There is a techie adage that goes like this: In China or Japan the nail that stands up gets hammered, while in Silicon Valley the nail that stands up drives a Ferrari and has stock options. Underlying that adage is a certain American confidence that whatever we lack in preparing our kids with strong fundamentals in math and science, we make up for by encouraging our best students to be independent, creative thinkers.

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The November 7 meeting of the West High PTSO will feature a presentation by members of the West English department on the administration’s plan to create a uniform 10th grade English curriculum beginning in the fall of 2006-07. This change will mean that — beginning with the current 9th grade class — West 10th graders will no longer be allowed to choose from the wide array of electives offered by the English faculty, a list of courses that vary by both content and degree of difficulty. Instead, under the proposed plan, all 10th graders will take the same English curriculum,
delivered in heterogeneously composed classes, much as West 9th graders do currently. 11th and 12th graders will continue to choose from the list of electives. If you are a current or future West parent and would like to know more about this plan or have concerns about its implementation, you are encouraged to attend the 11/7 meeting. West PTSO meetings are held in the West LMC and begin at 7:00 p.m.
Note: Parents of all age children within the West HS attendance area are welcome at this meeting. Background links.

See “Will Testing Be Right Answer for Schools?” in today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel . The interesting story is about NCLB and testing time throughout Wisconsin. Coming Monday in the Journal Sentinel is a follow-up story about testing special ed students.
You may be interested, also, in reading “Cheating Our Kids — How Politics and Greed Ruin Education,” by Joe Williams, who writes about education for “The New York Daily News.” Joe is a former education writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel . According to a reviewer, Joe Williams shows how parents can use consumer power to put children first, shining light on the special interests controlling our schools, where politics and pork infuse everything and our children’s education is compromised, . He argues that increased accountability and choice are necessary, and shows how the people can take back the education system, enhancing responsibility inherent in democracy. The solution is a new brand of hardball politics that demands competence from school leaders and shifts the power away from bureaucrats and union leaders to the people who have a the greatest reason to put kids first: concerned parents. With practical steps and uplifting examples of success, this is a manifesto to action.

CBS News:

Finally it meant I wasn’t the crazy mom who was pushing her kid to do things. I was a mom of a kid who had extraordinary abilities,” Alicja says.
Jacob Komar was the epitome of what the Davidsons were looking for and the Davidson Institute was just what the Komars needed. First, the Davidsons helped pay Jacob’s tuition to a private middle school for gifted math and science students.

More on Jan Davidson, here. Her low cost ideas for improving schools

Barack Obama:

But we don’t make much progress for our kids when we constrain ourselves like this. It appeared for a brief moment that the President, working with leaders like Senator Kennedy understood this, and many of us were initially encouraged by the passage of No Child Left Behind. It may not be popular to say in Democratic circles, but there were good elements to this bill – its emphasis on the achievement gap, raising standards, and accountability. Unfortunately, because of failures in implementation, particularly its failure to provide adequate funding and a failure to design better assessment tests that provide a clearer path for schools to raise achievement, the bill’s promise is not yet fulfilled.
The shortcomings of NCLB shouldn’t end the conversation, however. They should be the start of a conversation about how we can do better. Yes, it’s a moral outrage that this Administration hasn’t come through with the funding for what it claims has been its number one domestic priority. But to wage war against the entire law for that reason is not an education policy, and Democrats need to realize that.

[PDF Verision]

Channel3000:

Statistics show half the students at South Beaver Dam Elementary fall into the disadvantaged category.
Yet the school scored 100 percent on reading, knowledge and concept exams and more than 96 percent in attendance.
The school received a National Blue Ribbon Award from the U.S. Department of Education.
“There is no child left behind,” said parent Amy Grunst. “No child who can’t go. Everybody goes.”
“Our expectations are high,” said Principal Dan Rikli. “We are sensitive where they came from, but we expect just as much from every kid who walks into this school.”

Jon E. Hilsenrath:

The unusual spat has put a prominent economist in the awkward position of having to defend one of her most influential studies. Along the way, it has spotlighted the challenges economists face as they study possible solutions to one of the nation’s most pressing problems: the poor performance of some public schools. Despite a vast array of statistical tools, economists have had a very hard time coming up with clear answers.
“They’re fighting over streams,” marvels John Witte, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of political science and veteran of a brawl over school vouchers in Milwaukee in the 1990s. “It’s almost to the point where you can’t really determine what’s going on.”
Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist known for his free-market views, proposed 50 years ago that to improve schools, parents could be given vouchers — tickets they could spend to shop for a better education for their kids. He theorized that the resulting competition among schools would spark improvements in the system. Free-market advocates loved the idea. Teachers’ unions hated it, arguing that it could drain resources from some public schools and direct resources to religious institutions.

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Interesting stuff: Stanford posts lectures, interviews, music and sports via itunes. One of the interesting lectures appears to be Denise Clark Pope’s “Getting Ahead in School: How we are creating a Generation of Stress-Out, Materialistic and Miseducated Students”. Perhaps the UW will follow suit (and the MMSD?)
UPDATE: Jeff Henriques points out in the comments that the UW has a resource page up here.

2005 National and State Mathematics and Reading Assessments for grades 4 and 8 are now available.
Robert Tomsho takes a look at the reading results:

Observers say boosting reading scores isn’t likely to get any easier, given the rapidly changing demographics in the nation’s schools where, for many students, English is a second language. Indeed, English was a second language for 10% of the fourth graders who took the NAEP reading test this year, up from 3% in 1992.
The lack of progress may also reflect divisions in the philosophy of how reading should be taught. Educators and political partisans have waged a long and sometimes bitter battle over how to handle the subject, as conservatives championing basic phonics-based teaching have clashed with liberal backers of “whole language,” which revolves around making English instruction exciting by reading stories.

I said it in the comments section attached to Marcia’s original post. Now is the time for pre-high school families to get involved at West. Don’t wait.
This will be like turning around the Titanic, however–there is a great deal of momentum to disassemble much of what was strong about West for high achievers. And what the district seems to be ignoring is that many of these families make up the backbone of support for the school, from PTO, to athletic and drama boosters, etc, both in terms of hands-on involvement and financial contributions.
The safety valve of attending UW classes is also being shut off, too. If a course is offered ANYWHERE in the district, MMSD won’t pay for a West student to take it at UW. In addition, there is a “residency” requirement, i.e., to be considered a full-time student, a certain number of credit hours have to be taken at West or be approved to be taken elsewhere. So even if your family can afford to pay for UW courses and can get approval from UW for your student to take more than one class per semester, your student might still run afoul of the residency requirement.
Of course, home schooling is an option. Some families have quilted together classes at West, UW and home or on-line. One of the “West” national merit scholars this year has done just that.

Here is a listing of the AP courses taught at each Madison high school:
East (8 AP courses) — Calculus I, Calculus II, French, Macro Economics, Micro Economics, Music Theory, Psychology, Spanish
LaFollette (13 AP courses) — Calculus I, Calculus II, Chemistry, Computer Science, European History, French, Literature and Composition, Macro Economics, Micro Economics, Psychology, Spanish, Statistics, U.S. History
Memorial (16 AP courses) — Biology, Calculus I, Calculus II, Chemistry, Computer Science, Environmental Science, European History, French, Language and Composition, Literature and Composition, Macro Economics, Micro Economics, Physics, Psychology, Spanish, World History
West (8 AP courses) — Calculus I, Calculus II, Computer Science, French, Latin, Music Theory, Spanish, Statistics

The Department of Public Instruction web site includes data on AP courses offered going back to 1996-1997 through 2003-2004. (I apologize in advance for the long URL) The data is presented on statewide and individual district and school levels, which makes comparison possible:
http://data.dpi.state.wi.us/data/graphshell.asp?fullkey=02326903ZZZZ&DN=Madison+Metropolitan&SN=None+Chosen&TYPECODE=6&CTY=13&ORGLEVEL=DI&GRAPHFILE=GCOURSEOFFER
The page also has a utility that allows comparisons between districts and schools using pre-defined sets (ex. Big Eight) or user choice.
The user will need to use the links to view data for individual subject areas (math, foreign languages, English, etc.). The menu pick for statewide data is in the left hand column of the page. If I read it correctly, the number of AP course offerings is going up across the state, down in the Madison Metropolitan School District. At least in English AP offerings.
I note that haven’t had time to do a thorough analysis and have some questions about the data, and encourage others to do the same. I believe that there is some useful information through this source.

Edward Moyer:

As blogging enters the classrooom and takes its place alongside reading, writing and ‘rithmetic, adult Web surfers have the chance to relive the trials and tribulations of the wonder years.

Madison third graders rank BELOW the state-wide average for children in the advanced and proficient categories.
Nearly one-third of the African-American third graders read at basic or below. (And basic is below grade level.)
African-American third grades still trail white students by a substantial margin.
Schools at the bottom in 1978-79 are still at the bottom in 2004-2005.
Click here to view an Excel file with eight years of reading scores.

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National Center for Education Statistics:

More than two-thirds of students who were high school seniors in 2004 expected to complete a bachelor’s degree, and 35 percent planned to get a graduate or professional degree. But nearly two-thirds of the students who expected to get a four-year degree had not mastered intermediate level mathematics concepts as 12th graders, and nearly a third could not consistently solve simple problems based on low-level mathematical concepts, according to a study released Friday by the U.S. Education Department.

Via Inside Higher Ed.

Maya Portulaca Cole posted the following thoughts on the listserve of MAFAAC:

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Jay Matthews:

For two decades, policymakers have decreed that seventh grade should be a time when children have a chance to adjust to puberty and cliques and the other annoyances of turning 13. Lessons should be engaging and enriching, middle school advocates have said, but not put too much emphasis on mastering subject matter and passing difficult tests.
That attitude is changing, at Kenmore Middle School and in much of the rest of the country. Middle schools have “overemphasized emotional development at the expense of academic growth,” said Mike Riley, superintendent of Bellevue, Wash., schools

A recent New York Times article, “One Secret to Better Test Scores: Make State Reading Tests Easier” by Michael Winerip (10/05/05) reported that changes in k-12 achievement tests are the reason for substantially improved scores. The reporter argues that easier tests–not improved reading–account for much of the improvements claimed.
The Education Trust, a national non-profit organization, has published a study that compares student scores on state-created achievement tests with scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress for each state. The most recent edition of the report covers 2003. The data support the conclusion that Wisconsin’s tests may be overstating our students’ achievement. For example, in Wisconsin 80% of students statewide scored at grade level or better (“Proficient or Advanced”) on the Grade 4 Overall Reading and English Language Arts tests. However, only 33% of the Wisconsin sample taking the NAEP test scored at this level.
http://www2.edtrust.org/edtrust/summaries2004/Wisconsin.pdf

ABC News:

Carol’s school in China is sharply focused on math and sciences. In one day she takes math, two physics classes and three chemistry classes. In Emily’s school in Maryland, interest in these subjects is dwindling.

Daniel de Vise:

It is perhaps the final chance for Smith to impose his vision, and his will, on a school system he set out to transform three years ago. He has built much of his reputation in Anne Arundel by importing or expanding rigorous programs such as IB, on the theory that an infusion of challenging coursework would benefit all.
Smith acknowledges that completing the trio of IB schools is “a very important piece” of his plan, and his legacy, in the county.

Madison Metropolitan School District:

The third most students in Madison history — 60 — have qualified as semifinalists in competition for the 2006 National Merit Scholarship Awards. Three Madison students earned National Merit Achievement semifinalist status. This is the sixth straight year that at least 56 Madison students have achieved semifinalist status, a number not reached by any of the previous classes. That’s quite remarkable because the National Merit Corporation says that about 1.3% of test-taking students become semifinalists. Based on that percentage, the Madison district should have about 10 semifinalists. Only last year and the year before did Madison have more semifinalists, 69 and 67 respectively.

Young, Gifted and Black, by Perry, Steele and Hilliard is a little gem of a book. (Hereafter, YGB). The subtitle is “Promoting High Achievement Among African-American Students”. Though specifically addressing African-American kids, the descriptions and proscriptions proposed can be applied to all – important, given the continual poor showing of U.S. students generally on international tests (OECD PISA, TIMSS).
It is the section written by Asa Hilliard, Professor of Urban Education at Georgia State University, that addresses the real “gap” and real “reform”. The following attempts to summarize his positions and arguments:
The real gap for all students, not just Black, is the gap between student performance and excellence. Where does one start to close the gap? – by relying on the experiences of teachers who do not fail to achieve excellence in all their students, regardless of background – these experiences have always been around, but few educators want to acknowledge. It is in this protected environment of excellence in education that the theories of curriculum, and excuses of deprivation, of language, of failure can be unmasked.

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Jordan Horowitz’s Inside High School Reform, Making the Changes that Matter details the turnaround approaches that are preparing more students for college – disadvantaged students who wouldn’t get there otherwise.

TOP TEN TIPS FOR IMPROVING HIGH SCHOOLS

1. Treat teachers as the trained education professionals they are.
2. Hold students to high expectations.
3. Continually use school, teacher, and student data to decide what changes to make next.
4. Start with what you want students to know and achieve, then work backwards to create tests and lesson plans.
5. Coordinate lesson plans and tests within departments and across grades and schools.
6. Don’t take the “easy way out” when deciding how to help underachieving kids.
7. Create an optimistic, college-going culture and help students understand how high school work affects their future college and career choices.
8. Develop flexible school systems to maintain reforms that work.
9. Find partners such as local colleges, businesses, other schools, and parent groups to provide help.
10. Stay alert for new partners, activities, and funding streams while maintaining a focus on reform.

WISC-TV reports:

Read the full story online.

Last night was parent night at the MMSD middle schools. My daughter is in 8th grade at Hamilton Middle School, so I spent the evening going to her different classes to learn about what the syllabus was for each of her five academic classes – algebra I accelerated, english, history, Spanish and science. She also takes music theater, physical education and family and consumer education.
All was going well – lots of emphasis on content and organization. Then I got to her Algebra I class, which is also her homeroom. Her teacher said he had good news and bad news. Bad news in the third week of classes? Yes. He gave all his 8th grade algebra classes a pre-test that was an assessment of basic math calculations – percentages, fractions, decimals, etc. The average score – 40%!
How could this be one parent queried the teacher. Her child had gotten As last year in math class. His answer: children are lacking facility with the basic math skills necessary to be successful in algebra. Students did not know these basic skills and could not calculate answers without using a calculator.
If you don’t know basic math facts and know them well by the time you begin algebra I, a student will stuggle to be a successful learner in algebra and more advanced math classes. You have to have the basics down. The teacher recommended the book “Algebra To Go” as a review text.

Hamilton Middle School offers five academic classes per day in 7th and 8th grades. Hamilton offers its students choices in math, foreign language and music. What do other MMSD and Dane County middle schools offer children? I’d be interested in seeing posts with this information.
Hamilton MS Foreign Language:
In 7th and 8th grade, children choose either French or Spanish. Classes meet every day all year for two years.
Hamilton Middle School Math
Connected math is taught at this school. However, there are accelerated math class choices for students. Algebra 1 accelerated is offered to 8th grade students (based upon teacher recommendation, student interest). There are a number of classes of 8th grade Algebra 1 accelerated. Children completing this course in 8th grade successfully are ready for Geometry or Algebra II in 9th grade at West High School.
There is also one 7th grade class of Algebra I accelerated and one 8th grade class of geometry.
Hamilton Music
All children in grades 6, 7, 8 are required to take a music class – options offered are general music, chorus, band and orchestra. Also, in 8th grade music theater is offered. The schedule for all three years is an A/B schedule with physical education. Children have music three times one week and two times in the next week for an average of 125 minutes per week. The MMSD School Board approved music education curriculum calls for 200 minutes of music education per week (50 minutes per day).

On Monday, August 29, Kate McWhirter, Kari Douglas, Helen Fitzgerald and I met at Sherman Middle School with Ann Yehle, Principal at Sherman, Barb Brodhagen, Learning Coordinator at Sherman, Maria Brown, Spanish Teacher at Sherman, and Pam Nash, Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Schools.
Foreign Language Issues

At this meeting, where we were pressed for time, Maria spoke about the foreign language classes for 6th, 7th and 8th grade. In past years, 6th grade students received 4 1/2 weeks of French and 4 1/2 weeks of Spanish. This year they will be receiving 9 weeks of each class (A/B schedule). In seventh grade the students only receive one semester of class. This is due to the block theory that they are trying to implement at Sherman. The Foreign Language teachers prefer this type of schedule because they have more consistancy with the students for a greater amount of time. Meeting every day the pronunciation of words would improve vs. every other day with more students. Working with a student everyday helps the teacher becomes more familiar with the student. Unfortunately, for those students who have it first semester, they will receive no foreign language again until 8th grade. That year, those students will take foreign language all year, every other day. All Sherman students are required to take a foreign language.

Algebra

We spent most of the time discussing foreign language so we didn’t get a chance to go into an in-depth discussion of other areas that we’re concerned with. One of course, is Algebra. More information will be available tomorrow, and I’ll update you as to what was decided. But just to keep you up to date on the situation, only 5 students “qualified” to participate in Algebra. After a letter was sent out from Superintendent Art Rainwater’s office, 48 students are now opting for the Algebra class, with one teacher. This will change asap. However, students now can choose to participate in algebra, which conflicts with Sherman Principal Ann Yehle’s plan for heterogenous classes.

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Tuesday, September 20, 2005 – Washington Post
Two new books on how to teach students of divergent abilities seem at first to have been written on different planets.
But Deborah L. Ruf’s “Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left Behind” and a new edition of Jeannie Oakes’s “Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality” eventually reveal a similar frustration. Both want children to be given more individual attention and more of an academic challenge than they are getting in most schools.

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WisPolitics [PDF]:

The two-day event at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Union will include sessions Wednesday on the future of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) at 10:30 a.m., high school redesign at 11:20a.m., and the “New 3 R’s for the UW-Madison School of Education” at 1:15 p.m. Sectionals that begin at 2:30 p.m. will include changes in special education law, open enrollment, rural schools and communities, NCLB in Wisconsin, and virtual education. Dennis Winters, vice president and director of research for NorthStar Economics Inc. of Madison, will present research on the economic impact of 4-year-old kindergarten (4K) at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. (Media have been invited to this briefing.)

Tyler Cowen takes a quick look at William St. Clair’s new book: The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. This book, so interesting on many levels looks at:

During the four centuries when printed paper was the only means by which texts could be carried across time and distance, everyone engaged in politics, education, religion, and literature believed that reading helped to shape the minds, opinions, attitudes, and ultimately the actions, of readers. William St Clair investigates how the national culture can be understood through a quantitative study of the books that were actually read. Centred on the romantic period in the English-speaking world, but ranging across the whole print era, it reaches startling conclusions about the forces that determined how ideas were carried, through print, into wider society. St Clair provides an in-depth investigation of information, made available here for the first time, on prices, print runs, intellectual property, and readerships gathered from over fifty publishing and printing archives. He offers a picture of the past very different from those presented by traditional approaches. Indispensable to students, English literature, book history, and the history of ideas, the study’s conclusions and explanatory models are highly relevant to the issues we face in the age of the internet.

• The first study of actual reading using quantification and economic analysis
• Sheds new light on aspects of reading and its effect on the nation
• An indispensable resource for scholars working on literature, reading, and the history of publishing and printing

The Governance Divide: A Report on a Four-State Study on Improving College Readiness and Success authored by The Institute for Educational Leadership, The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, The Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research. Foreword, Executive Summary, Full Report (345K PDF):

The report also offers recommendations to help states transform ad hoc approaches into sustained action and institutionalized, long-term K-16 reforms. Every state needs to increase the percentage of students who complete high school and finish some form of postsecondary education; existing governance structures and policies cannot meet this overwhelming need. For most states, these structures and policies must be revised in significant ways.
Currently, K-12 and postsecondary education exist in separate worlds in the United States. Policies for each system of education are typically created in isolation from each other-even though, in contrast to the past, most students eventually move from one system to the other. Students in K-12 rarely know what to expect when they enter college, nor do they have a clear sense of how to prepare for that next step. Particularly now, in the 21st century, when more students must complete some postsecondary education to have an economically secure life, the need for improved transitions from high school to college is urgent. This need for some postsecondary education extends beyond individual aspirations. In this global economy, businesses and communities-and our nation as a whole-must have residents who have achieved educational success beyond high school.

Phoebe Randall has more, including comments from the Wisconsin DPI:

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction acknowledges there is a problem and said the department is working to improve the situation with new programs.
“In Wisconsin, there is a tremendous amount of coordination to ensure that students are prepared for college,” DPI Communications Officer Joe Donovan said.
This coordination comes in the form of a program called PK16, which stands for pre-kindergarten through grade 16. One of the program’s goals is to focus on keeping students motivated and challenged during the transition from their senior year of high school to college.

The OECD released their “Education at a Glance – 2005 Report” Daniel Drezner summarizes his take on the US Performance:

1) In science and math, the U.S. is ahead of only the really poor OECD countries — Turkey, Mexico, etc. So yes, there is reason to worry.
2) The poor performance is not because of a downward trend — in fact, if you look at chart A7.1 (“Differences in mean performance of eighth-grade students from 1995 to 2003”), you discover an interesting fact: the United States showed the greatest improvement in science and math scores of the sample — including Korea.
3) The poor performance isn’t because of a dearth of funds — table B1.1 shows that, Switzerland excepted, the United States spends the most amount of money per student in the OECD. You get a similar result if the metric is education spending as a percentage of GDP. Indeed, the OECD comments:

Lower expenditure cannot automatically be equated with a lower quality of educational services. Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands and New-Zealand, which have moderate expenditure on education per student at the primary and lower secondary levels, are among the OECD countries with the highest levels of performance by 15-year-old students in mathematics.

Reuters:

“McDonald’s Passport to Play” will launch in 31,000 schools this fall, reaching an expected 7 million children in grades three through five, the company said.
The move is part of McDonald’s (Research) so-called “Balanced Lifestyles” initiative, an aggressive effort to promote physical activity and nutrition and deflect harmful claims that its food is unhealthy and fattening.

WisPolitics:

Washington, D.C. – In a letter to Department of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, U.S. Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), are calling on the administration to help schools across the nation that are taking in the thousands of students displaced by the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina by increasing funding to those schools while relaxing the accountability standards mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act.

More money for less? More from Eduwonk.

The posting below, by Lloyd Bond, senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT) looks at the importance of the evolution, as opposed to revolution, of ideas in teaching and learning.
Bond points out that research shows that cognitive development occurs in stages. Certain fundamentals or skills must be mastered before higher level abilities can develop. In the continuing debate on how best to teach subjects like reading and math, extremists on both sides of the debate overlook the role that the other approach needs to play in helping students develop the appropriate skill set.
It is #18 in the monthly series called Carnegie Foundation Perspectives produced by the CFAT (more…)

SARITHA RAI: As part of a new wave of outsourcing to India, some tutors teach Americans using the Internet.

Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew speaks with Der Spiegel on Asia’s rise to economic power, China’s ambitions and the West’s chances of staying competitive:

Mr. Lee: Right. In 50 years I see China, Korea and Japan at the high-tech end of the value chain. Look at the numbers and quality of the engineers and scientists they produce and you know that this is where the R&D will be done. The Chinese have a space programme, they’re going to put a man on the Moon and nobody sold them that technology. We have to face that. But you should not be afraid of that. You are leading in many fields which they cannot catch up with for many years, many decades. In pharmaceuticals, I don’t see them catching up with the Germans for a long time.

CNN:

CNN: What will surprise us about the future evolution of the Internet?
BERNERS-LEE: The creativity of our children. In many ways, people growing up with the Web and now the Semantic Web take the power at their fingertips for granted. The people who designed the tools that make the Net run had their own ideas for the future. I look forward to seeing what the next generation does with these tools that we could not have foreseen. …

An article by Claudia Wallis in the August 8, 2005 issue of Time asks the question.

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I exchanged e-mails with Superintendent Rainwater about two new classrooms at Marquette. I’ll simply post the e-mails at this time and late add commentary, not on the program per se, but the budget process (or lack thereof) that created and funded it.

Art,
The rumor mill says that the administration moved the existing NEON program to Marquette or created a new one to be located at Marquette Elementary School.
The exiting NEON (New Educational Options and Networking) program serves “middle school-age students with an emotional/behavioral disability (EBD) who have not been successful in a full-day program at their home school despite numerous and varied interventions.”
Could you please provide details of any program changes or moves?
Ed Blume

The Superintendent responded:

Ed
Thanks for the email. I am always glad to clarify rumors. The NEON Program has not changed or moved. It still exist at Hoyt with the same staffing, etc. that we have had in the past. We did, however, establish two elementary ED alternative classes that will begin at Marquette this year. They are similar in design to NEON but serve primary and intermediate age EBD students who need a more structured, alternative service delivery model. Many of these kids are active with PBST [Postive Behavior Support Team] as well. Both classrooms are staffed with a teacher and two SEAs [special education assistant]. This is a “district” program serving students from any elementary school who meet the criteria and need this type of alternative, structured setting. We also have a full-time school psychologist allocated to this program. Jim Hassely, Coordinator Behavior Support, has been working closely with Joy Larson to set this program up in the Marquette/O Keeffe space. It will have minimal impact on Marquette, though, as the students will be served outside the general education classroom for the much of their school day.
Art

I then posed a number of questions to the Superintendent and Jack Jorgensen, head of special ed, kindly responded in a detailed memo.

The Madison School District announced that the 24% of eligible Madison students taking the SAT scored the highest ever and remain significantly above state and national averages:

Madison students’ composite score is 1266, up 37 points from four years ago (1229) and up 16 points from last year’s results (1250). The 1266 Madison composite is well over the state average composite of 1191, and significantly over the national average of 1028. (See tables below for details.)
The 16 point improvement is attributable to higher scores on both the verbal and math portions of the exam. The average verbal score for Madison students is 624, up from 615 the previous year. The average math score is 642, up from 635 in 2003-04.

The College Board posted national results and aggregate scores here.

Bob Herbert:

First the bad news: Only about two-thirds of American teenagers (and just half of all black, Latino and Native American teens) graduate with a regular diploma four years after they enter high school.
Now the worse news: Of those who graduate, only about half read well enough to succeed in college.
Don’t even bother to ask how many are proficient enough in math and science to handle college-level work. It’s not pretty.
Of all the factors combining to shape the future of the U.S., this is one of the most important. Millions of American kids are not even making it through high school in an era in which a four-year college degree is becoming a prerequisite for achieving (or maintaining) a middle-class lifestyle.

The complete report can be found here (PDF). Campaign for America’s Future Website.

Norimitsu Onishi writes from Seoul:

JUST as she did during the school year, Jeong Hye Jin, 15, spent the long, sweltering summer commuting to her high school by day and to private classes in the evening.

Summer school was mandatory, not for students who had fallen behind, but for those who, as she put it, “have a chance of getting into good universities.” Not attending was never an option for Hye Jin, who is ranked 17th out of 430 students in the 10th grade at Young Hoon High School, in a working-class neighborhood here in the capital.

In an August 4, 2005, an MS-NBC Report indicates tutoring firms (for profit, and non-profit), because schools and districts are ailing under the NCLB law, are doing well. Public schools are going to be funneling $900M to these private companies to tutor kids from schools that are not making adequate yearly progress. And, there are no standards that such firms need to maintain to get these funds, according to the article.
Among other issues:
“One sore spot is that some of the most troubled public school schools systems like Chicago’s have been forced to shut down their own after-school tutoring services because of federal rules that apply to failing districts.
Beth Swanson of Chicago Public Schools figures that means only 25,000 students will get services in the coming year, down from 80,000.”

Amy Hetzner:

“We don’t have a lot of proof that this works,” said Neah Lohr, the former director of the informational media and technology team for the state Department of Public Instruction. “Certainly students like the technology. That’s not the question.”
Research results are mixed. But most studies conclude that for computers and other technology to have much effect on student performance, a number of conditions are necessary: Teachers have to be technologically adept; classroom assignments have to allow for exploration; and curricula have to abandon breadth for depth.
Although schools have made changes in some of those areas, particularly increasing teachers’ technical proficiency, the predominant uses of computers remain word processing, heavily filtered Internet searches and the occasional PowerPoint presentation. In addition, with pressure rising to improve test scores, more schools have embraced skill-drilling software that contributes little to long-term student learning, observers say.

My view is that technology is simply another tool that may be part of a successful learning process. Critical thinking, rigor and general inquisitiveness are far more important than learning Word 2003 (which will be obsolete by the time our students reach the workforce). Successful technologists are capable of learning and using any tool. I was reminded of our priorities yesterday while visiting Sun Prairie’s CornFest: a teen could not make change (1.50 change was given for a 2.50 purchase from a $5.00 bill). More posts on this subject.

Madison School District:

Madison students who took the 2005 ACT college entrance exam continued to outperform their state and national peers. MMSD students’ composite score was slightly higher overall on the ACT compared to a year ago, 24.3 vs. 24.2 (scale of 1 to 36), while the average ACT score this year for Wisconsin students was 22.2 and nationally, 20.9.
Almost 74 percent of the MMSD students in the Class of 2006 took the ACT, a record number. Generally, when more students take the test, scores drop. However, the average MMSD ACT participant scored higher than roughly 72% of all Wisconsin ACT participants and higher than 78% of all ACT participants across the country.

Tamar Lewin:

Only about half of this year’s high school graduates have the reading skills they need to succeed in college, and even fewer are prepared for college-level science and math courses, according to a yearly report from ACT, which produces one of the nation’s leading college admissions tests.
The report, based on scores of the 2005 high school graduates who took the exam, some 1.2 million students in all, also found that fewer than one in four met the college-readiness benchmarks in all four subjects tested: reading comprehension, English, math and science.

Amy Hetzner:

Werner, who is 17, was one of seven Wisconsin high school students who posted a 36 on the ACT during the 2004-’05 testing cycle, according to data released by ACT Inc. on Friday. They were among 251 students nationwide who averaged a top score on the battery of English, reading, science and math tests during that time.
In addition to Werner, Astrid Stuth of Divine Savior Holy Angels High School in Milwaukee and Kent Rosenwald of Waukesha North High School represent the Milwaukee area. Corey Watts of Madison West High School and Dan Gerber of Onalaska High School got perfect scores, too. All of the students, except for Gerber, were juniors when they got their 36s. Gerber was a sophomore.

68% of Wisconsin students took the ACT (national average is 40). Those taking the test scored slightly higher than the national average composite score (22.2 vs. 20.9). State comparisons can be found here and here.

Some great letters to the editor of the Independent, a London newspaper, on the phoney debate over including the “teaching” of “intelligent design” alongside evolution in our school curricula.
http://comment.independent.co.uk/letters/article304598.ece

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Doug Guthrie:

The quality of Advanced Placement programs is coming under scrutiny at a time when educators are pushing to strengthen the academic level of high school class offerings.
Come February, the college prep classes at high schools across the nation will be audited amid concerns that some schools may be offering watered-down versions of AP courses. Full descriptions of every AP course, syllabus, sample assignment and sample exam for the 2007-08 year will be reviewed.
“Administrators are under pressure to create advanced-type classes. Parents want them. Policy-makers want them. If I’m being told to teach Advance Placement, I can put AP in front of any course name,” said Jim Ballard, executive director of the Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals. “Of course, it’s more than simply adding the name, and that’s where the College Board is crying foul.”
The College Board, which sets AP curriculum standards and conducts nationwide exams each spring, is reviewing the courses in response to calls from colleges and universities about ensuring the rigor of AP classes, officials said.

Eduwonk has additional comments

Keeping on topic 🙂 Dave Newbart finds that 1/3 of Illinois’ high school grads are not ready for college. Thus, 2/3 apparently are (evidently not, according to the article).

If colleges are to retain and graduate more students, the state needs to do a better job of educating them long before they set foot on campus, lawmakers and educators said Thursday.
New research presented by the Illinois Education Research Council at a meeting of the Senate Committee on Higher Education showed many Illinois high school graduates are simply not prepared to go to college.
More than one-third of Illinois graduates are not ready for college, said Jennifer Presley, director of the council, which is tracking nearly the entire class of 2002. Another 28 percent are only partially ready, she said. Yet 43 percent of the least ready students go to college, and 58 percent of minimally ready students do.

Joanne Jacobs has more.

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Gail Russell Chaddock:

Much of the national progress reported for 9- and 13-year-olds was driven by gains in the South. For example, while 9-year-olds in the Northeast gained 10 points in reading achievement (the equivalent of a grade level) over the past 30 years, the South gained 24, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). While reading scores for 13-year-olds barely budged in most of the United States, the South gained 12 points, more than a grade level.
It’s vindication for a generation of Southern governors, business groups, and educators who launched the standards movement in education a decade before it was picked up by the rest of the nation.

Jimbo Wales:

The second thing that will be free is a complete curriculum (in all languages) from Kindergarten through the University level. There are several projects underway to make this a reality, including our own Wikibooks project, but of course this is a much bigger job than the encyclopedia, and it will take much longer.
In the long run, it will be very difficult for proprietary textbook publishers to compete with freely licensed alternatives. An open project with dozens of professors adapting and refining a textbook on a particular subject will be a very difficult thing for a proprietary publisher to compete with. The point is: there are a huge number of people who are qualified to write these books, and the tools are being created to leave them to do that.
I just wanted to add one little note to today’s post, based on an excellent philosophical question Diana Hsieh asked yesterday about my views on free knowledge. While I do, in fact, think that it is wonderful that each of the ten things I will list will be free, the point of naming the list “will be free” rather than “should be free” or “must be free” is that I am making concrete predictions rather than listing a pie in the sky list of things I wish to see.

Jimmy Wales is the founder of wikipedia

Cyber Security Industry Alliance [PDF]:

Just as we teach our children “right from wrong” in the physical world, we must ensure that the same lessons are taught in the cyber world as well.

What is missing here is a focused and organized national effort to teach children cyber security, cyber ethics, and cyber safety with national security in mind. These elements of cyber awareness are vital because pervasive use of the Internet also poses risks that may harm the emotional and personal safety of children. The technology, unfortunately, enables devious and unethical behavior toward people, organizations or information technology underpinning critical infrastructure. The cyber education our children receive does not go far beyond how to turn on the computer and use a mouse. It is incomprehensible that we are not teaching cyber security, ethics, and safety at an early age. Poor awareness by children about cyber security may cause inadvertent damage to their own PC, other electronic devices or personal information, and could ultimately threaten the fabric of our nation’s critical cyber infrastructure.

Alan Borsuk:

You can do a good paint job that makes a poorly performing car look good, but it’s still a poorly performing car. That’s true too often of MPS diplomas. For kids to get to graduation, they sometimes take courses that aren’t as demanding as what should be expected. Graduation comes, “but it’s at the expense of content.” The student goes to college and finds other kids are way ahead. Jude’s response: “You were doing the A section of the book while they were doing the B and C sections. You covered a lot of material but it was very shallow. They covered a lot of material but it was in depth.”

Wisconsin Policy Research Institute Study shows that Direct Instruction is successful, particularly with hard to reach students. The study is on-line at http://www.wpri.org/Reports/Volume18/Vol18no4.pdf
Summary:
Education That Works in the Milwaukee Public Schools:
The Benefits from Phonics and Direct Instruction
by Sammis White, Ph.D.
A phonics-based teaching technique (Direct Instruction) is proving successful in some Milwaukee Public Schools. This study of 23,000 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students in the Milwaukee Public Schools showed that “among low-income students tracked between third and fourth grades 2002-03 to 2003-04, those with five years of Direct Instruction (DI) increased their math scores by 6.6% whereas non-low-income students increased their scores by 4.7%. This difference is statistically significant and is evidence of substantial progress.”
Direct Instruction in the Milwaukee Public Schools is creating real progress for hard-to-reach students.
* Students exposed to DI were even lower income, on average, than other MPS low-income students, but those individuals with long-term exposure to DI (defined as five years) did better, on average, than all low-income MPS students.
* In schools with DI in every grade and continuous professional development for the staff, students did even better, on average. Among low-income students, with a mix of regular and special education, students scored six points higher in reading and 25 points higher in math versus other low-income students. These differences suggest that with full implementation of DI at more schools, MPS would produce even greater academic gains.
_________________________________
The conclusions are less obvious from this article, but it is worth reading:
How best to teach reading?
Study of MPS students provides no clear answer
By ALAN J. BORSUK
aborsuk@journalsentinel.com
Posted: July 21, 2005
A controversial reading program called Direct Instruction is helping some Milwaukee Public Schools students, particularly those on the short end of the achievement gaps that are such an urgent issue here, a study of test scores of thousands of MPS students concludes.
But the comparison of students who have been in schools using the highly scripted program with those who haven’t been taught by that method leaves room for argument that the increasingly popular approach is not having much impact, at least not the way it is being done in many schools.
For the entire article go to: http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jul05/342804.asp

The Economist:

The National Assessment of Educational Progress as been periodically testing a representative sample of 9-, 13- and 17-year-olds since the early 1970s. This year’s report contained two striking results. The first is that America’s nine-year-olds posted their best scores in reading and maths since the tests were introduced (in 1971 in reading and 1973 in maths). The second is that the gap between white students and minorities is narrowing. The nine-year-olds who made the biggest gains of all were blacks, traditionally the most educationally deprived group in American society. …..
They need to have. The poor quality of America’s schools is arguably the biggest threat to America’s global competitiveness, a threat that will only grow as the best brains from India and China compete in an ever-wider array of jobs. And the growing gap between the educational performance of the rich and the poor, and between the majority and minorities, is arguably the biggest threat to America’s traditional conception of itself as a meritocracy. The test results are thus doubly good news. They suggest that America may be able to improve its traditionally dismal educational performance. And they suggest that sharpening up schools can especially help minority children.

Four letters to the editor in response to Michael Winerip’s recent article on teaching to the test:

Ms. Karnes learned all sorts of exercises to get children excited about writing, get them writing daily about what they care about and then show them how they can take one of those short, personal pieces and use it as the nucleus for a sophisticated, researched essay.
“We learned how to develop good writing from the inside, starting with calling the child’s voice out,” said Ms. Karnes, who got an A in the university course. “One of the major points was, good writing is good thinking. That’s why writing formulas don’t work. Formulas don’t let kids think; they kill a lot of creativity in writing.”
And so, when Ms. Karnes returns to Allendale High School to teach English this fall, she will use the new writing techniques she learned and abandon the standard five-paragraph essay formula. Right?
“Oh, no,” said Ms. Karnes. “There’s no time to do creative writing and develop authentic voice. That would take weeks and weeks. There are three essays on the state test and we start prepping right at the start of the year. We have to teach to the state test” (the Michigan Educational Assessment Program, known as MEAP).

Read the full article here. Read the letters to the editor by clicking on the link:

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The National Governor’s Association, as part of their “Redesiging American High School initiative” recently conducted a survey of over 10,000 American students, ages 16 to 18. Major findings include:

• Less than 1 in 10 say high school has been “very hard.”
• More than one-third say high school has been “easy.”
• 32% “strongly agree” they would work harder if high school offered more demanding and interesting courses.
• 71% think taking courses related to the kinds of jobs they want is the best way to make their senior year more meaningful. (they also mention taking courses that count as college credit)

The survey also collects information from those who dropped out or are considering dropping out of high school.

Survey Conclusions:

• It is critical to communicate to students that they need to seek out and take rigorous courses to be prepared for the future
• Educators and parents must do a better job of encouraging students to find meaning in senior
  year by emphasizing its importance to their futures.

• The message “you too can benefit from a high school education,” if continually reinforced, can work because a majority of teens who dropped out
  or who plan to drop out want to finish high school.

Read the entire summary here (250K PDF)

Presenting Data and Information: A One-Day Course Taught by Edward Tufte is in Madison August 8, 2005 ($320/person):

• “One visionary day….the insights of this class lead to new levels of understanding both for creators and viewers of visual displays.” WIRED
• “The Leonardo da Vinci of data.” THE NEW YORK TIMES
• The Fee includes Tufte’s three books: Visual Explanations, Envisioning Information, and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and the 15″ x 22″ Napoleon’s March poster

I attended his course in Chicago last year. Highly recommended. More on Edward Tufte.

The New York Times
July 11, 2005
Goodbye, Class. See You in the Fall.
By ALAN FINDER
ARDSLEY, N.Y. – Even though it was his last day of kindergarten, Zachary Gold, a bright, enthusiastic 6-year-old, said he wasn’t scared about moving up to the rigors of first grade. Unlike most kindergartners at the Concord Road Elementary School in this Westchester County village, he already knew who his first-grade teacher would be.

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William Gibson:

We seldom legislate new technologies into being. They emerge, and we plunge with them into whatever vortices of change they generate. We legislate after the fact, in a perpetual game of catch-up, as best we can, while our new technologies redefine us – as surely and perhaps as terribly as we’ve been redefined by broadcast television.

“Who owns the words?” asked a disembodied but very persistent voice throughout much of Burroughs’ work. Who does own them now? Who owns the music and the rest of our culture? We do. All of us.

Though not all of us know it – yet.

Gibson’s most recent book is Pattern Recognition, which is a must read. Gibson’s website.

In his letter to a Sherman parent, Michael George, Director of Content and Learning Team wrote:
“The requirements for regular instruction in 121.02(1)(L) are to be scheduled within the regular school day which is defined as “the period from the start to the close of each pupil’s daily instructional schedule.” Times of the day or week during which student attendance is optional are not considered part of the regular school day.”
In May Sherman principal Ann Yehle sent a letter to Sherman parents telling them band, orchestra and vocal music classes would be offered in an optional 8th hour. Parents wrote to DPI for clarification of the state law regarding regarding regular school day.
There will still be an optional 8th hour class with some form of music, but the newest proposal is to offer orchestra, band and vocal music education courses as pull-out classes, pulling students from other classes who want to study band, orchestra or vocal music. I’m left to wonder why students who want to study band, orchestra or vocal music continously have to “double up” their studies – seems like they are being penalized. Why wouldn’t this put additional and, perhaps, unnecessary, pressure on these students.
The entire content of the DPI letter follows:

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Corante launched an interesting new blog on the “Future of Work“. Food for thought.

Much afoot at Sherman Middle school. MMSD will look at developing a district-wide middle school curriculum. While that might improve the mess at Sherman, it might also mean watering down the curriculum, eg. math, throughout the district.
http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/local/index.php?ntid=45223
“School Board President Carol Carstensen, who made it one of her priorities to examine how the district’s 11 middle schools are structured and to consider proposals for changes, said that questions and concerns about middle- school curriculum existed before the situation at Sherman boiled over.
“It came to a head around Sherman,” Carstensen said.
Among the concerns is whether the kind of preparation students receive for high school varies depending on which middle school they attend, she said.
In one of her first jobs as the new superintendent of secondary schools, Pam Nash will focus on designing a middle school system that is consistent across the district, Rainwater said.
“Each of our middle schools has developed in a very different way,” Rainwater said, adding, “It provides a tremendous amount of flexibility.”
Carstensen said that while a more centralized model would sacrifice some autonomy and creativity in a school’s ability to meet the needs of its specific student population, she believes that all students should have the same opportunities in certain areas, including instrumental music and advanced math classes.”

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Roger Schank spoke at iLaw today:

i had to retire before i could talk about this stuff!
Charles Eliot was the president of harvard 1869-1909 is the most evil man in the history of harvard — he set up the high school curriculum that is still in place TODAY.
If you ever wondered why you took algebra in high school, is because the guy in princeton was selling a textbook on algebra, so he put algebra on high school curriculum!
i’m a math major and a computer science prof, and algebra has never come up in my life, maybe it has in yours.

Roger C. Schank Backbround

Jay Matthew has updated his list of the top 1000 US High Schools. The list, known as The Challenge Index, uses a ratio: the number of Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests taken by all students at public high schools in 2004, divided by the number of graduating seniors at the schools in 2004. Newsweek says that although the list “doesn’t tell the whole story about a school, it’s one of the best measures available to compare a wide range of students’ readiness for higher-level work, which is more crucial than ever in the postindustrial age.”
Here’s a list of Wisconsin High Schools included on the Challenge Index. Verona (710) and Madison Memorial (598) were the only Dane County schools included. Milwaukee Rufus King was the top ranked Wisconsin school on the list at 215.
Tom Kertscher takes a look at a recent addition to the list, Grafton High School.

From this week’s iLaw conference: “Teach the kids to code. Teach the artists to code. Let them control their own culture.” Are we fostering consumers or creative types? Follow the discussion here.

David Gelernter:

I thought she was merely endorsing the anti-war position. But my son set me straight. This student actually believed that if she had lived at the time, she might have been drafted. She didn’t understand that conscription in the United States has always applied to males only. How could she have known? Our schools teach history ideologically. They teach the message, not the truth. They teach history as if males and females have always played equal roles. They are propaganda machines.
Ignorance of history destroys our judgment. Consider Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill), who just compared the Guantanamo Bay detention center to Stalin’s gulag and to the death camps of Hitler and Pol Pot — an astonishing, obscene piece of ignorance. Between 15 million and 30 million people died from 1918 through 1956 in the prisons and labor camps of the Soviet gulag. Historian Robert Conquest gives some facts. A prisoner at the Kholodnaya Gora prison had to stuff his ears with bread before sleeping on account of the shrieks of women being interrogated. At the Kolyma in Siberia, inmates labored through 12-hour days in cheap canvas shoes, on almost no food, in temperatures that could go to minus-58. At one camp, 1,300 of 3,000 inmate

More on David Gelernter.

Melissa Milios:

n high school, I was a 3.8 (grade-point average) student. It was simple for me to get by with the bare minimum. I just got lazy,” says Andrea Edwards, 19, a graduate of Inglewood High. “Now that I’m here, it’s embarrassing — there’s so much I just don’t know.”
“You kind of feel left behind — like, why is my report card lying?” adds 19-year-old Kiwanna Hines, who was in the top 10 percent of her class at Junipero Serra High in Gardena. “I have my grandma, my auntie, my mom, my cousins — all of them are depending on me to graduate college. It’s a lot of pressure.”

The story notes that 8 out of 10 first-time freshman enrolled at Dominguez Hills last fall needed remediation in English and 7 in 10 needed remediation in math. Throughout the 23-campus CSU system, only 43% of the entering freshmen were proficient in both classes. Dominguez Hills president James Lyons summed it up: “There’s a disconnect between what they’re doing in high school to earn that GPA, and what is required and expected at the university level.” Via Eduwonk and Joanne Jacobs

Daithí Ó Murchú and Brent Muirhead:

At the beginning of the 21st. Century, all educators and all educational institutions, at all levels of education provision, are faced with the greatest time of possibility for change and evolution or stagnation and regression. Barker, 1978 in New York, stated that “action with vision can change the world” and the authors, based on their many years of experience working in both traditional and managed or virtual, E-Learning, lifelong-learning environments contend that the promotion of critical thinking is a key element in meaningful, responsible and soulful learning. Our ‘raison d’être’ as educators is to prepare our students for the society which does not yet exist and in doing so, provide them with opportunities to critically assess and transform their experiences into authentic learning experiences (Ó Murchú, 2005). This article explores the thought processes, realities and perceptions of the authors’ on-going experiences in on-line classes and gives their insights into promoting critical thinking in these Managed Learning Environments (MLEs).

Princeton’s First Annual Art of Science Exhibition is now online. Via Virginia Postrel.

Neal Stephenson:

Anakin wins that race by repairing his crippled racer in an ecstasy of switch-flipping that looks about as intuitive as starting up a nuclear submarine. Clearly the boy is destined to be adopted into the Jedi order, where he will develop his geek talents – not by studying calculus but by meditating a lot and learning to trust his feelings. I lap this stuff up along with millions, maybe billions, of others. Why? Because every single one of us is as dependent on science and technology – and, by extension, on the geeks who make it work – as a patient in intensive care. Yet we much prefer to think otherwise.
Scientists and technologists have the same uneasy status in our society as the Jedi in the Galactic Republic. They are scorned by the cultural left and the cultural right, and young people avoid science and math classes in hordes. The tedious particulars of keeping ourselves alive, comfortable and free are being taken offline to countries where people are happy to sweat the details, as long as we have some foreign exchange left to send their way. Nothing is more seductive than to think that we, like the Jedi, could be masters of the most advanced technologies while living simple lives: to have a geek standard of living and spend our copious leisure time vegging out.
If the “Star Wars” movies are remembered a century from now, it’ll be because they are such exact parables for this state of affairs. Young people in other countries will watch them in classrooms as an answer to the question: Whatever became of that big rich country that used to buy the stuff we make? The answer: It went the way of the old Republic.

Music education in Madison’s public schools has been on the chopping block for the past four years, beginning with the Superintendent’s proposed cut to Grade 4 strings. All the proposed cuts were made without any planning for changes, and the harshest cuts came this year, again without any planning for change among the key stakeholders and those most affected by the change – our children. This past year, in the absence of a fine arts coordinator, a team of teachers was to be put into place to oversee fine arts education – this did not happen but an interim fine arts coordinator was hired in the spring. Perhaps it’s time for the community to form a task force to collaborate on future directions and an educational framework for music education in our public schools?
This spring 60% of the elementary string staff was cut – 4 FTEs will teach nearly 2,000 children in 27 schools next year, 10% of the elementary music staff was cut and instrumental and vocal music were proposed for afterschool at Sherman Middle School.

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Jamaal Abdul-Alim:

Despite increasingly tough standards, the number of Wisconsin schools that will be flagged this year for failing to meet federally mandated reading and math goals will be less than half what it was last year – 51 as opposed to 108 – but not because things are getting better.
Rather, it is the state’s controversial calculation method that allows schools to miss the goals by substantial percentages without having it count against them.
For the same reason, only one school district in the state will be flagged for failing to meet the federally mandated standards, whereas last year 30 school districts were listed as failing to make enough progress.
The dramatic shift is due to the use of a statistical tool known as confidence intervals.

HOW LAPHAM ELEMENTARY ACHIEVED SUCCESS BY BUCKING THE DISTRICT’S FAVORED APPROACH
By Katherine Esposito

“At Marquette Elementary, Lapham’s 3rd through 5th grade sister school, skillful use of Direct Instruction has resulted in reading scores for Marquette third-graders that are virtually unsurpassed district-wide. Scores for black students particularly stand out.
In 1998, just 9% of Marquette black third graders were considered “advanced” readers, as measured on the third-grade state reading comprehension test; by 2003, 38% were “advanced.” District-wide, only 9% of black children scored as “advanced” in 2003.”
Read the full article here.