Category Archives: Budget/Financing

Budget/Financing

Schools turning broadband into cash

Erica Perez:

Three local educational institutions have discovered they are sitting on the telecommunications equivalent of beachfront property, and they’re about to cash in – to the tune of more than $100 million over 30 years.
In the 1970s, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee Public Schools and Milwaukee Area Technical College each got licenses for a set of frequencies to broadcast televised lessons in their classrooms. But by the mid-1990s, they had switched almost completely to the Internet, leaving these frequencies virtually unused for more than a decade.
Now, new rules from the Federal Communications Commission have cleared the way for these channels to be converted to wireless broadband. And commercial providers, eager to expand their wireless reach, have been racing to lease the frequencies from their owners.
Together, UWM, MPS and MATC plan to lease a dozen channels of educational broadband to Kirkland, Wash.-based Clearwire Corp. Under the deal, each institution will get $4.2 million up-front and monthly payments of $55,000 that increase annually, for a total estimated payout of about $36 million each over three decades.
The agreement could also bring Milwaukee Public Schools one step closer to bridging the digital divide. Clearwire spokeswoman Helen Chung would not comment on the company’s future business plans. But Todd Gray, an attorney with Washington, D.C.-based firm Dow Lohnes, who helped negotiate the deal, said Clearwire will likely use the spectrum to expand its wireless broadband network into the greater Milwaukee area.

Schools’ physical footprint lends themselves to this sort of wireless / fiber internet service. This is another way that the school systems can “bind” themselves to more of the population.

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Waukesha School Board Cuts Administrators to Save Teacher Positions

Amy Hetzner:

The School Board sacrificed administrative staff for teaching positions as part of nearly $1.3 million in program reductions approved Wednesday night for the 2008-’09 year.
The savings generated by eliminating the School District’s last staff member dedicated to implementing its gifted-and-talented program, as well as the equivalent of one-third of its department chairmen, helped keep the staff needed to preserve an eight-period day at the middle schools.
The board also voted to reduce the amount of money it distributes to building sites for discretionary spending by $200,000, or 3%, to cover some of the costs of a middle-school program that gives students one period every day for enrichment or extra help.
“None of us wants to make these cuts,” board member Kurt O’Bryan said. But he said the district paid its department chairmen more and gave them more time than did other school districts, and that administrative reductions would hurt students less than teacher layoffs.

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, School Climate

Critics on all sides of teacher pay law:

In rare move, arbitration threatened in Waukesha

Amy Hetzner:

Next week, Waukesha School District leaders plan to take an unusual step, one they contend is necessary after cutting $9.4 million worth of services over the past seven years: They will sit down with their teachers union to hash out a contract with help from a mediator.
What’s more unusual is the culprit that Waukesha Superintendent David Schmidt blames in part for the district’s financial woes: the state law intended to help school districts keep down teacher compensation costs.
“To some degree, we’d like to say we can control our labor costs,” Schmidt said. “The QEO makes that harder.”
Schmidt has company in other state school officials who contend the QEO, known more formally as the qualified economic offer law, has created fiscal problems for them. After 15 years with the law, considered one leg of the state’s so-called three-legged stool for school funding, calls for change are coming from many quarters.
At issue is what some have called the cap gap that exists between the roughly 2% increase in school revenue allowed annually under current law and the 3.8% boost in salaries and benefits practically guaranteed by the QEO, which says school boards can avoid arbitration if they offer teachers compensation increases in that amount.
“That’s probably the core issue right now within our system that’s causing some frustration from school district administrators,” said state Rep. Brett Davis (R-Oregon).
Although Waukesha school officials have not revealed the details of talks with the teachers union, indications are that their unusual move this year toward mediation and possible arbitration is to seek less than a 3.8% package increase for their teachers.
In addition to school leaders who complain the law’s conflict with revenue caps has forced staff cuts, teachers say the QEO increase has suppressed salaries. Critics contend it has helped educators keep inflated benefits.

Budget/Financing, School Climate

Milwaukee’s Grim School Budget Outlook

Alan Borsuk:

It won’t exactly be a jolly post-Christmas gift that each principal in Milwaukee Public Schools will receive Jan. 9.
What they will get are packets of information on the budget forecast for next year and the numbers they are to use in putting together a spending plan for their schools.
Good luck, principals – the information in most every case is going to be grim, so much so that some schools may ask to close or merge with others.
The planning assumptions put together by MPS administrators and approved by the Milwaukee School Board include:
• Another major decline in enrollment, 4.7% in the main roster of MPS schools, 4.1% when alternative schools and charter schools not staffed by MPS employees are included.
If the forecast proves true, there will be 77,546 students in September 2008 in that main roster, which is to say, the schools you normally think of when you think of MPS, compared with 96,942 in September 1998, a decline of more than 20% in a decade. The decline from a year ago to this year was 3.8%.
Including the alternative and charter schools, the forecast is for 83,787 for next fall, down from 87,360 this year.

Budget/Financing, School Climate, Special Education

Vouchers for Disabled Students Popular but Limited

Bridget Gutierrez:

Georgia’s new Special Needs Scholarship program was built on the promise that public school families of disabled children would get more schooling options. It was, nonetheless, a disappointment for most first-year applicants. According to state Department of Education figures, of 5,750 families who applied for a tuition voucher, 85 percent either couldn’t find a campus to accept their children, couldn’t afford the additional private school costs or didn’t meet all of the scholarship’s eligibility criteria. Nearly 900 families are getting financial aid, however, and supporters are convinced more children will be helped next year if more schools are willing to accept the vouchers. State lawmakers narrowly passed Georgia’s first K-12 school voucher program in the spring. Modeled after a Florida program, the plan was to give families of public special-education students more educational choices by offering them tuition vouchers to use at participating private schools. When the program opened this summer, education department and school officials were flooded with telephone calls, e-mails and applications. By the September deadline, thousands had applied. Late last month, 899, or 15 percent, of them received tuition checks. Families looking for vouchers were stymied partly by timing. Still, families, special education advocates and private school administrators say one of the biggest obstacles to finding a new school was the cost. Parents are expected to pick up the tab for any tuition the voucher does not cover, as well as expenses such as transportation and physical therapy.

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Schools’ Use of Community Levy up

Amy Hetzner:

Local school districts continued to turn to the unrestricted community service levy this school year, boosting taxes paid to the fund by 10%, almost twice the increase in their total property tax income.
For the 2007-’08 school year, the 60 public school districts in the five-county metro Milwaukee area plan to raise nearly $22.6 million through the community service levy, which has grown rapidly since the state Legislature removed it from under revenue caps seven years ago.
Statewide, school systems will receive about $66.6 million in community service funds through property tax increases this school year, according to information from the state Department of Public Instruction. That compares with just over $17 million raised by Wisconsin school districts for community service activities in 2000-’01, the first year the fund came out from under the state revenue controls.
When legislators first removed community service activities from under the strictures of revenue caps, they said they did so because school districts that run recreational departments for their communities should not be forced to cut educational services to fund outside activities.

Tax and spending growth in Madison’s Fund 80 has also been controversial.

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, What Can I Do?

Parents taking school concerns to Capitol

Norman Draper:

It wasn’t enough for Beverly Petrie and her fellow school activists to help the Stillwater district reap some funding in the Nov. 6 election. After they fought for the levy, they figured there was more to be done. So, they decided to set their sights on lobbying the Legislature on behalf of the district this winter.
“One of the things we heard a lot during the [levy] campaign is people believe it’s the state’s responsibility to pay for public schools,” Petrie said. “So, hearing that so often during the campaign, it’s hard for us to let it all collapse at this point.”
Thus began Stillwater schools’ legislative action committee, still without an official name or agenda.
Around the Twin Cities, parents are banding together to take the cause of their school districts to the Capitol. Often, they’re trying to help secure more funding. With the beginning of the legislative session about two months away, such groups are now holding their first meetings and formulating legislative platforms.

Budget/Financing, School Climate

More on Wisconsin 4 Year Old Kindergarden

Amy Hetzner:

On the heels of news that better than two-thirds of the state’s school districts now offer 4-year-old kindergarten, an apparent backlash has turned the tide in several southeastern Wisconsin school districts.
First, there was the Elmbrook School Board narrowly rejecting administrators’ proposal to extend a 4K pilot that’s several years old. Then, on Monday, the Muskego-Norway School Board unanimously shot down a proposal to start junior kindgarten.
Last night, the Plymouth School Board held an hours-long hearing into whether to continue a 4K program that was started just last year. One of the guests was Republican state Sen. Glenn Grothman, a vocal opponent of 4K who has previously compared the publicly funded preschool program to communist schemes.

Related – Marc Eisen: Missed Opportunity for 4K and High School Redesign.

Budget/Financing

K-12 Tax and Spending Climate

A few articles on the current tax and spending climate:

  • Property Tax Frustration Builds by Amy Merrick:

    In some markets where real-estate values had been rising sharply for years, property taxes are still climbing. That is because it can take a long time for assessments, which commonly are based on a property’s estimated market value, to catch up with the realities of the real-estate market.
    The lag time has led to an outcry to cut property taxes reminiscent of the 1970s, says Gerald Prante, an economist with the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in Washington.
    “In many cases, incomes were growing faster than property-tax bills in the 1990s,” Mr. Prante says. “Recently, property-tax bills have grown faster than incomes, on average.”
    State and local property-tax collections increased 50% from 2000-06, according to Census Bureau data. During the same time period, the median household income rose 15%, before adjustment for inflation.

    Property taxes supply $65% of the Madison School District’s $349M budget (2007-2008) [Citizen’s Budget with 2.5MB PDF amendments]

  • A look at the progressivity of the Federal Income Tax by Alex Tabarrok:

    Despite all the deductions, loopholes and clever accountants the federal income tax is strongly progressive. Moreover the federal tax system remains progressive even if you include the payroll tax, corporate taxes and excise taxes. The chart below with data from the Congressional Budget Office, shows the effective tax rate by income class from all federal taxes. Effective tax rates are considerably higher on the rich than the poor.
    The effective tax rate is higher on the rich and the rich have more money – put these two things together and we can calculate who pays for the federal government. The final column in the table shows the share of the 2.4 trillion in federal tax revenues that is paid for by each income category.

Dean Mosiman:

School taxes increased more than 7 percent statewide, the biggest increase in 15 years, fueling renewed cries for reform of the state school funding system.
The state school finance system is “broken, ” said Pete Etter, interim superintendent of the tiny Black Hawk School District about 60 miles south of Madison, which had the highest local school property tax increase of any district in the state. “It ‘s not only Black Hawk. It ‘s every district in the state. ”
Critics say the system is flawed because state revenue limits for districts don ‘t grow enough, if at all. If state aid is insufficient, districts must turn to taxpayers, sometimes through referendum.
Dane County range
School taxes — as well as the total tax bill — depend mostly on where you live.

Budget/Financing, Discipline / Violence, School Climate, Student Support, Teacher Support

Madison School Board Votes for More Security Funds

Listen to the discussion [47MB MP3 Audio].

Andy Hall & Brittany Schoep:

“This is one of the most important things we’ve brought before you,” Rainwater told the board. “It is critically needed to ensure our schools continue to be safe.”
“We’re walking a really fine line right now,” School Board President Arlene Silveira said. “I think these positions will really help keep us on the positive side of that line.”
The high school positions are designed to help students with behavior, academic, social, transitional and other problems who can hurt themselves and the learning environment, Memorial High School Principal Bruce Dahmen said.

Susan Troller has more:

In an interview before Monday night’s meeting, Pam Nash, assistant superintendent for high schools and middle schools said, “The number of incidents I deal with in the high schools and middle schools is going up every year. We want to get a proactive handle on it. It’s as simple as that.”
“This is not only important but critical to the future of our schools,” Superintendent Art Rainwater said as he recommended an initial proposal to spend $720,500 for security measures. The money is available through the recently signed state budget, a windfall Madison schools did not know they would get when the Board inked the final budget in October.
The board approved hiring four case managers at East, West, Memorial and La Follette and five positive behavior coaches will be brought on board at O’Keeffe, Sherman, Jefferson, Black Hawk and Whitehorse middle schools.

Related:

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, School Climate, Special Education, Student Support

Schools Accused of Mainstreaming to Cut Costs

John Hechinger:

For years, Jonathan Schuster’s mother begged the public schools here to put her son in a special program where he could get extra help for his emotional problems. By 11th grade, Jonathan had broken his hand punching a wall and been hospitalized twice for depression — once because he threatened to kill himself with a pocket knife.
But teachers insisted that Jonathan, who suffers from attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities and bipolar disorder, could get by in regular classrooms. His mother, Kathleen Lerch, says the reason was cost. “It was all about the bottom line,” she says. Citing confidentiality, school officials declined to discuss Jonathan’s case but said they seek to provide an appropriate education to all children.
Advocates for the disabled have long promoted the inclusion of special-education children in regular classes, a practice called mainstreaming. Many educators view mainstreaming as an antidote to the warehousing of children with special needs in separate, and often deficient, classrooms and buildings.
Now, some experts and parents complain that mainstreaming has increasingly taken on a new role in American education: a pretext for cost-cutting, hurting the children it was supposed to help. While studies show that mainstreaming can be beneficial for many students, critics say cash-hungry school districts are pushing the practice too hard, forcing many children into classes that can’t meet their needs. Inclusion has evolved into “a way of downsizing special education,” says Douglas Fuchs, a Vanderbilt University education professor.
Districts have a powerful motivation to cut special-education costs. U.S. schools spend almost twice as much on the average disabled student as they do on a nondisabled peer, according to a 2004 federal study. But the study also found that, in recent years, per-student special-education costs rose more slowly than for the general population. One of the likely reasons, researchers found, was cost savings from mainstreaming.

Budget/Financing, School Climate

25 in Oregon turn down federal money that binds them to No Child Left Behind rules

Betsy Hammond & Lisa Grace Legnicer:

A t least 25 Oregon schools whose students are behind in reading and math have turned down federal aid intended to help those students learn more, an analysis by The Oregonian has found.
Not taking the money — typically $200,000 a year — allows a school to dodge consequences and pressure to improve brought by the federal No Child Left Behind law.
As a result, students in those schools don’t get free tutoring and don’t have the extra teachers and teacher training that federal money would buy. Parents don’t get letters notifying them of their school’s achievement problems and plans to improve, and students lose the opportunity to transfer to a better-performing school.
“Why would they turn down the money? It’s not like we don’t need the tutoring,” says Madison junior Betelehem Shenbulo. She would have failed algebra II last year without the help of a tutor paid with federal funds, the 16-year-old says.
“I have seen people struggle this year, really struggle, but tutoring is not available anymore,” she says. “We should still have it.”
Under No Child Left Behind, any school receiving federal funds to help disadvantaged students that misses academic performance targets two years in a row is put on a federal must-improve list.
Nationwide, more than 2,500 schools — including 80 in Oregon — have been put on the federal list. They face consequences if they don’t improve.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Discipline / Violence, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support, Wellness

Madison Schools Consider an Increase in School Safety/Security Spending

Susan Troller:

We are at a point in our high schools and middle schools where we need to take some action to assure the public that our schools remain safe and secure,” Superintendent Art Rainwater said. He noted that public safety had become a significant issue in neighborhoods throughout the city.
But long time board member Carol Carstensen asked to table the proposal, and other board members agreed to put the decision off a week for more study.
“I’m probably going to vote for it,” she said. “But I would like a little more time and more details in the next week.”

Related:

Budget/Financing, History - Madison Schools, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Madison Teachers Protest Larger Class Size

Channel3000:

Many of Madison’s elementary school teachers spoke out to the Madison Metropolitan School District’s Board of Education on Monday night.
Carrying brightly colored signs, the group protested the increased class size for gym, arts and computer classes. The larger related arts classes are known by some as “one and one-half classes,” WISC-TV reported.
District officials started the policy at the elementary level this year to save money.
Some teachers said their students, many of whom come from low-income backgrounds, are getting short-changed.
“I teach in a school with 46 percent or more kids on free or reduced lunch,” said Rhonda Schilling, a music teacher for Thoreau and Hamilton elementary schools. “Many of the kids come from really rough backgrounds, and those are the kids in particular that shine often in the arts. They need that contact time with their teacher.”

Budget/Financing, Discipline / Violence, History - Madison Schools, School Climate, Student Support, Teacher Support

Madison School Board Debates School Security

WKOW-TV:

The Madison school board on Monday night is set to consider approving a $780,000 plan to tackle problem behavior in middle and high schools.
Principals have been complaining that behavior issues are creeping up, said Assistant Superintendent Pam Nash. That includes everything from running in the hallways to bullying to fighting.
School officials want to hire what amounts to be a behavior coach in its middle and high schools. The staff person would work with students with behavior issues, reaching out to them and contacting their parents or county agencies, as needed.

Channel3000:

At the high school level, the proposal would add four behavior and case managers to work with students who are already having problems, who may be disengaged or disruptive.
At the middle school level, the district wants to add seven and a half positive behavior coordinators who would help teach students how to be better school citizens.
“In our middle schools, I would say if there is one area that we have seen a bit of a shift in behavior, it’s bus behavior,” said Pam Nash, assistant superintendent for Madison Middle and High Schools. “We have more issues on middle school buses than any of us would like. That’s an area, that behavior piece, that we want to target as well.”
Part of the school security proposal would include adding two extra security guards at each of the city’s four high school and installing surveillance and radio equipment at middle schools.

Budget/Financing

Making Better Use of Limited (Financial) Resources

Wisconsin Center for Education Research:

The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) has documented a steady increase in per-pupil education funding in the U.S. over the past 100 years. After adjusting for inflation, education funds have risen on average about 3.5% annually. UW-Madison education professor Odden says the consistent rise in spending has not, however, been accompanied by a similar rise in student performance, at least over the past 30 to 40 years.
Current education goals are thus not likely to be met without determining how better to use school resources.
Today, about 60% of the education dollar is spent on instruction. Another 10% is spent on administration, 10% on instructional and pupil support, 10% on operations and maintenance, 5% on transportation, and 5% on food and miscellaneous items. Odden says this pattern is similar across districts, regardless of demographics and enrollment.
To align resources with strategies for improving student achievement, Odden suggests thinking of education spending as divided into three “portions”:

  • One portion for core instructional services, professional development, and site administration;
  • A second portion for instructional and pupil support services, which help the education system accomplish the goal of student achievement in the core subjects; and
  • A third portion for overhead (school operation and maintenance, transportation, food services, and central office administration).

Much more on Allen Odden. Related: K-12 Tax & Spending Climate:

Budget/Financing, Events, School Climate

Wisconsin Way Forum on School Funding

As all of you are well aware, one of the most vexing issues facing public education today is funding and 14 years of revenue controls that have been placed on Wisconsin schools, causing on-going erosion in programs and services.
On Thursday, December 6, 7:00-9:00 PM, 1919 Alliant Energy Center Way, Alliant Energy Center, Madison [Map], a community forum sponsored by the Wisconsin Way will be held to discuss the issue of taxation and public investment.
The Wisconsin Way is a non-partisan, grassroots effort to create a fair and equitable funding system that promotes excellence in education and public service. Area residents with different viewpoints are being invited to come together for a public conversation on taxes and possible solutions to the challenges we face in protecting and preserving Wisconsin?s quality of life and our great schools.
To learn more about Wisconsin Way, you can the website: http://www.wisconsinway.org
We are attempting to get a head count for turnout, so if you think you might attend, please contact me (even at this late date).
Also, if you have questions, don?t hesitate to contact me. Friends and neighbors are welcome as well.
Thanks much for your consideration.
Jeff Leverich leverichj@weac.org Telephone 608 276-7711

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, School Climate

California schools move to the head of the class

1 Comment

Mitchell Landsberg:

California public schools dominated a national ranking of high schools released Friday, countering the usual depiction of the state’s schools as lagging behind their counterparts elsewhere in the country.
In a first-ever ranking of high schools by U.S. News & World Report magazine — best-known for its influential and controversial ranking of colleges and universities — 23 of the top 100 schools in the nation were from California, including 10 from the Los Angeles area.
No other state has as many schools on the list, although New York City and its suburbs, with 20 schools, have by far the most of any metropolitan area, and Massachusetts has the highest percentage of its schools ranked among the top 505 profiled.
The top-ranked school in California was Pacific Collegiate School, a charter campus in Santa Cruz, which was ranked No. 2 in the country behind Thomas Jefferson High in Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C.
Also in the top 10 were the Oxford Academy at No. 4, a college preparatory school in the Anaheim Union High School District that accepts students by examination, and the Preuss School at No. 10, a charter school under the joint oversight of the San Diego Unified School District and UC San Diego. The Preuss School is currently under a cloud because of allegations of grade-tampering, but that would apparently not have affected its ranking, since U.S. News relied on standardized test scores, not grades.
In the Los Angeles area, the top-rated school was Gretchen Whitney High in Cerritos, at No. 12. The ranking was the latest in a long list of honors for the school, and Principal Patricia Hager was both proud and circumspect.
“Well, I’d like to be No. 1,” she joked in an interview. “I’m very proud because this is a very special place, and I appreciate any opportunity I get to have that recognized.”
At the same time, she said, “It’s interesting how we define things like ‘successful’ and ‘top performer’ — what does it mean? As a public educator, it concerns me how we use those terms. Every school has something going for it, so in a way it’s unfair to other schools that don’t score highly on tests. Philosophically it’s a dilemma, but I won’t refuse the attention.”

Budget/Financing, School Climate

Wisconsin K-12 Tax & Spending Outlook

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Editorial:

Another year and deeper in debt.
No, that’s not some sad-eyed, old country ballad. It’s the state of Wisconsin’s long-term finances.
To pay for highways, buildings and environmental programs over the past decade, the state has increased long-term debt by 87%, a trend that if left unchecked will surely mean increasingly difficult budget decisions down the road.
The Journal Sentinel’s Steven Walters noted in a recent report that the Legislative Fiscal Bureau says the state had $8.28 billion in such debt in 2006, up from $4.41 billion in 1996 (www.jsonline.com/689757). The period studied covered the leadership of Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, and Republicans Scott McCallum and Tommy G. Thompson.
In effect, the governors, with legislative acquiescence, have made politically advantageous decisions to have their favorite programs and pay for them later. It’s basically credit card budgeting.
But the bill always comes due.
As Todd Berry, president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, told Walters, the growing debt is a risk. Principal and interest payments on general-obligation bonds will exceed $700 million for the first time this year. Payments on transportation bonds will cost $174 million.
While state officials say the debt load is manageable, a major bond agency, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, last week changed its rating outlook from “positive” to “stable.”
Other long-term trends make such budget moves all the more troublesome. Per-capita income in Wisconsin is about $4,000 a year less than in Minnesota, for example, a gap that has widened. And the number of elderly is expected to jump 90% from 702,000 in 2000 to near 1.34 million by 2030 while the percentage of working age people is expected to decline from 61% to 57%, meaning fewer taxpayers supporting more people in need of services. Add to that the need to replace aging roads, bridges and sewers.

Clearly, we are unlikely to see significant increases in redistributed state tax dollars to “rich” school districts like Madison [2007-2008 Citizen’s Budget].
Related: K-12 Tax & Spending Climate:

According to the Wisconsin DPI, per student spending in Wisconsin has increased by 5.1% annually, since 1987. The Madison School District increased at a 5.25% rate during that time. Clearly, our public schools are attempting to address more issues than ever, from academics to breakfast, special education and health care.

Budget/Financing, School Climate

In school reform, billions of dollars — but not much bang

Sol Stern:

When Mayor Bloomberg took control of the city’s schools, he made a solemn promise to raise student achievement and rein in a notoriously inefficient and money-wasting school system. In fact, in his January 2003 speech unveiling his administration’s Children First reforms, the mayor suggested that the $12 billion then going to the schools was sufficient to bring about academic improvement. That’s because he and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein were now going to “make sure we get the most value for the school system’s dollar.”
Five years later, we have new, unimpeachable data on the schools that allows us to assess whether the mayor’s promise to deliver a much bigger education bang for the taxpayers’ buck has been fulfilled.
The short answer: not by a longshot. First, let’s examine the dollar side of the equation. The 2003 budget for the schools, Bloomberg’s first, was $12.5 billion, including pension costs and debt service. About $1.2 billion of this total came from federal education funds, another $5.6 billion from the state, and $5.6 billion from direct city contributions. The current budget, including pension and debt service, stands at $19.7 billion. This represents an increase of $7 billion – more than 50% – in total education spending in five years.

Budget/Financing

Voters support casino tax for schools

Guy Clifton:

A statewide poll shows Nevada voters overwhelmingly favor an initiative to raise the state’s gaming tax in order to fund education.
The Research 2000 poll, conducted for the Reno Gazette-Journal, found 68 percent of voters were in favor of the initiative filed by the Nevada State Education Association, which would raise the gaming tax from 6.75 percent to 9.75 percent at casinos with a total revenue of more than $1 million a month.
“That’s pretty consistent with our findings as well,” said Lynn Warne, president of the 28,000-member NSEA. “The (Las Vegas Review-Journal) did a poll that came in with over three-fourths in favor.”
The Gazette-Journal poll of 600 Nevadans who vote regularly in state elections was conducted Nov. 16-19 and has a margin of error of 4 percent.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, School Climate

Where Should we Get Money for Education

James Wigderson:

The state Senate Education Committee is meeting today to again discuss Senate Joint Resolution 27, a bill that would require the state of Wisconsin to change its school funding formula by July 1, 2009. The bill does not indicate how the school funding formula should be changed, or which communities should benefit from the change.
The bill is the brainchild of state Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts. When Pope-Roberts last spoke in Waukesha, she told the audience she had a secret plan, like Nixon’s plan to end the Vietnam War, to “fix” the state’s school funding formula, hidden in her desk. The plan has yet to be revealed.
We may get a clue from Democratic activist Ruth Page Jones who is planning on testifying at the hearing. Jones is known to most people in Waukesha as the head of the increasingly irrelevant Project ABC. Project ABC spent much of last spring campaigning to change the state’s funding formula with the promise it would help Waukesha’s schools. Even Pope-Roberts disagreed that any change in the funding formula was likely to be to Waukesha’s benefit.
Jones is now president of Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools, newly independent from the liberal Institute for Wisconsin’s Future. The WAES is committed to the “Wisconsin Adequacy Plan.” Adequacy, as in they define adequacy by their wish list, and then the taxpayers get the bill.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Elections, Events, Fund Raising, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

“Wisconsin Way” Meeting Notes

The “Wisconsin Way” recently held a forum in Waukesha. The local Taxpayer’s League posted some notes [website].
A schedule of forums appears on their website (Madison is 12/6/2007). More:

Welcome to the Wisconsin Way! You’ve made the first step to helping lower Wisconsin’s property taxes, while protecting our services and maintaining Wisconsin’s quality of life.
A groundswell of public concern about the affordability of property taxes on the one hand and the need to maintain Wisconsin’s critical infrastructure on the other has prompted several statewide leadership groups to join forces in a historic search for solutions called The Wisconsin Way.
In the coming months, the original conveners of the Wisconsin Way—the Wisconsin Counties Association, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, Wisconsin Realtors Association, Wisconsin Transportation Builders Association and Wood Communications Group—will host a series of public gatherings around the state in an effort to engage Wisconsin citizens in a constructive, solution-oriented conversation about what we can do to make Wisconsin taxes fairer and reduce the property tax burden without sacrificing the quality of public services that have made Wisconsin a special place to live and work.

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Special Education

Waukesha Schools go to Mediation over teacher contracts: Trading Jobs for Compensation?

Pete Kennedy:

The word “mediation” usually isn’t all that menacing. But these days, and in this district, “mediation” packs plenty of punch.
A few weeks ago the Waukesha School Board announced it had taken its teachers to mediation. That means a neutral party will try to negotiate a settlement between the teachers union (the Education Association of Waukesha) and the board.
What’s most significant about the board’s action is the mediator can declare an impasse and send the proposals to an arbitrator. And that, my friend, is a big deal.
Why? First, because arbitration is the labor-relations version of high-stakes poker. It’s a winner-take-all proposition. Both sides present their proposal to a (supposedly) neutral third party, who picks the plan he or she believes fairest. There is no in-between – you win or you lose.
Arbitration also is a big deal because it’s hardly ever done, at least when state public schools are involved.
“Yes, it’s significant,” said David Schmidt, superintendent of the School District of Waukesha for the past 10 years. “It’s the first time we’ve done it since I’ve been here.”
Schmidt says he is fine with the teachers union, that the real trouble is in Madison. (The EAW is very much in agreement.) But right now, the problem has to be fixed closer to home. “What we can control locally are our expenditures,” Schmidt says.

Links and notes on Madison’s recent teacher’s contract.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, School Climate

Free online materials could save schools billions

Greg Toppo:

Since March, Dixon Deutsch and his students have been quietly experimenting with a little website that could one day rock the foundation of how schools do business.
A K-2 teacher at Achievement First Bushwick Elementary Charter School in Brooklyn, N.Y., Deutsch, 28, has been using Free-Reading.net, a reading instruction program that allows him to download, copy and share lessons with colleagues.
He can visit the website and comment on what works and what doesn’t. He can modify lessons to suit his students’ needs and post the modifications online: Think of a cross between a first-grade reading workbook and Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia written and edited by users.
If Deutsch wants to see a lesson taught by someone who already has mastered it, he clicks on a YouTube video linked to the site and sees a short demo. “I find it’s more teacher-friendly than a textbook,” he says.

Related: Open Source Reading Instruction.

Budget/Financing

Sun Prairie Will Get A New High School

WKOW-TV:

un Prairie School District has spent the past few years warning residents that the schools there are becoming too crowded as the city expands.
This referendum wasn’t the first, but it was the first to pass. The District will get a new High School that will house 10th, 11th and 12th graders. The current High School will be used for 8th and 9th grade.
It’s a $96 million dollar cost for the new school.

Meanwhile, West Bend’s $119M referendum was defeated 62.6% to 37.4%.

Budget/Financing

Milwaukee School’s 9% Property Tax Increase & School Funding Notes

Alan Borsuk:

In his statement, (Milwaukee Mayor Tom) Barrett says, “School Board members must come to grips with the costs of outstanding obligations and annual operations. Tough, fundamental decisions must be made, and must be made soon.”
That is something that was widely acknowledged at the board meeting, even as board members used a way of cutting the levy proposal that did not involve having to decide on cutting any current services in MPS.
The approved budget calls for spending $17.1 million less than Andrekopoulos proposed, but that amount will come from not making some pension and debt service payments that were in the budget for this year. MPS financial chief Michelle Nate said the decision, in itself, will not put pension or debt service funds into difficulty, but it is basically a one-time-only solution. And the overall decisions on the budget and the general forecast for MPS mean major changes will have to be made, she said.
This will be the first time in nine years that MPS will not spend the maximum amount allowed by state law, and board members worried about long-term effects. The less a school district spends, the less it gets in state aid in following years. The $17.1 million cut will mean $6.6 million less in state aid a year from now, Nate said.
That means MPS will start its budget process in spring that much further in trouble. Several board members said painful decisions might have to be made on things such as what level of busing the district can continue to offer.
The board did not debate new spending ideas proposed by Andrekopoulos, including $8 million to reduce high school class sizes and improve programs in areas such as foreign language, music and art; $5 million to improve math achievement; and $300,000 to restore ninth-grade basketball teams at some schools. Those ideas effectively were approved.

Related: “The school district must be more efficient, but political and business leaders must work to fix a flawed state aid formula.”

Budget/Financing, School Climate, Special Education, Wellness

Autism ‘Epidemic’ Largely Fueled by Special Ed. Funding, Shift in Diagnosing

AP:

A few decades ago, people probably would have said kids like Ryan Massey and Eddie Scheuplein were just odd. Or difficult.
Both boys are bright. Ryan, 11, is hyper and prone to angry outbursts, sometimes trying to strangle another kid in his class who annoys him. Eddie, 7, has a strange habit of sticking his shirt in his mouth and sucking on it.
Both were diagnosed with a form of autism. And it’s partly because of children like them that autism appears to be skyrocketing: In the latest estimate, as many as one in 150 children have some form of this disorder. Groups advocating more research money call autism “the fastest-growing developmental disability in the United States.”
Doctors are concerned there are even more cases out there, unrecognized: The American Academy of Pediatrics last week stressed the importance of screening every kid for autism by age 2.

More here.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, School Climate

Advertising & Schools

Pat Schneider:

t’s just a logo and a phone number, says Arlene Silveira, president of the Madison School Board.
But to members of TAME, Truth and Alternatives to Militarism in Education, the “Army Strong” ad that has cropped up on scoreboards at stadiums and gymnasiums this fall looks a lot like an endorsement of an Army future for Madison high school students.
“Students are at an age to figure out what to do with their lives,” parent and TAME member Vicki Berenson said Thursday. “When they see ‘Army’ on the field every day, it starts to seem normal.”
TAME is urging parents and others concerned over military recruitment in the high schools to come to the School Board meeting Monday to protest outside school district headquarters at 545 W. Dayton St., then head inside to sign up at 6:50 p.m. to speak out against the ads.

Budget/Financing, School Climate

Real Public School Spending vs. Real Oil Prices 1929-2007

edspending19272007.jpg

Mark Perry:

Using these data from the U.S. Department of Education and oil prices from Global Financial Data, the graph above (click to enlarge) shows expenditures per pupil in public elementary and secondary schools from 1929-2007, adjusted for inflation, and oil prices during the same period, also adjusted for inflation. Both series are price indexes set to equal 100 in 1929.
The data for public school spending are only available through the 2001-2002 school year from the Department of Education, and I was unable to find a comparable series through 2007, but I extended the series from 2002 through 2007 by assuming that the trend in spending for education would continue (about a 3% per year real growth rate).

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools

Audio: Madison School Board 2007-2008 Final $349M Budget Discussion

Listen to the Madison School Board discuss the District Administration’s proposed final 2007-2008 budget: $349M, up $10M from the previously approved $339M last spring. The Board had an interesting discussion regarding the use of these new funds. Final approval is scheduled for Monday evening, 10/29/2007 @ 5:45p.m.:

Approval of Finalized 2007-08 Budget Adjustments and Adoption of the Tax Levy.

19MB mp3 audio
It will be interesting to see where these additional funds are spent, particularly in light of the annual spring ritual of reducing the budget increases. Send your thoughts to the Madison School Board: comments@madison.k12.wi.us

Budget/Financing, School Climate

Wisconsin Budget Delay Favors Rich Schools

Amy Hetzner:

The delay in approving a budget in Wisconsin could end up benefiting residents in the state’s wealthiest communities.
Legislators were unable to meet a Sept. 28 deadline set by the state Department of Public Instruction that would have allowed them to increase general aid to school districts by $79.3 million in the 2007-’08 school year in time to reduce next year’s tax bills.
So on Tuesday, when they approved the second-latest budget in state history, they did what some called the next best thing by putting the same amount into the school tax levy credit. The credit increase is expected to be signed into law by Gov. Jim Doyle.
That would be a boon to residents in districts such as Elmbrook and Mequon-Thiensville, where taxpayers have long complained that their money is siphoned off to support schools in other parts of the state. But it would mean less money for school systems such as Milwaukee and Racine, where the argument is that residents with less wealth need more help to ensure their children get a chance at an education on par with those in richer communities.
The reason for the difference is that, unlike general school aid, the state’s school levy tax credit is distributed based on the school property tax burden in individual municipalities. That largely means the credit goes to residents in the wealthiest areas.

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, What Can I Do?

Madison School District Proposed Final 2007-2008 Budget: $349M

The Madison School District’s Administration proposed a $349,562,776 final 2007-2008 budget last night [$14,404.26/student (24,268)]. This represents an increase of $10,136,058 from the adopted current year budget ($339,427,718). It also represents a $16,460,911 increase (4.94%) over the 2006-2007 revised budget. [Citizen’s Budget]
MMSD Budget Amendments and Tax Levy Adoption for 2007-2008 11.6MB PDF
It will be interesting to see where these additional funds are spent. Send your thoughts to the Madison School Board: comments@madison.k12.wi.us
Superintendent Rainwater mentioned last night that 55 additional students “open enrolled” out of the MMSD this year, taking their spending authority with them. The numbers are evidently “trending up”.

Budget/Financing, Discipline / Violence, School Climate, What Can I Do?

Cleveland School Gets $2.5M for Security

Joe Milicia:

The state will provide $2.5 million to Cleveland schools to upgrade security after a student gunman shot and wounded two teachers and two students before he killed himself, the governor’s office said Friday.
The money would be available for security upgrades selected by the district, which has identified installing metal detectors in all of the district’s 110 schools as a top priority, Keith Dailey, spokesman for Gov. Ted Strickland said Friday.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, School Climate

What works in education: the lessons according to McKinsey


The Economist:

THE British government, says Sir Michael Barber, once an adviser to the former prime minister, Tony Blair, has changed pretty much every aspect of education policy in England and Wales, often more than once. “The funding of schools, the governance of schools, curriculum standards, assessment and testing, the role of local government, the role of national government, the range and nature of national agencies, schools admissions”—you name it, it’s been changed and sometimes changed back. The only thing that hasn’t changed has been the outcome. According to the National Foundation for Education Research, there had been (until recently) no measurable improvement in the standards of literacy and numeracy in primary schools for 50 years.
England and Wales are not alone. Australia has almost tripled education spending per student since 1970. No improvement. American spending has almost doubled since 1980 and class sizes are the lowest ever. Again, nothing. No matter what you do, it seems, standards refuse to budge (see chart). To misquote Woody Allen, those who can’t do, teach; those who can’t teach, run the schools.
Why bother, you might wonder. Nothing seems to matter. Yet something must. There are big variations in educational standards between countries. These have been measured and re-measured by the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which has established, first, that the best performing countries do much better than the worst and, second, that the same countries head such league tables again and again: Canada, Finland, Japan, Singapore, South Korea.

Budget/Financing

Madison School tax increase lower than expected

Jason Stein:

Madison homeowners received some good news Thursday — a continued state budget impasse wouldn ‘t affect their property taxes as much as expected.
Figures released by the Madison School District show that a failure to pass a state budget for 2007-09 — and provide more aid for schools — could drive up property taxes by as much $12 on the average home. That ‘s just a fraction of an August estimate by Gov. Jim Doyle ‘s budget office that suggested property taxes from schools would rise by up to $48 on that same Madison home if the Legislature fails to pass a new two-year budget.
The state budget is now 110 days late.

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, What Can I Do?

The Need for Better PR & Madison High School Redesign Notes

Jason Shephard:

Beebe made his pitch at a meeting of the school board’s communications committee chaired by Beth Moss, who says one of her top priorities this year is developing strategies to more aggressively seek changes in state funding.
“We’re going to have to continue to cut the budget annually, and it’s going to be worse and worse,” laments Moss, a school board newcomer elected in April. She fears the district will have no choice but to begin “dismantling programs.
As for the perennial issue of school funding, Moss and others are gearing up for a Nov. 15 state Senate education committee hearing. Tom Beebe’s group supports a proposal to hike state funding for K-12 education by $2.6 billion a year, based on a model developed by UW-Madison professor Allan Odden.
But as Beebe was asking the Madison district to join his group as a paying member, Rainwater expressed “serious doubts” about the plan and questioned whether Madison schools would benefit. The funding scheme, Beebe admitted, could potentially lead to an initial decrease in state funding to Madison.
“In the first year, Madison gets screwed for political reasons,” Beebe told the committee — hardly the best message to send when seeking money from a cash-strapped district.
Beebe might benefit from a lesson in better communication. Or maybe he believes that sometimes, the best PR strategy is telling it like it really is.

I continue to believe that the odds of successfully influencing the State Legislature – in Madison’s favor – are long. Better to spend the effort locally on community partnerships and substantively addressing the many issues facing our public schools (such as academic preparation in elementary and middle schools so that students are prepared for high school, rather than watering down high school curriculum). Madison spends more per student (about $13,997) than the average Wisconsin School District (11,085).
Tom Beebe Audio / Video.

Budget/Financing

Statement by Madison Board of Education President Arlene Silveira on the state budget

1 Comment

“I am disappointed that the members of the Wisconsin Legislature are unable to do the job they were elected to do: pass a state budget. As an elected
official, I take my duties and responsibilities seriously.
“In September, school started on the day it was scheduled to begin, teaching and learning is taking place in our classrooms and our school district is operating the way we planned for it to operate.
“Earlier this year, the Madison School board approved a tentative budget for the 2007-08 school year, anticipating that by October, when the Board usually sets the tax levy, we would have all the final information to finish our job. After months of partisan wrangling, our state legislators have failed to uphold their end of the partnership.
“It’s unfortunate that our local property taxpayers will suffer the consequences of the Legislature’s inability to pass the only bill required in a two-year session: the biennial budget.”
COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS? PLEASE CONTACT:
Madison Metropolitan School District
Public Information Office
545 W. Dayton St.
Madison, WI 53703
608-663-1879

Keep up with the latest state budget information via the WisPolitics Budget Blog.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Special Education, Staff Support, Student Support

Ed Hughes and Marj Passman on Madison’s Small Learning Community Climate and Grant Application

I sent an email to Ed and Marj, both of whom have announced their plans to run for Madison School Board next spring, asking the following:

I’m writing to see what your thoughts are on the mmsd’s high school “reform” initiative, particularly in light of two things:

  1. The decision to re-apply for the US Dept of Education Grant next month
  2. The lack of any public (any?) evaluation of the results at West and Memorial in light of their stated SLC goals?

In other words, how do you feel about accountability? 🙂

They replied:
Marj Passman:

I am generally supportive of small learning communities and the decision to reapply for a Federal grant. Our high schools continue to provide a rich education for most students — especially the college bound – but there is a significant and maybe growing number of students who are not being engaged. They need our attention. The best evidence is that well implemented small learning communities show promise as part of the solution to increasing the engagement and achievement of those who are not being well served, do no harm and may help others also. My experience as a teacher backs up the research because I found that the caring relationships between staff and students so crucial to reaching those students falling between the cracks on any level of achievement are more likely to develop in smaller settings. Some form of small learning communities are almost a given as part of any reform of our high schools and if we can get financial help from the Federal government with this part of the work, I’m all for it.
I think it is important not to overestimate either the problems or the promise of the proposed solutions. The first step in things like this is to ask what is good that we want to preserve. Our best graduates are competitive with any students anywhere. The majority of our graduates are well prepared for their next academic or vocational endeavors. We need to keep doing the good things we do well. If done successfully, SLCs offer as much for the top achieving students as for any group – individual attention, focus on working with others of their ability, close connection to staff, and consistent evaluation.
You also asked about “accountability” and the evaluations of the existing SLCs. Both evaluations are generally positive, show some progress in important areas and point to places where improvements still need to be made. Neither contains any alarming information that would suggest the SLCs should be abandoned. The data from these limited studies should be looked at with similar research elsewhere that supports SLC as part of the solution to persistent (and in Madison) growing issues.
Like many I applauded when all the Board members asked for a public process for the High Schools of the Future project and like many I have been woefully disappointed with what I’ve seen so far. Because of this and the coming changes in district leadership I’d like to see the redesign time line extended (the final report is due in April) to allow for more input from both the public and the new superintendent.
Thanks for this opportunity
Marjorie Passman
http://marjpassmanforschoolboard.com

Ed Hughes:

From what I know, I am not opposed to MMSD re-applying for the U.S. Dept. of Education grant next month. From my review of the grant application, it did not seem to lock the high schools into new and significant changes. Perhaps that is a weakness of the application. But if the federal government is willing to provide funds to our high schools to do what they are likely to do anyway, I’m all for it.
Like you, I am troubled with the apparent lack of evaluation of results at West and Memorial attributable to their small learning communities initiatives. This may seem inconsistent with my view on applying for the grant, but I do not think we should proceed further down an SLC path without having a better sense of whether in fact it is working at the two schools that have tried it. It seems to me that this should be a major focus of the high school redesign study, but who knows what is going on with that. I asked recently and was told that the study kind of went dormant for awhile after the grant application was submitted.
My own thoughts about high school are pointing in what may be the opposite direction – bigger learning communities rather than smaller. I am concerned about our high schools being able to provide a sufficiently rich range of courses to prepare our students for post-high school life and to retain our students whose families have educational options. The challenges the schools face in this regard were underscored last spring when East eliminated German classes, and now offers only Spanish and French as world language options.
It seems to me that one way to approach this issue is to move toward thinking of the four comprehensive high schools as separate campuses of a single, unified, city-wide high school in some respects. We need to do a lot more to install sufficient teleconferencing equipment to allow the four schools to be linked – so that a teacher in a classroom at Memorial, say, can be seen on a screen in classrooms in the other three schools. In fact, views of all four linked classrooms should simultaneously be seen on the screen. With this kind of linkage, we could take advantage of economies of scale and have enough student interest to justify offering classes in a rich selection of languages to students in all four high schools. I’m sure there are other types of classes where linked classrooms would also make sense.
This kind of approach raises issues. For example, LaFollette’s four block system would be incompatible with this approach. There would also be a question of whether there would need to be a teacher or educational assistant in every classroom, even if the students in the classroom are receiving instruction over the teleconferencing system from another teacher in another school. I would hope that these are the kinds of issues the high school re-design group would be wrestling with. Perhaps they are, or will, but at this point there seems to be no way to know.
There are some off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts prompted by your question and by Maya Cole’s post about the high school re-design study. Feel free to do what you want with this response.

Related Links:

Thanks to Ed and Marj for taking the time to share their thoughts on this important matter.

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making

Madison School Board Discussion of Fund 80 Based Community Partnerships

Monday evening’s Madison School Board meeting included a fascinating and quite useful discussion of the way in which the district “grants” money to (or creates partnerships with) local groups via Fund 80 (Fund 80, or “Community Services” is money sourced from local property taxes that lives outside the state revenue caps. This means that Fund 80 spending can grow as fast as the School Board approves). The growth of Fund 80 spending has been the subject of some controversy during the recent past.
Props to the school board for discussing and addressing this matter.
Audio 13MB MP3
Much more about Fund 80 here [RSS]
Another factor that will drive property taxes is the changing real estate market. I noted nearly two years ago, that Madison had about 14,000 more parcels in 2005, than 1990. This creates a larger pie to spread government and school spending across. Slower or no growth in the property tax base may mean larger tax increases per parcel than we’ve seen in the past (along with flat state funding). Madison is considered a “property rich” school district, therefore we receive a much smaller percentage of our budget from redistributed state taxes and fees (this approach was referred to as the “Robin Hood Act” in Texas). The MMSD’s handy citizen’s budget notes that 65% of its revenues arrive via local property taxes. Finally, Madison’s property rich status means that any increase in spending beyond the revenue limits via referendums reduce state aids. For example, $1.00 of new referendum spending may cost local property taxpayers $1.60 or thereabouts. This concept is known as “Negative Aid”.
Related: K-12 Tax & Spending Climate.

Budget/Financing

Georgia’s “Appropriate Education” Financial Definition

Jim Wooten:

The work done by former state representative and school board member Dean Alford and others is groundbreaking. Three efforts are especially striking.
One — important but not all that novel — is to determine precisely how much money is needed to produce an educated child. Final numbers are about a month away, but as a start, the task force concludes that a system should be able to meet the academic needs of an elementary school child for $6,220, plus add-ons for other considerations — special needs, for example. Operation and maintenance of school buildings would add another $600 and transportation another $151.
The second significant contribution goes to the heart of the suits here and elsewhere. That is to identify wealth and tax it appropriately.
“There are probably better ways of measuring wealth than we use now,” said Jeffrey Williams, a consultant to the task force. “We only use property values now.” In the 1950s and early ’60s, he says, some measure of personal income was included. From the ’60s on, it’s been the property tax.
Williams examined 10 local systems spread throughout the state. Some were rich in property and wealth, some poor on both and some low or high on wealth or property.

The Madison School District’s current 2007/2008 budget is $339,685,844, or $13,997.27 per student [24,268 students]. The latest MMSD Citizen’s budget is worth a look.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, School Climate, Student Support, What Can I Do?

Our Schools Must Do Better

Via a reader’s email: Bob Hebert:

I asked a high school kid walking along Commonwealth Avenue if he knew who the vice president of the United States was.
He thought for a moment and then said, “No.”
I told him to take a guess.
He thought for another moment, looked at me skeptically, and finally gave up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know.”
The latest federal test results showed some improvement in public school math and reading scores, but there is no reason to celebrate these minuscule gains. We need so much more. A four-year college degree is now all but mandatory for building and sustaining a middle-class standard of living in the U.S.
Over the next 20 or 30 years, when today’s children are raising children of their own in an ever more technologically advanced and globalized society, the educational requirements will only grow more rigorous and unforgiving.
A one- or two-point gain in fourth grade test scores here or there is not meaningful in the face of that overarching 21st-century challenge.
What’s needed is a wholesale transformation of the public school system from the broken-down postwar model of the past 50 or 60 years. The U.S. has not yet faced up to the fact that it needs a school system capable of fulfilling the educational needs of children growing up in an era that will be at least as different from the 20th century as the 20th was from the 19th.
“We’re not good at thinking about magnitudes,” said Thomas Kane, a professor of education and economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “We’ve got a bunch of little things that we think are moving in the right direction, but we haven’t stepped back and thought, ‘O.K., how big an improvement are we really talking about?’ ” Professor Kane and I were discussing what he believes are the two areas that have the greatest potential for radically improving the way children are taught in the U.S. Both are being neglected by the education establishment.

Herbert is spot on. The same old, same old (or, “Same Service”) strategy at ever larger dollar amounts has clearly run its course.
Herbert’s words focus on addressing teacher quality

“Concerned about raising the quality of teachers, states and local school districts have consistently focused on the credentials, rather than the demonstrated effectiveness — or ineffectiveness — of teachers in the classroom.”

, and alternative school models:

The second area to be mined for potentially transformative effects is the wide and varied field of alternative school models. We should be rigorously studying those schools that appear to be having the biggest positive effects on student achievement. Are the effects real? If so, what accounts for them?
The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), to cite one example, is a charter school network that has consistently gotten extraordinary academic results from low-income students. It has worked in cities big and small, and in rural areas. Like other successful models, it has adopted a longer school day and places great demands on its teachers and students.
Said Professor Kane: “These alternative models that involve the longer school day and a much more dramatic intervention for kids are promising. If that’s what it takes, then we need to know that, and sooner rather than later.”

Budget/Financing, Events, School Climate, Special Education

Special Education: When Should Taxes Pay Private Tuition?

John Hechinger:

A decade ago, Tom Freston, then a top Viacom Inc. executive, began a legal battle to force New York City to pay for his son’s tuition at a Manhattan private school for children with learning disabilities.
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments to resolve the central question of the case: Must parents of special-education students give public schools a chance before having taxpayers reimburse them for private-school tuition? How the justices respond will have broad implications for school budgets and the movement toward “mainstreaming,” or educating disabled children in regular classrooms. Mr. Freston, pledging to donate any proceeds, has said the fight is about principle, not money.
Under a landmark 1975 special-education law, now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, school systems must provide a “free appropriate” public education to disabled students. Congress, alarmed that schools were warehousing kids with special needs in poorly equipped classrooms, said that, wherever possible, the children should be placed in the “least restrictive environment” — often the same classrooms as their nondisabled peers. In 2005, about 54% of special-education students spent 80% or more of the school day in a regular classroom, up from 33% in 1990.
Nonetheless, the act permits parents to seek public financing for private schools if they can establish that the public schools can’t meet their children’s needs. About 88,000 of the nation’s more than six million special-education students are educated in private schools or in private residential facilities at public expense.

Budget/Financing, Special Education, Student Support, Wellness

Family Wins Suit for Autistic Son’s Health Care

NPR (Larry Abramson):

Two years ago, Jacob Micheletti was diagnosed with autism.
His parents say Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) has transformed their son from a boy who was retreating into darkness into a precocious, gregarious kid.
Jake’s father, Joe Micheletti, who works for the state of New Jersey, assumed the family’s insurance company would cover the treatment costs. They were not, which came as a shock, Micheletti said. So he took the case to the state’s highest court — facing off with fellow co-workers along the way — and won.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum

9/24/2007 Performance & Achievement Meeting: 4 Year Old Kindergarden & “A Model to Measure Student Performance with Ties to District Goals”

The Madison School Board’s Performance & Achievement Committee met Monday evening. Topics discussed included:

  • 4 Year Old Kindergarden
  • A Model to Measure Student Performance with Ties to District Goals (39 Minutes into the mp3 file). Growth vs status goals. MMSD proposes to adopt a “Valued Added” which will “control for the effects of different external factors”:
    • poverty
    • mobility
    • parent education
    • english language proficiency, and
    • race and ethnicity.

    District Goal: Look at the composite overall average growth for the district across all schools and all grade levels in the areas of reading and math. Based on the WKCE scores.

    30MB 87 Minute mp3 audio file.

    Notes: 56 minutes (Maya Cole): “Why are we using WKCE and how is that going to tie into our curriculum and student improvement so that it ends up back in the classroom and not just measuring test scores?”. Art Rainwater responded that “this kind of measurement is not expected to do the day to day informing of instruction inside the classroom”, “informing the instruction occurs inside the classroom on a day to day basis”. Art also mentioned the District’s “Student Intervention Monitoring system [also SIMS]. [1:00]”.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, School Climate, What Can I Do?

An Update on the Foundation For Madison Public Schools

Susan Troller:

“Be true to your school” could be the motto of a challenge the Foundation for Madison’s Public Schools has issued to friends and supporters of public education here.
According to Martha Vukelich-Austin, foundation president, it’s taken less than 10 months for over half the schools in Madison to meet a challenge grant aimed at helping build individual endowments at every local elementary, middle and high school in the city.
The foundation is an independent, nonprofit community group that raises money to help support public education in Madison.
The grant promises to match every dollar raised at each individual school with 50 cents from the Madison Community Foundation — which manages the funds for the Foundation for Madison Public Schools — up to $3,750 at each of 48 schools. Pledges totalling up to $180,000 will yield an extra $90,000 for the schools, for a total of $270,000 to be divided among 48 schools.
…….
For example, Mendota Elementary School, with one of Madison’s highest poverty rates among its students but strong academic scores, had an endowment of $36,745 as of the second week in September. Other elementary schools with impressive endowments include Thoreau, with $54,968, and Shorewood, with $39,047.
East High School has an endowment of $82,944, and tiny Shabazz City High has an endowment of $63,027, compared with West High School’s $26,800, Memorial High School’s $26,397 and La Follette High School’s $13,632.
Among middle schools, Cherokee and Spring Harbor lead the pack with $63,886 and $59,855 respectively.

Local entrepreneur John Taylor provided a $250K “Challenge Grant” in December, 2003. It would be interesting to add his perspective to the the conversation. Clusty Search on John Taylor.

Budget/Financing, School Climate

How To Calculate School Taxes

Waukesha Taxpayer’s League:

Waukesha Forward has published their new newsletter and much of what they said, we agree with-the support the AB447, AB448 and AB449, the call on the union to slow down the rate of growth of teachers’ salaries. However, while we appreciate the board’s attempt to slow down the administrative salaries, we believe they should have been frozen. If our district adminstrative costs were brought into line with other districts (per position comparison), our district could have saved hundreds of thousands (see WaukeshaForward.org). In addition to slowing down the rate of growth in teacher salaries, we also believe there needs to be changes in the insurance–copays AND contributions to premiums. These are all things that the Waukesha Taxpayers League has supported for a very long time.
Now that we are coming into tax season, we will give a lesson on how to calculate school taxes. This has been an area of contention we have had with the school district and the way the tax increases get underplayed. Sometimes, the newspaper catches the misreprentation and sometimes they don’t.

The slowing real estate market will place more emphasis on “mill rate” increases vs. assessed values.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Elections, School Climate, What Can I Do?

Donor Of New Atlases Says Schools Shrugged Them Off

Susan Troller:

Don Becker finds it odd and annoying that in a time of dwindling resources and a beleaguered budget he’s had trouble giving money to Madison’s public schools.
It’s not that he hasn’t tried, and hasn’t been successful in the past, at providing help to a number of schools on items ranging from books to bus rides to practice shirts for girls’ athletic teams.
But when it came to signing a check for $2,500 last year to buy updated atlases for classrooms at Muir Elementary School, Becker’s money disappeared into a bureaucratic hole at the Doyle Administration Building for months on end. When he tried to follow up on what happened to his donation, he said he was given several different explanations for the delay in purchasing the books.
The bottom line was that when his wife went back this fall to volunteer in her favorite classroom, there was still no sign of the atlases.
Last week, in frustration, Becker called Rand-McNally, the publisher, and bought the atlases himself at what he says is a better price than the district had negotiated. Then he asked for his money back.
According to Becker, he was initially told by Steve Hartley, the district’s chief of staff, that although he would get his donation returned, the district would not provide its sales tax certificate number to Rand-McNally so that the $127 tax charged to Becker for the purchase of the atlases could be reimbursed.

Budget/Financing

Madison School District Talented & Gifted Spending vs. Total Budget

mmsdtag.jpg

Madison United for Academic Excellence has a meeting this evening:

Out of Level Testing Opens Doors of Opportunity, Midwest Academic Talent Search—MATS),” 7:00 p.m. McDaniels Auditorium, Doyle Administration Building, 545 W. Dayton Street. [Map]

This chart presents a useful opportunity to review spending via the handy $339M+ MMSD Citizen’s Budget for 2007-2008 (The citizen’s budget is one of the work products from Lawrie Kobza’s stint on the finance and operations committee this past year).
2007-2008 Student Count: 24,268

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, School Climate

End, Don’t Mend, No Child Left Behind

Neal McCluskey:

Congress has taken up renewal of the No Child Left Behind Act, with a major hearing in the House education committee. Unfortunately, despite little evidence that NCLB has done any good, there’s no reason to believe Congress will improve it. After more than a century of industrial-era schooling, policy-makers are still unwilling to do what’s necessary and turn public education on its head.
NCLB’s results have been ambiguous at best. The most positive news has come from the Center on Education Policy, a Washington think tank, which found that scores on state tests have risen under NCLB. But CEP only had usable pre- and post-NCLB scores for 13 states and could do full analyses for only seven.
Nationally representative measures offer worse news: Improvements on National Assessment of Educational Progress math exams have slowed under NCLB, and reading outcomes have either stagnated or declined, depending on the grade.
These outcomes should be no surprise. The federal Institute for Education Sciences recently confirmed that states are in a race to the bottom on standards, setting them as low as possible so they’re easy to hit. But that’s just symptomatic of a more basic problem: No matter how revolutionary politicians say laws like NCLB are, they always preserve the same institutional structures we’ve had for more than a century, in which politicians and bureaucrats have all the power, and parents and children have none.

Budget/Financing, School Climate, Teacher Support

Waukesha Teacher Compensation: Education over Experience

Amy Hetzner:

Nearly a decade after the School District started shifting its pay scale to emphasize education over experience, about one-third of Waukesha teachers are at the top of the school system’s salary schedule.
More than 300 of 960 district teachers made $70,507 in 2006-’07, the highest salary available to teachers and other certified staff without picking up extra duties.
District officials are careful to point out that the compressed salary schedule, in which teachers can earn large pay boosts for reaching certain benchmarks in graduate and post-graduate education, doesn’t cost the district more than a traditional schedule that pays based on a mixture of experience and education.
But because many of the teachers earning top pay also have seniority privileges protecting them from layoffs, the top-loaded pay system could cause problems as the district looks to more staff cuts to balance its budgets.

More at the Waukesha Taxpayer’s League.

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, Nutrition, Student Support, Wellness

Madison schools’ lunch period isn’t what it used to be

Andy Hall:

And somehow, in a time window one third the size that many adults take for lunch, 215 young children crowd around picnic-style tables, consume chicken nuggets — or whatever they brought from home — and hustle outside to play.
Squeezed by tight school budgets, the federal No Child Left Behind law and Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction rules on instructional time, the school lunch period isn’t what it used to be in many school districts.
ver the years,” said Frank Kelly, food services director of the Madison School District, who estimates that overall, school lunch periods in the district have been trimmed about 10 minutes over the past 10 years.
“I don’t think people are going to accept anything less than this.”
In fact, in response to complaints from parents four years ago, Madison officials eased the lunch crunch a bit for elementary students by using the last five minutes of the class period before lunch to move students to the cafeteria.
There was talk four years ago of expanding the elementary lunch period to 35 minutes. But the idea was dropped after officials estimated it might cost more than $2 million to pay teachers and lunch supervisors.
“We don’t have much flexibility in extending that,” said Sue Abplanalp, an assistant superintendent who oversees Madison’s elementary schools.
While DPI leaves it up to local officials to determine the length of lunch periods, Madison educators say they believe they attain a decent compromise by giving:
•Elementary students 20 minutes.
•Middle school students 30 to 34 minutes.
•High school students about 35 minutes (except at West High School, where most students get 55 minutes under a plan initiated last year).
Those schedules are typical of what’s found around Wisconsin, said Kelly, who has worked in food service for 31 years.
“For most of our people, it works very well,” Madison schools Superintendent Art Rainwater said.

Budget/Financing

Waukesha Schools’ Health Care Savings

Amy Hetzner:

As it continues to negotiate contracts with eight employee groups, the School Board has approved health insurance changes and modest salary increases that are expected to reduce overall compensation costs for non-unionized employees this school year.
Other employees will hopefully take note, School Board President William Baumgart said.
“This was a small group of people in comparison to the total district,” Baumgart said of the approximately 70 administrators, secretaries and technical staff covered by the settlement. “We feel if we’re going to put emphasis on saving money in employee costs, we’re going to have to do it at all levels. And this will be the first one.”
Under the one-year settlement the School Board approved last week, non-unionized employees will pay higher deductibles, office co-payments and drug costs for their health care. They also will continue to pay 5% of their health insurance premiums.
Salaries will increase by 2% this school year for the pool, except for assistant principals who will receive a 1% pay boost. Overall, the changes are expected to reduce costs for covered employees by 0.63%, or $31,647, less than what the district spent last school year, said Erik Kass, executive director of business services for the district.

Locally, health care costs [RSS] have been a topic of much discussion and controversy.

Budget/Financing

City, School District get $9 million windfall

1 Comment

Andy Hall:


An unprecedented windfall is on the horizon for the city of Madison and Madison School District, promising to relieve some budget pressures and affect major issues such as the city ‘s hiring of 30 police officers and the School Board ‘s debate over whether it still needs to ask voters for more money in a referendum.
Under a proposal from Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, the city would receive $3.7 million and the School District would get $5.4 million in money flowing from two fast-developing special taxing districts created years ago by the city. In addition, Dane County and Madison Area Technical College would receive a little less than $1 million apiece.
“It ‘s significant news, and very good news, for the School District and the city, ” Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said Wednesday. “The amount is unprecedented. ”
The one-time payouts would occur by the end of next year if the City Council votes to close the two tax incremental financing districts as recommended by city staff members who say the move is necessary under state law.

Budget/Financing, School Climate, Staff Support

Shabaz Allows Trial For Whistle-blower

Kevin Murphy:

A jury will get to decide if a Madison Metropolitan School District employee speaking out about alleged bid-rigging cost her a promotion, a federal judge ruled.
Linda Martin had worked in the district’s transportation office since 1989, but was passed over in November 2002 for the newly created position of transportation coordinator. A month later, Martin was transferred to the accounting department as her transportation clerk’s job was eliminated.
Although the school district contends Martin wasn’t qualified for the coordinator’s job, that argument is contradicted by the district’s interviewing her for the position, according to U.S. District Judge John Shabaz’s decision issued Thursday. It also is under dispute whether the district’s choice, Jeff Fedler, was more qualified than Martin.
Fedler had worked for a school bus vendor, First Student, formerly Verona Bus, before being recommended in May 2002 by Martin’s supervisor, Rene Bremer, for the job Martin was seeking.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support

Schools by Age, Not Address

Amy Hetzner:

Theory” and “experiment” were two ways Waukesha School Board members last week described the district’s move to create two schools focused solely on the lower or upper elementary grade levels.
But staff in schools already organized around such grade levels describe the model another way: child-focused.
“Really, the whole building kind of revolves around those early learners,” said Deb Ristow, principal of Pewaukee Lake Elementary School, which has housed students in kindergarten through third grade since 2002.
Although not as common in southeastern Wisconsin, “grade centers” that serve students for a fraction of their elementary years make up one of every five elementary schools nationwide, according to an analysis by the Educational Research Service. The facilities can be kindergarten-only centers, pre-kindergarten through second- or third-grade buildings or third- through fifth- or sixth-grade schools.

Budget/Financing, School Climate

Sobol v. Sobol

Teachers College: Columbia University News:

On the issue of educational equity, Tom Sobol is an unabashed friend of the people. On the issue of Tom Sobol, he takes a tougher line
When Tom Sobol was superintendent of schools in Scarsdale, New York, there was a guy named Bob who came to all the budget meetings—the classic, thorn-in-your-side self-appointed public citizen who haunts town halls across the nation.
“Bob used to roundly excoriate us for violating the public trust, and I had to hand it to him, he did a great job at doing his thing—he knew the budget better than just about anyone except me,” says Sobol.
It’s a warm spring day, and Sobol, 75, who retired in 2006 as TC’s first Christian A. Johnson Professor of Outstanding Educational Practice, is talking with an interviewer in his new office on the second floor of Grace Dodge Hall. (He still teaches one course per semester.) He is a kind-faced man whom time has given the craggy features of an eagle, with a thatch of white hair atop his head. His voice is soft, the result of medicine he takes for a spinal cord disorder that has left him without feeling in his legs, confined to a powered wheelchair; however, his eyes are clear and steady.
“Well, then Bob’s wife died, and he stopped coming to meetings. And one year, we were going along, and I knew the annual budget hearings were coming up, and I thought, I wonder how Bob is doing. So I picked up the phone and called him. I said, ‘How are you?,’ and he said, ‘Well, it’s hard getting along without Jane.’ I said, ‘Are you up on your numbers?,’ and of course, he was, he wouldn’t have been anything else. I said, ‘Are we going to see you out there at the meeting?,’ and he said, ‘No, I can’t drive anymore.’ And I said—and this was before my own legs gave out—‘Listen, the meeting is at eight, I’ll come around beforehand and pick you up, and we’ll go over together.’ So I did, and we drove over, and the meeting went along, and around nine o’clock, he stood up and roundly excoriated us for violating the public trust. And afterward I drove him home. I’ve always felt good about that.”
The story captures many familiar aspects of Sobol—the good Samaritan, whose many students and friends distributed “Noble Sobol” buttons for his retirement party; the adroit politician whose sense of community interaction (he wrote his doctoral thesis at TC on the subject) helped him become New York State’s Commissioner of Education under Governor Mario Cuomo; the dry, self-deprecating wit who effortlessly mixes quotes from Robert Frost, E.M. Forster and May Sarton with amusing stories of being “parked” by his grandchildren so they can ride around on his motorized wheelchair. Perhaps the most singular, however, is the man so concerned about choosing the moral course of action—and so committed to public engagement as the best means of arriving at it—that he quite literally imports his own toughest critics.

Budget/Financing, School Climate

Do Milwaukee’s Public Schools Spend Too Much

Bruce Murphy:

That was certainly the suggestion of a new Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance study, which was done for the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. The latter’s leader, Tim Sheehy, has been a frequent critic of local governments for paying benefits he believes are too high. In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article covering the study, Sheehy was quoted as declaring that the district needed to establish control over its “staffing, pension and benefit costs.”
Blogger Jay Bullock has suggested that the report, the JS story by Alan Borsuk, and an earlier JS story written by me in 2003, were all deliberately timed to pressure the teacher’s union to accept lower salaries and benefits. I doubt that Borsuk cares to be classed with me (he’s probably wearing a bag over his head), and I’m not convinced he was out to get the union. But his story, as well as Bullock’s blog, seemed to miss some of the forest for the trees. So who and what should we believe?
For starters, MPS is spending less per pupil than the Madison system and an amount similar to what other urban districts in Wisconsin spend. But it’s doing that with less-experienced teachers: Milwaukee teachers average 10 years of experience versus 15 years statewide. Since teachers typically get an automatic “step increase” for every year of service, you need to hold the level of experience constant and then measure. That measurement shows MPS teachers are getting 38 percent more than the statewide average in total compensation, the report found.

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Madison LaFollette High School and the District’s Athletic Director Changes

1 Comment

from a “Madison Parent”, via email:

I was checking out the MMSD situation with reguards to the Athletic Directors positions and its impact on the schools. I was real suprised to hear that Lafollette has kept on Jim Pliner as a stff member in a position as Dean of Students. It seems that as he cannot be the AD they did find a way to keep Mr. Pliner. I will first say that Jim was and is a great asset to Lafollette. He was a great influence on students in a most positive fashion, not just for athletes but all the student body. BUT…..Lafollette already has one Dean of students. This replaces a Assit. Principal that was eliminated due to enrollment decline and the budget.Now we take and add a dean of students and they assume some of those duties to help the administration cope. What they do not tell parents is the position takes away from a teaching position.So now we have two deans and that means two Faculty positions are gone. Lafollette has created “skinny” classes in some electives so they can still be offered to students but even these are not enough to keep classes avail to most. What was cut from the schedule this year and prior years to keep the “Deans”.And with cuts coming up again, what gets cut again. A look will reveal its not the “prep” courses but a lot of Tech and other electives that the “blue collar” community of Lafollette could use. enough from me..Could someone show mw Im wrong?

Budget/Financing

Sun Prairie School Board Consider’s a Fall Referendum

Sun Prairie School District:

Five years of study, planning, and effort regarding the future of the high school are likely to come to a critical decision point at the regular School Board meeting this Monday, September 10.
The School Board will consider the final options developed this past year by the High School Planning Team and reviewed by the Community Response Team and may pass resolutions that put into place a referendum on Tuesday November 6, 2007.
The Board will begin with consideration of a possible swimming pool, based on last year’s recommendations from the Ad Hoc Pool Task Force. They will then review the final high school plans and costs, and finally decide whether to adopt resolutions necessary to cause a referendum.

Sun Prairie will also begin to require that school visitors show a Photo ID at the main office.

Budget/Financing, School Climate

Tighter Link Sought Between Spending, Achievement in N.Y.

Michele McNeil:

As states look for ways to hold school districts accountable for how they use big increases in K-12 funding, New York’s experience may offer a test case in directing the flow of that new money.
Under the state’s ambitious “Contracts for Excellence” program, 55 of New York’s 705 districts will share $430 million in extra aid this school year, but are required to file detailed plans that limit the spending to five strategies intended to raise student achievement.
The early signs are that districts are complying with the new rules. According to a review by Education Week of contracts available as of last week—representing some three-quarters of the new funding—about half the increase will be spent this year on reducing class size, one of the five state-mandated categories.
Another quarter of the new money will go to increase students’ time on task in those districts, usually by lengthening the school day or year.

Budget/Financing

Housing Slump Strains Budgets of Cities, States

Amy Merrick:

Tremors from the housing market’s slump are straining the budgets of state and local governments from coast to coast, sending officials scrambling to plug gaps.
Rising defaults on subprime home loans are boosting the inventory of unsold homes and driving sale prices lower. That’s cutting into housing-related revenues from building-permit fees, taxes on contracting and recording property transfers, and even sales taxes.
As a result, legislators in Florida, which was at the forefront of the housing boom, plan a special session this month to consider deep budget cuts to offset a projected $1.5 billion funding gap. California forecasts a shortfall of at least $5 billion in next year’s budget. And Chicago faces a $217 million gap in its $5.6 billion budget for 2008.
In the Kansas City, Mo., area, more than two dozen agencies that serve the homeless are likely to lose at least some of their funding this year. Meanwhile, the tiny town of Sultan, Wash., near Seattle, has had to lay off the janitor at City Hall, forcing office workers to take over bathroom-cleaning duties.
In many cases, budget officials knew that the fast pace of housing-related revenue growth in recent years wasn’t sustainable, but the extent of the slowdown has sometimes surprised them. Unlike the federal government, states and local governments generally balance their budgets. That means sudden revenue shortfalls can translate into serious cutbacks in spending plans.
“Our forecasts for the last couple of years have been building in a decline” of revenue as the economy headed toward a soft landing, says Amy Baker, coordinator of the Florida Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research. “What we discovered, when we met in 2006 and then spring 2007, is that the decline was actually occurring more rapidly than we thought.”

Budget/Financing, Nutrition, Wellness

The School Cafeteria, on a Diet

Andrew Martin:

As students return to school this week, some are finding an unusual entry on the list of class rules: no cupcakes.
School districts across the country have been taking steps to make food in schools healthier because of new federal guidelines and awareness that a growing number of children are overweight.
In California, deep fryers have been banned, so chicken nuggets and fries are now baked. Sweet tea is off the menu in one Alabama school. In New Jersey, 20-ounce sports drinks have been cut back to 12 ounces.
Food and beverage companies have scrambled to offer healthier alternatives in school cafeterias and vending machines, and some of the changes have been met with a shrug by students. The whole-wheat chocolate-chip cookies? “Surprisingly, the kids have kind of embraced them,” said Laura Jacobo, director of food services at Woodlake Union schools in California.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, School Climate

Thinking About K-12 Building Maintenance, Spending and School Climate in Colorado

Nancy Mitchell:

Colorado’s speaker of the house is traveling the state in daylong jaunts – driving on unpaved roads to meet with kids, eating lunch in restaurants decorated with rusted farm tools, singing America the Beautiful with the Lions Club – to learn more about rural schools.
It’s not always a pretty picture.
In the San Luis Valley, the high school’s only math teacher is too busy with other subjects to teach calculus; in Ordway, the gym weights are prison castoffs; in tiny Joes, a teacher applies for Gerber Foods grants to buy textbooks.
In repairs alone, K-12 schools statewide need $6 billion to $10 billion. Which is why Romanoff may propose, for the first time in Colorado history, a statewide ballot measure to build and repair schools.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, School Climate

Putting Our Changing (Milwaukee) District to the Test

Alan Borsuk:

As a new school year opens, we look at the new challenges and recurring demands facing education and ask what can be done to aid our classrooms and students
The start of the school year is always a time when children, parents, teachers and administrators have to rush to take care of a zillion small questions, from what to wear on the first day to whether there’s a teacher in every classroom.
But it is also the start of the next round of the wrestling match with the largest questions hanging over education, especially in urban places such as Milwaukee.
Here are 10 of the big questions facing Milwaukee as the school year begins in earnest today and thumbnail thoughts on how they are being answered.
1) What works? Want to hear a recitation of all the reforms that haven’t really succeeded in getting better educational outcomes for Milwaukee children? Neither do we. Nonetheless, there are bright spots on the local education scene – specific schools that are doing well – and they tend to have common traits, including excellent principals, united and stable staffs, a strong commitment to clear education programs and a willingness to keep working with each child to get the child engaged and to the point of success.

Budget/Financing, School Climate

Views on Wisconsin’s K-12 School Spending

Frank Lassee:

The third Friday of September is an important date for schools. On that day the final enrollment count is made, then each school district will move to finalize their annual budget. Having the school budgets final by mid October is important for all of us, especially property taxpayers.
Under current law, schools will be allowed to spend $264 more for each student than last year. That is what the Governor and Democratic Senators proposed, as well. The Assembly has shaved it back to $200 per kid each year of the budget (with an incentive of $264 if the teachers agree to negotiate for a less expensive health plan). Last year in Wisconsin, we spent almost $10 billion on our public schools, approximately $5 Billion of state taxes, $4 Billion of local property taxes and $1 Billion from the federal government.

Paul Soglin:

Wisconsin State Representative Frank Lasee (R-2nd) needs to go back to school. I suppose it is an intended public service that he tells us that, “Education is by far the single biggest expense of our state budget.”
O.K. Interesting information, but he never tells us what is the proper level of spending, or for that matter, why home owners should pay more so that businesses can pay less for education.
He makes additional observations such as the fact that, “Total spending divided by the number of teachers works out to nearly $150,000 for each teacher.”
Huh? What does that mean? Lasee thinks that the cost of busing kids to school or the cost of school books is to be measured by the cost per teacher. A figure as useful as knowing the cost of postage to mail a letter to the moon. Most of his comments continue with measures and data that are meaningless, either with no context or a useless context.

Much more on K-12 spending here.

Budget/Financing

America Risks the Fate of the Roman Republic

David Walker (Comptroller General of the United States):

T he US is a great nation, possibly the greatest of all time. Yet to keep America great, policymakers must learn certain lessons from history, notably the downfall of the Roman republic.
The world has changed dramatically in recent years. The US is currently the sole superpower on earth but that exclusive status is likely to be short-lived. While the US is number one in many things, from the size of its economy to military might, it faces several big sustainability challenges.
America’s fiscal, healthcare, education, energy, environment, immigration and Iraq policies are in need of review and revision. Timely action is needed because Washington’s historical crisis-management approach to dealing with hard public policy choices is no longer prudent.

Jeremy Grant has more along with David Potter and Martin Walker.
Comptroller of the Currency

Budget/Financing

Kewaunee High School goes solar

From WFRV:

KEWAUNEE (WFRV) – Tuesday morning, solar-electric panels were installed on the roof of Kewaunee High School.
The panels are part of a system that will produce about 2,800 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year – that’s enough electricity to power three classrooms, which amounts to approximately $200 in energy savings per year to the school.
In addition to the solar panels, the school was awarded a three-week renewable energy curriculum to be integrated into the science curriculum. Students and teachers can access data from the solar-electric system via the Internet and use the information in classroom projects throughout the year.
The system was donated to the school by WPS Community Foundation as part of the SolarWise® for Schools program. Every year three or four new high schools are selected. Since 1996, 41 high schools in the Wisconsin Public Service area have participated in the program.
This program is funded by donations from 3,800 Wisconsin Public Service customers, as well as state grants.


For more information on solar energy, go to Focus on Energy.

Budget/Financing, Elections, School Climate

K-12 Spending More Reliant on Federal Government Since No Child Left Behind Act

Gerald Prante:

New data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that the federal government has been commandeering a continually larger role in K-12 education in recent years, especially since 1999 and the January 2002 passage of the No Child Left Behind Act.
The new statistics include detailed financial data about school districts across the nation for the 2004-05 school year. Five years earlier, during the 1999-2000 school year, public school districts received an average of $578 per pupil from the federal government. By 2004-05, that number had risen to $919. That’s a 60-percent increase, and even after adjusting for inflation, it’s a 39 percent boost in federal aid. In this study we rank the states on how much more reliant they have become on Uncle Sam for this traditionally local government function.
There are several ways to quantify this increasing reliance on the federal government. The two we present in Table 1 are the absolute dollar amounts per pupil that the federal government sent to each state’s school system, and the percentage of each state’s education spending that comes from the federal government. The rightmost column shows how every state’s share of revenue from the federal government has changed since 1999-00.

Related: K-12 Spending Climate.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Curriculum, History - Madison Schools

Where does MMSD get its numbers from?

One of the reasons that I have devoted more time than I should to analyzing the outcomes from the District’s SLC grants (way too much time, given that I don’t get paid for this and given that the District is going to continue on its merry way with restructuring our high schools into Small Learning Communities no matter what the data indicates) has to do with the frustration I experience when I try and find consistency in the District’s data. Frankly, there isn’t any. MMSD is consistently inconsistent with their numbers, see for example my earlier post trying to identify what the District spent in 2004/05.
The District’s latest press release trumpeting the success of our high school students on the ACT is just the latest example of this problem. According to MMSD, the percentage of Madison students who took the ACT is significantly higher than the percentages that are reported by DPI.
The District reports that “Sixty-nine percent of all MMSD 12th grade students participated in the ACT during 2006-07, compared to 70% last year. Over the last 13 years, MMSD participation has ranged from 67-74% (see pg. 2 table).”

ACT Score Comparison by Year
Average Composite:

                                    %MMSD 12th
 Year     Madison   WI     US     Graders Tested 
2006-07    24.6     22.3    21.2        69%
2005-06    24.2     22.2    21.1        70%
2004-05    24.3     22.2    20.9        74%
2003-04    24.2     22.2    20.9        70%
2002-03    23.9     22.2    20.8        68%
2001-02    24.4     22.2    20.8        67%
2000-01    24.1     22.2    21.0        70%
1999-00    24.2     22.2    21.0        72%
1998-99    24.4     22.3    21.0        67%
1997-98    24.5     22.3    21.0        67%
1996-97    24.5     22.3    21.0        70%
1995-96    23.8     22.1    20.9        71%
1994-95    23.5     22.0    20.8        70%

According to DPI, a much smaller percentage of the District’s 12th graders have taken the ACT in their junior or senior years. (The table below is taken from DPI)











































































ACT Results – Composite – All Students

Madison Metropolitan
  Enrollment
Grade 12		 Number Tested % Tested Average Score – Composite
1996-97 1,552 982 63.3 24.5
1997-98 1,650 1,016 61.6 24.5
1998-99 1,639 1,014 61.9 24.4
1999-00 1,697 1,127 66.4 24.2
2000-01 1,728 1,091 63.1 24.1
2001-02 1,785 1,113 62.4 24.4
2002-03 1,873 1,126 60.1 23.9
2003-04 1,920 1,198 62.4 24.2
2004-05 2,055 1,247 60.7 24.3
2005-06 2,035 1,244 61.1 24.2
2006-07 1,983 1,151 58.0 24.6

An examination of minority student participation in the ACT reveals that the percentage of African American and Hispanic students taking the test has declined over the last three years. Only 20.1% of African American students in the District took the ACT as compared to 34.6% of African American students across the state.
I am more than willing to believe that DPI’s numbers are inaccurate, but don’t they get this data from the District? Several months ago I was attempting to clarify discrepancies between MMSD and DPI in the cost per student data, and that experience is perhaps informative here. I wrote to clarify this issue:

I am writing to ask about the data that the district lists on its web site regarding cost per pupil. The excel spreadsheet t1.xls on the page (http://www.madison.k12.wi.us/re/dataprofile.htm) lists numbers that do not match those listed on DPI’s web site (http://data.dpi.state.wi.us/data/selschool.asp). Specifically, the numbers that MMSD lists as the state average cost per student are greater than the numbers that DPI lists on its site, while at the same time the MMSD cost per student listed is less than what DPI states that our District spends per student.
I am attaching the spreadsheet I downloaded from the District web site, along with the numbers that I got from DPI. If you could help me understand the discrepancy in these numbers it would be most appreciated.

The response that I got back from Roger Price was:

Jeff,
Both data sources are from the DPI. They calculate both tables. I am not sure what the differences are between the two. We utilize the “Basic Facts” data as published by the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.
Roger

Why the District with its extensive Data Warehouse has to rely on the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance to tell it what they spend per student is beyond me, but it doesn’t fill me with any confidence about the accuracy of their data.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Student Support

Don’t fund Small Learning Community grant sought by MMSD

August 20, 2007
Gregory Dennis
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, SW., room 3W243 FB6
Washington, DC 20202-6200
Dear Mr. Dennis,
As a long-time advocate for academic excellence in the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD, Madison, Wisconsin), I urge the Department of Education to reject the MMSD’s recent application for a Small Learning Centers grant, Smaller Learning Communities Program CFDA #84.215L.
Please visit a popular Madison blog, schoolinfosystem.org, where you will find long threads with comments, questions, and concerns about the grant application, as well as the MMSD’s pilot efforts in small learning centers.
Blog commentators, some of whom as statistics instructors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, clinical psychologists, and other professionals with advanced degrees, express little support for the MMSD’s implementation of small learning communities.
When people try to get evaluation data from the MMSD on the current small learning communities, the district cannot or will not produce the information. The little available information about the MMSD’s small learning communities does not point to success, but rather to no impact on academic achievement. (See the evaluation on the MMSD Web site by Bruce King, whose services the MMSD wrote into its grant proposal.)
As the MMSD implements small learning schools, it simply amounts to closing the achievement gap by limiting opportunities for academic success of advanced students without raising the academic performance of low-performing ones.
Finally, the MMSD would be better off not to launch a major program change, especially when the current superintendent, the champion for the changes, will leave the district in the summer of 2008.
Sincerely,
Ed Blume

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, School Climate, Student Support

Hours of teaching differ for schools

Amy Hetzner & Alan Borsuk:

Where a student attends public school in the five-county metropolitan Milwaukee area can make a difference of as much as four weeks’ time in the classroom per year, according to data reported to the state.
For the last two school years, the school districts of Burlington, Cudahy, Kettle Moraine, Mukwonago, Slinger, South Milwaukee and Wauwatosa reported that most – if not all – of their schools held classes at least 65 hours longer than the minimum hours set by state law.
Meanwhile, the Oak Creek-Franklin and Waukesha school districts met for the minimum amount of hours, and a large number of schools in the Milwaukee Public Schools system fell below the standard in 2006-’07.
“There’s nothing more important than time with the classroom teacher,” said Tony Evers, deputy superintendent of the state Department of Public Instruction. “And, if that’s continually taken away, the state of Wisconsin would have an obligation that doesn’t happen.”
By and large, most public schools in Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Washington and Waukesha counties reported similar annual total instructional hours for their students for the past two years, the only years for which data was available from the DPI.

Budget/Financing

New Study Reveals School Finance Lawsuits Increase Funding Temporarily, Hike Taxes Permanently

Christ Atkins:

But few studies have attempted a comprehensive, state-by-state measure of the long-term fiscal impact of court education mandates4 and none have presented a state-by-state estimate of the cost of legislation approved to comply with court education mandates.
How much more are states spending on education as a result of these mandates? Have lawmakers increased taxes to comply with the mandates, and if so, how much? Has compliance with court mandates led to long-term increases in per-pupil spending? This study—the first in a new series called Appropriation by Litigation—will answer these questions.

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

MMSD Misses Notification Date, Will Again Provide Private School Bus Rides

5 Comments

Anita Clark:


The Madison School District said Tuesday it will provide bus rides for children attending private schools this year because it missed a legal deadline to notify families that the service was ending.
Hoping to save about $229,000, the School Board voted last spring to abolish bus routes that carried 208 children to six Catholic schools.
Instead, the district would pay their parents a transportation subsidy of about $450 per student.
The district has been working this summer with the Catholic Diocese of Madison to help it set up an alternative transportation system, but it did not realize there was an Aug. 4 deadline for notifying parents affected by the change, Superintendent Art Rainwater said Tuesday.
“We were so engrossed, it just went by us, ” he said. “The statute is very clear and we did not meet it. ”
Michael Lancaster, superintendent of schools for the diocese, said he ‘s happy that children will be receiving safe rides to school.
“Safety was a huge parental concern and ours as well, ‘ ‘ he said.
The financial effect on the district will be evaluated in October when it deals with “hundreds of pluses and minuses ‘ ‘ in making final budget adjustments after receiving data on enrollment, state aid and other factors, Rainwater said.
“We really don ‘t know until October how this fits in,” he said.

Much more on last spring’s private school busing budget change and commentary.
Perhaps this matter is related to gaining voter support for a 2008 referendum, which was discussed at Monday’s Madison School Board meeting:

Approval of Minutes dated April 30, May 7, May 14, May 22, May 29, June 27, July 16 (two sets), 2007
Announcements
There are no announcements.
Initial Discussion of Potential 2007-08 Referendum.

Susan Troller:

An oversight by the Madison school district’s administration means that the prayers of some Catholic school parents have been answered.
The school district announced Tuesday that it must continue to provide yellow school bus service for students at six local Catholic schools through the 2007-08 school year because it missed a deadline for notifying parents that there would be a change in transportation policy.
The Madison School Board voted last spring to eliminate busing for parochial school students and instead provide a stipend of $450 per child so parents can pay the cost of transportation themselves. State statutes mandate that public schools must provide transportation to all students in their districts, even those attending private schools.
According to Superintendent Art Rainwater, the district has been working over the summer with the Catholic Diocese of Madison to establish alternative means of getting parochial students to school, and it inadvertently missed the 30-day legal deadline for notifying individual parents that there would be a change in transportation policy.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, What Can I Do?

District SLC Grant – Examining the Data From Earlier Grants, pt. 2

An earlier posting examined the results of the small school initiative at Memorial high school. This post aims to examine West’s SLC grant. Similar to the Memorial grant, the goal of West’s SLC grant was to reduce the achievement gap and to increase students’ sense of community.
The final report is a major source of frustration for anyone who values data analysis and statistics. Essentially, there are no statistics reported. The data is presented in figures that are cluttered and too small, which makes them difficult to interpret. Changes over time are discussed as trends without any sort of statistical tests being reported. Most of the data presented are no more detailed than what anyone can pull off the DPI web site.
Before examining the impact of West’s restructuring on student achievement and on students’ connection to the school, it is necessary to identify just a few of the components of the West proposal that were never enacted:

  • “C.2.c Advocate Mentor. Each student will have an adult advocate from their learning community (LC) who stays with them through their years at West. Students will meet weekly with their advocate to review academic progress and attendance, preview the upcoming week, discuss school or personal issues, etc.” A rather ambitious aspect of the proposal, and considering District finances a totally unrealistic proposal. It was not implemented.
  • “C.2.d. Academic/Career Pathways. Beginning early in freshman year, each student will work with their LC guidance counselor and parent(s) to develop an Individualized Graduation Plan (IGP) that includes (1) personal, academic, and career/avocation exploration goals, and (2) academic coursework and learning experiences beyond the classroom that help students achieve these goals. Updated periodically, the IGP will be based on the student’s academic record and a current assessment of their skills and competencies, intellectual interests, and personality.” As far as I know, this never happened, at the very least parents were never involved.
  • “C.5.e. Strategies for securing/maintaining staff, community, and parent buy-in. … We will provide frequent formal (e.g., surveys, focus groups) and informal chances for staff and other stakeholders to raise concerns with the project leadership (Principal and hired project staff).” Parents were never surveyed and the only focus groups that I am aware of were two meetings conducted following parents’ uproar over English 10 …
    “The SLC Coordinator will also provide frequent progress reports through a variety of school and community-based media (e.g., special staff newsletter and memos from the principal; school newsletter sent home; media coverage of positive developments, etc.). Also our community partners will serve as ambassadors for the project via communications to their respective constituencies.” There were two presentations to the PTSO summarizing the results of the grant. I am not aware of anything in the school newsletter or in the “media” that reported on the results of the restructuring.
  • “E.1 Overall Evaluation Strategy
    Third-Party Evaluator. … He will develop survey instruments and analyze the formative and summative data described below, and prepare annual reports of his findings for all stakeholder groups. Parents (one of the stakeholders) never received annual reports from the evaluator, and I have no idea about what surveys were or were not developed …
    Also the outcome data for West will be compared to the same data elements for a school with similar demographic characteristics that is not restructuring into learning communities.” Rather than comparing West’s outcome data to a comparable school, the final report compares West’s data to the District’s data.
  • Finally, one of the goals of the grant (2.f. Parent Participation) was to increase the % of parents of color who attend school functions. This data was to come from attendance logs collected by the LC Assistant Principals. This objective is not even listed as one of the goals on the Final Report, and if attendance at PTSO meetings is any indicator, the SLC grant had no impact on the participation of parents of color. It is interesting to note that the recently submitted high school redesign grant does not include any efforts at increasing parental participation. Given the extensive literature on the importance of parental involvement, especially for low income students (see the recent meta analysis by Jeynes (2007) in Urban Education, Vol. 42, pp. 82-110), it is disappointing to see that the District has given up on this goal.

On to the data…

Continue reading District SLC Grant – Examining the Data From Earlier Grants, pt. 2 →

Budget/Financing, School Climate, Student Support

As States Tackle Poverty, Preschool Gets High Marks


Deborah Solomon:

In Washington and statehouses across the country, preschool is moving to the head of the class.
Florida and Oklahoma are among the states that have started providing free preschool for any 4-year-old whose parents want it. Illinois and New York plan to do the same. Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to spend $15 billion over five years on universal preschool funding. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke calls preschool one cure for inequality.
The movement represents one of the most significant expansions in public education in the 90 years since World War I, when kindergarten first became standard in American schools. It has taken off as politicians look for relatively inexpensive ways to tackle the growing rich-poor gap in the U.S. They have found spending on children is usually an easy sell.
It took a well-orchestrated campaign to put pre-K on the top of political agendas — and new tactics that didn’t rely on do-gooder rhetoric. Among those working on the issue are the research director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, a billionaire Oklahoma oil man and a foundation executive in Philadelphia.
Their winning pitch: Making pre-K as prevalent as kindergarten is a prudent investment. Early schooling, they say, makes kids more likely to stay in school and turn into productive taxpayers.

Related: The Economics of Preschool.

Budget/Financing, School Climate

A Look at Houston’s $805M Referendum in light of Enrollment Declines

Ericka Mellon:

First, the Houston school board, which is expected to approve that $805 million bond proposal Thursday, signed a $3.8 million contract with Magellan Consulting, a Conroe-based firm that specializes in analyzing school buildings. Magellan consultants – with the help of HISD’s former in-house demographer, who now works for the company – also estimated student enrollment for each of the district’s schools over the next decade. Magellan projects the district’s overall enrollment will continue dropping – about 4 percent over the next decade. With that decline, several people have asked why the district needs taxpayers to dip into their pockets to fund new campuses.

Budget/Financing

Dual Income Families & Tax Burden

Todd Zywicki:

EVALUATING THE TWO-INCOME TRAP HYPOTHESIS: As I’ve been working on my book on bankruptcy this summer, I’ve been going back through the various hypotheses that have been advanced for the rise in American bankruptcy filings in the 1980s and 1990s. One hypothesis was that advanced in The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke by Professor Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi.
Warren & Tyagi’s argument can be easily summarized. They focus on the rise in the number of households with two parents working as an indication of economic distress. Conventional economic theory would indicate that one benefit of having a second wage-earner is that it will make the family more resilient to a financial setback or loss of job than a traditional family with only one wage-earner. Families today, unlike those a generation ago, can save the second earner’s income as precautionary savings, thereby making it easier to withstand a setback.
So I got out my handy calculator and calculated what the indicated percentage of taxes translates into in terms of actual dollars paid in taxes. In turns out that for the 1970s family, paying 24% of its income in taxes works out to be $9,288. And for the 2000s family, paying 33% of its income (a higher rate presumably because of progressivity hitting the second wage-earners income) in taxes works out to be $22,374.

Budget/Financing, School Climate

Schools Bypass Budget Caps

Amy Hetzner:

A little-publicized exemption to a state law that caps school district revenue has kept a nurse in the Greenfield School District and cops in South Milwaukee’s middle and high schools in recent years.
It could also help pay the Waukesha School District’s share of a new traffic light, and for a part-time aide to record student immunization data for the Oak Creek-Franklin School District.
And there is a possibility such cases, in which school systems are allowed to raise extra money if they have to replace a service that had been provided by another governmental entity, could grow.
“I think there is a potential but it varies from school district to school district, community to community,” said Woody Wiedenhoeft, executive director for the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials. “But, in tight times, to try to make budget fits, I can see people discuss ‘Well, should we move it from one budget to another?’ ”
In recent years, the exemption has led school districts to raise their revenue caps so they can pay for everything from police liaison officers and nurses to grass cutting and snow plowing. Since 2003, school districts have been allowed to collect more than $1.8 million under the exemption, according to records from the state Department of Public Instruction, which has to approve all requests under the law.

Non revenue limited spending growth in the Madison School District’s Fund 80 has drawn local attention. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel applauds this loophole.

Budget/Financing, Elections, School Climate

More on MATC – Milwaukee Property Tax Blowback

Mike Nichols:

The folks running Milwaukee Area Technical College want your money, deserve your money, have a right to your money, and it matters not a bit what they do with it.
In fact, the technical college district doesn’t just want your money for technical education. It deserves your money because, I guess, that’s just the way things are around here – so quit whining.
Quit being, as one Milwaukee state representative put it recently, I noted in my blog, so “political.”
Or, better yet, consider – seriously – quitting MATC itself.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, School Climate, Special Education, Student Support

What Autistic Girls Are Made Of

Emily Bazelon:

Caitlyn & Marguerite sat knee to knee in a sunny room at the Hawks Camp in Park City, Utah. On one wall was a white board with these questions: What’s your favorite vacation and why? What’s your favorite thing about yourself? If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
Caitlyn, who is 13, and Marguerite, who is 16 (I’ve used only their first names to protect their privacy), held yellow sheets of paper on which they had written their answers. It was the third day of the weeklong camp, late for icebreakers. But the Hawks are kids with autistic disorders accompanied by a normal or high I.Q. And so the main goal of the camp, run on a 26-acre ranch by a Utah nonprofit organization called the National Ability Center, is to nudge them toward the sort of back and forth — “What’s your favorite video game?” — that comes easily to most kids.
Along with Caitlyn and Marguerite, there were nine boys in the camp between the ages of 10 and 18. They also sat across from one another in pairs, with the exception of one 18-year-old who was arguing with a counselor. “All I require is a purple marker,” the boy said over and over again, refusing to write with the black marker he had been given. A few feet away, an 11-year-old was yipping and grunting while his partner read his answers in a monotone, eyes trained on his yellow paper. Another counselor hurried over to them.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, School Climate

Innovating School & Schooling

Center for Policy Studies and Hamline University:

  1. Traditional schooling is ‘torqued out’. We need to create radically different models of school/ing.
  2. Existing organizations don’t innovate well. Most different schools will have to be created new.
  3. The states’ charter laws make it possible now to create new and different schools.
  4. In redesigning schools we should focus on motivating the workers: both students and teachers.
  5. We can now customize student learning using today’s digital electronics.
  6. Without new models of school K-12 might not be sustainable economically

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, School Climate

High School Small Communities

2 Comments

I noticed the district is applying for a grant to the BOE in relation to the High School Small Communities. I have a couple of thoughts relating to this issue.
First of all, I applaud your effort in making our large high school more intimate. It seem in an emotional way logical that the high school would be divided into smaller communities to allow for connectiveness.
The funny thing is, as I celebrate my 25th year since I was in high school this year, I look back and see this same thing occurred back in my day. It was called clubs, athletics, and band.
High schools have been a breeding ground for fun, involvement, participation and community building. MMSD has been cutting this very foundation you are asking for a grant to “Create through artificial means” since I moved here in 2000. The non-academic athletics, the non-essential music, the unnecessary theater and arts have been cut, cut and cut some more. I understand the need for cutting and you can’t cut curriculum, but now we are going to create the “connectivity” artificially.
My son loves sports. He matriculates to others like him. He has met kids from Toki, Hamilton, Spring Harbor and even private school from sports. If you ask him where he wants to go to High School next year he will tell you Memorial to play BB or some other sport. He has a strong since of community based on his interest.
My daughter loves the arts. Drawing, acting, and especially singing. If you ask her where she wants to go to high school she will tell you Memorial because she has seen several plays there and want to participate in the drama club. She is also a pretty good swimmer and has senior role models on Memorial Swim Team.
Neither will say Memorial because the Math is great! They already have established a type of community through their interest, as we did as kids. It is so sad that NONE of the MMSD schools have a marching band, as that club can involve hundreds of students and attach them to a community of students of all ages and interest through music. Instead we are trying to create the communities randomly, via what a computer, that does not account for interest.
It is also sad we are cutting our athletics slowly but surely. This year it is the AD at the High School Level. I heard the BOE at MMSD was unwilling to raise the fees to allow these actives that provide a community for low, middle and high income students. Since many of you do not have children participating in sports let me clue you in on a few things.

Continue reading High School Small Communities →

Board Meeting Archives, Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, Student Support, What Can I Do?

District SLC Grant – Examining the Data From Earlier Grants, pt. 1

7 Comments

The Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) recently submitted a five year, $5 million grant proposal to the US Department of Education (DOE) to support the creation of Small Learning Communities (SLCs) in all four high schools (See here for post re. grant application). While the grant proposal makes mention of the two smaller SLC grants the district received earlier, there is no examination of the data from those two projects. One would think that DOE would be curious to know if MMSD’s earlier efforts at creating SLCs had produced the desired results before agreeing to provide further funding. Furthermore, one would think it important to examine if the schools implemented the changes that they proposed in their applications. It is my intention to provide some of that analysis over the course of several posts, and I want to encourage other community members to examine the Memorial grant proposal and final report and the West grant and final report themselves.
We begin by examining Memorial High School’s SLC grant which was funded from 2000-2003. Memorial’s SLC grant is a good place to start, not only because it was the first MMSD SLC grant, but because they lay out clearly the outcome measures that they intend to evaluate and their final report provides hard numbers (as opposed to graphics) over a number of years before and after the implementation of the SLC grant. Memorial had two goals for their SLC grant: 1) to reduce the achievement gap and 2) to increase students’ connectedness to the school.
Examining student achievement suggests mixed results for Memorial’s restructuring. Student GPA’s indicate a slight narrowing of the achievement gap for African American students and essentially no change for Hispanic students when compared to their fellow white students over the period of the grant.

Difference Between
2000
2001
2002
2003
White & African American
1.35
1.35
1.16
1.24
White & Hispanic
0.75
0.87
0.74
0.79

Student WKCE performance can be considered an external indicator of student success, and these data indicate no change in the proportion of students scoring at the Proficient and/or Advanced levels, an especially noteworthy result given that the criteria for the WKCEs were lowered in 2002/03 which was the last year of the grant. I’ve included data up through this past school year since that is available on the DPI website, and I’ve only presented data from math and reading in the interests of not overloading SIS readers.

WKCE 99/2000 2000/01 2001/02 2002/03 2003/04 2004/05 2005/06 2006/07
Reading                
African American
45.09
54.90
36.00
33.00
40.5
45.8
42.9
29.8
Hispanic
63.16
80.00
47.00
54.00
53.6
51.7*
53.1*
29.3*
White
93.33
85.55
86.00
89.00
90.2
86.2
89.0
84.2
Low Income
53.33
56.36
36.00
36.00
32.9
40.7
43.7
25.7
Not Low Income      
88.00
86.9
84.7
89.8
80.2
Math                
African American
18.00
27.45
20.00
29.00**
39.2
32.2
27.3
39.4
Hispanic
42.11
40.00
33.00
49.00
42.9
62.1*
59.4*
36.2*
White
77.44
76.48
68.00
90.00
89.7
89.3
89.0
86.4
Low Income
18.64
16.37
16.00
29.00**
29.4
38.4
38.7
35.7
Not Low Income      
90
85.8
86.9
89.2
84.2

* note. data for Hispanic students includes 4 Native American students in 03/04 and 2 in the following two years
** note. DPI actually reports higher percentages of students scoring proficient/advanced: 34% and 37% respectively for these two cells
The data from DPI looking at ACT test performance and percentage of students tested does not suggest any change has occurred in the last 10 years, so the data presented here would suggest that Memorial’s SLC restructuring hasn’t had any effect on the achievement gap, but what about the other goal, student connectedness?

Continue reading District SLC Grant – Examining the Data From Earlier Grants, pt. 1 →

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Governance Changes in the Milwaukee Public Schools

Alan Borsuk:

A surge of action and proposed action, a president who wants his hands on a lot of things and bad blood between board members – the heat is growing at Milwaukee School Board meetings, and it is creating an environment in which Superintendent William Andrekopoulos is facing the stiffest political challenges of his five years in office.
The election in April of Michael Bonds to replace Ken Johnson on the board, followed by the election of Peter Blewett as the board’s president, have put into power two people with strong feelings about doing things differently from the way Andrekopoulos wants.
And they are acting on those feelings.
A central role for the board president is to name members of the committees that do most of the board’s work. The president usually gives his allies the dominant positions but doesn’t put himself in many roles.
Blewett has done much more than that – he named himself chairman of two committees, one that handles the budget and strategic direction of Milwaukee Public Schools and one that handles questions of policy and rules, and he named himself as a member of two other major committees, handling finance and safety. He also named Bonds to head the Finance Committee, an unusual step, given that Bonds was brand new.
Blewett and Bonds, who have formed a generally close relationship, have also been submitting a relative flood of proposals for the board to take up. Since May 1, the two have submitted 34 resolutions between them, with nine others coming from the other seven members of the board.
Some seek major changes in MPS practices or to reopen issues previously decided by the board. Included would be reopening Juneau High School, reuniting Washington High School into one operation (it has been broken into three), restoring ninth-grade athletics and building up arts programs in schools.
The total of 43 resolutions is more than board members submitted in the entire year in six of the eight previous years. Seventeen resolutions were introduced at a board meeting last week, 14 of them written or co-written by Blewett or Bonds.
Although this might seem like a bureaucratic matter, it is a key element of efforts by Blewett and Bonds to shake up the central administration of MPS. They are challenging Andrekopoulos openly in ways not seen in prior years, when a firm majority of board members supported Andrekopoulos.
He and Bonds have been critical of Andrekopoulos and the previous board for not doing enough to listen to people in the city as a whole and for not providing enough information to the board.
Blewett said his main agenda item as president is “to engage the community.” Just holding public hearings or meetings around the community is not enough, he said, referring to a round of community meetings last fall on a new strategic plan for MPS as “spectacular wastes of time and money.” He said people who work in schools, parents and the community in general need meaningful involvement.
“I really want to make sure that we’re investigating every opportunity to engage the public and provide our students with quality learning experiences that get beyond reading and math,” he said.
Bonds said, “I have a very aggressive agenda to change the direction of the School District.”
He was strongly critical of policies such as the redesigning of high schools led by Andrekopoulos in recent years, including the creation of numerous small high schools.
“Given the resources we (MPS) have, we should be providing a better product,” he said. “I feel the administration has led us down a failed path.”

There are similar issues at play in Madison. The local school board’s composition has significantly changed over the past few years – much for the better. Time will tell, whether that governance change translates into a necessary new direction for our $339M+, 24, 342 student Madison School District. Alan Borsuk is a Madison West High Grad.

Budget/Financing

Recent Change in Per Pupil Public Elementary and Secondary School Current Expenditures Per State: 1986 to 2005 (Constant 2005 Dollars)

18K PDF. Wisconsin’s K-12 funding has increased, in “real dollars” 45.3% from 1986 to 2005 (25th). Interestingly, from a tax perspective, Wisconsin ranks 17th in public elementary and secondary school revenue per $1,000 personal income in 2004 [20K PDF]. Via Morgan Quitno Press: State Trends.
MQ also publishes an annual “Smartest State” award. Wisconsin ranked 8th in 2006/2007.

Budget/Financing, School Climate, Student Support, Teacher Support

Madison Parents Seek Court Order to Open Enroll into Monona Grove School District

15 Comments

Andy Hall:


Madison resident Allison Cizek, 5, is about to enter kindergarten, but a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that restricts the use of race in assigning children to schools may influence which school district she attends.
Allison ‘s parents, Jeff and Jennifer Cizek, filed a petition in Dane County Circuit Court on Thursday seeking an immediate court order that would allow her to attend Taylor Prairie School in the Monona Grove School District this fall.
“I wouldn ‘t be spending money on this if it wasn ‘t important to me, ” Jeff Cizek said Friday evening.
“The color of a person ‘s skin doesn ‘t matter. They should all be treated the same. ”
The family ‘s attempts to transfer Allison from Madison to Monona Grove have been rejected by Madison School District officials who ruled that because she is white, her departure would increase racial imbalance in her Madison school.
Allison ‘s family lives on Madison ‘s Southwest Side in the 2800 block of Muir Field Road. The home is in the Madison School District ‘s Huegel Elementary attendance area.
But her mother teaches in the Monona Grove School District, and last year Allison attended a pre-kindergarten program in that district east of Madison.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Madison School District Small Learning Community Grant Application

19 Comments

136 Page 2.6MB PDF:

Madison Metropolitan School District: A Tale of Two Cities-Interrupted
Smaller Learning Communities Program CFDA #84.215L [Clusty Search]
NEED FOR THE PROJECT
Wisconsin. Home of contented cows, cheese curds, and the highest incarceration rate for African American males in the country. The juxtaposition of one against the other, the bucolic against the inexplicable, causes those of us who live here and work with Wisconsin youth to want desperately to change this embarrassment. Madison, Wisconsin. Capital city. Ranked number one place in America to live by Money (1997) magazine. Home to Presidential scholars, twenty times the average number of National Merit finalists, perfect ACT and SAT scores. Home also to glaring rates of racial and socio-economic disproportionality in special education identification, suspension and expulsion rates, graduation rates, and enrollment in rigorous courses. This disparity holds true across all four of Madison’s large, comprehensive high schools and is increasing over time.
Madison’s Chief of Police has grimly characterized the educational experience for many low income students of color as a “pipeline to prison” in Wisconsin. He alludes to Madison’s dramatically changing demographics as a “tale of two cities.” The purpose of the proposed project is to re-title that unfolding story and change it to a “tale of two cities-interrupted” (TC-I). We are optimistic in altering the plot based upon our success educating a large portion of our students and our ability to solve problems through thoughtful innovation and purposeful action. Our intent is to provide the best possible educational experience for all of our students.

Much more on Small Learning Communities here [RSS SIS SLC Feed]. Bruce King’s evaluation of Madison West’s SLC Implementation. Thanks to Elizabeth Contrucci who forwarded this document (via Pam Nash). MMSD website.
This document is a fascinating look into the “soul” of the current MMSD Administration ($339M+ annual budget) along with their perceptions of our community. It’s important to note that the current “high school redesign” committee (Note Celeste Roberts’ comments in this link) is rather insular from a community participation perspective, not to mention those who actually “pay the bills” via property taxes and redistributed sales, income and user fees at the state and federal level.

Budget/Financing, School Climate, Teacher Support

Advocating Teacher Merit Pay

Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

Wisconsin should reward hard-working, innovative teachers such as William Farnsworth with merit pay.
Farnsworth, a science teacher at Waunakee Intermediate School, received the 2006 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. He was the only Wisconsin teacher among the 93 teachers honored.
Performance-based pay serves as an incentive for better work, makes salaries competitive and reflects the complexity of many teaching jobs. It’s time has come in Wisconsin.

Budget/Financing, School Climate, Special Education

Schools Beat Back Demands for Special Ed Services

1 Comment

Daniel Golden:

Paul McGlone, an iron worker, and his wife, Tricia, became worried in 2006 that their autistic son knew fewer letters in kindergarten than he had in preschool.
When the East Islip school district refused their request for at-home tutoring by an autism specialist, they exercised their right under federal special-education law to an administrative hearing. There, a hearing officer ordered East Islip to pay for seven hours a week of home therapy. The McGlones hired a tutor, and their son “started to click again,” his mother says.
Then the district appealed the decision to Paul F. Kelly, the New York state review officer for special-education cases. He denied any reimbursement for home services. “The child’s progress was consistent with his abilities,” Mr. Kelly found in February. The family canceled the tutoring.
The McGlone case is part of a pattern that has many parents and advocates for the disabled in an uproar. They say administrative reviews in many parts of the U.S. overwhelmingly back school districts in disputes over paying for special-education services. State education departments, which have an interest in keeping down special-education costs, typically train or hire the hearing officers. Also, recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions and changes to federal law have made it harder for parents to win cases.

Budget/Financing

Germantown Wants to Leave Milwaukee’s MATC Tax District

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Tom Kertscher & Erica Perez:

A proposal to remove Germantown from the Milwaukee Area Technical College District is a step into largely uncharted territory, but it is attracting interest from other communities that want to cut property taxes.
Meanwhile, MATC is waiting to see whether it could lose millions of dollars to the Moraine Park Technical College District, should Germantown succeed in moving to the lower taxing district.
Gaining approval from the state technical college board for such a move probably would be difficult, given that it would take money away from the Milwaukee district, said Germantown Village Trustee Al Vanderheiden.

Budget/Financing, Elections, School Climate

“A primer on “Madison Math” – when is a ‘cut’ really a cut?”

Rep. Karl Van Roy:

Calling an increase in spending or funding a ‘cut,’ just because it isn’t as much as someone proposed, is a textbook example of “Madison Math.” In the coming weeks, you’ll be hearing a lot about the Assembly version of the budget and a good portion of the criticism will be false claims that our version cuts our most important programs. For example, you’ll hear that the Assembly budget cuts funding for the UW system and K-12 education. Both of these claims are patently false. In fact, the Assembly version of the budget increases spending on K-12 education by $464,404,400 ($16 million more than Governor Doyle proposed). And the UW system receives a $62.3 million increase above their funding level in the last budget, but yet you will hear cries of ‘cuts’ to the UW system simply because they were offered more in the Governor’s and Senate’s versions of the budget.

K-12 spending increases annually. The debate is always over the amount (and sometimes the source such as the redistribution of income, sales or property taxes) of the increase. The current state of Wisconsin Budget is $54,268,817,100. Senate Democrats proposed a new budget of $66,106,668,800 while Assembly Republicans proposed spending $56,336,765,800 in the next budget cycle. TJ Mertz has more on the proposed state budget here and here.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Student Support, What Can I Do?

Best And Worst School Districts For The Buck

Via a reader email: Christina Settimi:

More spending doesn’t necessarily buy you better schools. With property taxes rising across the country, we took a look at per-pupil spending in public schools and weighed it against student performance–college entrance exam scores (SAT or ACT, depending on which is more common in the state), exam participation rates and graduation rates.
Winners in this rating system are counties whose schools deliver high performance at low cost. The losers spend a lot of money and have little to show for it.
Marin County, Calif., provides the best bang for the buck. In 2004 Marin spent an average of $9,356 ($6,579 adjusted for the cost of living relative to other metro areas in the U.S.) per pupil, among the lowest education expenditures in the country. But in return Marin delivered results above the national average: 96.8% of its seniors graduated, and 60.4% of them took the SAT college entrance exam and scored a mean 1133 (out of 1600). The others in the top five are Collin, Texas; Hamilton, Ind.; Norfolk, Mass.; and Montgomery, Md.
In Pictures: Best And Worst School Districts For The Buck
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Alexandria City, Va., which sits just six miles outside of our nation’s capital, spent $13,730 ($11,404 adjusted) per pupil, but its high schools registered only a 73% graduation rate, with 65.0% of the seniors participating in the SAT for a mean score of 963. According to John Porter, assistant superintendent, Administrative Services and Public Relations for the Alexandria City Public Schools, their graduation rate is reflective of a large number of foreign-born students who may take longer than the traditional four years to graduate. He also noted that their performance measures are rising, along with their expenditures. Per-pupil spending in Alexandria City is now over $18,000. Others on the bottom of the list include Glynn, Ga.; Washington, D.C.; Ulster, N.Y.; and Beaufort, S.C.
Using research provided by the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group based in Washington, D.C., Forbes began with a list of the 775 counties in the country with populations greater than 65,000 that had the highest average property taxes. From this list we isolated the 97 counties where more than 50% of per-pupil spending contributions comes from property taxes. ( Click Here For Full Rankings)
Since it costs more to educate a student in New York than Alabama, we adjusted expenditures for each metropolitan area based on Economy.com’s national cost of living average. We then chose to compare spending to the only performance measures that can be used to compare students equally across the country. With a nod toward recognizing the importance of education, performance was weighted twice against cost. Performance and cost numbers are county averages; individual school districts within a county can vary greatly.

Dane County ranked 63rd (Other Wisconsin Districts in the Top 97 include: Ozaukee – 16, -43 and Walworth – 91).
Daniel de Vise:

Education scholars and school system officials greeted the study as a flawed answer to a fascinating question: Which school districts deliver the best results for the tax dollars citizens invest?
“The value of this kind of analysis is to remind us that simply pouring more [money] into existing school systems is no formula for producing higher achievement out the other end,” Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, said in an e-mail.
But Finn derided this analysis as “just plain dumb” for failing to consider other factors, such as wealth and parent education, that affect test scores and graduation prospects.
The Forbes study takes the unusual approach of rating school systems from a stockbroker’s perspective — or, more specifically, the perspective of a stockbroker raising a family in the D.C. suburbs. Rather than simply rank them by SAT participation or outcome or graduation rate, it considers all three measures and a fourth, dollars spent.
The endeavor is skewed toward affluent and suburban schools, educators said, because of the focus on local property taxes; wealthier jurisdictions tend to pay a greater share of education costs from their own tax coffers. The top three systems in the resulting ranking are all suburban: Marin County, just north of San Francisco; Collin County, near Dallas; and Hamilton County, outside Indianapolis.

Budget/Financing

High School of the Arts gets creative to erase debt

Sarah Carr:

Prospects are looking brighter for the coming school year at cash-strapped Milwaukee High School of the Arts. But long term, the school’s fate will provide a case study for some of the major challenges facing public education today:

  • Can a financially struggling public school find major private donors?
  • Can a school with a distinct – and sometimes, more costly – specialty, such as the arts, preserve that focus at a time of slimmed-down budgets?
  • And if help comes, will it be from the arts community, business leaders, alumni and parents, or from established funding channels? Where does a public school in need of extra money turn first?

Under a new plan, the high school will likely borrow money from a pool of funds from other city schools with budget surpluses. The move will probably allow the school to restore a few teaching positions in the fall. The plan has brought a fresh sense of optimism to the school community. But the High School of the Arts’ situation also underscores the obstacles in store as public schools, in unprecedented numbers, try to dive into the world of private fund raising.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, School Climate

The “Small School Hype”

Diane Ravitch:

I like small schools, but I also like middle-size schools. About ten years ago, Valerie Lee of the University of Michigan did a study in which she asked what was the ideal size for a high school, and she concluded that the ideal school was small enough for kids to be known by the teachers, but large enough to mount a reasonable curriculum. The best size for a high school, she decided, based on a review of student progress in schools of different sizes, is 600-900 students. You may think this is too large, but it sure beats schools of 2,000-3,000. I think we can all agree that the mega-schools that were created in the past forty years or so are hard, difficult environments for adolescents, where they can easily get lost in the crowd. Anonymity is not good for kids or for adults, either.
Anyway, American education seems to be engaged in yet another statistical sham, this time involving small high schools. Everyone wants Gates money, so almost every big-city school district is breaking up big schools into small schools. To make sure that they look good and get good press (the same thing), the leadership of some districts stack the deck by screening out the lowest performing kids—the special education students, the limited-English speakers, and kids with low test scores.

Much more on Madison’s Dance with “Small Learning Communities” here, including outgoing Superintendent Art Rainwater’s presentation on the proposed “High School Redesign”.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, School Climate

Six Myths About the Financial Impact of Charter Schools

1 Comment

Matthew Arkin and Bryan Hassel [2.33MB PDF]:

School districts across the country are having financial problems, and charter schools are increasingly getting blamed. Charters are accused of taking money from “the public schools,” although they are public schools themselves. Charters are even taking the blame for rising taxes. These assertions certainly paint a clear picture of some district administrators’ feelings about charter schools – but they don’t tell the full story.
In fact, high-quality public charter schools have positive financial impacts for communities that more than offset the obvious and immediate revenue losses to districts. Accurately measuring the financial impact of charters requires looking at not only the revenue shifts for the school district but also these benefits to the broader community.

Budget/Financing, School Climate

Schools Diversity Based on Income Segregates Some

Jonathan Glater & Alan Finder:

When San Francisco started trying to promote socioeconomic diversity in its public schools, officials hoped racial diversity would result as well.
It has not worked out that way.
Abraham Lincoln High School, for example, with its stellar reputation and Advanced Placement courses, has drawn a mix of rich and poor students. More than 50 percent of those students are of Chinese descent.
“If you look at diversity based on race, the school hasn’t been as integrated,” Lincoln’s principal, Ronald J. K. Pang, said. “If you don’t look at race, the school has become much more diverse.”
San Francisco began considering factors like family income, instead of race, in school assignments when it modified a court-ordered desegregation plan in response to a lawsuit. But school officials have found that the 55,000-student city school district, with Chinese the dominant ethnic group followed by Hispanics, blacks and whites, is resegregrating.
The number of schools where students of a single racial or ethnic group make up 60 percent or more of the population in at least one grade is increasing sharply. In 2005-06, about 50 schools were segregated using that standard as measured by a court-appointed monitor. That was up from 30 schools in the 2001-02 school year, the year before the change, according to court filings.

Budget/Financing

Fundraising: Hope for Education

Samsung:

The winner of the Samsung and Microsoft Hope for Education Essay Contest will receive up to $200,000 in Samsung electronics and Microsoft educational software for his/her school. Entrants must provide an original, sincere, no more than 100-word essay answering the following question: “What is the single most significant benefit that technology can provide in the classroom?” Entrants must be legal residents of the 50 U.S. states or the District of Columbia, and minors must obtain parent/guardian’s consent. Entry deadline: July 22, 2007.

Via a reader.