expresses itself as favoring the creation of appropriate international machinery with power adequate to establish and to maintain a just and lasting peace among the nations of the world, and as favoring participation by the United States therein.”
In June of 1943, an isolationist Republican from Ohio, John Vorys, rose to voice his approval, and the resolution was passed. Vorys’s conversion marked the beginning of the United States’s bipartisan, multilateralist foreign policy that would lead to the forming of the United Nations, reversing America’s decision after World War I not to join the League of Nations.
Fulbright, a former Rhodes Scholar and University of Arkansas president, was elected to the Senate the following year. He would go on to become the only senator to vote against the appropriation for Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Un-American Activities Committee, and, afterward, as the longest serving chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which so ably illuminated the absurdities of the Vietnam War.
Flowing from his early internationalist resolution came the creation of the Fulbright Scholar Program, signed into law by Harry Truman in 1946. It promoted educational exchanges between foreign students and Americans to facilitate “mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries of the world.” It is a program I have been involved with over the years.
Saudi Prince Sultan Thanks Education Ministry for Winning WTO Education Tourism Award
“This is a prestigious award we have received for the Education Scholastic Tourism Program (Smile) which we launched in 2005 in cooperation with the Ministry of Education,” Prince Sultan ibn Salman, secretary general of the Supreme Commission For Tourism (SCT), told newsmen at a packed press conference at the SCT headquarters held here yesterday to celebrate the award which was given in in Madrid on Wednesday.
The prince formally presented the award to Education Minister Dr. Abdullah Saleh Al-Obeid, whose ministry was instrumental in implementing the program for 150,000 students during the past three years.
Thanking the ministry of education for its unstinted cooperation, the prince recalled that during the past two years, the program — Smile — has covered 150,000 students and 1,800 teachers in 2,700 schools in 42 education department offices. “We want to extend this proven program to another 900,000 students — both boys and girls — in the intermediate and high schools,” Prince Sultan added.
Art Rainwater: the great communicator
Superintendent Art Rainwater attended his last Madison School Board meeting Monday night, and everything seemed so collegial and functional that it was easy to imagine it had always been this way.
But, of course, it was not.
Art Rainwater took over a school district that was in crisis.
When he succeeded former Superintendent Cheryl Wilhoyte a decade ago, the administration was at odds with much of the School Board, the community and, most seriously, with unions representing teachers and other school employees.
Much of the trouble had to do with Wilhoyte’s unwillingness — perhaps inability — to communicate in a straight-forward manner.
Rainwater changed things immediately.
He was frank and accessible, never spoke in the arcane jargon of education bureaucrats and set up a regular schedule of meetings with board members, community leaders and Madison Teachers Inc. executive director John Matthews.
Related: MMSD Today feature on Art Rainwater. Notes and links on Madison’s incoming Superintendent, Dan Nerad
Much more on retiring Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater.
Tamira Madsen covers Art’s last school board meeting.
Time Flies by Art Rainwater.
The Madison School District’s budget was $200,311,280 (24,710 enrollment) in 1994 and is $367,806,712 for the 2008/2009 (24,268 enrollment) school year.
Ruling: Madison district must reinstate athletic directors
The Madison School District must reinstate four high school athletic directors and “make them whole for any financial loss, ” according to an arbitrator ‘s ruling made public Monday.
Arbitrator Milo Flaten ruled the district violated its contract with Madison Teachers Inc. a year ago when it replaced the four athletic directors — who were union members — with two managers hired from other school districts.
In the decision, dated Friday and released by MTI on Monday, Flaten wrote that under its existing contract with MTI, the district promised that “athletic directors in the four schools would be represented by the union and that they would be members of the bargaining unit. No amount of reassignment of duties or creation of superficial boundaries can change that.”
MTI Executive Director John Matthews on Monday estimated the decision could cost the district more than $230,000.
Of that amount, each of the four former athletic directors would receive about $8,000 apiece — the extra compensation the four, who still work for the district, would have received this school year as athletic directors.
Education in Sweden and Finland
Competition—and ignoring the 1970s—breeds success
THE best schools in the world, it is generally agreed, are in Finland. In the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) studies, which compare 15-year-olds’ reading, mathematics and science abilities in more than 50 countries, it routinely comes top. So politicians, academics, think-tankers and teachers from all over the world visit Finnish schools in the hope of discovering the magic ingredient. Journalists come too, and now it’s my turn.
And since I’m coming this far north, I want to take in Sweden too. That social-democratic paradise has carried out school reforms that make free-market ideologues the world over weak at the knees. In the 1990s it opened its state-education system to private competition, allowing new schools to receive the same amount for each pupil as the state would have spent on that child.
Sweden is my first stop. My week starts with post-breakfast coffee with Widar Andersson, an ex-chairman of Sweden’s Independent Schools Association. When the independent schools reforms were first mooted in 1991, he was a member of parliament for the Social Democrats, in one of their rare spells in opposition. “I think I was the only Social Democrat in favour of the reforms,” he tells me.
In 1994, when they came into force, he and two state-school teachers opened one of the very first independent schools. It was not the first time he took on the state: years earlier he and a few other social workers had set up a private company trying innovative ways to treat drug addicts. “I learned there must be other ways to do things than those the state has decided are right, especially in a country like Sweden where the state is so large,” he says.
Changing Perceptions of Private Religious Schools: Public Money and Public Trust in the Education of Children
Private religious schools were originally intended to provide a sound secular education to children in their formative years, together with religious instruction and the experience of the life and culture of their faiths. In recent decades, however, as ongoing social and economic challenges have led to the deterioration of the public school system, private schools have been looked to as possible alternatives for educating public school children through such programs as tax-funded school vouchers.
But can these institutions be trusted to provide quality education without bias? In the last half century, Supreme Court opinions discussing public education and the Establishment clause have reflected a general distrust of parochial school systems. Public perception of religious schools has also changed little. The author argues, however, that private religious schools – in particular Catholic schools – have evolved to become more professional, more ecumenical, and more financially transparent, and thus are well positioned to offer viable alternatives to provide quality educational opportunities to public school children. But in order for these programs, such as school vouchers, to succeed, the public must be assured that religious schools will not divert taxpayer dollars into self-interested sectarian purposes.
Put a Little Science in Your Life
A COUPLE of years ago I received a letter from an American soldier in Iraq. The letter began by saying that, as we’ve all become painfully aware, serving on the front lines is physically exhausting and emotionally debilitating. But the reason for his writing was to tell me that in that hostile and lonely environment, a book I’d written had become a kind of lifeline. As the book is about science — one that traces physicists’ search for nature’s deepest laws — the soldier’s letter might strike you as, well, odd.
Brian Greene:A COUPLE of years ago I received a letter from an American soldier in Iraq. The letter began by saying that, as we’ve all become painfully aware, serving on the front lines is physically exhausting and emotionally debilitating. But the reason for his writing was to tell me that in that hostile and lonely environment, a book I’d written had become a kind of lifeline. As the book is about science — one that traces physicists’ search for nature’s deepest laws — the soldier’s letter might strike you as, well, odd.
But it’s not. Rather, it speaks to the powerful role science can play in giving life context and meaning. At the same time, the soldier’s letter emphasized something I’ve increasingly come to believe: our educational system fails to teach science in a way that allows students to integrate it into their lives.
Allow me a moment to explain.
Find Answer to Achievement Gap
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:
Test scores released last week clearly show one of the primary tasks confronting Madison School District ‘s incoming superintendent, Daniel Nerad:
The district should find more effective ways to educate its rapidly growing populations of foreign-speaking students and lower-income students.
Students from immigrant families and students from lower-income families continue to score low on the annual tests required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
That ‘s the chief reason the Madison district fell below the state average in 22 of 23 scores.
Many notes and links on the latest Wisconsin scores here.
Two Finalists for Waukesha Superintendent
The finalists – Cudahy Superintendent James Heiden and Oshkosh Deputy Superintendent for Business Services Todd Gray – will each spend a full day this week touring the district and speaking with staff and community members. The board could make its choice on a replacement for Superintendent David Schmidt by the end of the week, School Board President Daniel Warren said.
Schmidt, who has been with the Waukesha School District since the 1998-’99 school year, is scheduled to retire at the end of June.
The district received applications from nearly 20 candidates for the job. Consultants from Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates winnowed those down to six semi-finalists, who were interviewed by board members over three nights last week.
The board deliberated until about 12:45 a.m. Friday before deciding on their final candidates, Warren said.
Special Japanese school established for Harvard wannabes
Benesse Corp., the nation’s largest correspondence study company, launched Friday a preparatory school in Tokyo for high school students aiming to get into Harvard University in the United States.
The move came in response to an increasing demand from high school students keen to attend prestigious overseas colleges.
The preparatory school, named Route H, offers a course on the SAT Reasoning Test–a standardized college admission test in the United States–and includes lessons on how to write a statement of purpose and an essay in English, as well as how to make a good impression during an interview. All the lessons are especially tailored for people striving to enter Harvard.
Harvard University, established in 1936, is known for its excellent research programs. It topped The Times-QS World University Ranking 2007 list, published by The Times Higher Education.
Due to the small number of applicants from Japan, information on admission procedures for prestigious overseas colleges is scarce, according to a Benesse official. But in recent years, the company has received an increasing number of inquiries regarding admission to top-notch colleges abroad, with 30 schools across the nation making inquiries in the last academic year.
Why Free Markets Have Little to Do with Inequality
Many Europeans believe liberal economic reforms are incompatible with social justice. The US and the UK, they point out, have more liberal markets for products and labour than in continental Europe – but also higher levels of poverty and income inequality. European countries therefore face a choice. They can either free their product and labour markets and accept the downsides or they can protect social solidarity by resisting Anglo-American neo-liberalism.
But the belief that market liberalisation increases social inequalities is not borne out by the evidence. The UK certainly has higher levels of poverty and inequality than France or Germany. But pointing this out is just selective use of evidence to support a predetermined conclusion. If there were a strong correlation between levels of market liberalisation and social outcomes, one would expect to see the pattern replicated across the European Union – not just in a carefully selected group of countries.
Is such a pattern discernible? No. The nation with the lowest levels of poverty and income inequality in the EU, as well as the lowest rate of long-term unemployment, is Denmark – a country with competitive product markets and some of the least restrictive labour laws. Countries with the worst social outcomes (Greece, Italy and Portugal) all have restrictive product and labour market laws. Liberalisation, it seems, no more threatens social justice than regulation guarantees it.
So what explains these differences in social outcomes? The answer, one might think, must be differences in spending by governments. Social spending is certainly high in egalitarian countries such as the Nordics. But it is just as high in France, where social inequalities are more marked. Likewise, it is as high in the supposedly heartless UK as it is in the egalitarian Netherlands. Contrary to popular belief, the UK is not governed by a callous minimal state.
Somewhat related: local discussion on Madison’s Equity Task Force.
Georgia Teacher Group Re-Writes Social Studies Standards
State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox threw out this year’s results, citing a disconnect between test questions, what the state expects students to learn and what teachers taught. About 71 percent of sixth-graders and 76 percent of seventh-graders failed the tests, according to preliminary results.
Middle schools began using the new social studies curriculum this year. The CRCT exams were based on the more rigorous standards.
Cox convened the teachers’ panel to recommend improvements to the social studies standards, which she said were too vague. Once the revisions are approved, other committees will revise the social studies CRCT for sixth and seventh grades — a lengthy process that takes between one to two years.
Discipline comes first and frequent at boot-camp-style academy
Keith Shields says he needed tough love.
He got it, and in big doses.
Hours of physical training and military drills every day. Orders, sometimes given in nose-to-nose style, for what he was supposed to do every moment. Strict codes of conduct and dress – no cussing, no talking back, most everything done at double time, books carried with your left arm so you can salute with your right at any moment.
Last fall, when his mother brought him for the first time to Right Step, a military-style boot camp school for high school kids who generally have been failures in every other setting they’ve been in, Shields, now 16, said to himself, “Can’t nobody change me.”
The first day, he says, he mouthed off to a drill sergeant and found himself on his knees, with his arms pinned behind his back.
It was the start of a happy relationship – a process that, in Shields’ description, turned him from being a street tough who had been into every form of wrongdoing into something he is proud to call himself: a cadet
School Shopping, Part IV
I think we’ve decided where Belle is going to kindergarten. Barring some unforeseen circumstance, she’ll be attending our neighborhood school in the fall.
When I last wrote on this subject, we were really torn between the two options, the neighborhood school and the public “Open” school. Since that writing, I did a classroom observation at the Open school, which was required as part of the application process, and liked what I saw overall. I did wish that they hadn’t put me in a student teacher classroom, but I suppose that’s a reality that is good to observe, too.
We went ahead with being entered in the lottery, and we drew number 45. The lottery was in the end of March, and as of now they are at number 38 on the list. Historically, people who draw numbers in the 40s usually get in, but it can be as late as July or August. So all through April and May, Kevin and I put off discussing the issue because we figured we’d hash it out if/when we got in and there was a decision to make. (Of course, that didn’t stop me from getting opinions on both schools from anyone and everyone I could.) We told Belle that there were two schools we were considering for her, and she was OK with it being up in the air.
Eyer recently wrote about the Ann Arbor School District’s use of “Everyday Math”.
An Interview with a Detroit High School Principal
Mumford High principal Linda Spight, recently selected for a MetLife Foundation Ambassadors in Education Award, oversees her school’s engagement with the surrounding Wyoming-7 Mile neighborhood.
She and winning public school principals in 25 cities will each receive a $5,000 grant toward a joint project with community partners.
“The MetLife award acknowledges the importance of having a good relationship with a community and working collaboratively,” said Spight, 59, of Detroit, leader of Mumford’s 2,100 students. “Things should improve when you’re on the same page.”
Back to school for cities: Solutions to urban problems begin with improving schools
Big city school boards and superintendents have generally failed to provide the accountability and leadership needed to educate the many disadvantaged children they serve. Mayors and the federal government must take stronger roles in improving urban schools.
In an increasingly global and knowledge-based economy, nothing is more important to the future of cities and to the nation as a whole than education.
America’s beleaguered cities cannot rebound without good public schools, now plagued by lack of money, unresponsive bureaucracies, declining enrollments, high dropout and poverty rates, and low academic standards. State and federal contributions to school budgets have not made up for huge inequities in local support.
At their best, public schools give the most disadvantaged children a chance to succeed, but rarely the clear path that children find in affluent districts. More than 50 years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case declared segregation unconstitutional, the nation’s schools remain practically as unequal as ever — and in places such as metro Detroit, nearly as segregated as they were in 1950.
Madison schools to end agriculture program
When students return to classes in the fall, it’ll mark the first time in six decades the Madison School District hasn’t offered a program in agricultural education.
And that leaves Mary Klecker, who is retiring after three decades of leading the program, feeling angry.
“As I retire, I feel a strong sense of betrayal by this School District,” Klecker wrote in a letter last week to members of the School Board and top state officials.
“It will be a sad end to a wonderful program that provides our students learning and career opportunities for a lifetime.”
Fifty-three students are enrolled in agricultural education courses this year at East High School.
The program, which has included courses in introduction to agriculture, animal science, conservation and environmental science, leadership skills with the FFA, and horticulture, attracted more than 200 students at three high schools during its heyday in the mid-1990s.
In her letter and an interview, Klecker railed against district leaders, whom she said “lack a grasp of our state’s agricultural heritage” and the importance of agribusiness and “are totally clueless” about related, outstanding programs at Madison Area Technical College and UW-Madison.
It’s time to open the doors to out-of-state school models
Former Providence School Board Member Julie Steiny:
Across the nation, charter laws have spawned certain schools that are so successful they’re being replicated in other towns and states.
Nonprofit providers of these nationally acclaimed schools have been wooed and welcomed into communities hungry for better, more-effective options. The best of these models can prove their strategies’ merits with lots of encouraging data, testimonies from happy parents and impressive stories about their successful students.
These networks include the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), Achievement First and the Green Dot Schools, among others. Pop down to New Haven, Conn., to see the thing of beauty that is the Amistad Academy run by Achievement First. Or drive up to Lynn, Mass., to take in a KIPP.
Can Rhode Island benefit from these proven successes? In a word, no.
Our laws fiercely protect Rhode Island’s educational status quo, as though it were a real treasure like Narragansett Bay or our historical architecture. The protectionist laws make it impossible for outside providers to do business in the state. (One could argue that the state laws make it impossible even for local schools to do business effectively. Certain Rhode Island charter schools are now being crushed by our protectionist culture.)
Take as only one example Rhode Island’s General Law 16-13-6 which cements teacher tenure, seniority and “bumping” into place, leaving Rhode Island administrators little if any control over the quality of their staff. No school providers from saner states can possibly assure us that they can be successful here if they can’t retain the stability of their staff and let ineffective teachers go, when necessary. Longtime Rhode Island residents have been drinking the protectionist Kool-Aid for so long they forget what effective school governance might look like.
Fascinating.
More colleges move toward optional SATs
- Smith College and Wake Forest University no longer require the SAT for admissions
- Nearly 760 institutions have made a step in this direction, advocacy group says
- Schools say SAT is biased against students who can’t afford preparation
- The College Board, which owns the SAT, says test is a good predictor of success
Fifteen years into education reform, we are still failing to fix the most troubled schools. Now there’s no excuse.
SCHOOL LEADERS IN Holyoke are no strangers to finger-wagging state reports on student achievement at the Lynch Middle School. It was eight years ago this month that the state education department first declared the Holyoke school, which has a student-poverty rate of 84 percent, “underperforming.” In the years since then, state officials have paid visit after visit to Holyoke, documenting shortcomings in written reports and recording the steps the school was taking to try to address them.
The Lynch was one of the first schools in Massachusetts to earn that unenviable distinction, which is part of the accountability system established by the landmark education reform bill passed in 1993. And today it is still among the 114 schools in the state – nearly all of them serving high-poverty populations – that are officially “underperforming.” Of all the schools that have made this list, only nine have been able to climb off of it. Lynch, and many other schools, land on the list and tend to stay there.
Fifteen years into education reform, a growing number of critics charge that the effort has hit a wall. With MCAS, the sometimes controversial achievement test, the state has become quite good at identifying schools where performance is lagging. But it has failed at the crucial next step: fixing the schools.
Union Negotiations Go Online
American Airlines and its unions are actively using the web to publish their positions. Check out the Association of Professional Flight Attendants Website. Related: Concessions before negotiations and an alternate view.
The resegregation of Seattle’s schools
Nearly three decades after Seattle Public Schools integrated almost all its schools through busing, that racial balance is long gone.
Leschi Elementary, about evenly divided between white and minority students in 1980, has a nearly all-minority population once again. The same is true for Brighton Elementary, Dunlap Elementary, Van Asselt Elementary — and all but two of the 26 schools that, the year before busing started, were considered racially imbalanced. Today, a total of 30 schools — close to a third of the district’s buildings — have nonwhite populations that far exceed the district’s average of 58 percent. In 20 of them, nonwhite enrollment is 90 percent or more.
Seattle schools don’t look exactly like they did before districtwide busing began in 1978. There are fewer nearly all-white schools. Minority students are not as concentrated as they once were in the central part of the city.
Another Look at High School Performance Assessments
Just returned from Providence where I spent two days learning about Rhode Island’s diploma system, which includes a number of performance-based assessment requirements. Today at Portsmouth High School I saw students present their senior projects to groups of teachers, classmates, and outside community judges. Beginning this year, to graduate, all 200+ seniors at Portsmouth are required to complete a year-long senior project, consisting of the “4Ps” — a research paper, a tangible product, a process portfolio, and today’s oral presentation. Students select their projects, submit a letter of intent, and work closely with a school or community mentor. And, the projects really are diverse. The first student I saw today presented the stage set she’d designed for the school production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Another student’s project consisted of running a marathon and fundraising to support leukemia research.
The students were, of course, outstanding. But, what surprised me most were my conversations with the principal, teachers, and state officials about the cultural changes that were emerging from the senior project requirement. Roy Seitsinger, Director of RI High School Redesign, was emphatic that this work was “about transformative cultural change.”
Perfect school attendance earns teen a brand-new car
Andria Baker has pretty much always been present.
From the first day of kindergarten through her last day of high school, Baker somehow made it to school for every day of classes, despite colds and sports injuries. Why? If she kept it up, her father promised her a car.
Baker kept up her end of the bargain, willing herself to go to school on those days when she felt under the weather. She notched her 13th year of uninterrupted classroom attendance with her final day at Constantine High School on Friday.
Zeum: An Arts & Technology Museum for Kids & Families
Zeum is a non-profit multimedia arts and technology museum with a mission to foster creativity and innovation in young people of all backgrounds, communities and learning styles. By providing hands-on experiences in four core creative processes (animation, sound and video production, live performance and visual arts), we encourage youth to share their stories, build their voices, and use multimedia tools for creative self-expression.
Rod Carew Leads Education Workshop
Hall of Famer Rod Carew felt right at home Wednesday morning speaking to a group of Temple City High School teachers as part of a traveling education workshop put on by the Hall of Fame, right down to receiving a school hat with a “TC” logo much like his old Minnesota Twins cap as a gift.
Carew told the enthralled group of Southern California educators the story of his life and career, from growing up in Panama, to not making his high school team, to being discovered by a Twins scout on a sandlot field in New York, to becoming an 18-time All-Star elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot.
Because of his life journey, he often tells kids not to let anybody tell them they can’t do something, because anything can happen in life.
“It’s OK to dream, because dreams do come true,” said Carew, whose career proves that point. “No matter what walk of life you take.”
Little interest again in Richmond superintendent
Richmond’s School Board yesterday held the last of four meetings asking city residents what they want to see in a superintendent — and again drew only a small group.
About two dozen people showed up at Linwood Holton Elementary School for the session.
“We need someone who is very top notch,” Tammy Williams, a parent from South Richmond, told the board. “We need someone who can concentrate on the entire system.”
One district is finding that simple measures are helping kids read.
If administrators in the Centennial School District are right, all it takes is a few minutes a day to get many of their struggling readers on track.
The district’s five elementary schools are finishing the first year of the Centennial Early Reading Foundations program (CERF), a K-3 literacy initiative created to reduce the number of special education referrals, to lift more students to grade level, and to improve children’s social development, through increased small-group instruction and assessment, tailored to each child’s needs. Much of the extra work occurs right in the classroom.
“We recognize that literacy is a cornerstone to the success of our children,” said Dan Bittman, the district’s director of elementary and secondary schools. “Literacy affects achievement in all areas and prepares them for the global world.”
Incoming Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad Receives UW-Green Bay Chancellor’s Award
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay:
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Chancellor Bruce Shepard will present Chancellor’s Awards to longtime UW-Green Bay friends Daniel Nerad and Leonard A. Seidl during commencement ceremonies Saturday, May 17, on campus.
The Chancellor’s Award is UW-Green Bay’s highest community honor. It recognizes distinguished service to the University and community.
Daniel Nerad, Ph.D., is recognized for his service to the community and success in promoting partnerships with its public university.
Nerad has been superintendent of schools and learning in the Green Bay Area Public School District since 2001. Prior to his appointment as superintendent, he served the Green Bay district in a variety of roles including assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction and executive director of curriculum. He earned Wisconsin Superintendent of the Year honors in 2006.
UW-Green Bay Chancellor Bruce Shepard notes that Dr. Nerad’s “commitment and dedication to education have had a major impact on students and people of all ages in our community.” In particular, the superintendent’s support of Phuture Phoenix at UW-Green Bay has helped the precollege program expand its reach to thousands of local students as early as fifth grade. The program matches volunteer mentors with students from low-income neighborhoods and counsels children to value education and plan for college. Nerad has also been a partner with the Institute for Learning Partnership at UW-Green Bay.
Much more on Dan Nerad here.
School of the future in the Philippines
The opening of the new school year in this country coincides with the onset of the rainy season, highlighting twin problems that confront us year after year.
The first is the seemingly perennial lack of classrooms and school buildings, with the Department of Education hard-pressed each time school opening season comes round to build enough classrooms for the ever-increasing population of students. Add to this the need to repair, if not rebuild entirely, school buildings damaged in typhoons and other natural disasters or simply falling apart due to time and substandard construction.
Around this time of the year, too, the Philippines comes in for its share of rains, typhoons, floods, landslides and other disasters. And for many communities, especially in the rural areas, the nearest and most convenient evacuation center is the local school, which many consider to be built of stronger, sturdier materials than their own flimsy houses. But what if this isn’t the case? What if the school house itself is vulnerable to the elements?
Do We Really Need School Boards?
A school board expert from Iowa who spoke at a conference in Dartmouth earlier this month noted that elected school boards in both Canada and the United States are increasingly being replaced by appointed bureaucrats.
Mary L. Delagardelle, who is in favour of elected boards, warned that “giving up elected school boards . . . is also giving up a little piece of democracy.”
True enough. But we have surely reached the point in Nova Scotia, after a decade of troubles with school boards, where a little less democracy would be welcome change.
A GAAP Toothed (Wisconsin) Budget
There are at least two negative consequences for taxpayers. First, failing to pay today’s bills until tomorrow makes paying tomorrow’s bills even harder. The state’s problem keeps getting bigger. A report issued in January had the GAAP deficit at over $2.4 billion. The previous year, it was $2.15 billion, which was more than the year before. And that year’s GAAP gap was bigger than the year before that. You get the picture.
The second consequence of the GAAP deficit is it hurts the state’s bond rating. That means the state has to pay higher interest rates when it borrows money. And, of course, it’s the taxpayers who pay the penalty for our lawmakers’ fiscal irresponsibility.
This problem has been 20 years in the making. GAAP deficits have been happening under Democratic governors and Republican governors, and they’ve been happening when Republicans control the Legislature as well as when Democrats are in charge. But while the problem isn’t new and both parties are to blame, it’s important to remember that it hasn’t always been this way.
Something to consider with respect to the potential for growth in redistributed state education tax dollars.
Related: Michigan recently raised taxes significantly, only to see a smaller increase than expected.
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Releases Latest State Test Results, Madison Trails State Averages
380K PDF Press Release [AP’s posting of DPI’s press release]:
Results for statewide testing show an overall upward trend for mathematics, stable scores in reading, and a slight narrowing of several achievement gaps. This three-year trend comes at a time when poverty is continuing to increase among Wisconsin students.
The 434,507 students who took the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations (WKCE) and the Wisconsin Alternate Assessment for Students with Disabilities (WAA-SwD) this school year showed gains over the past three years in mathematics in six out of seven grades tested. Reading achievement at the elementary, middle, and high school levels was stable over three years. An analysis of all combined grades indicates a narrowing of some achievement gaps by racial/ethnic group.
“These three years of assessment data show some positive trends. While some results point to achievement gains, we must continue our focus on closing achievement gaps and raising achievement for all students,” said State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster.
Andy Hall notes that Madison Trails State Averages [Dane County Test Result Comparison prepared by Andy Hall & Phil Brinkman – pdf]:
But in the Madison School District, just two of the 23 proficiency scores improved, while five were unchanged and 16 declined, according to a Wisconsin State Journal review of the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school year data from the state Department of Public Instruction.
Madison’s scores trail the state average in 22 of the 23 scores. Typically the percentage of Madison students attaining proficient or advanced ratings trails the state average by several percentage points.
“The fact that we’re able to stay close to the state average as our demographics have made dramatic changes, I think is a positive,” said Madison schools Superintendent Art Rainwater, who added that the district’s “strong instructional program” is meeting many of the challenges of immigrant and low-income students while ensuring that “high fliers are still flying high.”
A district analysis shows that when the district’s students are compared with their peers across the state, a higher percentage of Madison students continue to attain “advanced” proficiency scores — the highest category.
Madison students who aren’t from low-income families “continue to outperform their state counterparts,” with higher percentages with advanced scores in reading and math at all seven tested grade levels, the district reported.
Rainwater said he’s long feared that the district’s increasingly needy student population, coupled with the state’s revenue limits that regularly force the district to cut programs and services, someday will cause test scores to drop sharply. But so far, he said, the district’s scores are higher than would be expected, based on research examining the effects of poverty and limited English abilities on achievement.
This school year, 43 percent of Madison students are from low-income families eligible for free and reduced-price lunches, while 16 percent of students are classified as English language learners — numbers that are far above those of any other Dane County school district.
Rainwater noted that students with limited English abilities receive little help while taking the reading and language arts tests in English.
Reading test scores for Madison students changed little compared to 2006-07, but math results decreased in six of the seven grades tested. Of 23 scores in five topics tested statewide, Madison lagged behind state peers in 22 of 23 of those scores.
Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater attributes the district’s performance and trends to the growing population of English language learners in the district.Officials now are able to draw upon three years of results since Wisconsin began administering testing to students in grades three through eight and grade 10 in reading and mathematics. Based on state regulations, students in fourth, eighth and 10th grade were also tested in language arts, science and social studies.
Alan Borsuk on Milwaukee’s results:
But there is little room for debate about what the scores say about the need for improvement in the outcomes for Milwaukee Public Schools students: The gaps between Milwaukee students and the rest of the state remain large, and school improvement efforts of many kinds over the years have not made much of a dent.
The problem is especially vivid when it comes to 10th-graders, the highest grade that is part of Wisconsin’s testing system. The gap between sophomores in Milwaukee and those statewide has grown larger over the last two years, and, once again, no more than 40% of 10th-graders in MPS were rated as proficient or better in any of the five areas tested by the state. For math and science, the figure is under 30%.
Amy Hetzner notes that Waukesha County’s test scores also slipped.
Notes and links regarding the rigor of Wisconsin DPI standards. DPI academic standards home page. Search individual school and district results here. The 2006 Math Forum discussed changes to the DPI math test and local results.
TJ Mertz reviews Wright Middle School’s results.
Chan Stroman’s June, 2007 summary of Madison WKCE PR, data and an interesting discussion. Notes on spin from Jason Spencer.
Jeff Henriques dove into the 2007 WKCE results and found that Madison tested fewer 10th graders than Green Bay, Appleton, Milwaukee and Kenosha. There’s also a useful discussion on Jeff’s post.
Advocating a Standard Grad Rate & Madison’s “2004 Elimination of the Racial Achievement Gap in 3rd Grade Reading Scores”.
Madison School District’s Press Release and analysis: Slight decline on WKCE; non-low income students shine
Advocating a Standard Graduation Rate & Madison’s “2004 Elimination of the Racial Achievement Gap in 3rd Grade Reading Scores”
Back in 1995, when the Wisconsin State Journal and WISC-TV began a civic journalism project to study the racial achievement gaps in our schools, the statistical measures of student achievement and reading in third grade put the issue in sharp focus.
United Way and our community partners’ efforts, through a variety of strategies including the Schools of Hope tutoring program, relied on those strong, focused statistics to measure the success of our 1-on-1 and 1-on-2 tutoring.
By 2004, Superintendent Art Rainwater was able to announce the elimination of the racial achievement gap in third grade reading scores, because our community had focused on stable statistical measure for over 10 years.
A standard graduation rate formula would create the same public focus for our nation’s efforts to increase high school graduation rates.
Related:
- Ruth Robarts Letter to Isthmus on 3rd Grade Reading Scores
- Jason Shephards: The Fate of the Schools discusses those 2004 3rd grade reading scores.
- Ruth Robarts: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:
On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.
According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.
Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close. - A teacher’s letter to Isthmus on 3rd grade reading scores.
- Channel3000 on the Schools of Hope project and 3rd grade reading scores.
- Value Added Assessment in the Madison School District. Ed Hughes: Madison schools need to get real on equity, New value-added approach is needed for improving schools
- Leslie Ann Howard’s biography.
- Ed Hughes wrote a fascinating piece in 2005 on the local budget, collective bargaining and school climate. The piece includes this gem:
This points up one of the frustrating aspects of trying to follow school issues in Madison: the recurring feeling that a quoted speaker — and it can be someone from the administration, or MTI, or the occasional school board member — believes that the audience for an assertion is composed entirely of idiots.
- Madison & Math Data, 8th Grade.
U.S. Schools Tap Growing Ranks of Chinese Students
As more and more Chinese go to college, U.S. universities are trying to grab a piece of this growing market. Even smaller schools feel they must have some sort of exchange program with Chinese schools. Exchange students were once motivated by a desire to spread international understanding, but now many feel that global education is important to their success in the job market.
audio.
National Spelling Bee Brings Out Protesters Who R Thru With Through
A fyoo duhzen ambishuhss intelectchooals, a handful ov British skool teechers and wuhn rokit siuhntist ar triing to chang the way we spel.
They are the leaders of the spelling-reform movement, a passionate but sporadic 800-year-old campaign to simplify English orthography. In its long and failure-ridden history, the movement has tried to convince an indifferent public of the need for a spelling system based on pronunciation.
Reformers, including Mark Twain, Charles Darwin and Theodore Roosevelt, argued that phonetic spellings would make it easier for children, foreigners and adults with learning disabilities to read and write. For centuries, few listened, and the movement, exhausted by its own rhetoric and disputes within its ranks, sputtered out. It’s back.
Spelling reform is currently enjoying a renaissance in the U.S. and Britain. At a time when young people are inventing their own shorthand for email and text messages, the reformers see a fresh opportunity 2 convert people 2 the cause.
In recent years, the ranks of Britain’s Spelling Society and the American Literacy Council have swelled from a few stalwart members to more than 500, which in this effort is a lot. Reformers are energized: Some are writing to dictionary editors urging them to include simplified spellings in new editions. Others are organizing academic conferences, including one on June 7 in Coventry, England, on “The Cost of Spelling.” The American Literacy Council just allocated $45,000 of its $250,000 private endowment to develop a series of DVDs using simplified spelling to teach English to international students. The Spelling Society has hired its first publicist.
US Schools: Not that Bad
America’s educational system is easier than those in China and India — but it’s still teaching valuable life lessons
Students have 2 million minutes—the time from the beginning of eighth grade to high school graduation—to build the intellectual foundation they’ll need for professional success. That’s the premise of a new documentary, Two Million Minutes, that’s making waves in education and political circles.
The film tracks six students—two each in the U.S., India, and China—during their senior year of high school. The Indian and Chinese students work diligently on math and science, while the American students work hard but appear less focused and leave plenty of time for video games and social lives. The message is that because of our education system, we’re getting left behind.
Two Million Minutes provides a provocative glimpse of the global competition now facing U.S. students. And the conclusion many are drawing is that to keep our edge, our children need to study more math and science and work harder. It is true that the U.S. education system should be improved; that’s essential for economic success.
But the solution isn’t for us to become just like our new competitors. We need to do what we do better.
Retiring Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater’s Reign, A Look Back
On June 30th, Art Rainwater is stepping down as superintendent of the Madison Metropolitan School District.
It’s a position the 65-year-old never expected to fill, in Madison or anywhere else.
“My only career goal was to be a high school football coach,” says Rainwater.
He was in 1965. Rainwater’s career kicked off in Arkansas. The teacher-coach then moved to Texas. Next, Rainwater took a principal job in Alabama. His path eventually led to administrative work in Missouri. Then, in 1994, Rainwater became deputy superintendent in Wisconsin’s Capitol City.
“I’ve served at almost every level of the K-12 education system that you can serve,” he says.
In 1998, he added interim superintendent to his resume, replacing Cheryl Wilhoyte. During her tenure the district hit plenty of road bumps. Tensions were high.
“I think there was a lot of dissatisfaction, across the community, with the school district, at that time,” says Rainwater. “So, the damage control was pretty obvious, (it) was going to happen.”
Rainwater came in with three immediate goals. Smooth things over with the teachers union. Repair the district’s relationship with the UW. And, gain the support of the business community.
“I thought by doing those three things, it would put the new superintendent, in place, to come in and hit the ground running,” he adds.
Many notes and links on Art Rainwater can be found here.
Waukesha’s Superintendent Search
The board is in the midst of interviews with six semifinalists for the superintendent’s job, chosen from a pool “just shy of 20” applicants screened by search consulting firm Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates. The interviews are scheduled to wrap up tonight, with the board naming one or several finalists afterward, Warren said.
That puts the district on track to bring in its finalists next week for meetings with administrators, community leaders, labor groups and board members, with the possibility that the board could know whether it has a final candidate by week’s end, he said.
The names of the semifinalists have not been released.
Summer no holiday for college coaches, high school football prospects
Memorial Day marks the time high school and college students are anxious for the school year to end and the summer to begin; graduation ceremonies take place and families plan their vacations.
Not so fast!
College football coaches and athletes who are going into their senior season of high school football have other plans. For both college staffs and high school athletes, the time period between Memorial Day and Labor Day is extremely important for recruiting.
Childhood Obesity Rates Stop Rising
The obesity epidemic may have peaked among U.S. children, halting a decades-long trend of inexorably expanding waistlines among the nation’s youngest and most vulnerable, federal health officials reported yesterday.
A new analysis of the most recent data collected by an ongoing government survey, considered the most authoritative on the subject, detected the first sign since the 1980s that the proportion of 2-to-19-year-olds who are overweight may have stopped rising, the National Center for Health Statistics reported.
Girls are becoming as good as boys at mathematics, and are still better at reading
Luigi Guiso of the European University Institute in Florence and his colleagues have just published the results of a study which suggests that culture explains most of the difference in maths, at least. In this week’s Science, they show that the gap in mathematics scores between boys and girls virtually disappears in countries with high levels of sexual equality, though the reading gap remains.
Dr Guiso took data from the 2003 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment. Some 276,000 15-year-olds from 40 countries sat the same maths and reading tests. The researchers compared the results, by country, with each other and with a number of different measures of social sexual equality. One measure was the World Economic Forum’s gender-gap index, which reflects economic and political opportunities, education and well-being for women. Another was based on an index of cultural attitudes towards women. A third was the rate of female economic activity in a country, and the fourth measure looked at women’s political participation.
Expeditionary Learning Schools Outward Bound
Expeditionary Learning Schools Outward Bound:
Expeditionary Learning Schools Outward Bound (ELS) is a comprehensive K-12 educational design. Our approach combines rigorous academic content and real world projects — learning expeditions — with active teaching and community service. The ELS design focuses on teaching in an engaging way. Faculty members receive intensive professional development in curriculum, teaching practices, and building a strong school culture. Expeditionary Learning is now being implemented in over 140 urban, rural, and suburban schools.
Toughest Summer Job This Year Is Finding One
School is out, and Aaron Stallings, his junior year of high school behind him, wanders the air-conditioned cocoon of the Woodland Hills Mall in search of a job.
Mr. Stallings, 18, says he has been looking for three months, burning gasoline to get to the mall, then filling out applications at stores selling skateboard T-shirts, beach sandals and baseball caps. He likes the idea of working amid the goods he covets. But so far, no offers.
“I’m going to go to Iraq and get a job,” he says acidly. “I hear they’ve got cheap gas.” He grins. “I’m just playing. But I’ve been all over, and nobody’s hiring. They just say, ‘We’ll call you tomorrow.’ And no one ever calls back.”
As the forces of economic downturn ripple widely across the United States, the job market of 2008 is shaping up as the weakest in more than half a century for teenagers looking for summer work, according to labor economists, government data and companies that hire young people.
This deterioration is jeopardizing what many experts consider a crucial beginning stage of working life, one that gives young people experience and confidence along with pocket money.
Related: Milwaukee Sisters Sell Root Beer To Raise Money For College.
Colorado’s Innovation Schools Act of 2008
Colorado State Senate President Peter Groff (D-Denver) submitted a bill that:
- Allows hiring decisions outside Union Labor Contracts
- Gives schools control over:budgets, hiring decisions, and length of school days
- Allows schools to dictate teacher qualifications and how much time to spend in class
- Allows public schools to sidestep restrictions for the purpose of creating wide-ranging innovation in Colorado schools.
More from Jeremy Meyer and Democrats for Education Reform. Download Colorado SB08-130 here. Governor Bill Ritter signed the “Innovation Zones” bill into law on May 28, 2008.
Todd Engdahl summarizes the changes during the bill’s “sausage making” process:
First big change
The original bill required only “a statement of the level of support” for the plan by school employees, students and parents, and the community. The amended bill requires a four-part test of support among various constituencies: “a majority of administrators,” “a majority of teachers” and a “majority of the school advisory council,” plus “a statement of the level of support” among other school employees, students and parents, and the surrounding community.
The amendments add a requirement to the application process – a description of the elements of any collective bargaining agreement that would need to be waived for an innovation plan to work.
Second (really) big change
The original bill gave innovation schools blanket exemption from laws and rules on: performance evaluations, authority of principals, employment of teachers, transfer of teachers, dismissal of teachers, salary schedules, teacher licensing and teacher salary payment.
All of that was struck by the amendments and replaced with language allowing a school board to waive any requirements deemed necessary to an innovation plan, except provisions of the school finance law, the exceptional children’s educational act, data requirements necessary for School Accountability Reports, laws requiring criminal background checks of employees and the children’s Internet protection act. (The original language barred any waivers of CSAP and No Child Left Behind requirements, and those remain in the bill.)
Third (really) big change
The original bill allowed innovation schools to be removed from a district’s entire collective bargaining agreement by a vote of a majority of the personnel at the affected school or schools.
The amendments require “waiver of one or more of the provisions of the collective bargaining agreement” (italics added) to be approved by vote of “at least sixty percent of the members of the collective bargain unit who are employed at the innovation school.”
Live Video Language Learning
We have a simple (but not easy) mission: Revolution education.
Our goal is to create a platform to allow live learning to take place over the Internet anytime from anywhere.
Most importantly…for anyone. We’re the first people (we know) to create something that’s totally open and community-driven (rather than closed and transaction-driven).
We’re excited to create tools for people to teach and learn what they love in ways they never imagined possible.
If changing the world is your thing and you’re as passionate about education and learning as we are, please get in touch.
There is certainly a revolution underway in education – largely occurring outside the traditional school models. Innovation always starts at the edges, in this case homeschooling, and non-traditional school leaders and teachers. Much more on technology & education here.
Japan Urges Limiting Kids Cell Phones
Japanese youngsters are getting so addicted to Internet-linking cell phones that the government is starting a program warning parents and schools to limit their use among children.
The government is worried about how elementary and junior high school students are getting sucked into cyberspace crimes, spending long hours exchanging mobile e-mail and suffering other negative effects of cell phone overuse, Masaharu Kuba, a government official overseeing the initiative, said Tuesday.
“Japanese parents are giving cell phones to their children without giving it enough thought,” he said. “In Japan, cell phones have become an expensive toy.”
The recommendations have been submitted from an education reform panel to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s administration, and were approved this week.
The panel is also asking Japanese makers to develop cell phones with only the talking function, and GPS, or global positioning system, a satellite-navigation feature that can help ensure a child’s safety.
Working Relationship: Patrick Spottiswoode, director of education at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, and his PA, Adrienne Gillam
“We get 100,000 students a year, aged from 3 to postgraduates,” says Patrick Spottiswoode, the Globe’s education director, “and at our busiest, we have 800 in a day. Children often arrive bored and cynical, but once they’ve been introduced to Shakespeare, they become animated and positive.” His PA, Adrienne Gillam, sees it for herself: “It’s wonderful to watch an audience of kids come alive,” she says.
The education programme is run by 23 members of staff with the help of 60 freelancers, usually actors who have been specially trained in each year group’s syllabus and can help students of all ages to create a production in less than a day.
The events have come a long way since 1984 when Patrick arrived — by coincidence, on Shakespeare’s birthday. He recalls: “I was working on a PhD and decided to take a year off, but 24 years later, I’m still here. There were only two members of staff, and the job advertisement was for someone to run an arts centre, museum and cafe. In reality, I started the arts centre with L200 of my own books, the museum was in a leaking warehouse and the cafe consisted of a kettle.”
Checking Up: States’ Reports On Child-Care Centers Hit Web
Some important government child-care safety records are entering the Internet age at last.
In the past, state regulators’ inspections of child-care centers and homes for safety, quality and cleanliness typically were cloaked in bureaucratic obscurity. To see the records, parents often had to drive to a state office during the workday or file cumbersome written requests under state freedom-of-information laws.
Now, 20 of the 50 states have begun posting the records online, and at least 13 more plan to do so soon. Searches usually can be done by Zip Code, city or facility name, bringing up state inspection reports, safety or health citations, complaint investigations or all three. (See a list of state links.)
Obama’s Education Speech
Obama backed into his answer, praising charter schools and suggesting the federal government encourage innovation both by the president’s “bully pulpit” and by advertising “best practices” for schools to observe and emulate.
But, he went on, “this has always been a problem when it comes to education reform policies. There are always good schools in every state, in every school district and at every income level. You can go into every state and you can point to one school or five schools or ten schools that are doing a great job of educating their kids. The question we have to figure out is how do we scale up? How do we take the lessons of a great school like MESA, and have a hundred good schools like MESA?
“And there are a lot of ingredients to that, but probably the biggest challenge is making sure that we’ve got great educational leaders, both teachers and principals, in those schools and we’ve got to produce more and more of those.
During the question and answer period, Obama was asked about bilingual education, especially given current climate of immigration. Obama believes that everyone should be bilingual or even “trilingual.” “When we as a society do a really bad job teaching foreign languages – it is costing us when it comes to being competitive in a global marketplace,” he said.
He was also asked about the federal government’s role in a world of charter schools and the success of private foundations on small school public education, such as the school where he was appearing. Obama immediately expressed his support for charter schools, citing the importance of “innovation at the local level.” But Obama treaded lightly, saying that there are always good schools in every state. Earlier in his speech, Obama referred to the ongoing teacher talks in Denver. Dozens of teachers in two different public schools called in sick in opposition to their ongoing contract negotiations.
At the Wednesday event, Obama regurgitated the (inaccurate) slam that NCLB relies on a “a single, high-stakes test,” according to this report (Obama tours Colorado school, touts education plans EdWeek) and did the whole curriculum narrowing thing, too, about which I have my doubts.
He’s also proposing a national service-type thing that to my eye looks an awful lot like a federal version of TFA. Just what schools (and school reform) doesn’t need — more FNG short-timers making everyone feel good about high-need schools (Full text of Obama’s education speech). Yeah, I’m against that.
Friend or Foe: The scoop on Toki lunches
Monika Hetzler & Erika Rodriguez:
Ask Toki Middle School students how they feel about school lunches, and you’ll get varied responses. Some say they never eat it, while others claim “it’s the best lunch I’ve had!” Whether people like the food or not isn’t necessarily indicative of the healthfulness of school lunches.
University of Wisconsin nutritionist Marcy Braun said the nutritional value of school lunches could be “greatly improved” and described her ideal school lunch.
“Well, first, I would make the lunch period longer,” said Braun, adding that if schools provided more space and played music during lunch, it would “make the room more alive,” which could be a “key factor” in creating a better environment.
Via Isthmus.
How to Solve Toddler Tantrums: Think Like a Neanderthal
You’re in a store, little kid in hand, and then suddenly she tries to pull away. You bend down and whisper quietly in her ear, “Stay with Mommy, honey,” knowing full well that this reasonable request is a foolish attempt to dampen the temper tantrum that is rising like a tsunami inside your kid. With a pounding heart, you scoop her up and run from the store before someone shouts, “Bad parent. Dreadful child. Get out!”
No one knows why 2-year-olds have temper tantrums, but most of them do. It starts with mild anger over something simple but then quickly escalates into full blown fury dramatized by screaming, fist pounding, foot-stomping, and screaming. The child also descends psychologically into a place where they can’t be reached by words or physical comfort, and parents stand by helpless and confused.
Clearly, the child is distressed, but to the parent, the distress seems way out of proportion to the situation. And it is physically stressful for the child, which suggests that there must be some evolutionary reason why temper tantrums are so universal for little kids.
Keeping Science In Children’s Orbit
As Schools Focus on Reading and Math, Educator Has Students’ Eyes on the Skies
Bob Nicholson can make the sun rise in the west, the stars come out at noon and the moon wax and wane with his whims.
“I will show you what the sky will look like on your last day of fifth grade,” the 56-year-old educator told students gathered one afternoon this month in the domed planetarium at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria.
“This is not only a space machine,” he continued, “it’s a time machine.”
Open-mouthed, the Lyles-Crouch Traditional Academy fifth-graders stared up as the sun suddenly took Nicholson’s cue, rising and setting on the course it would take June 19, the last day of school.
Middleton High School Students Collect Donations to Aid Individuals in War-Torn Nation
Project Liberia inspires students to give
With the school year winding down and summer almost here, it would be easy for any area high school student to spend his or her time simply counting down the days to the start of summer fun. But for one group of students at Middleton High School, there is no time like the present to start a new project, aimed at helping those in need halfway around the world.
For the past three weeks, this group of students have been collecting used sports equipment for children in the country of Liberia, all in the name of helping the youth of this nation, which is recovering from a 15-year civil war, learn how to see each other as teammates rather than enemies.
The inspiration for the project — titled Sports For Africa and part of a burgeoning non-profit organization called Project Liberia — came from 16-year-old Laytee Norkeh, whose mother and father are Liberian nationals. As Norkeh and her friends listened to heartbreaking stories of the great need that exists across the small West African country, they couldn’t help but see an opportunity to get involved.
“We felt a strong need to take matters into our own hands and help those who are so helpless,” Norkeh says. “It takes so little to make such a big difference in the lives of these people. We want to help them and give them hope of a better future.”
Norkeh, along with Eli Rosen, Carli Kopatz, Lexie Jordee, Sam Delabarre, Ashley Guse, Campbell White, David Ripp, Alex Koritzinsky, and John Zimmerman have been working to collect used sports equipment at their school and other local businesses. The collection runs from May 28 – June 6th. Laytee has created a video which will be shown to the student body beginning May 28th.
About Project Liberia:
Project Liberia is a collection of individual programs designed to meet some of the most pressing needs for a nation recovering from a devastating civil war. Each venture — from building a community center, developing a micro-loan system and bringing sports equipment to children in villages and orphanages — has been developed to enhance the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual fiber of the people of Liberia. 501(c)(3) status pending.
For more information, please contact Bulleh Bablitch at (608) 577-6711 or project.liberia@yahoo.com.
Liberia via the CIA’s World Factbook.
Gwinnett County, GA Schools asked math teachers to stay for summer school
Gwinnett County Schools began to prepare teachers for higher than normal failure rates on the standardized math exam for middle-schoolers long before the state announced the troubled scores.
Tougher standards made the new middle school math section of the Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Test more challenging for students. New curriculum changes also proved to be more difficult for some educators to teach and students to grasp.
When you have a new assessment on a new curriculum you usually anticipate that you will have a dip in performance,” said Sloan Roach, spokesperson for Gwinnett Schools.
Planning ahead for problems, Gwinnett administrators asked more middle school teachers than usual to stick around for summer school, so the district wouldn’t be overwhelmed by eighth-graders seeking help in math. Eighth-graders are required to pass the CRCT for promotion to high school.
Three women rise to the top of AFT union
Hillary Clinton’s bid to become the first female U.S. president could falter, but another milestone for women probably will fall into place this summer with little fanfare: Three women are slated to become the first to run a major labor union.
Delegates to the American Federation of Teachers’ biennial meeting here in July are expected to elect Randi Weingarten their new president, along with two other longtime AFT officials: Antonia Cortese and Lorretta Johnson as secretary-treasurer and executive vice president, respectively.
The three announced their candidacy last week at a small, private event for top union officials.
“It’s powerful because these are three knowledgeable women,” says Marietta English, president of the Baltimore Teachers Union. “This is the year for women. I’m excited.”
Wisconsin Host schools and families needed for Japanese teachers
A father from Thailand recently observed the power of international exchange programs in an e-mail to Wisconsin staff about his daughter’s visit to the state: “She has learned many things and felt very connected to her host, friends and you. I think this is the best part of this program: to get people to know each other, understand each other and feel that they belong to the same family. It is very amazing that only few weeks can make this strong relationship.”
Another opportunity to build international relationships is now here. Schools and districts have until June 6 to apply to host visiting teachers from Japan this fall.
The Japan-Wisconsin Education Connection, now in its 12th year, gives a select number of K-12 Wisconsin school districts the opportunity to host a talented elementary, junior or senior high school teacher from Japan.
Rhee Changes DC’s School Budget Formula: Seeks to Bring Art & Music to Schools
D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee has scrapped a funding formula introduced in the late 1990s to bring more transparency and public participation to budget deliberations, replacing it with a system that critics say diminishes the autonomy of individual schools.
Rhee says that the funding method, known as the “weighted student formula,” has not served many schools well, placing too much power in the hands of principals. Her alternative, she said, will increase transparency and help her make good on a core promise: to provide every D.C. school with art, music and physical education teachers.
Dismay over changes in the formula is part of a broader unhappiness with the development of the 2008-09 budget, the first on Rhee’s watch. Information about the proposed allocation of money, usually available to the public in February, was posted only a week ago on the D.C. Public Schools Web site.
The Washington DC District posts individual school budgets online.
Kettle Moraine School Plans Weekly Short Day for Teacher Development
Some parents in the Elmbrook School District have complained about their district’s move away from weekly, one-hour early releases to a schedule that dismisses students two hours and 15 minutes earlier than usual less frequently.
Kettle Moraine’s plan has yet to be shared with all of the school’s parents, said Kotlowski, although she said it has the near unanimous support of teachers.
The school should look into whether it could offer activities to occupy the student body while teachers are meeting as an alternative to sending them home early, Kettle Moraine board member Colin Butler suggested. He said students in Vermont, where he previously served on the school board, were allowed to ski free on the days when they went home early from school.
“Time given away will be very difficult to retrieve later on,” Butler said.
Science Students Need To Get Out Of The Classroom
It’s a late Wednesday morning and these three high school students from Meriden should be hunkered down in the classroom. But here they are, jammed around a digital monitor at the Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, fingers hovering over the touchscreen display that morphs scorpions and other critters through evolutionary time.
“Oh, wow,” says Alexis Rivera, 16, neck craning and eyes fixed to the screen. “This is crazy.”
Rivera was among 40 biology students from Orville H. Platt High School who fanned across the museum last week for a field trip on biodiversity, peering at ecological dioramas and touching interactive displays. To education experts, this is “informal” or “free-choice” science learning, which means it’s happening outside of school.
“When we’re in class, we can say, ‘Do you know that bird, the so-and-so?'” says Walt Zientek, the school’s special-education teacher for science. He is standing in the dimmed exhibit hall on Connecticut birds as his students weave their way through the museum’s three floors.
Parents question proposed changes to Pennsylvania’s gifted-student regulations
Pennsylvania is taking steps to make gifted education available to more students, but that has done little to quell long-standing tension between parents and school districts over how the state’s brightest are educated.
The proposed changes on course to become final this summer make clear that districts must use more than an IQ score to identify gifted students – as most other states do.
The state sets a 130 IQ as the trigger for gifted education and allows districts to choose the other criteria, such as teacher recommendations and classroom work.
Just how much impact the clarification will have is uncertain. State officials had no estimate of how many more students would be identified or the potential cost to districts.
While most area school administrators interviewed said they already use more than an IQ score to evaluate students, education advocates disagree.
Education activist led school board
After 10-year hiatus, she joined efforts to remove controversial superintendent
Margaret V. Soucek and a small group of friends set out in the mid-1960s to help reform the Morton High School District 201 Board.
Their group, The Organization for Better Education, met with so much stonewalling and hostility from local political forces in Berwyn and Cicero that one of their candidates, Mary Karasek, considered dropping out of the race, Karasek recalled Monday. But when Mrs. Soucek heard about her friend’s wish, she wouldn’t have it.
“I thought, ‘It isn’t worth it,'” Karasek said. “But Margaret got so worked up about the fact that I withdrew, that I decided I had to [run].”
Mrs. Soucek, 86, a longtime Berwyn resident, would go on to serve as president of the District 201 Board, frequently squaring off against forces loyal to west suburban figures such as former Cicero Town President Betty Loren-Maltese. Mrs. Soucek died Wednesday, May 21, in Adventist La Grange Memorial Hospital after a heart attack.
Few Solutions in Book on Charters
Journalists, particularly me, tend to get excited about charter schools, the independently run public schools that have produced — at least in some cases — major improvements in achievement for children from low-income families. The charter educators I write about are often young, energetic, witty, noble and pretty much irresistible. But their charter schools, which use tax dollars with little oversight, are relatively new and untried. Like all experiments, they could easily fizzle.
That is the point of a short, readable and fact-filled new book, “Keeping the Promise? The Debate over Charter Schools,” available for $16.95 at http://rethinkingschools.org. The seven chapters make the best case I have ever read for a skeptical attitude toward the nation’s 4,000 charter schools. For reasons I will explain, it did not change my view of charters, but it should spark, as the subtitle says, a thought-provoking debate.
Local Politics: Madison Mayor Dave Meets with MTI’s John Matthews & Former WEAC Director Mo Andrews
Jason Joyce’s useful look at Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz’s weekly schedule often reveals a few nuggets of local political trivia. Today, the Mayor met with Madison Teachers, Inc. Executive Director John Matthews and former WEAC Executive Director Morris (Mo) Andrews.
Related links:
- City of Madison faces slower tax receipt growth
- Wisconsin state budget structural deficit: $1,682,000,000
- Madison School District’s 2008/2009 $367,806,712 budget (up from $217M in 1995, while enrollment has been flat the demographics have changed significantly)
- MTI has clashed in the past with WEAC
- Incoming Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad met with Mayor Dave in March.
- Retiring Superintendent Art Rainwater met with Dave in April.
- Madison Mayor proposes expansion of low income housing throughout Dane County.
- Morris Andrews searches: Clusty / Google / Live / WisPolitics
- Andrews previous efforts at reform of Wisconsin’s redistributed school tax dollars generated some controversy, as this letter from former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist illustrates [WEAC press release]. Andrews is an interesting guy.
- 2001 “Morris Andrews Plan to replace shared revenues with a county sales tax increases.
- Mayor Dave’s campaign website.
- Jason Shephard: John Matthews has run Madison’s teachers union for 40 years. Is it time for a change?
- Wisconsin’s tax burden drops to 11th.
Might parents and taxpayers have a meeting?
Study echoes MPS, voucher findings
Graduation rates higher among voucher students
A second round of results comparing high school graduation figures for Milwaukee Public Schools and a group of private schools in the city’s publicly funded voucher program has reached the same conclusion as a report issued in January: Students who attend voucher schools are more likely to graduate than those who attend MPS.
The second report, issued today, adds data for the class of 2007 to its figures. The earlier report had figures for the classes of 2003 through 2006.
The report was funded by and released by School Choice Wisconsin, the main organization for advocacy for Milwaukee’s voucher program, which is the oldest and largest of its kind in the United States. About 19,000 students attended about 120 private schools in the city this year, with public funds of up to $6,501 per student going to the schools.
Press release and complete report – PDF
Grand Rapids School Board to stop collecting union dues
The Grand Rapids Board of Education voted to suspend collecting union dues out of teachers’ paychecks.
The move comes after a mediation session was held Thursday. School officials say that session was unproductive. The board also took a no-confidence vote in Grand Rapids Education Association president Paul Helder.
The dues are now taken out of teachers’ paychecks by the district and forwarded to the union. It amounts to $57,000 every pay period, once every two weeks.
The district continued the practice voluntarily after the old contract expired, but that will end May 30.
Board leadership said they are trying to send a message that union leadership is dysfunctional, in part because the board president said Thursday’s mediation session wasted time repeating the same arguments about the district’s financial condition.