Robert Slavin of John Hopkins reports on current educational models that are supported by scientific evidence, and makes recommendations.
Despite some recent improvements, the academic achievement of American students
remains below that of those in most industrialized nations, and the gap between African
American and Hispanic students and White students remains substantial. For many years, the
main policy response has been to emphasize accountability, and No Child Left Behind has added
further to this trend. There is much controversy about the effects of accountability systems, but
they have had little impact on the core technology of teaching: Instruction, curriculum, and
school organization.
This paper argues that genuine reform in American education depends on a movement
toward evidence-based practice, using the findings of rigorous research to guide educational
practices and policies. No Child Left Behind gives a rhetorical boost to this concept, exhorting
educators to use programs and practices “based on scientifically-based research.” In practice,
however, programs that particularly emphasize research-based practice, such as Reading First,
have instead supported programs and practices (such as traditional basal reading textbooks) that
have never been evaluated, while ignoring well-evaluated programs. The same is true of the
earlier Comprehensive School Reform program, which was intended for “proven,
comprehensive” programs but has instead primarily supported unresearched programs.
This paper reviews research on programs that already have strong evidence of
effectiveness. Programs with strong evidence of effectiveness fell into the following categories.
1. Comprehensive school reform models, which provide professional development and
materials to improve entire schools. Research particularly supports Success for All and
Direct Instruction, but smaller numbers of studies support several additional models
including the School Development Program, America’s Choice and Modern Red
Schoolhouse.
2. Instructional technology. Research supports integrated learning systems in mathematics.
Word processing has been found to improve writing achievement.
3. Cooperative learning programs engage students in small groups to help each other learn.
Many studies support this strategy in elementary and secondary math, reading, and other
subjects.
4. Innovative mathematics programs. The first What Works Clearinghouse report supported
research on two technology-based programs, Cognitive Tutor and I Can Learn, in middle
schools. Elementary programs such as Cognitively Guided Instruction and Project SEED
also have strong evidence of effectiveness.
5. Innovative elementary reading programs having strong evidence of effectiveness include
Success for All and Direct Instruction, as well as Reciprocal Teaching and Cooperative
Integrated Reading and Composition.
6. Tutoring programs in reading, especially Reading Recovery, have rigorous evaluations
showing their effectiveness.
7. Dropout prevention programs, such as the Coca-Cola Valued Youth Program and Alas,
have good evidence of effectiveness.
See Full Report

Sam Dillon:

Spurred by President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, educators across the nation are putting extraordinary effort into improving the achievement of minority students, who lag so sharply that by 12th grade, the average black or Hispanic student can read and do arithmetic only as well as the average eighth-grade white student.

Anupreeta Das and Amanda Paulson:

Somit Basak’s tutoring style is hardly unusual. The engineering graduate spices up lessons with games, offers rewards for excellent performance, and tries to keep his students’ interest by linking the math formulas they struggle with to real-life examples they can relate to.
Unlike most tutors, however, Mr. Basak lives thousands of miles away from his students — he is a New Delhi resident who goes to work at 6 a.m. so that he can chat with American students doing their homework around dinnertime.

Via Joanne Jacobs

The headline is that MMSD students generally scored lower than last year on the state standardized tests at the same time as state performance either held steady or showed slight improvement. The data on individual Madison schools are available here

Alan Borsuk:

The brightest spot in the tests statewide appeared to be reading for eighth- and 10th-graders. The results show that 85% of eighth-graders were proficient or better in reading, up six percentage points from a year ago, while 74% of 10th-graders cleared the proficiency bar, up five percentagepoints from a year ago.
But for fourth-graders, the percentage proficient or better went down in math and science, stayed the same in reading and language arts and went up one point in social studies.
And an eight-point jump in the percentage of eighth-graders who were at least proficient in math only reversed an eight-point drop among the eighth-graders in the prior year – a sign both of the way scores can change from year to year and of how little things have changed in recent years.
The gaps that leave low-income and minority students scoring far below other students remain large and in some instances were worse in this school year’s testing. There have been some instances of the gaps shrinking, but it remains as much as 50 percentage points in some cases (78% of white 10th-graders and 28% of black 10th-graders were demonstrated proficient in math.

Students once saw computer-science classes as their ticket to wealth. Now, as more technology jobs are outsourced to other countries, such classes are seen as a path to unemployment.
New data show students’ interest in the discipline is in a free fall. The number of newly declared computer-science majors declined 32 percent from the fall of 2000 to the fall of 2004, according to a report released this month by the Computing Research Association, which represents computer scientists in industry and academe. Another survey, from the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, shows that the number of incoming freshmen who expressed an interest in majoring in computer science has plummeted by 59 percent in the last four years.
Professors say the creation in the last five years of new degrees in information technology or information systems may also be offering more-attractive alternatives to computer science. Computer science focuses on how networks are engineered — the theoretical aspects of computing — and on writing software, while information technology focuses on applied work, such as building Web sites, adapting systems to a business’s needs, and maintaining networks.
George Mason University started an information-technology program in the fall of 2002, and this year has 726 students in the program. The number keeps growing each year, with students particularly interested in computer-security courses, says Anne Marchant, an information-technology instructor at the university. Only 550 George Mason students are computer-science majors. A few years ago the department had about 800 students who majored in the field.
Ms. Marchant blames the shift partly on what she sees as students’ deteriorating mathematics aptitude.
“Information technology is the right home for an awful lot of students who do not have the math skills and do not really have the interest in becoming programmers,” she says.
Jesse J. Rangel, a senior at California State University at Bakersfield who is a computer-science major, says some of his classmates avoid computer science because it involves advanced mathematics and physics. “The sad fact is that many students are not up for the challenge,” he says.
See the full article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Mindy B. Hagen:

With a critical shortage of Information Technology workers projected in the coming years, it’s crucial that university computer science departments do all they can to attract top students to the field, a local IBM official said Tuesday.
At IBM University Day in Research Triangle Park on Tuesday, leading IBM officials and university professors from across the region gathered to discuss new ways of marketing computer careers to up-and-coming students.

The May 2, 2005 Madison School Board meeting included a statement & discussion from a parent whose child was denied open enrollment in the Wisconsin Virtual Academy. 9MB Video. More on open enrollment: Clusty | Google

Newsweek ranks the top US High Schools. Madison Memorial is ranked #587. Here’s the criteria.

Jeff Henrique, a Madison Schools Parent and a writer on this blog is featured in a UW Madison News Release regarding classroom clickers (personal response systems) as instant assessment tools.

In “What, Me Worry?”, Tom Friedman holds forth, as he so often does, on a speech Bill Gates gave on the antiquated way we educate our high school students. Gates warns that the future belongs not to those countries rich in natural resources but rather to those who “mine” their populace’s intellectual power. China and India will soon propel many more of their students ahead of ours, and with the flattening of the globe, Tom’s latest book’s thesis, these students will no longer have to come to the US. Thus the brain drain will be from within and without.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/29/opinion/29friedman.html

Continue reading Bill Gates on Hidebound High School Curricula →

New AAAS Report Explores How Schools Improve Math and Science Learning
A System of Solutions: Every School, Every Student
Ten U.S. school districts have achieved significant improvement in science and mathematics performance by developing ambitious programs that set high standards and then closely tracking what works and what doesn’t work in helping students learn, according to a new AAAS report.
The 22-page report, “A System of Solutions: Every School, Every Student,” identifies 10 U.S. K-12 school districts, serving some of the nation’s major inner-city areas, and discusses the systemic practices that helped them improve student performance and close the gap between minority and non-minority students.
U.S. school districts examined as part of the AAAS report are: Atlanta; Boston; Brownsville, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; El Paso, Texas; Houston; Los Angeles; Miami; Portland, Ore.; and San Diego.
The 22-page report was commissioned by the GE Foundation and is available on-line here http://www.aaas.org/programs/centers/capacity/documents/GELongReport.pdf.

A reader forwarded this 4 page (17K PDF Document – 17K) that compares and discusses Advance Placement classes available at Madison’s four high schools.

Several interesting letters to the editor in Sunday’s NYT in response to this article: The Schools Under Bloomberg: Much Tumult, Mixed Results, including this comment:

Too many have held low expectations for Harlem’s children. We have a mayor who not only seems to care about reforming the schools, but also is holding himself accountable for raising the expectations of our children. While I do not agree with every single one of his reforms, I believe they should be given more time before they are dismissed.

Continue reading NYT: School Reform: How Fast, How Far? →

The cover story in today’s Isthmus (dated April 15) includes new praise for the effectiveness of Direct Instruction for teaching reading.
For example, the article says, “Among the beneficiaries . . . are special ed students, who receive an especially intense form of Direct Instruction. One-third of Marquette’s special ed kids were ‘advanced’ readers on last year’s third-grade test, while over one-half were ‘proficient.’
The article continue, “Meanwhile, at Franklin-Randall, the district’s other paired elementary schools, the third-grade scores for special ed students are the inverse of those at Lapham-Marquette: Whereas Marquette has one-third of its kids at the top and 8% at the bottom, Randall has 8% at the top and one third at the bottom. At Hawthorne Elementary, one of five schools formerly eligible for the Reading First grant, no special ed children register as ‘advanced,’ and most perform poorly.”
Unfortunately, most Isthmus articles are not posted on-line. When an electronic copy become available, I’ll post a link to it.
Ed Blume

Below Jeff Henriques posted a response from the MMSD to a letter criticizing Reading Recovery.
The critical letter concludes:
“Reading Recovery has not met the needs of these lowest performing students. Most significantly, its excessive costs can make it more difficult for a school to provide help for all students in need, especially those who are behind in the upper grades. Thus, Reading Recovery is not a productive investment of taxpayers� money or students� time and is a classic example of a �one size fits all� method.”
Read the full letter letter on Reading Recovery’s flaws.
Ed Blume

The New York Times on April 13 reported on a study by the Northwest Evaluation Association that shows there is a decline in the improvement of students in schools since the enactment of NCLB. To quote the article in part:
“Since No Child Left Behind, … individual growth has slowed, possibly because teachers feel compelled to spend the bulk of their time making sure students who are near proficiency make it over the hurdle.
The practice may leave teachers with less time to focus on students who are either far below or far above the proficiency mark, the researchers said, making it less likely for the whole class to move forward as rapidly as before No Child Left Behind set the agenda.”
The following link is to the actual report from the NWEA site, for your reading pleasure.
Download file

Direct Instruction frequently enters discussions of reading in Madison’s schools.
Strictly speaking, Direct Instruction (with a capital D and a capital I) is a copyrighted program. Direct instruction (little d, little i) refers to a variety of programs that use direct systematic instruction and other principles of Direct Instruction.
Additionally, direct instruction works to teach other subjects, math, science, history, and more.
Dr. Martin Kozloff, professor at University of North Carolina-Willmington, prepared a long list of direct instruction cirricula. Click here to read a short description of each.
Ed Blume

New York Times Editorial:

The United States has historically viewed public education as a local issue, so the federal government has looked the other way when the states have damaged the national interest by failing to educate large swaths of the population. That approach has left us with one of the weakest educational systems in the developed worl

A message to Madison School Board members from Superintendent Art Rainwater:
Attached is a press release from the Federal Department of Education in which they use our closing the gap in third grade reading as the example for Wisconsin of what NCLB and the Reading First grants have accomplished. The other interesting thing is the data they use to show how successful they have made us is the same data we used to show them why they should fund our Balanced Literacy program.
Download file

Natalie Rhoads

John Clare:

The less pupils use computers at school and at home, the better they do in international tests of literacy and maths, the largest study of its kind says today.
The findings raise questions over the Government’s decision, announced by Gordon Brown in the Budget last week, to spend another �1.5 billion on school computers, in addition to the �2.5 billion it has already spent.

Chris Jablonski:

Wikis have made their way into the classroom at Lewis Elementary School in Portland, Oregon. Students working on writing projects are accessing their teacher’s wiki from their Safari bookmark toolbar on their Macs via Apple’s Rendezvous. The wiki is installed on the teacher’s iBooks and is an adaptation of Instiki, which in combination with SchoolTool, an open souce management information system, streamlines the entire process. Apart from a couple of problems,–when the laptop is asleep or is outside the school the system breaks down–it gets the thumbs up from the students who use it. It takes away the burden of navigating file servers and word processor interfaces and lets the students focus on their writing.

I like wiki’s – they seem quite useful for the classroom.

Diane Ravich
It makes no sense to blame the high schools for their ill-prepared incoming students. To really get at the problem, we have to make changes across our educational system. The most important is to stress the importance of academic achievement. Sorry to say, we have a long history of reforms by pedagogues to de-emphasize academic achievement and to make school more “relevant,” “fun” and like “real life.” These efforts have produced whole-language instruction, where phonics, grammar and spelling are abandoned in favor of “creativity,” and fuzzy math, where students are supposed to “construct” their own solutions to math problems instead of finding the right answers.
These are the exact same points Professor Seidenburg, UW Madison, made to the MMSD School Board earlier this year. He also critized the MMSD Superintendent for turning away $10+ million over several years of Reading First federal grant money.

e-prairie discusses a number of recent comments from the technology community on our education problems:

• The American Electronics Association on losing our competitive advantage.
• The OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment
• Pay for performance teacher compensation movements
• Milton Friedman on School Choice
• Bill Gates on our obsolete high schools

The New York Times Editorial Page agrees with Bill Gates and takes the States to task for “embracing the lowest common denominator”.

Brian Tumulty on the achievement gap:

Wisconsin needs to boost graduation rates among blacks and other minorities, the state superintendent of instruction said Sunday as a two-day national summit on the future of high schools ended here.
�We have an achievement gap and we need to ensure every child is graduating from high school,� Elizabeth Burmaster said. �That�s the issue.�
Although Wisconsin boasts one of the highest high school graduation rates in the nation � 92 percent overall in 2002-2003 � only 63 percent of blacks, 76 percent of Hispanics and 78 percent of American Indians complete high school in four years.

From a post on the atrios website:
No Child Left Behind – Football Version
1. All teams must make the state playoffs, and all will win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held
accountable.
2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time and in the same conditions. No exceptions will be made for interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL.
3. Talented players will be asked to work out on their own without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren’t interested in
football, have limited athletic ability, or whose parents don’t like football.
4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th and 11th games.
5. This will create a New Age of sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimal goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child will be left behind.

Several interesting items from the Ford Foundation’s Winter 2005 K-12 Report:

• Dallas public schools are boosting student achievement by integrating arts into the curriculum.
• In West Virginia and across the country, rural communities are fighting the supersizing of public schools.
• BOOK REVIEW: School Champion
  A consensus has grown over the last 20 years that for sustainable school reform to occur, the public?not just parents?must be engaged, as instigators of change and as watchdogs to ensure that reforms are put into practice.

Another interesting link: The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence is a statewide education advocacy organization. We work to improve education for all Kentuckians.

Bill Gates:

he most blunt assessment came from Microsoft chief Bill Gates, who has put more than $700 million into reducing the size of high school classes through the foundation formed by him and his wife, Melinda. He said high schools must be redesigned to prepare every student for college, with classes that are rigorous and relevant to kids and with supportive relationships for children.
“America’s high schools are obsolete,” Gates said. “By obsolete, I don’t just mean that they’re broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools _ even when they’re working as designed _ cannot teach all our students what they need to know today.”

I am no fan of Bill Gates. [Slashdot discussion] He does, however raise some useful points, including the biggest obstacle: political will.

JOHN CHUBB, ROBERT LINN, KATI HAYCOCK, AND ROSS WIENER: Do we need to repair the monument?

Valerie Strauss:

Ask teachers, administrators and students why such discrepancies exist in these classes, and they will say it has nothing to do with ability. So what explains it

At War With Diversity: U.S. Language Policy in an Age of Anxiety
James Crawford, Executive Director, National Association for Bilingual
Education
4:00 pm, Tuesday, February 8
1418 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Drive
University of Wisconsin-Madison

In a letter to the editor of Isthmus UW Psychology Professor Mark Seidenberg wrote, “There�s something deeply wrong here. The educational establishment has embraced methods for teaching reading that have a weak scientific basis and are counterproductive for many beginning readers. They then develop a very expensive remedial reading program to fix the problems created by these instructional methods. Why not do it right the first time?” To read the full text of the letter go to
Dr. Seidenberg’s letter

TALKING OUT OF SCHOOL / Jason Shepard / Isthmus, December 16, 2004
Not all good news on reading
Writing in the Isthmus weekly newspaper out on Thursday, December 16, 2004, Jason Shepard notes, “One reality touts the district [MMSD] as superior to any other known district in the country at nearly eliminating the gap among the lowest performing readers in the third grade. The other reality shows that minority third graders continue to lag far behind whites at higher levels. While nearly 94% of white third graders read at or above grade level this year, only 66% of black students do.”
Download file

American-American students fare badly in Reading Recovery. Only 43% successfully discontinue, compared to 49% for Asian students, 56% for Hispanic students, and 57% for white students.
According to one of the district�s report on Reading Recovery (p. 14), �Discontinued Reading Recovery students [that is, students who �graduate�] outperform the comparison group by 1.2 text reading levels while all other Reading Recovery students score almost 4 text reading levels less than their comparison group.�
In other words, for every 43 discontinued African-American Reading Recovery students who advance 1.2 text reading levels, 57 fall behind by 4 text reading levels relative to their comparison group. The net impact of Reading Recovery reduces overall reading success for the African-American students in the district.
Ed Blume

Mary Watson Peterson, MMSD Reading Coordinator, presented the theory behind the design and development of MMSD’s Balanced Literacy Program. Her professional presentation noted the significant progress in reading that the District has been reporting publicly during the past month.
Ms. Peterson mentioned that several teachers are trained in Direct Instruction and that some teachers use this method. However, no information was presented on the results using this approach as a core curriculum or as an intervention method.
Mary Watson Peterson MMSD Elementary Reading Curriculum Presentation to the MMSD School Board on Monday, December 13, 2004

Jay Mathews, Washington Post staff writer, wrote an article in the December 14, 2004 Washington Post (Mining Scores for Nuances in Improvement) about using value-added assessments, which “…use test scores to compare each child’s progress to predictions based on past performance…” Not everyone is pleased with value-added assessments. “Value-added assessment has also become a political irritant because some school boards and superintendents want to pay teachers based on how much value they are adding, as measured by individual student test scores, for students in their classes. In Ohio and most other states, the system is being used only to diagnose student needs, leaving the question of teacher pay for later.” Value-added assessments, which can be done by principals or teachers, is one approach that attempts to bring analysis of student data closer to the school/teacher.
Mining Scores for Nuances in Improvement

U.W. psychologist, Mark Seidenberg, wrote an editorial in Sunday’s (12/12/04) edition of the Wisconsin State Journal critical of the way that the district is presenting its reading data. He also points out that although Superintendent Rainwater would like the public to believe “that accepting the Reading First funds would have required him to “eliminate” the district’s current reading curriculum – the one used throughout the district. … The acceptance of Reading First funding has no bearing on the curriculum used in other schools.”

Continue reading Madison schools distort reading data →

This is my first post to this blog, so I�ll start by introducing myself. My name is Bill Herman. I have two kids at Crestwood ES, and a third will start in the fall. Also, I work in K-12 education; I�m the technology director for Monona Grove Schools.
I read �Paper #1,� criticizing MMSD for declining $2 million of federal money for reading, with interest and some dismay. With interest because it does seem odd that the district would reject such a sum even if some strings are attached. With dismay because neither side in the debate had a good way to weigh the district�s key claim�that the existing program has improved student reading.
Both sides used WKCE scores to support their claims. Unfortunately, the WKCE is not a useful tool to assess the effectiveness of programs at MMSD or anywhere else, because it isn�t designed to measure student progress over time, or to compare scores from one year with scores from another year. This means that we have a bigger problem than not knowing if elementary reading instruction is effective in MMSD. We are not able to decisively assess the effectiveness of any instructional program in the Madison schools.

Continue reading Are MMSD Programs Effective? Who Knows? →

MMSD District Administration will be making a presenation on the MMSD Literacy Program Research tomorrow during the Performance and Achievement Committee meeting. I hope significant time is spent discussing a) results and next steps for MMSD’s Balanced Literacy approach to learning to read and write b) an analysis of alternative reading interventions and c) analysis and reasons that led the Superintendent to turn down Reading First grant funds.
If there are teachers who are using teaching methods/curricula that are not part of the current Balanced Literacy approach, but are effective with the student population who is not at the proficient and advanced reading levels, board members need to ask to see the results.
Why look at the results? All teachers want each child they teach to be successful learners. If teachers are being successful in their teaching approach, the District Administration needs to learn from these efforts and incorporate them into their existing curricula. Continuous change to improve best practices through various feedback mechanisms is an important part of a successful change in an organization.

Continue reading A Parent’s Thoughts on Learning to Read – Next Step Considerations →

Reading First is a part of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Title I, Part B, Subpart 1). Reading First is designed to assist schools in establishing reading programs for students in kindergarten through grade 3. These programs must be founded on scientifically-based reading research and aid in ensuring every student can read well by the end of third grade.
Link to DPI Reading First Website and WI Reading First Grant Application

Continue reading Reading First Program in Wisconsin →

Leopold Elementary Needs Donations Of Violins, Violas And Cellos So That All Of The Students In Its Popular Strings Classes Can Take An Instrument Home To Practice.
Read Sandy Cullen’s full article:

Continue reading Visions Of Violins For Christmas – Shortage of String Instruments for Low Income Elementary Students →

The MMSD Board of Education has established three priorities aimed at improving student achievement:
1. All students reading at grade level by third grade
2. All students completing Algebra and Geometry by the end of 10 th grade
3. All students attending school at least 94%
Each year the Superintendent reports on progress toward these goals. This year’s presentation was made on December 6, 2004.
Superintendent’s Annual Report to School Board on Board Priorities

Jenny D posts a transcript of RFK’s (Robert F. Kennedy) 1965 Senate testimony on school performance:

Some may wonder, why on earth is Jenny D. wasting her time copying down 40-year-old Senate testimony? Because it so closely mirrors the conversations today about No Child Left Behind. NCLB didn’t fall out of the sky as some evil Republican plan. It was first hatched, albeit crudely, in 1965 by U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy. I think it’s important to know where we came from

RFK on standardized tests | RFK on Title 1

Monday, December 13
5:00pm – Peformance & Achievement, Doyle Admin Building, Rm 103
Research-Base Underlying MMSD Classroom Reading Programs
Alternative Programs
Apparently this committee meeting comes as a response to the Isthmus article on the failures of Reading Recovery.

Madison’s preschool leaders are advocating for an innovative K-4 program that involves a public/private partnership with the Madison Metropolitan School District, City of Madison and Madison preschools. There are proposed options that will build upon current preschool programs and entry into public school.
As the article below states, innovative pre-school programs can have decades long positive effects on children who participate in them as they grow into adults.
David L. Kirp, writing in the Sunday New York Times Magazine (November 21, 2004:
“The power of education to level the playing field has long
been an American article of faith. Education is the
”balance wheel of the social machinery,” argued Horace
Mann, the first great advocate of public schooling. ”It
prevents being poor.” But that belief has been undermined
by research findings — seized on ever since by skeptics —
that federal programs like Head Start, designed to benefit
poor children, actually have little long-term impact.
Now evidence from an experiment that has lasted nearly four
decades may revive Horace Mann’s faith. ”Lifetime Effects:
The High/Scope Perry Preschool Study Through Age 40,” was
released earlier this week. It shows that an innovative
early education program can make a marked difference in the
lives of poor minority youngsters — not just while they
are in school but for decades afterward. ”
The complete article follows:

Continue reading Life Way After Head Start – Innovative PreSchool Programs Have Decades Long Effects for Low Income and Minority Children →

John Tierney writes:

At one level, the debate is over current controversies in public education: Many parents believe that their children, mostly in elite schools, are being pushed too hard in a hypercompetitive atmosphere. But other parents are complaining about a decline in programs for gifted children, leaving students to languish in “untracked” and unstimulating classrooms. Some critics of education believe that boys especially are languishing in schools that emphasize cooperation instead of competition. No Child Left Behind, indeed.
But the basic issue is the same one raised four decades ago by Kurt Vonnegut in “Harrison Bergeron,” a short story set in the America of 2081, about a 14-year-old genius and star athlete. To keep others from feeling inferior, the Handicapper General weighs him down with 300-pound weights and makes him wear earphones that blast noise, so he cannot take “unfair advantage” of his brain.
That’s hardly the America of 2004, but today’s children do grow up with soccer leagues and spelling bees where everyone gets a prize. On some playgrounds dodge ball is deemed too traumatic to the dodging-impaired. Some parents consider musical chairs dangerously exclusionary.

Fascinating look at the tyranny of low expectations….

Jamall Abdul-Alim on the Maple Dale-Indian Hill School District‘s attempt to use DVD’s for first through third graders.

“Buenos dias,” says Senor Morris, the instructor featured in the DVD set “Elementary Spanish” – a program the Maple Dale-Indian Hill School District is using for the first time this year to teach Spanish to first- through third-graders.
In Spanish, the phrase means “good morning.”
But the days of Spanish instruction for students at Indian Hill may not be as good as they once were, educators say.
Last year, a teacher stood in the place now occupied by the TV set and DVD player. Budget cuts brought on by declining enrollment led district officials to say adios to Spanish teacher Mara Malloy – called Senora Malloy by her students.
She has been replaced by the DVD Spanish instruction package produced by Northern Arizona University.
The district saved thousands of dollars in Malloy’s part-time teacher salary and benefits. The DVD package cost $3,000.
But educators and students say there is a deeper cost associated with the switch from live teacher to technology that transcends dollars. They lament the lack of interaction between student and teacher, and worry that will lead to less academic success.

This week’s Isthmus includes a damning internal assessment of Reading Recovery, “a remedial first-grade reading program considered a cornerstone of Madison’s school iteracy efforts.”
“The district would be ‘well-served to investigate other methods’ to reach struggling reaaders, says the report.”
One of those other methods will be presented Sunday, at 1:00 p.m., at the Madison Community Center.
You can link to the Isthmus article.
The notice of Sunday’s meeting follows.

Could Madison Use Milwaukee�s Successful Reading Programs?
Norm and Dolores Mishelow
1:00 p.m.
Sunday, November 7
Madison Senior Center
330 W. Mifflin
Madison
Principal Norm Mishelow will discuss how academic achievement excels at Barton, because the school teaches reading using Direct Instruction (DI), a program that provides a detailed script for teacher-student interaction. The program focuses on small group learning and emphasizes phonics. The school also uses a math curriculum that focuses generally on building basic arithmetic skills.
Norm�s wife Dolores is a former principal of 27th Street School which was a failing school before she took over. She started DI, and their test scores soared. She used to believe in all the whole language and warm fuzzy teaching until, of course, she saw the light with DI. Norm was not using DI until Dolores nudged him to try it (after she retired) and his scores, though decent without DI, hit the stratosphere once DI got humming.
The same curriculum in MMSD elementary schools could help close the achievement gap, cut instructional costs, reduce special ed referrals, and raise achievement overall.
You can read more by connecting to Barton School.
Sponsored by www.schoolinfosystems.org and Active Citizens for Education (ACE).

Ruth Robarts wrote, “In his memo [to reject $2 million in Reading First funds]Superintendent Rainwater argues that MMSD should refuse to make the proposed changes at the five schools because we are a “successful” district. He states that our reading program is a success because more than 80% of all third graders score at grade level or above (“proficient or advanced”) on the Wisconsin Reading Comprehension Test. Unfortunately, that’s not true for the schools that qualified for Reading First grants. As Rainwater admits, more than 30% of the third graders in these schools fell below “proficient or advanced” scores in recent years. See “Madison Superintendent Declines $2M in Federal Funds Without Consulting the Board” below.”
The superintendent’s interprestion of the 80% success rate doesn’t seem to appreciate what Reading First consultants recommend for the other 20%.
To see what a complete reading program looks like, you can link to presentations by the Institute for the Development of Educational Achievement.
The presentation on the Center to Improve Reading Competence Using Intensive Treatments Schoolwide is especially revealing in showing how a reading program can address 80% of a school population, but the program needs a secondary prevention program to assist 15% of the school’s kids and a tertiary intervention for the 5% with severe, sustained reading difficulty.
From my experience, the MMSD does not appear to have consistent, effective intervention for either the 15% or the 5%.
Ed Blume

Please plan to attend a presentation by two principals of Milwaukee elementary schools that use a curriculum that won Barton Elementary federal recognition as a Blue Ribbon school, the only one in Wisconsin:
Could Madison Use Milwaukee�s Successful Reading Programs?
Norm and Dolores Mishelow
1:00 p.m.
Sunday, November 7
Madison Senior Center
330 W. Mifflin
Madison
Principal Norm Mishelow will discuss how academic achievement excels at Barton, because the school teaches reading using Direct Instruction (DI), a program that provides a detailed script for teacher-student interaction. The program focuses on small group learning and emphasizes phonics. The school also uses a math curriculum that focuses generally on building basic arithmetic skills.
Norm�s wife Dolores is a former principal of 27th Street School which was a failing school before she took over. She started DI, and their test scores soared. She used to believe in all the whole language and warm fuzzy teaching until, of course, she saw the light with DI. Norm was not using DI until Dolores nudged him to try it (after she retired) and his scores, though decent without DI, hit the stratosphere once DI got humming.
The same curriculum in MMSD elementary schools could help close the achievement gap, cut instructional costs, reduce special ed referrals, and raise achievement overall.
You can read more about Barton School.
Ed Blume

Interesting timing, given Jeff’s post below about West’s intention to drop advanced biology.
Doug Erickson on Madison Country Day School’s expansion announcement:

Madison Country Day School broke ground Thursday on a $4.8 million expansion that will add a gymnasium, a performing arts stage and 13 classrooms.
The addition, which will house the private school’s middle and high school, is expected to be done in August.
Opened in 1997 with 22 students in five lower grades, the school has grown to 252 students in grades pre- kindergarten through 10th. It reached capacity two years ago and is now using two portable buildings, said Adam de Pencier, head of school. “We’re absolutely jammed.”
The school at 5606 River Road is in the town of Westport near Waunakee. It is a non- religious, independent school that was designed to incorporate the best curriculum from around the world. The school wants to be seen as a research facility whose teaching practices can be used as a model for other public and private schools, de Pencier said.
The school was founded by Christopher Frautschi, nephew of philanthropist Jerry Frautschi, whose $205 million donation is paying for construction of the Overture Center for the Arts in Madison.

As always, there are options for people willing to spend the money. A challenging and proven curriculum is vital to our community.
I recently emailed a bit with Bill Keys, Madison School Board President, thanking him for the BOE’s support of Lapham’s English program and two school’s exploration of Singapore Math. Here’s the email message.

Continue reading The Yin & Yang of Curriculum →

On Monday, October 11, the MMSD School Board met in a special meeting to review the request for additional staffing for La Follette High School. The District Administration was requesting an additional 1.65 FTE. Rather than hire new staff, District Administration was proposing to provide the additional staffing through existing teacher overloads. Requests for teacher overloads would be done on a voluntary basis.
Three teachers from La Follette spoke during public appearances at the meeting. They believed that staffing needs at La Follette were more than requested by District Administration. These teachers were concerned that too many students were spending nearly half their school day in study halls due to in adequate staffing needs and that teachers were feeling overburdened with existing staffing levels.
Since 2000, teacher FTEs at the high schools have decreased by 7 FTE, and the number of high school students has increased by 679 students.
Following is the video of one of the teachers who spoke during public appearances – Peggy Ellerkamp, LaFollette librarian.
Peggy Ellerkamp

Joanne Jacobs writing in Tech Central Station:
Forget the anecdotes and assumptions. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, federal education dollars are supposed to fund only programs proven effective by “scientifically based research.” That’s spotlighting a problem: A lot of what passes for education research isn’t reliable or rigorous, and many education professors aren’t keen on the scientific method.
Education has a “dirty little secret,” writes Jeffrey Mervis in the June 11, 2004 Science Magazine:

“No program has yet met that rigorous standard, because none has been scientifically evaluated and shown to be effective. (A related secret is that there’s no consensus on the type of evaluation studies that are needed.)”

Bush’s Education Department wants controlled studies, like the tests that determine whether a new drug is safe and effective. Is Panacea Z more likely to cure ignorance than Brand X? It would be nice to know before investing millions of dollars. And yet the research often provides no guidance.

Jamall Abdul-Alim:

The number of Wisconsin schools and districts that failed to make enough progress to satisfy federal law rose, according to statistics released Friday, prompting renewed concern over whether schools can meet the increasingly tough standards of the “No Child Left Behind” era.
According to state Department of Public Instruction figures, 123 schools were on the list of schools that failed to make “adequate yearly progress” – a 12.7% increase over last year.

Wisconsin DPI Report DPI Press Release (151K PDF)
Doug Erickson also covered this DPI news release.

The table shows 3rd grade reading scores for all Madison elementary schools for the last seven years.
Download file

Nanette Asimov, Tanya Schevitz and Carrie Sturrock summarize the Golden State’s latest 4th and 10th grade results:

Last spring, nearly 4.8 million students in grades 2 through 11 took the exam, which is considered tough because it measures the students’ knowledge of what the state says they need to know about English, math, science and history.
Statewide, 36 percent of students scored “proficient” or “advanced” on the English portion, up from 35 percent last year. The remaining students scored below par, at “basic,” “below basic” or “far below basic.”
In math, proficiency inched up from 40.5 to 41.6 percent of students in grades 2 through 7 since last year. Older students, tested in a variety of math subjects, slipped in algebra and geometry.
Only 20 percent of low-income students were proficient in English, while among wealthier students, 50 percent were proficient. The rates were identical last year.

Student Photography: 117 pupils at John B. Dey Elementary School, armed with disposable cameras were sent to photograph the alphabet. Here’s a look at the project, from A to Z.

The WSJ Editorial page, in a wide ranging piece, discussed social promotion and the utility of summer school:

That’s because the get-tough approach – flunking students – isn’t realistic: Repeating a grade does more harm than good. Such students are much more likely to cause behavior problems, skip school and eventually drop out.
And simply advancing students to the next level – called “social promotion” – with no extra help only ensures the children will fall behind even faster the next year. Wisconsin law now prohibits social promotion out of fourth and eighth grades.
With both social promotion and grade retention discredited as phony strategies that harm, not help, student achievement, summer school starts to look like a good investme

Caroline Hendrie writes in the June 16 edition of Education Week
As a strategy for reforming secondary education in America, small schools have gotten big.
Prodded by an outpouring of philanthropic and federal largess, school districts and even some states are downsizing public high schools to combat high dropout rates and low levels of student achievement, especially in big- city school systems. For longtime proponents of small schools, the upswell in support for their ideas is making for heady times.
Despite the concept�s unprecedented popularity, however, evidence is mounting that “scaling up” scaled-down schooling is extraordinarily complex. A sometimes confusing array of approaches is unfolding under the banner of small high schools, contributing to concerns that much of the flurry of activity may be destined for disappointing results.

Continue reading High Schools Nationwide Paring Down →

“There’s a lot of latitude for teachers to do what they think is right, and there’s not a lot of commonality, consistency, across classrooms.” David Schmidt, Waukesha school superintendent in an article by Amy Hetzner.

Two fascinating posts at former SJ Mercury writer Joanne Jacobs blog:

• National Spelling Bee results, commentary from the American Literacy Union, who picketed the event (debt vs dette among other useful comments). Jackobs also writes about single mother Ashley White, a former spelling bee contestant featured in the film Spellbound.
• School Finance Post, with some interesting comments and links (California Finance and a recent Economist article).

Tom Beebe writes:

Wisconsin�s public school system is arguably the most important component
of our high quality of life. It has historically been part of the �village�
that raises intelligent, motivated, and successful participants in both
public and economic life.
The quality we have known for decades, however, is under siege. Unless we
act soon to change the way we fund public education, more schools will
close, school districts will begin to disappear, communities will wither,
and our children will lose sight of the future we promised them.

Continue reading Organizing for Adequacy →

Multi-age classrooms were the norm in education in this country 100 years ago. Bedford, Massachusetts, a small community outside Boston, MA, will begin a pilot program on multi-age classrooms next year. The recommendation was made by the Davis School Multi-Age Committee to the Bedford School Committee (School Board).

Continue reading Community Involvement Before District Proceeds with Full Implementation of Multi-Age Classroom Model →

From Dave Farber’s [IP] List (Farber is Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon): Guru Parulkar writes:

I read this posting with a lot of interest because I also grew up in India and have been following changes in US and in India (as an ordinary interested citizen) for the past 20 years since I came to this country. I was a bit surprised with the generalizations about both India and US suggested in the email from Slashdot.
India is a big country with a lot of diversity. The type of value system as well as exposure to science/engineering implied in the Slashdot posting (children writing essays about getting Nobel prize, children growing up aspiring to be pioneers in science and technology) apply to a small cross-section of the society. I don’t think it applies to India in general or even to the majority in India. It is definitely true that the large middle class in India puts tremendous emphasis on education. However, the reason for this emphasis has been that careers in engineering and medicine have been the only way to make descent living. Right or wrong (like it or not) at a very early age kids recognize (because parents and society drill it down) that unless they do well in academics, they wouldn’t be able to get into engineering or medicine and thus not have a descent life. And so kids get serious about education and they start to respect other kids who do well in the school. It is not the “love of science or innovation” that has been making people serious about education. It is simply the financial rewards down the road. A lot of us Indians here in US wonder if this academic pressure on kids in India is appropriate because this means kids study and study and don’t have time to learn, enjoy, and experience other stuff that matter too in life.

Continue reading Guru Parulkar on US Education Curriculum →

A new study of remedial programs for students with dyslexia shows “that more aggressive treatment can make dyslexic brains work the way normal brains do, activating a region that plays a vital role in reading fluency”.

Continue reading New Information about Remedial Reading Programs →