Controversy @ The Madison School Board over Discipline Policy: “Featuring the Administration as Sisyphus” (Now with Video!)

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:

As is becoming increasingly common these days however, mine turned out to be a minority view. Other Board members took turns identifying parts of the revision that they did not like, raising some concerns that they had previously expressed and some that were new. The general tenor of the comments was that the current format of the Code was fine but that Code should be stricter and that more violations should lead to mandatory recommendations for expulsion.
About an hour into the meeting, I expressed some frustration with the proceedings (since I’m just figuring this stuff out, this video starts with eight seconds of black) :
Eventually Board members settled on deep-sixing the Work Group’s proposal but adopting some (but not all) of the substantive changes reflected in the revision. For example, the aggravated theft offense was added. The change to the unintentional use of force against a staff member violation was adopted (a very good move, btw), but the change to the possession and distribution of drugs or alcohol violation was not (I think). Another change boosted the potential consequences imposed for non-physical acts of bullying or harassment.
Also on our agenda Monday night was the creation of a new Board Ad Hoc Committee on Student Discipline, Conduct and Intervention, to be chaired by Lucy Mathiak. Some Board members suggested that the revisions recommended by the Work Group and rejected by the Board might be re-considered by the members of this committee in some fashion.
I found the Board’s rejection of the proposed revisions and ad hoc amending of the existing Code an unfortunate turn of events and criticized what I described as our legislating on the fly right before the vote:

An Open Letter to the Wisconsin Read To Lead Task Force on Implementing Common Core Academic Standards; DPI: “Leading Us Backwards”

Dan Gustafson, PhD 133K PDF, via a kind email from the Wisconsin Reading Coalition:

WRC recommends reading the following open letter from Madison neuropsychologist Dan Gustafson to the Governor’s Read to Lead task force. It reflects many of our concerns about the state of reading instruction in Wisconsin and the lack of an effective response from the Department of Public Instruction.
An Open Letter to the Read-To-Lead Task Force
From Dan Gustafson, PhD
State Superintendent Evers, you appointed me to the Common Core Leadership Group. You charged that the Leadership Group would guide Wisconsin’s implementation of new reading instruction standards developed by the National Governors’ Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).
It is my understanding that I was asked to join the group with the express purpose of bringing different voices to the table. If anything, my experience with the group illustrates how very far we need to go in achieving a transparent and reasoned discussion about the reading crisis in Wisconsin.
DPI Secretly Endorses Plan Created by Poor Performing CESA-7
I have grave concerns about DPI’s recent announcement that Wisconsin will follow CESA-7’s approach to implementing the Common Core reading standards. DPI is proposing this will be the state’s new model reading curriculum.
I can attest that there was absolutely no consensus reached in the Common Core group in support of CESA-7’s approach. In point of fact, at the 27th of June Common Core meeting, CESA-7 representative Claire Wick refused to respond to even general questions about her program.
I pointed out that our group, the Common Core Leadership Group, had a right to know about how CESA-7 intended to implement the Common Core Standards. She denied this was the case, citing a “non-disclosure agreement.”
The moderator of the discussion, DPI’s Emilie Amundson, concurred that Claire didn’t need to discuss the program further on the grounds that it was only a CESA-7 program. Our Common Core meeting occurred on the 27th of June. Only two weeks later, on July 14th, DPI released the following statement:
State Superintendent Evers formally adopted the Common Core State Standards in June 2010, making Wisconsin the first state in the country to adopt these rigorous, internationally benchmarked set of expectations for what students should know and are expected to do in English Language Arts and Mathematics. These standards guide both curriculum and assessment development at the state level. Significant work is now underway to determine how training will be advanced for these new standards, and DPI is currently working with CESA 7 to develop a model curriculum aligned to the new standards.
In glaring contrast to the deliberative process that went into creating the Common Core goals, Wisconsin is rushing to implement the goals without being willing to even show their program to their own panel of experts.
What Do We Know About Wisconsin/CESA-7’s Model Curriculum?
As an outsider to DPI, I was only able to locate one piece of data regarding CESA-7’s elementary school reading performance:
4TH GRADE READING SCORES, 2007-08 WKCE-CRT,
CESA-7 IS AMONG THE WORST PERFORMING DISTRICTS.
CESA-7 RANKED 10TH OF THE 12 WISCONSIN CESA’S.
What Claire did say about her philosophy and the CESA-7 program, before she decided to refuse further comment, was that she did not think significant changes were needed in reading instruction in Wisconsin, as “only three-percent” of children were struggling to read in the state. This is a strikingly low number, one that reflects an arbitrary cutoff for special education. Her view does not reflect the painful experience of the 67% of Wisconsin 4th graders who scored below proficient on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress.
As people in attendance at the meeting can attest, Claire also said that her approach was “not curriculum neutral” and she was taking a “strong stand” on how to teach reading. Again, when I pressed her on what these statements meant, she would only reference oblique whole language jargon, such as a belief in the principal of release from instruction. When I later asked her about finding a balance that included more phonics instruction, she said “too much emphasis” had been given to balanced literacy. After making her brief statements to the Common Core group, she said she had already disclosed too much, and refused to provide more details about the CESA-7 program.
Disregarding Research and Enormous Gains Made by other States, Wisconsin Continues to Stridently Support Whole Language
During the remainder of the day-long meeting on the 27th, I pressed the group to decide about a mechanism to achieve an expert consensus grounded in research. I suggested ways we could move beyond the clear differences that existed among us regarding how to assess and teach reading.
The end product of the meeting, however, was just a list of aspirational goals. We were told this would likely be the last meeting of the group. There was no substantive discussion about implementation of the goals–even though this had been Superintendent Evers’ primary mandate for the group.
I can better understand now why Emilie kept steering the discussion back to aspirational goals. The backroom deal had already been made with Claire and other leaders of the Wisconsin State Reading Association (WSRA). It would have been inconvenient to tell me the truth.
WSRA continues to unapologetically champion a remarkably strident version of whole-language reading instruction. Please take a look at the advocacy section of their website. Their model of reading instruction has been abandoned through most the United States due to lack of research support. It is still alive and well in CESA-7, however.
Our State Motto is “Forward”
After years of failing to identify and recommend model curriculum by passing it off as an issue of local control, the DPI now purports to lead. Unfortunately, Superintendent Evers, you are now leading us backward.
Making CESA-7 your model curriculum is going to cause real harm. DPI is not only rashly and secretly endorsing what appears to be a radical version of whole language, but now school districts who have adopted research validated procedures, such as the Monroe School District, will feel themselves under pressure to fall in line with your recommended curriculum.
By all appearances, CESA-7’s program is absolutely out of keeping with new Federal laws addressing Response to Intervention and Wisconsin’s own Specific Learning Disability Rule. CESA-7’s program will not earn us Race to the Top funding. Most significantly, CESA-7’s approach is going to harm children.
In medicine we would call this malpractice. There is clear and compelling data supporting one set of interventions (Monroe), and another set of intervention that are counter-indicated (CESA-7). This is not a matter of opinion, or people taking sides. This is an empirical question. If you don’t have them already, I hope you will find trusted advisors who will rise above the WSRA obfuscation and just look at the data. It is my impression that you are moving fast and receiving poor advice.
I am mystified as to why, after years of making little headway on topics related to reading, DPI is now making major decisions at a breakneck pace. Is this an effort to circumvent the Read-To-Lead Task Force by instituting new policies before the group has finished its scheduled meetings? Superintendent Evers, why haven’t you shared anything about the CESA-7 curriculum with them? Have you already made your decision, or are you prepared to show the Read-To-Lead that there is a deliberative process underway to find a true model curriculum?
There are senior leaders at DPI who recognize that the reading-related input DPI has received has been substantially unbalanced. For example, there were about five senior WSRA members present at the Common Core meetings, meaning that I was substantially outnumbered. While ultimately unsuccessful due to logistics, an 11th hour effort was made to add researchers and leadership members from the Wisconsin Reading Coalition to the Common Core group.
The Leadership Group could achieve what you asked of it, which is to thoughtfully guide implementation of the Common Core. I am still willing to work with you on this goal.
State Superintendent Evers, I assume that you asked me to be a member of the Leadership Group in good faith, and will be disappointed to learn of what actually transpired with the group. You may have the false impression that CESA-7’s approach was vetted at your Common Core Leadership Group. Lastly, and most importantly, I trust you have every desire to see beyond destructive politics and find a way to protect the welfare of the children of Wisconsin.
Sincerely,
Dan Gustafson, PhD, EdM
Neuropsychologist, Dean Clinic

View a 133K PDF or Google Docs version.
Related:
How does Wisconsin Compare: 2 Big Goals.
Wisconsin Academic Standards

Wisconsin Teacher Content Knowledge Requirement Comparison

Wisconsin Public School Advocates to Rally at the Capitol, Saturday July 30, 3:00 PM

99K PDF, via a TJ Mertz email:

As hundreds of thousands of public school supporters gather in Washington DC the weekend of July 28 to 30, 2011, Wisconsin advocates will hold a rally in support of the Save Our Schools agenda at 3:00 PM on Saturday July 30, near the State St. entrance to the Capitol.
“Public schools are under attack. There is a need for national, state, and local action in support of our schools. Wisconsin has been ground zero in this; the Save Our Schools demands from the Guiding Principles provide a great framework to build our state movement and work to expand opportunities to learn” said education activist Thomas J. Mertz.
The Save Our Schools demands are:

Equitable funding for all public school communities
An end to high stakes testing used for the purpose of student, teacher, and school evaluation
Teacher, family and community leadership in forming public education policies
Curriculum developed for and by local school communities

Doing more with less doesn’t work. “The time to act is now. While phony debates revolve around debt ceilings, students and teachers across the country are shortchanged. We need real reform, starting with finally fixing the school funding formula, and putting families and communities first. What child and what teacher don’t deserve an excellent school?” said rally organizer Todd Price, former Green Party Candidate for Department of Public Instruction and Professor of Teacher Education National Louis University.
The event will feature speeches from educators, students, parents and officials, as well as opportunities for school advocates from throughout Wisconsin to connect and organize around issues of importance in their communities.

For more information, visit: http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/ and http://saveourschoolswisconsin.wordpress.com/
Related:

Locally, via a kind reader’s email, the Madison School District’s preliminary budget plans to spend about $362,000,000 for 25,000 students, about $14,480 per student.. The District’s budget has been largely flat for several years, after growing at 5.25% annually for some time.
Was the $5 Billion Worth It? A decade into his record-breaking education philanthropy, Bill Gates talks teachers, charters–and regrets, Mea Culpa on Small Learning Communities; Does More Money Matter?; the article mentions that we spend about $600,000,000,000 annually on public education.
How does Wisconsin compare?
Several Wisconsin Senate recall elections occur in a few weeks. (WEAC has many links along with Madison Teachers, Inc, AFT-Wisconsin and the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association.
Chris Wilson: Two “simple” graphs reveal US Federal Government cash and debt positions.
Wisconsin Ranks #4 in tax burden, Minnesota 7 and Massachusetts 11.

Madison schools resolves planning time dispute with teachers union

Matthew DeFour:

The Madison School District has reached an agreement with its teachers union over changes to planning time — a resolution Superintendent Dan Nerad said fits within the bounds of the state’s new collective bargaining law.
An earlier proposal prompted hundreds of teachers to protest at a School Board meeting in May and Madison Teachers Inc. executive director John Matthews to threaten a job action if the matter wasn’t resolved.
The issue relates to changes in the district’s 2011-13 collective bargaining agreement with MTI, which was approved in March before the state’s collective bargaining law took effect.
In the past, disagreements over contract language were often resolved through memorandums of understanding (MOUs). But once the collective bargaining law took effect June 29, districts that approved contracts after Feb. 1 couldn’t modify them through MOUs, or else they would be
Read more: http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/education/local_schools/article_82b5f386-b25e-11e0-873a-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1SblqTZYo

Wisconsin Governor Walker instructs us on future of schools; Notes on Teacher Content Knowledge Requirements

Alan Borsuk:

Scott Walker, the governor who set the stage for a burst of educational excellence? The guy who helped teachers make their work more successful and more rewarding (at least intangibly)?
Goodness, turning those question marks into periods is going to be a project. It’s hard to imagine how Walker’s standing among teachers could be lower.
But Walker thinks that will be the verdict several years from now.
By winning (as of now) the epic battle to cut school spending and erase almost all collective bargaining powers for teachers, as well as other educational battles, Walker has changed the realities of life in just about every school in the state, including many private schools.
The focus through our tumultuous spring was on money, power and politics. Now the focus is shifting to ideas for changing education itself.
So what are Walker’s ideas on those scores?
In a 40-minute telephone interview a few days ago, Walker talked about a range of education questions. There will be strong criticism of a lot of what he stands for. Let’s deal with that in upcoming columns. For the moment, I’m going to give Walker the floor, since, so far this year, the tune he calls has been the tune that the state ends up playing. Here are some excerpts:

Much like our exploding federalism, history will certainly reveal how Walker’s big changes played out versus the mostly status quo K-12 world of the past few decades. One thing is certain: the next 10 years will be different, regardless of how the present politics play out.
I found the interview comments on the teacher climate interesting. Watching events locally for some time, it seems that there is a good deal more top down curricular (more) and pedagogy (teaching methods) dogma from administrators, ed school grants/research and others.
Other states, such as Minnesota and Massachusetts have raised the bar with respect to teacher content knowledge in certain subjects.
Wisconsin teacher license information.
Related: 2 Big Goals for Wisconsin.

While other districts cut back, Madison offers summer ‘enrichment’ courses

Matthew DeFour:

On Friday morning, while her friends were at the pool or sleeping in, Jovana Aguilar was in school building a molecule out of marshmallows and toothpicks.
Over the past three weeks, Aguilar learned science through “cool experiments,” such as building paper airplanes to demonstrate Bernoulli’s principle and popping a balloon with a plastic bottle, baking soda and vinegar.
Aguilar, who just finished fifth grade at Hawthorne Elementary, is participating in the Madison School District’s summer school program for the third year in a row to boost her reading skills.
But unlike last year, when half of her morning was devoted to reading and the other half was spent playing dodgeball or board games in a recreational class, she had the opportunity this summer to take “enrichment” courses in science and world cultures.

Members chipped in $23.4 million to WEAC in 2008 union dues Dues pay exorbitant union salaries; WEAC awarded just $18,850 in scholarships out of $24 million budget

Richard Moore, via a kind reader’s email:

With the practice of paying forced union dues soon to become a relic of the past for many public employees, officials of the Wisconsin Education Association Council have reportedly contacted members in a bid to convince them to continue paying up through automatic bank withdrawals.
That’s not surprising because the revenue stream the state’s largest teachers’ union is trying to protect is substantial. In fact, the organization collected more than $23.4 million in membership dues in fiscal year 2009 from its approximately 98,000 members.
The numbers are included on WEAC’s IRS forms for the year. Fiscal year 2009 was the latest filing available. The state’s new collective bargaining law that took effect this week will end mandatory dues payments and government collection of dues for many public employees immediately and for most of the rest when current contracts expire.
According to IRS documents, the union mustered membership dues of $23,458,810 in fiscal year 2009. National Education Association revenue totaled another $1,419,819, while all revenues totaled $25,480,973, including investment income of $367,482.

Madison Area National Merit Scholars

Wisconsin State Journal:

Thirty-two area students are among 112 Wisconsin students and nearly 4,800 students nationwide who received National Merit Scholarships from U.S. colleges and universities this year.
The scholarships range in value from $500 to $2,000. The recipients were selected from 16,000 semifinalists out of 1.5 million students who took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test in 2009.
In Dane County the recipients were from Edgewood High: Catherine A. DeGuire of Verona and Eric J. Wendorf of Madison; from Madison East: Jesse M. Banks, Jillian M. Plane and Scott O. Wilton, all of Madison; from Madison Memorial: Nancy X. Gu of Madison; from Madison West: Abigail Cahill, Nicholas P. Cupery, Sujeong Jin, Peter G. Lund and John C. Raihala, all of Madison, and Al Christopher V. Valmadrid of Fitchburg; from Madison Shabazz: Isabel A. Jacobson of Madison; from Marshall High: Zechariah D. Meunier of Marshall; from Middleton High: Anna-Lisa R. Doebley, Rachel J. Schuh and Cody J. Wrasman, all of Middleton, and Danielle M. DeSantes of Verona; from Stoughton High: Matthew J. Doll and Alexandra P. Greenier, both of Stoughton; from Verona High: Jasmine E. Amerson and James C. Dowell, both of Verona, and Kathryn M. Von Der Heide of Fitchburg; from Waunakee High: Stephen J. Bormann of Waunakee; and from home schools: Greer B. DuBois, Margaret L. Schenk and Isaac Walker, all of Madison.
Outside Dane County the recipients were Madeleine M. Blain of Evansville, Julie Mulvaney-Kemp of Viroqua, Clara E. McGlynn of Reedsburg, Ryanne D. Olsen of Jefferson and Yvette E. Schutt of Janesville.

Many notes and links on National Merit Scholares, here.

Reforming Wisconsin education Gov. Scott Walker and state schools superintendent Tony Evers should be inclusive in their efforts.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Creating a new system of accountability for schools in Wisconsin could be a great help to parents and school districts and, thus, an important educational reform for the state. If the new system is fair and done right, it would provide plenty of clear information on which schools are achieving the right outcomes.
Ideally, it would measure schools not only on whether they have met certain standards but how much students and schools have improved over a certain time period. It also would measure all schools that receive public funding equally – public, charter and voucher – so that families would have the information they need to make good choices. That’s all important.
Gov. Scott Walker, state schools superintendent Tony Evers and others have signed on to create a new school accountability system and to seek approval from the U.S. Department of Education to allow the system to replace the decade-old, federally imposed one they say is broken. The feds should give that approval, and the state should move forward with this reform and others.

Student mental health: ‘Need far outweighs resources’

Matthew DeFour:

With nearly one in six students exhibiting mental health problems and fewer specialists to monitor their behavior, Madison school and community leaders are launching new efforts to better treat student mental health.
The Madison school district is expanding services this fall, and Superintendent Dan Nerad is calling for a task force from the broader community, including health care providers, to review the issue and devise solutions.
“The need far outweighs the resources that are currently available,” Nerad said.
Local experts say untreated children’s mental health problems such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress can result in lower academic performance, higher dropout rates, and more classroom disruptions, truancy and crime.
The problems are often exacerbated by childhood trauma related to poverty, domestic violence and substance abuse. Madison’s growing number of low-income students, who account for two-thirds of those exhibiting mental health problems, also face barriers to accessing mental health services, local experts and advocates say.

TJ Mertz advocates property tax increases to support additional Madison School District expenditures.

Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Evers emerges as fierce advocate of schools in face of massive cuts, privatization efforts

Susan Troller:

About a dozen members of a bipartisan, mostly volunteer organization called Common Ground file into Superintendent Tony Evers’ utilitarian conference room in downtown Milwaukee. The group is exploring how to help Milwaukee’s beleaguered schools, and it has scheduled a meeting with the head of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction as part of its research.
Tall, thin and gray haired, Evers has a boyish smile and a welcoming manner. He’s now in a white shirt and tie, sans the suit coat he wore to an earlier meeting with suburban school officials in Pewaukee.
Common Ground, a nonpartisan coalition that includes churches, nonprofits and labor unions, has come to Evers’ office today looking for advice on how best to direct its considerable resources toward helping Milwaukee students, whose performance in both traditional public schools and in taxpayer-funded voucher schools ranks at the bottom of major American cities.
After initial pleasantries and introductions are exchanged, Keisha Krumm, lead organizer for Common Ground, asks Evers a question. “At this stage we’re still researching what issue we will be focusing on. But we do want to know what you can do. What’s your power and influence?”

How does Wisconsin compare to other states and the world? Learn more at www.wisconsin2.org.

Advocating Teacher Content Knowledge: Lessons From Finland #1 – Teacher Education and Training

Bob Compton:

One of the many things I learned producing my film The Finland Phenomenon, was the importance of setting a very high standard for the education and training of teachers.
Finland’s high school teachers are required to have both a Bachelors and Masters degree in the subject they teach (e.g. – math, physics, history, etc) combined with one-year of pedagogical training with very heavy emphasis in real classroom teaching experience under the guidance of an outstanding seasoned teacher.
By contrast, most U.S. States require only a Bachelors degree from a college of education with an emphasis in the subject to be taught – and frequently that subject matter is taught by professors in the Education School, not in the actual subject department. Think of it as content and rigor “light” for teachers.
So, what should America do to apply this obvious lesson from Finland? My thoughts:
1- each U.S. State needs to cut off the supply of teachers not sufficiently prepared to teach this generation at its source. The source is colleges of education. A State legislature and Governor can change the requirements to be a teacher in their State. All it takes is courage to withstand the screams from colleges of education – the sacred cash cow of most universities.
2- To teach at the high school level, a State should require the prospective teacher to have at least an undergraduate degree in the subject they plan to teach and from the department that teaches that subject (e.g. – teaching math? Require a B.S. from the Math department).

South Korea plans to convert all textbooks to digital, swap backpacks for tablets by 2015

Zach Honig:

Well, that oversized Kindle didn’t become the textbook killer Amazon hoped it would be, but at least one country is moving forward with plans to lighten the load on its future generation of Samsung execs. South Korea announced this week that it plans to spend over $2 billion developing digital textbooks, replacing paper in all of its schools by 2015. Students would access paper-free learning materials from a cloud-based system, supplementing traditional content with multimedia on school-supplied tablets. The system would also enable homebound students to catch up on work remotely — they won’t be practicing taekwondo on a virtual mat, but could participate in math or reading lessons while away from school, for example. Both programs clearly offer significant advantages for the country’s education system, but don’t expect to see a similar solution pop up closer to home — with the US population numbering six times that of our ally in the Far East, many of our future leaders could be carrying paper for a long time to come.

Brian S. Hall has more.

Teaching and Learning in the Midst of the Wisconsin Uprising

Kate Lyman:

It all started when my daughter, also a Madison teacher, called me. “You have to get down to the union office. We need to call people to go to the rally at the Capitol.” I told her I hadn’t heard about the rally. “It’s on Facebook,” she responded impatiently. “That’s how they did it in Egypt.”
That Sunday rally in Capitol Square was just the first step in the massive protests against Gov. Scott Walker’s infamous “budget repair bill.” The Madison teachers’ union declared a “work action” and that Wednesday, instead of going to school, we marched into the Capitol building, filling every nook and cranny. The excitement mounted day by day that week, as teachers from throughout the state were joined by students, parents, union and nonunion workers in the occupation and demonstrations.
Madison teachers stayed out for four days. It was four exhilarating days, four confusing days, four stressful and exhausting days.
When we returned to school the following week, I debated how to handle the days off. We had received a three- page email from our principal warning us to “remain politically neutral” as noted in the school board policy relating to controversial issues. We were to watch not only our words, but also our “tone and body language.” If students wanted to talk about the rallies, we were to respond: “We are back in school to learn now.”

On the Milwaukee Public Schools: All hands on deck Sacrifices are needed to ensure that Milwaukee kids are educated despite state budget cuts. The district, its union and businesses should be willing to step up.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

The state budget has left Milwaukee Public Schools reeling. Meeting this challenge requires a response from the entire community.
Local businesses and foundations will be called on to do more. The Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association should make a contribution to the district’s pension plan to save teacher positions. And the district itself has to become more efficient by selling unused buildings and finding a less expensive way to feed its 85,000 students.
Of the 519 district employees being sent layoff notices, 354 would be teachers, according to Superintendent Gregory Thornton. Most of the cuts will come in kindergarten through eighth grade. And, as usual, it’s mostly teachers with the least amount of experience who will be shown the door.

Achieving cultural competency in the classroom

Susan Troller:

A former classroom teacher who grew up in the inner city in Milwaukee, Andreal Davis is the assistant director for equity and family involvement for the Madison Metropolitan School District. She is in charge of making sure resources are allocated fairly among schools, that students come to school prepared and that they have equal access to learning opportunities. And in a district where there are now more students of color than there are white students, and where the number of students from economically disadvantaged families is just a shade under 50 percent, an increasingly important part of Davis’ job is to help teachers, students and their families work together effectively.
Research shows that a strong partnership between home and school is one of the most critical elements in helping all students succeed, but when there’s little common ground or cultural understanding between teachers and the families they are serving, misunderstandings and communication failures are inevitable, and can lead to rocky relationships.

The GOP Fails Pennsylvania Kids

William McGurn:

The next time some Republican wonders why the African-American community doesn’t just come to its senses and start to vote the GOP ticket, point him to Pennsylvania.
This past November, Republican Tom Corbett successfully campaigned for governor on a platform that included giving Pennsylvania moms and dads more options for where they can send their children to school. Given that he enjoys Republican majorities in both the House and Senate, prospects for making good on this promise were, as the Philadelphia Inquirer recently put it, “once considered a slam dunk.” With just two days before the legislature takes off for the summer, however, the GOP leadership is sending mixed signals. As we go to press, school choice is in political limbo.
At the heart of this debate is Senate Bill 1. Co-sponsored by Republican Sen. Jeffrey Piccola and Democrat Anthony Williams, it would allow parents of a needy child to take the money the state pays to their home school district and apply it to the public, private or parochial school of their choice. The plan would be phased in and expanded over three years. It further includes a $25 million increase in a popular state program that gives tax credits to businesses that donate money for scholarships.

WEAC & Teacher Union Dues

Steve Gunn, via a kind reader’s email:

No wonder bullying remains a persistent problem in public schools.
When teachers engage in such behavior, kids can be expected to follow their example.
It’s become apparent that bullying may be necessary to guarantee the survival of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union.
That’s because state law will no longer bully on behalf of the union.
Until now, anyone who secured a teaching job at a Wisconsin public school automatically became a de facto member of the teachers union. Teachers had the option of avoiding official membership, but dues were still deducted from their paychecks and they were still represented by the union.

Florida Leads the Nation in the Percentage of High School Students Enrolled in High Level Classes; Some States Still Leave Low-Income Students Behind; Others Make Surprising Gains

by Sharona Coutts and Jennifer LaFleur:

Florida is a state of stark contrasts. Travel a few miles from the opulent mansions of Miami Beach and you reach desperately poor neighborhoods. There’s the grinding poverty of sugar cane country and the growing middle class of Jacksonville. All told, half the public-school students in Florida qualify for subsidized lunches. Many are the first in their families to speak English or contemplate attending college.
In many states, those economic differences are reflected in the classroom, with students in wealthy schools taking many more advanced courses.
The Opportunity Gap
But not in Florida. A ProPublica analysis of previously unreleased federal data shows that Florida leads the nation in the percentage of high-school students enrolled in high-level classes–Advanced Placement and advanced math. That holds true across rich and poor districts.
Studies repeatedly have shown that students who take advanced classes have greater chances of attending and succeeding in college.
Our analysis identifies several states that, like Florida, have leveled the field and now offer rich and poor students roughly equal access to high-level courses.
In Kansas, Maryland and Oklahoma, by contrast, such opportunities are far less available in districts with poorer families.
That disparity is part of what experts call the “opportunity gap.”

Wisconsin’s results are here, while Madison’s are here.

WEAC sues over law giving Wisconsin Governor Walker power over DPI rules

Jason Stein:

Members of state teachers unions sued Thursday to block part of a law giving Gov. Scott Walker veto powers over rules written by other state agencies and elected officials.
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal skirmishes between the GOP governor and public employee unions.
In the case, parents of students and members of the Wisconsin Education Association Council and Madison Teachers Inc. challenge the law for giving Walker the power to veto administrative rules written by any state agency. That law wrongly gives Walker that power over the state Department of Public Instruction headed by state schools superintendent Tony Evers, the action charges.
“The state constitution clearly requires that the elected state superintendent establish educational policies,” WEAC President Mary Bell, a plaintiff in the suit, said in a statement. “The governor’s extreme power grab must not spill over into education policy in our schools.”
The measure, which Walker signed in May, allows the governor to reject proposed administrative rules used to implement state laws.

Hollowing out the ivory tower

Tim Black:

‘The idea – which I have to say has affected large numbers of politicians – that you can just give people at university a certificate and, hey presto, they’ll earn this amount more and the country will be x-amount richer has always seemed so bizarre to me that I have to pinch myself that so many apparently rational people believe exactly that.’
Professor Alison Wolf is a breathless speaker – as I discovered while trying to keep up during the course of our interview. But as the author of Does Education Matter? Myths About Education and Economic Growth, and more recently of the government-commissioned Review of Vocational Education, Wolf is certainly worth listening to on the plight of British universities. And nowhere is her insight more valuable than when it comes to tackling what she has called ‘the great secular faith of our age’ – namely, the idea that education is the key to economic growth, swelling both an individual’s bank balance and expanding a nation’s GDP.

Wisconsin School District Administrative Cost Comparison

WISTAX via sp-eye:

Phil Frei and his Traveling Pie-in-the-Sky Budget Show like to compare Sun Prairie administrative costs to the state average. And we look great! That trick’s not working so well anymore. As they say in the deep south, “that dog don’t hunt”. Heck even the new associate editor for the STAR, covering the recent budget hearing, asked if we didn’t have a more realistic comparison.
Well… here’s where we rank: 45th. Not even in the top 10%. At least when we look at Administrative costs per student.

Madison spends $1003/student (7.8% of operating expenditures).

Kaleem Caire’s Speech on the Proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School to the Madison Rotary Club

Kaleem Caire, via email:

Based on current educational and social conditions, the fate of boys of color is uncertain. African American and Latino boys are grossly over-represented among young men failing to achieve academic success and are at greater risk of dropping out of school. Boys in general lag behind girls on most indicators of student achievement.

In 2009, just 52% of African American boys and 52% of Latino boys graduated on-time from Madison Metropolitan School District compared to 81% of Asian boys and 88% of White boys.
In the class of 2010, just 7% of African American seniors and 18% of Latino seniors were deemed “college-ready” by ACT, makers of the standardized college entrance exam required for all Wisconsin universities.

Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men (Madison Prep) is a public charter school being developed by the Urban League of Greater Madison. Madison Prep will serve as a catalyst for change and opportunity, particularly young men of color. Its mission is to prepare scholars for success at a four year college by instilling excellence, pride, leadership and service. A proposed non-instrumentality charter school located in Madison, Wisconsin and to be authorized by the Madison Metropolitan School District, Madison Prep will serve 420 students in grades 6 through 12 when it reaches full enrollment in 2017-2018.

Watch a video of the speech, here.

Letters to the WiSJ on Madison Teachers’ John Matthews

Merle Lebakken:

Following the exploits of Madison Teachers Inc. leader John Matthews in the State Journal makes it obvious that he is a negotiator extraordinaire.
He’s managed to have his people on one side of the “negotiating table” and at least some he helped elect on the other side, so it is not a “bargaining table” but a “collaboration table.”
Maybe, however, he has gone too far in not enthusiastically promoting measuring teacher performance, as encouraged by President Barack Obama. Now it seems Wisconsin’s taxpayers need to take back some of the functions, like measuring employee performance, usually ascribed to management but, through negotiation, given to the employee.

Thomas Kavanagh:

I appreciated the respect for John Matthews’ achievements conveyed by Madison labor mediator Howard Bellman’s comment in Sunday’s article, and his concern about the possible effect of Gov. Scott Walker’s attempt to destroy the Madison teachers union and public employee unions throughout Wisconsin:
“It would be like somebody watching all their paintings burn up… What he’s accomplished over the years would have been just a memory.”
However, that analogy fails to give consideration to the value of his work beyond creating a robust and effective union. For the artist, the joy of the creation might be lasting, but the product of his efforts would be gone. That would not be the case for what Matthew’s efforts have produced.

Bob Hartwig:

fter encouraging Madison teachers in February to stage an illegal sick-out, which robbed children of educational opportunities and caused disruption for many parents, he now says teachers are “ready to do whatever it takes” to continue the protest of state budget reductions. He was also quoted as saying; “It’s going to get down and dirty.”
Wow! This kind of rhetoric coming from a 71-year-old man who receives about $310,000 in annual income and benefits from union fees. Makes you ask the question: What is his priority?

Rotary Club Speech: Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men: Innovative Solution & First All-Male Public Charter School in Wisconsin

Madison Rotary Club:

Join us next week,
Wednesday, June 22, at the Alliant Energy Center’s Exhibition Hall as we welcome fellow Rotarian Kaleem Caire to the podium for a presentation on the features of the Madison Preparatory Academy, its timeline for implementation and a status report on where it is in the school development and approval process.
Attendees will learn why and how the Urban League hopes to lead a renaissance in K-12 education in Greater Madison, tying its charter school effort to local school improvement
initiatives, economic development projects and advancements and innovations in higher education and workforce development in Greater Madison.

Best American High Schools; Wisconsin: 12 out of 500, None from Dane County

Newsweek:

To compile the 2011 list of the top high schools in America, NEWSWEEK reached out to administrators, principals, guidance counselors, and Advanced Placement/International Baccalaureate coordinators at more than 10,000 public high schools across the country. In order to be considered for our list, each school had to complete a survey requesting specific data from the 2009-2010 academic year. In total, more than 1,100 schools were assessed to produce the final list of the top 500 high schools.
We ranked all respondents based on the following self-reported statistics, listed with their corresponding weight in our final calculation:
Four-year, on-time graduation rate (25%): Based on the standards set forth by the National Governors Association, this is calculated by dividing the number of graduates in 2010 by the number of 9th graders 2006 plus transfers in minus transfers out. Unlike other formulas, this does not count students who took longer than four years to complete high school.
Percent of 2010 graduates who enrolled immediately in college (25%): This metric excludes students who did not enroll due to lack of acceptance or gap year.
AP/IB/AICE tests per graduate (25%): This metric is designed to measure the degree to which each school is challenging its students with college-level examinations. It consists of the total number of AP, IB, and AICE tests given in 2010, divided by the number of graduating seniors in order to normalize by school size. AP exams taken by students who also took an IB exam in the same subject area were subtracted from the total.
Average SAT and/or ACT score (10%)
Average AP/IB/AICE exam score (10%)
AP/IB/AICE courses offered per graduate (5%): This metric assesses the depth of college-level curriculum offered. The number of courses was divided by the number of graduates in order to normalize by school size.

Just 12 Wisconsin high schools made the list, not one from Dane County. It would be interesting to compare per student spending (Madison spends about $14,476 per student) , particularly in light of a significant number of “southern” high schools in the top 50. Much more on United States per student spending, here. Wisconsin State Tax Based K-12 Spending Growth Far Exceeds University Funding.

Sometimes, the best we can do for kids’ education is to get out of the way and let them do it themselves.

Steve Rankin, via email:

Mikko Utevsky, 17, of Madison, decided to form a student-led chamber orchestra, so he did. Their premiere was June 17 on the UW-Madison campus, and here’s what Mikko had to say to Jacob Stockinger, a classical music blogger from Madison, at the beginning of a week of intensive rehearsal: http://welltempered.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/classical-music-qa-high-school-conductor-mikko-utevsky-discusses-the-madison-area-youth-chamber-orchestra-which-makes-its-debut-this-friday-night-in-vivaldi-beethoven-and-borodin/
Obviously, these kids did not arrive at their musical talents without adult teaching and guidance. Many of them began in their school bands and orchestras. They continue to study with their own teachers and with adult-run orchestras such as WYSO (http://wyso.music.wisc.edu/) and school-based bands and orchestras. As school funding continues to be in jeopardy, and arts programming is first on the chopping block (the MMSD strings program has been under threat of elimination a number of times and has been cut twice since most of these students began, (https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2007/01/elementary_stri_3.php, https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2006/05/speak_up_for_st.php, https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/000241.php, https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2006/05/on_wednesday_ma.php, https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2006/05/speak_up_for_st_2.php – many more citations available through SIS), the chances for a student-led ensemble such as MAYCO (Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra) to continue to thrive are also in jeopardy.

State budget will force most Wisconsin school districts to cut property taxes

Jason Stein and Karen Herzog:

The state budget bill now in Gov. Scott Walker’s hands would leave schools with roughly $900 million less in state aid and property tax authority over the next two years, state figures show.
Going beyond simple cuts in state aid to schools, the budget bill would also end up requiring many districts – perhaps two-thirds of them statewide – to cut their property tax levies, according to one analysis by a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor.
Now that the 2011-’13 budget bill stands on the verge of becoming law and the protests have died down, schools – and taxpayers – can start to digest the changes in store for them. Those range from new savings on teachers’ benefits to expansions of private school voucher programs in Milwaukee and Racine.
“We’re really entering a new phase in school funding,” said Dan Rossmiller, lobbyist for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards. “It suggests huge challenges.”
The cuts to schools are the single biggest item in the Republican budget toward closing a two-year, $3 billion budget deficit without relying on tax increases. The controversy about the cuts is likely to continue, with at least one district saying it’s considering a lawsuit.

Wisconsin Voucher debate reveals deep divisions about public schools

Susan Troller:

As of early afternoon Wednesday the fate of voucher schools in Green Bay is uncertain. Rumors are flying that the proposal to use tax dollars to pay families to send their children to private and religious schools in that city will be pulled from the state budget.
It’s been a hot topic.
The voucher story I posted on Chalkboard last week detailed Green Bay Supt. Greg Maass’ unhappy reaction to both the proposal and the abrupt legislative process that put it in the budget. It definitely struck a nerve, and drew many comments.
Some of the most interesting reactions went well beyond the issue of vouchers and whether public money should be used to fund private schools. They expressed the heart of the debate surrounding public schools, or “government” schools as some folks call them.
Are public schools failing? Who’s to blame? What responsibilities does a civil society owe to children who are not our own? What kind of reforms do parents, and taxpayers, want to see?
Here are some excerpts that are revealing of the divide in the debate:

VHOU812 wrote: …As a consumer of the public (or private) educational institutions, I am demanding more value. If it is not provided, I will push to refuse to purchase and home school. This is not what I want. I want security knowing that I am satisfied with the investment in my children’s education. I don’t get that feeling right now from publc schools, and that is the core of the problem that public schools need to fix. I also see that private institutions, by their nature, can make changes to respond to consumer demands very quickly, and it is clear public schools either can’t, or won’t.

I’m glad Susan posted these comments. Looking at the significant growth in Wisconsin K-12 spending over the past few decades along with declining performance, particularly in reading compels us all: parents, taxpayers, students, teachers, administrators and the ed school community, to think different.
Wolfram’s words are well worth considering: “You have to ask, what’s the point of universities today?” he wonders. “Technology has usurped many of their previous roles, such as access to knowledge, and the social aspects.”

Time for year-round school in Madison

Chris Rickert:

But after learning of the Madison School District’s failure to adequately boost test scores under No Child Left Behind, I had to wonder: Heat or no heat, what cause for picnicking is there in the advent of a nearly three-month long break from formal learning for brains that, in their youth, are veritable sponges for knowledge?
I’m less worried about my children, who have a standard pair of educated, middle-class parents. They probably won’t make major academic strides over the summer, but they won’t lose much ground or — worse — fill their free time picking up bad habits.
But here’s the thing about the Madison district: Increasingly, its students aren’t like my kids.
They are like the kids who live in the traditionally lower-income, higher-crime Worthington Park neighborhood. These and the kids from the tonier Schenk-Atwood neighborhood where we live share a school, but they don’t necessarily share the same social, educational and financial advantages.

Much more on the oft-criticized WKCE, here and “Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum”. It certainly is long past time for a new academic benchmark… Wisconsin students should participate in global examinations, such as TIMSS, among others.

5 reasons to believe progress is being made to address Wisconsin reading crisis

Alan Borsuk:

What if, despite everything else going on, we were able to put together a strong, multi-faceted campaign that made progress in fighting the reading crisis in our midst?
The optimist in me says it might happen, and I point to five things that are going on to support that. (Don’t worry, the pessimist in me will show up before we’re done.)
One: I attended the second meeting of Gov. Scott Walker’s Read to Lead Task Force recently. Unlike most anything else going on in the Capitol, this was a civil, constructive discussion involving people of diverse opinions. The focus of the afternoon-long session was how to improve the way teachers are trained to teach reading.
Walker and Tony Evers, the state superintendent of public instruction, disagree strongly on some major school issues, but they sat next to each other, facing university professors, teachers, reading advocates of varying philosophies, and others. There even seemed to be some emerging agreement that the state Department of Public Instruction and university leaders could and should take steps to ensure that teachers are better trained before they get into classrooms and, once there, get more effective help in continuing to develop their skills.
The broad goal of Walker’s task force is to get almost all kids reading on grade level before they leave third grade – a wonderful goal. But reaching it raises a lot of issues, including how to deal with sharply contending schools of thought on how to best teach reading.
Nonetheless, at least for an afternoon, important people were engaged in a serious discussion on a huge issue, and that seemed encouraging.

Legislative Update: Our Spending Authority Goes Up; Rewritten Charter School Bill Tiptoes Toward Plausibility

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:

There’s been a considerable legislative activity affecting our schools lately, with the Joint Finance Committee completing its work on the Governor’s proposed budget and other legislative committees active as well.
Here’s an update on two developments of particular interest to those of us in Madison – the retention of school districts’ ability to use property tax carryover authority to increase spending above otherwise applicable revenue limits and the most recent iteration of the Republican charter school expansion legislation working its way through committee.
Other legislative developments will have significant impact elsewhere in the state in the short run and could well affect Madison significantly in the longer run – I’m thinking of the expansion of voucher schools into all of Milwaukee County and Racine and perhaps Green Bay – but the two developments that will likely have a more immediate impact are my focus for today.

Peer pressure: Madison La Follette High School youth court program shows potential

Matthew DeFour:

When Madison La Follette High School senior Burnett Reed got into a heated argument with another student during his sophomore year in 2008, he faced a choice.
He could take a disorderly conduct ticket that would stay on his court record. Or he could participate in the school’s new youth court program in which a jury of fellow students would assess the case. He chose youth court and was sentenced to writing an apology letter, tutoring and four hours with a life coach.
He so liked the option he soon became a juror, and now is helping Madison West High School start its own program next year.
“It’s a better way to keep youth out of the system,” Reed said.
The approach has so much potential Madison Municipal Judge Dan Koval wants to start a similar program later this year for adult offenders, particularly those with chronic municipal violations such as retail theft, disorderly conduct, trespassing and other non-criminal offenses.

DPI Report: Madison Schools Are Out of Compliance on Gifted and Talented Education

Lori Raihala:

In response, Superintendent Nerad directed West to start providing honors courses in the fall of 2010. West staff protested, however, and Nerad retracted the directive.
Community members sent another petition in July, 2010-this time signed by 188 supporters-again calling for multiple measures of identification and advanced levels of core courses for 9th and 10th graders at West. This time there was no response but silence.
In the meantime, Greater Madison Urban League President Kaleem Caire told us: “The law is there for a reason. Use it.”
So, after years of trying to work with the system, we filed a formal complaint with the DPI in September, 2010. Little did we know what upheaval the next months would bring. In October, the district administration rolled out its College and Career Readiness Plan; teachers at West agitated, and students staged a sit-in. In February, our new governor issued his reform proposal; protesters massed at the Capitol, and school was called off for four days.
In the meantime, the DPI conducted its investigation. Though our complaint had targeted West for its chronic, blatant, willful violations, the DPI extended its audit to the entire Madison School District.

Much more on the Madison parents complaint to the Wisconsin DPI, here.

Sun Priarie Administrator Moving to Madison?

SP-EYE via a kind reader’s email:

At the last school board meeting, we learned, in a late addendum to the Personnel agenda item, that High School Assistant Principal Rainey Briggs ($75,971) is also leaving the district. Word on the street is that he has been offered a Principalship in the Madison school district. Hmmm? Don’t we have a Principal position open here in Sun Prairie? At Creekside elementary? Was Briggs interested in that position? Was he interested but Culver was not, n’est ce pas? Enquiring minds are wondering.
Briggs has developed a reputation as a charismatic, inspiring, and aspiring leader within the district and the community. We’ve heard anecdotal tributes to his efforts to work with kids at the high school and middle school level. We’re hoping we didn’t let him go without a fight. In fact, the board meeting got a little edgy when 3 board members voted AGAINST accepting his resignation. It came down to poor Terry Shimek having to cast the final vote to accept the resignation of Briggs as well as the Sound of Sun Prairie leaders who resigned amid stormy allegations. It was the right move for Shimek…they couldn’t really deny these folks…right? (although Briggs had technically committed to honoring his contract earlier this year). You can’t force people to stay when they wish to go…right?

What does the future hold for education in Wisconsin?

Alan Borsuk:

Mr. Educational Landscape Watcher here, with his jaw hanging open while he thinks about a few questions that boil down to this: What next?
In January, Gov. Scott Walker told a convention of school board members and administrators from around Wisconsin that he was going to give them new tools to deal with their financial issues. Naïve me – I thought he meant bigger hammers and saws.
It turned out Walker was thinking along the lines of those machines that can strip-mine most of China in a week.
Goodness gracious, look at where things stand less than five months later, with more earth moving and drama ahead. Every public school in Wisconsin will be different in important ways because of what has happened in Madison. The private school enrollment in the Milwaukee and Racine areas will get a boost, maybe a large one. The decisions many people make on schooling for their kids are likely to be changed by what has happened in Madison. And then there’s the future of Milwaukee Public Schools (he said with a shudder).
As the Legislature’s budget committee wraps up its work, let’s venture thoughts on a few questions:

Madison School District Dual Language Immersion Program Evaluation

Daniel A. Nerad, Superintendent:

In Winter 2011, the Center for Applied Linguistics conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the dual language immersion (DLI) programs in the Madison Metropolitan School District, including a charter school with DLI implemented K-5, three elementary schools just beginning implementation, and one middle school site with DLI in sixth grade. The goal of the evaluation was to gather sufficient information for strategic planning to adjust any program components that are in need of improvement, and to strengthen those areas of the programs that are already in alignment with best practices. This report provides feedback on student outcomes, things that are going well, and recommendations for the short-, mid-, and long-term.

Madison School District Fine Arts Task Force Update

Laurie Fellenz, Teacher Leader- Fine Arts:

High School course sequence and alignment by course title across the four large high schools is nearly complete. All course titles will be fully aligned by 2011-12. This allows us to look at fine arts courses that are being offered at all of our high schools and what courses are more building-specific. Fine Arts Leadership Teams and High School Department chairs have discussed the equity (and inequity) across the attendance areas, and these two groups will offer recommendations during the 2011- 12 school year to improve access for all students to a wide variety of high school fine arts offerings.
Through the new Curricular Materials budget process now managed by Curriculum & Assessment (formerly ELM), the purchase of the Silver Burdett Making Music series for all elementary schools began this spring. All kindergarten books have been purchased, and 1″ grade materials will be purchased with the 2011-12 Curriculum Materials budget. The decision was made to purchase one grade at a time so that all elementary schools have equitable resources.
Funds from the Curricular Materials budget and the Fine Arts Task Force allocation were used to purchase REMO World Music Drumming instruments and curriculum forall32elementaryschools. Schools were assessed on their current inventory- some schools received full sets and some schools will divide sets based on need. All schools will receive the full complement o f curriculum materials, and professional development in 2011-12 will include world music drumming and drum circles.

Much more on the Fine Arts Task Force, here.

Madison School District Literacy Program Evaluation

Lisa Wachtel, Executive Director of Curriculum & Assessment:

2010-11 was the first year in which a formal curricular review cycle has been initiated. According to the program review cycle approved by the MMSD Board of Education, literacy was the first area to be reviewed. As a part of an intensive first year (Year 1) review cycle, the Literacy Evaluation and Recommendations were presented to the Board in February, 2011. At the March, 2011 Board meeting, a panel presentation was made in addition to sharing updated action plans and budget implications. Additional budget clarifications were made at the April, 2011 Board meeting.
Recommendations Requested on June 6, 2011
It is recommended that the Board approve the Literacy Program Evaluation: Findings and Recommendations.
It is recommended that the Board approve $611,000 to support the Literacy Program Evaluation recommendations. $531,000 of this amount is included in the Superintendent’s 2011-12 Balanced Budget Funding for READ 180 in the amount of $80,000 is included in the recommended funding for additions to the 2011-12 cost-to-continue budget (memo dated May 16, 2011) from cost savings measures.
It is recommended that the Board approve the plan to purchase learning materials to support literacy in the amount of $415,000. In October, 2011, the Board requested a plan to outline the purchase. This plan supports the Literacy Evaluation Recommendations, including K-12 literacy instructional materials, Dual Language Immersion, and equity purchases. Funding for the $415,000 purchases is included in 2010-11 contingency accounts (Fund 10) transferred to Curriculum & Assessment (Fund 10) to supplement the Instructional Learning Materials Budget (ELM).
Supporting Documentation
The full report, K-12 Literacy Program Evaluation: Findings and Recommendation for Continual Improvement of Literacy Achievement & K-12 Alignment was submitted by courier to the Board on February 22, 2011. This document is in a 3-ring binder, and is not being re-sent in this packet
A summary document, titled Recommendations, Cost Considerations and Plan Description (dated March 17, 2011) provides more detail regarding how the action steps are being carried and reflects the most current budget requests totaling $611,000.

Madison School District Math Task Force Update

Lisa Wachtel, Executive Director of Curriculum and Assessment Sarah Lord, Mathematics Teacher Leader (2010-2011) Jeff Ziegler, Mathematics Teacher Leader (2011-2012) Grant Goettl, Middle School Math Specialist Resource Teacher Laura Godfrey, Mathematics Resource Teacher:

During the 2010-2011 school year, the Mathematics Division of Curriculum and Assessment (C&A) focused on implementing recommendations regarding Middle School Mathematics Specialists. Additionally, progress has been made in working towards consistent district-wide resources at the high school level.
Recommendations #1 – #5:
Recommendations #1-#5 focus on increasing mathematical knowledge for teaching in MMSD ‘s middle school teachers of mathematics. These recommendations address our workforce, hiring practices, professional development, partnerships with the UW and work with the Wisconsin DPI to change certification requirements.
The C&A Executive Director, C&A Assistant Director, Deputy Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Schools and Mathematics Instructional Resource Teacher met with Human Resources to discuss the implementation of the district-wide expectation for the hiring and retention of Math Specialists. This team created wording to be inserted into all middle school positions that state expectations for teachers involved in teaching mathematics.
The Mathematics Instructional Resource Teacher from Curriculum and Assessment has visited middle schools across Madison to share information with teaching staff and answer questions regarding the Middle School Math Specialist professional development program and the associated expectation for middle school teachers of mathematics. The resource teacher has also met with the Middle School Math Leadership Academy, and the Learning Coordinators to share information and answer questions. A website was created to provide easy access to the needed information. (A copy of the website is attached as Appendix E.)
The Middle School Math Specialist Advisory group that includes UW Mathematics, UW Mathematics Education, Education Outreach and Partnerships, and Madison Metropolitan School District has met throughout the year to provide updates, guidance to the development of the Math Specialist program, and continual feedback on the courses and implementation.
The first cohort of classes in the Middle School Math Specialist program being offered at UW-Madison began in August of20!0. During the first year, the three courses were co-taught by representatives from UW-Mathematics (Shirin Malekpour), UW- ( Mathematics Education (Meg Meyer), and MMSD (Grant Goettl). A total of22 MMSD teachers participated, with seven completing one course, two completing two courses, and ten completing all three offered courses. The topics of study included number properties, proportional reasoning, and geometry.
The first cohort will continue into their second year with eleven participants. The topics of study will include algebra and conjecture. The first cohort will complete the five course sequence in the spring of 2012.
The second cohort is currently being recruited. Advertising for this cohort began in March and sign-up began in April. This cohort will begin coursework in August of 2011. In the first year they will participate in three courses including the study of number properties, proportional reasoning, and geometry. This cohort will complete the five course sequence in the spring of 2013.
The tentative plan for facilitation of the 2011-2012 courses is as follows:

Much more on the Math Task Force, here.

Madison School District Equity Report Update

Andreal Davis, Assistant Director for Equity and Family Involvement:

The 2010 Report provides a baseline from which the MMSD will measure future progress in meeting the three goals set forth in the BOE equity policy. Data reported in The State of the District 2010 (http://boeweb.madison.k12.wi.us/files/boeffheWholeThing.pdf) informs key findings in this first annual report. Additionally, critical issues related to the specified equity goals are framed within the context of the Strategic Plan Objectives/Strategies. Outlined below, specific performance measures prescribed in the Strategic Plan will serve as indicators of progress towards meeting the MMSD equity goals.

Much more on the Madison School District’s Equity Task Force, here.

Eva Moskowitz, Harlem Success And The Political Exploitation Of Children

Leo Casey:

As educators, one of our defining beliefs is the principle that we do not use the students entrusted in our care as a vehicle for promoting and accomplishing our political agendas. We hold to this core value even when the political agendas we are pursuing involves causes that will better the lives of those young people, such as full funding for day care centers and schools. When communities and families send their young to us to be educated, they trust that we will exercise the authority given to us as teachers responsibly: we do not manipulate young people into political action they do not fully understand, but educate them into the skills and knowledge of democratic citizenship, in order that one day they will be prepared to make and act on their own informed choices of political action.
So when Eva Moskowitz and her Harlem Success Academies turned out students and parents to support the closing of district schools at the February meetings of the Panel for Educational Policy, many of us present were shocked at the way in which 5 year old and 6 year old children were sent to the microphones to speak words they clearly did not understand, put into their mouths by adults who called themselves educators, even as they ignored our most fundamental professional ethics. But if we were paying attention, we would have seen that this crass political exploitation of children is actually a consistent behavior of Moskowitz and Harlem Success.

Newspaper’s lawsuit seeks sick notes for Madison school teachers during protest

Matthew DeFour:

The Madison School District failed to follow state law when it denied the Wisconsin State Journal access to more than 1,000 sick notes submitted by teachers who didn’t show up for work in February, according to a lawsuit filed by the newspaper Thursday.
The lawsuit, filed in Dane County District Court, asks the court to force the district to release the notes under the state’s open records law, which requires government agencies to release public documents in most circumstances.
The lawsuit says the sick notes are public records because the public has a special interest in knowing how governments discipline employees, who are ultimately responsible to the public.
“We can’t know if things were dealt with appropriately if we can’t see the underlying documents on which decisions were made,” said April Rockstead Barker, the newspaper’s lawyer.
Dylan Pauly, a School District lawyer, declined comment until she had a chance to review the lawsuit.

Madison School District Final Audit Report: Gifted and Talented Standard

Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction:

On September 20,2010, eight residents of the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) filed a complaint (numerous others were listed as supporting the complaint) alleging the school district was not in compliance with the Gifted and Talented (G/T) standard, Wis. Stat. sec. 121.02(1)(t), that requires that each school board shall “provide access to an appropriate program for pupils identified as gifted and talented.” Based upon this complaint, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (department) initiated an audit pursuant to Wis. Admin Code sec. PI 8.02. The purpose ofthe audit was to determine whether the school district is in compliance with Wis. Stat. sees. 121.02(1)(t) and 118.35, and Wis. Admin. Code
sec. PI 8.01(2)(t)2. The investigation focused on three core content areas: English/language arts; science; and social studies; in particular at the 9th and 1oth grade levels, per the letter of complaint.
The department informed the school district of the audit on October 13, 2010, and requested information and documentation for key components of the G/T plan. The school district provided a written response and materials on November 29, 2010 and supplemental materials on December 21 , 2010.
On January 25 and 26, 2011, a team of four department representatives conducted an on-site audit which began with a meeting that included the school board president, the district administrator, the deputy superintendent, the secondary assistant superintendent, the executive director of curriculum and assessment, the interim Talented and Gifted (TAG) administrator, an elementary TAG resource teacher, a secondary TAG resource teacher, and legal counsel. After this meeting, the team visited East, West, LaFollette, and Memorial High Schools. At each of these sites, the team conducted interviews with the building principal, school counselors, teachers, and students. At the end ofeach ofthe two days the department team met with parents.

Statement by State Education Chiefs Supporting the National Council on Teacher Quality’s Review of Colleges of Education

Foundation for Excellence in Education, via a Kate Walsh email:

Today, the following members of Chiefs for Change, Janet Barresi, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Information; Tony Bennett, Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction; Steve Bowen, Maine Commissioner of Education; Chris Cerf, New Jersey Commissioner of Education; Deborah A. Gist, Rhode Island Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education; Kevin Huffman, Tennessee Commissioner of Education; Eric Smith, Florida Commissioner of Education; and Hanna Skandera, New Mexico Public Education Department Secretary-Designate, released a statement supporting the National Council on Teacher Quality’s colleges of education review.
“Great teachers make great students. Preparing teachers with the knowledge and skills to be effective educators is paramount to improving student achievement. Ultimately, colleges of education should be reviewed the same way we propose evaluating teachers – based on student learning.”
“Until that data becomes available in every state, Chiefs for Change supports the efforts of the National Council on Teacher Quality to gather research-based data and information about the nation’s colleges of education. This research can provide a valuable tool for improving the quality of education for educators.”

Public higher education institutions in Wisconsin and Georgia–and possibly as many as five other states–will not participate voluntarily in a review of education schools now being conducted by the National Council for Teacher Quality and U.S. News and World Report, according to recent correspondence between state consortia and the two groups.
In response, NCTQ and U.S. News are moving forward with plans to obtain the information from these institutions through open-records requests.
In letters to the two organizations, the president of the University of Wisconsin system and the chancellor of Georgia’s board of regents said their public institutions would opt out of the review, citing a lack of transparency and questionable methodology, among other concerns.
Formally announced in January, the review will rate education schools on up to 18 standards, basing the decisions primarily on examinations of course syllabuses and student-teaching manuals.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?:
Teacher colleges balk at being rated Wisconsin schools say quality survey from national nonprofit and magazine won’t be fair.

Wisconsin School districts press to reach agreements

Karen Herzog:

With deadlines looming against a backdrop of uncertainty, some area school districts are scurrying to reach agreements with employee unions, gaining concessions in benefits to avoid mass layoffs and program cuts.
A few agreements are new or extended contracts, including a two-year contract for teachers approved last week in Menomonee Falls. Others, such as an agreement approved for West Allis-West Milwaukee teachers, are more limited. School districts could have made the changes without union approval if the law largely eliminating collective bargaining for most public employees wasn’t stalled in court.
School officials also are crafting new employee handbooks to replace union contracts, outlining benefits and working conditions no longer subject to negotiations if, as expected, collective bargaining is limited to wages.
Some districts are obligated by contract to send layoff notices by June 1. Districts also must give 30 days’ notice if they want to switch to less expensive insurance plans before the new fiscal year begins July 1. Many districts have union contracts that expire June 30.

Gainful employment

Kevin P. Chavous:

Against all logic and growing opposition from both sides of the political spectrum, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) seems poised and determined to proceed with the new Gainful Employment regulations, which would serve as a guidepost for their issuance of federal student loans for private sector colleges. The proposed Gainful Employment regulations would require that career education providers and programs provide students for “gainful employment” in recognized occupations.
To determine if these programs are eligible, ED wants to tie its federal loans to students’ debt-to-income ratio as well as the repayment rates of the for-profit institution. While there has been much debate over the origin of this proposal, its impact could not be more clear: for-profit colleges would suffer and, more significantly, low-income and minority college enrollment would drop precipitously.

Call for revolution in English teaching: Professor says multilingual teachers who grew up speaking Cantonese provide a better model for Hong Kong children than native English speakers

John Carney:

English should be taught in Hong Kong by multilingual teachers, not native English speakers, according to a Hong Kong education professor who is organising an international conference on English as a lingua franca, being held in the city.
“It’s a revolutionary shift that we’re arguing for, and it’s that the multilingual way becomes the linguistic model for teaching kids English here, not that of a native English speaker,” says Andy Kirkpatrick, chair professor of English as a professional language at the Hong Kong Institute of Education.

Beyond the School: Exploring a Systemic Approach to School Turnaround

Joel Knudson, Larisa Shambaugh & Jennifer O’Day

Educators have long grappled with the challenge presented by chronically underperforming schools. Environments that consistently fail to prepare students for higher levels of education threaten opportunities for high school graduation, postsecondary education, and career success. The U.S. Department of Education reinforced the urgency of reversing sustained poor performance in early 2009 when it identified intensive supports and effective interventions in our lowest-achieving schools as one of its four pillars of education reform. However, federal and state policies have often situated the cause–and thus the remedies–for persistent low performance at the school level. This brief uses the experience of eight California school districts–all members of the California Collaborative on District Reform–to suggest a more systemic approach to school turnaround.
We explore the district perspective on school turnaround by describing several broad themes that emerged across the eight districts in the California Collaborative on District Reform. We also profile three of these districts to illustrate specific strategies that can create a coherent district-wide approach to turnaround. Building on these district perspectives, we explore considerations for turnaround efforts in the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

More than 1,700 sign up for Madison schools’ new 4K program

Matthew DeFour:

More than 1,700 students are signed up for Madison’s new 4-year-old kindergarten program next fall — many more than the district anticipated.
The district initially projected enrollment at 1,500 students, but so far has enrolled 1,730 students and counting. Parents can enroll their students in the free program at any time.
The higher number is a good thing and likely resulted from an extensive amount of community outreach, according to Deputy Superintendent Sue Abplanalp.

The story behind the Milwaukee school choice study: The results are more complicated than they are sometimes portrayed.

John F. Witte and Patrick J. Wolf:

The past few weeks have seen a lively debate surrounding the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and Gov. Scott Walker’s various proposals to expand it. It is time for researchers to weigh in.
For the past five years, as mandated by state law, we have led a national team in a comprehensive evaluation of the choice program. Our study has applied social science research methods to carefully matched sets of students in the choice program and in Milwaukee Public Schools. Whenever possible, we have used measures that are applied consistently in the public- and private-school sectors, generating true apples-to-apples comparisons.
This is what we have learned:
Competitive pressure from the voucher program has produced modest achievement gains in MPS.
The three-year achievement gains of choice students have been comparable to those of our matched sample of MPS students. The choice students are not showing achievement benefits beyond those of the students left behind in MPS.
High school students in the choice program both graduate and enroll in four-year colleges at a higher rate than do similar students in MPS. Being in the choice program in ninth grade increases by four to seven percentage points a student’s prospects of both graduating from high school and enrolling in college. Students who remain in the choice program for their entire four years of high school graduate at a rate of 94%, compared with 75% for similar MPS students.

Wisconsin Governor’s Read to Lead Task Force 5/31/2011 Meeting

via a kind reader’s email:

Notice of Commission Meeting
Governor’s Read to Lead Task Force
Governor Scott Walker, Chair
Superintendent Tony Evers, Vice-Chair
Members: Mara Brown, Kathy Champeau, Steve Dykstra, Michele Erikson, Representative Jason Fields, Marcia Henry, Representative Steve Kestell, Rachel Lander, Senator Luther Olsen, Tony Pedriana, Linda Pils, and Mary Read.
Guests: Professors from UW colleges of education
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 1:00pm
Office of the Governor, Governor’s Conference Room  115 East State Capitol  Madison, WI 53702
Welcome and opening remarks by Governor Walker and Superintendent Evers.
Introductions from task force members and guest members representing UW colleges of education.
A discussion of teacher training and professional development including current practices and ways to improve.
Short break.
A discussion of reading interventions including current practices and ways to improve.
A discussion of future topics and future meeting dates.
Adjournment.
Governor Scott Walker
Chair
Individuals needing assistance, pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act, should contact the Governor’s office at (608) 266-1212, 24 hours before this meeting to make necessary arrangements.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: An American Agenda for Education Reform; Advocating Benchmarking

Marc Tucker:

This paper is the answer to a question: What would the education policies and practices of the United States be if they were based on the policies and practices of the countries that now lead the world in student performance? It is adapted from the last two chapters of a book to be published in September 2011 by Harvard Education Press. Other chapters in that book describe the specific strategies pursued by Canada (focusing on Ontario), China (focusing on Shanghai), Finland, Japan and Singapore, all of which are far ahead of the United States. The research on these countries was performed by a team assembled by the National Center on Education and the Economy, at the request of the OECD.
A century ago, the United States was among the most eager benchmarkers in the world. We took the best ideas in steelmaking, industrial chemicals and many other fields from England and Germany and others and put them to work here on a scale that Europe could not match. At the same time, we were borrowing the best ideas in education, mainly from the Germans and the Scots. It was the period of the most rapid growth our economy had ever seen and it was the time in which we designed the education system that we still have today. It is fair to say that, in many important ways, we owe the current shape of our education system to industrial benchmarking.
But, after World War II, the United States appeared to reign supreme in both the industrial and education arenas and we evidently came to the conclusion that we had little to learn from anyone. As the years went by, one by one, country after country caught up to and then surpassed us in several industries and more or less across the board in precollege education. And still we slept.

Well worth reading. I thought about this topic – benchmarking student progress via the oft-criticized WKCE during this past week’s Madison School District Strategic Planning Update. I’ll have more on that next week.
Related: “Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum”.

University of Wisconsin Institutions to Receive Talented & Gifted Grants

Greg Bump:

Modifies the gifted and talented education grant program to allow all UW institutions to receive grants.

Wisconsin Joint Committee On Finance website.
I wonder what this means?
Some states and regions offer extensive higher education opportunities to high school students.

Madison Teachers lobby School Board to keep planning time

Matthew DeFour:

Hundreds of teachers packed the Madison School Board meeting Monday night to protest changes in their contract next year related to planning time for elementary school teachers.
Some speakers reminded the board that elementary school planning time was a key issue in the 1976 teachers strike that closed school for two weeks. Tension among teachers is already heightened because of state initiatives to curtail collective bargaining and reduce education funding.
“Compensation has been reduced, morale is low, stress is high,” Lowell Elementary teacher Bob Arnold said. “Respect and support us by preserving our already inadequate planning time.”

Madison West High School Sexual Assault

via a kind reader’s email:

Please read attached letter with information about an assault at West High today. (The body of the letter is below, for anyone unable to open the attachment.)
Dear Students, Parents/Legal Guardians:
We want to make you aware of an alleged serious sexual assault that happened at West High School on Monday, May 16. A female student reported being forcibly sexually assaulted in a stairwell by a student acquaintance. The female student first contacted the Fitchburg Police Department which then notified the school.
West High School administrators and our education resource officer are working with Fitchburg Police on the investigation. An individual has been arrested for 2nd degree sexual assault and has been taken into custody.
As we continually evaluate our safety and security procedures at West High, this incident requires staff and students to be extra vigilant in all areas of the school. West High staff will work with the district’s security coordinator and Building Services staff to examine access to all hallways, corridors, stairwells and elevators. Lighting, security cameras and building supervision are being reviewed and if changes are needed, they will be made.
This incident is deeply disturbing to us. We want to assure you that the staff at West High School will do all they can to make certain the school is safe. We are also prepared to help any student and family needing assistance as a result of this incident. They should contact any administrative staff at West HS.
If you wish to discuss safety at West High in greater detail, please contact the Superintendent.

Districts asked to name teachers who used sick time during protests

Matthew DeFour:

School districts across the state are being asked to release the names of teachers who called in sick during protests in February at the Capitol, a move that led to closures for a day or more in many districts.
It’s unclear how many of the state’s 424 districts received requests, but several conservative groups have made public records requests for teacher names. Most districts have released them.
But the Madison School District denied several requests, saying the release could risk the safety of teachers and students, and disrupt morale and the learning environment in schools.
And the s, the state’s largest teachers union, used a similar argument in asking a La Crosse County judge to quash the release of teacher names in the La Crosse and Holmen districts.
The judge recently blocked the release of names in Holmen and may rule soon on the La Crosse case.

On the Agenda Madison School District Board of Education, the Week of May 23, 2011

TJ Mertz:

I picked a bad week to start doing “On the Agenda” posts on the Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education doings. Too much going on. Given the amount to cover, I’m going to try to keep the comments and context minimal. I should also note that I haven’t yet decided how regularly I will do these again.
The details for all of the meetings are here. Here is the rundown.

Gift Card, Anyone? The Anatomy of a Fiasco

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:

I am in favor of a less adversarial and more collaborative and forward-looking relationship between the school district and MTI. I think it is unfortunate that the union seems to perceive that it is in its best interests to portray the school district administration as hostile to teachers. I would like to see a world where the union views itself less in an adversarial role as a bulwark against the administration’s exploitation of teachers and more collaboratively as partners with the district in figuring out better ways to improve student learning.
From my perspective, my proposal – which, if adopted, would only have amounted to a gesture – wasn’t intended to help persuade teachers to abandon their union. Instead, I’d hope that it may convey the message that, even when the administration and School Board disagree with teachers’ positions and adopt policies that make their jobs harder, we are not the enemy. We want to work together collaboratively in pursuit of better results for our students.

Much more, here.

Madison School District Literacy Program; 2011-12 Proposed Budget Hearing Remarks

We urge the Board of Education to approve and implement the initiatives and budget proposed for the school-wide literacy program [Public Appearance Remarks]. It is deplorable that heretofore there has been no systematic plan to address the reading and writing shortcomings of the District. These shortcomings are the most fundamental causative factor contributing to the poor achievement performance of our students. The proposed design of systemic changes to the curriculum, instructional strategies, engagement of teachers, support staff, students and parents/other adults and the realignment of financial and other resources will result in measurable student growth. Board adoption of the $650,000.00 2011-12 budget considerations is an absolute necessity of the very highest priority.
Our thanks and compliments to the Board and the administration for undertaking the assessment of literacy in the District. However, the Board must take a greatly increased leadership role in demanding the vigorous evaluation and assessment all programs, services and personnel throughout the District. There must be demonstrable commitment and evidence of the systematic implementation of the strategic objective of the five-year District Strategic Plan to address the woefully inadequate and insufficient data upon which to make decisions about curriculum, instruction and performance of students and staff.
The Board must not give any support for an increase in property taxes in finalizing the 2011-12 budget. Nor, is there any justification for using any amount of “under-levy carry-over” if such authorization should be re-instated by the state. There is no evidence to support an increase in taxes. We must be able to prioritize the expenditure of revenues available within the limits established. The Board has already demonstrated it cannot effectively manage its allocations to areas of highest need to strengthen the impact on curriculum, instruction and performance affecting student learning. Until and unless the Board can demonstrate a higher and more effective level of leadership with its decisions and priorities it cannot be trusted with more money that will only get the same results.
We support an increase in allocations for maintenance and electrical infrastructure up-grades conditional upon 1) re-allocation of existing funds to these areas; 2) clear and enumerated priorities, established in advance, for maintenance projects that are specifically related to safety issues; and 3) electrical infrastructure up-grades specifically related to priorities established for improvements and expansion of technology as identified in the Technology Plan for use in student learning, instruction, business services and communications with the public.
The Board must not give approval to the proposed amendment for providing staff with year-end bonuses. This is absolutely the wrong message, for the wrong reasons at the wrong time. It cannot be justified in ‘rewarding’ those staff who wrongfully abdicated their responsibilities in the classroom to the students; by insulting those staff who did attempt to fulfill their responsibilities; as well as insulting the parents and students harmed by those detrimental actions. It would be far better to allocate the ‘savings funds’ to resources actively and directly impacting student learning. The Board must make a commitment to providing leadership toward academic improvements and to creating a working culture of mutual trust and collaboration with employees and taxpayers.
For further information contact: Don Severson, donleader@aol.com 577-0851

How to destroy a school system

Ruth Conniff:

There is something horribly fascinating about watching Wisconsin Republicans discuss their plans for our state’s school system.
First, they swing the bloody ax:

The biggest budget cuts to our public schools in state history, nearly $900 million. Kerchunk.
A bill to create a statewide system of charter schools whose authorizing board is appointed by Scott Walker and the Fitzgeralds, and which will funnel resources out of local schools and into cheapo online academies. Kerchunk.
Lifting income caps on private-school vouchers so taxpayers foot the bill to send middle- and upper-income families’ kids to private school. Kerchunk.
Then comes the really sick part. They candy-coat all this with banal statements about “reforms” that will “empower” parents and students and improve education.

Last week, Walker went to Washington, D.C., to give a speech to school-choice advocates at the American Federation for Children. He started off by reading a Dr. Seuss book, and talking about how “every kid deserves to have a great education.”

Numbers don’t hold up for tighter school security measures

Chris Rickert:

I was surprised to learn this week that my high school occasionally brought in drug-sniffing dogs when I was a student there some 25 years ago.
That might be because they were only used after school hours. It also might be because the dogs weren’t very effective, given that I never felt discouraged from engaging in the kinds of behaviors during school hours that the dogs are presumably meant to discourage.
Neither were many of my classmates, whose on-school-property, school-hours transgressions often made my own drug-related rebelliousness look pretty lame.
But it’s not only questions about the effectiveness of siccing Fido on schools that make me wonder about a package of Madison School District security proposals sparked by new concerns over drug, gang and other criminal activity in and around schools.

School board member Ed Hughes wants to give some docked pay back to Madison teachers (Proposal Withdrawn Later in the Day)

Matthew DeFour:

Hughes is making the proposal [56K PDF Ed Hughes Amendment] as an amendment to the district’s budget.
Funding would come from the $1.3 million windfall the district will get from docking the pay of 1,769 teachers who were absent without an excuse on one or more days between Feb. 16-18 and 21.
The district closed school during those four days because of the high number of staff members who called in sick to attend protests over Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed changes to public sector collective bargaining.
“Under the circumstances it seemed to me the school district shouldn’t necessarily profit from that, because the teachers agreed to make up the time in a way that took away planning time for them,” said Hughes, who is considering a run for school board president when new officers are elected Monday.
Hughes is also proposing increasing the district’s proposed property tax levy for next year by about $2 million to pay for maintenance and technology projects and any costs associated with the district’s implementation of a state-imposed talented-and-gifted education plan.
“It seems goofy that we give away $1 million and then raise property taxes [50K PDF Ed Hughes Amendment],” board member Lucy Mathiak said.

Jay Sorgi:

If a school board member in Madison gets his way, the district would used money it saved when teachers forced schools to shut down during the budget debate to award end of the year bonuses to teachers.
WTMJ partner station WIBA Radio in Madison says that teachers in Madison would receive $200 gift cards as year-end bonuses.
“Whenever we can, we need to show some kind of tangible appreciation for the extremely hard work our teachers and staff do,” said Ed Hughes, a member of the Madison school board.
“They’ve had a particularly tough year as you know, given that they kind of became political footballs in the legislature. We’re ending up slashing their take home pay by a substantial amount, pretty much because we have to.”

Additional links:

David Blaska adds quotes from Mr. Hughes, here.
School board member withdraws controversial gift card proposal.
Don Severson talks with Vicki McKenna on the proposal (35mb .mp3)
What’s behind the teacher gift card proposal? by Susan Troller
TJ Mertz summarizes today’s brief Madison School District budget meeting.

Related: 5/26/2005 MTI & The Madison School Board by Ed Hughes.

An Open Letter to Wisconsin Governor Walker about His School Choice Speech to the American Federation for Children

Kim Grimmer:

Dear Governor Walker:
I visited the McIver Institute website to view the speech on your plans to expand school choice in Wisconsin which you gave to the American Federation for Children on May 9th. I have a few questions. If you want to just post your responses below in the comments section of this blog, that would be super! Thanks in advance.
1. Did you use a teleprompter? I don’t think I saw you look at your notes more than once or twice in the thirty-three minute speech. If you gave that speech just winging it, I am very impressed. (When you ate David Gregory’s lunch in his interview of you, I also gave you credit where it was deserved.) My one (very small) constructive criticism of your speaking style is to suggest that you cut back on nodding your head up and down “yes” when applause is washing over the podium. It makes you look a little bit like Dan Aykroyd in the Blues Brothers, and a little too self-congratulatory. On the other hand, if you make it to the presidency some day, and Mr. Aykroyd can lose some weight, he will probably be all set for a return gig on SNL.

Democrats Want to Direct Additional Wisconsin Taxes to K-12 Spending

Andy Szal:

Assembly Democrats today proposed using more than half of the new money in last week’s bolstered revenue projections to increase K-12 funding in the state budget, charging that Republicans have failed to distinguish between priorities that can wait and those that cannot.
“We are actually fighting for the very future of public education,” Rep. Fred Clark, D-Baraboo, said at a press conference outside the Capitol this morning. Clark is running against GOP Sen. Luther Olsen in a potential recall election.
Dems proposed directing $356 million more toward school aids in the budget after LFB projections added $636 million to state coffers over the next biennium last week. Their proposal would also reserve $200 million of that revenue to repay the Patients Compensation Fund, $100 million to pay down some state debt and $20 million to increase aid to technical colleges.

Wisconsin State Tax Based K-12 Spending Growth Far Exceeds University Funding.
Understanding UW Debate: Relative State Support Down, State Regs Remain.

Know Your Madisonian: 40-year teacher has seen many changes

Matthew DeFour:

Of the six Madison School District principals retiring this year, Cathy McMillan has logged the most years of service with the district at 39 years.
Her 40-year career in education began as a sixth-grade teacher in Baltimore. Since moving to Madison in 1972, she has taught at the elementary, middle and high school levels, worked in district administration, and served as principal at Hawthorne Elementary School and for the past four years at Franklin Elementary School.
Q: Why did you decide to become an educator?
A: I remember my sixth-grade and first male teacher, Mr. Wiskita, inspired me to pursue my interest in math and science. Once I got into the classroom I was hooked. I wanted to see that all students enjoyed learning — especially math. I wanted girls to love math and consider math-related careers.

Madison schools ‘don’t want to wait’ for a crisis

Matthew DeFour:

Responding to an increase in violence, drugs and gang activity in and around schools, the Madison School District is considering a broad effort to improve building security, including the use of drug-sniffing dogs in high schools next year.
The district also is proposing to lock the main entrances of middle school buildings during the day. Other recommendations include redesigning main entrances at West and Memorial high schools and adding surveillance cameras to all elementary and middle schools, district security coordinator Luis Yudice said.
“We are not doing this because we believe we have severe problems in our schools (or) because we experienced a tragedy in our schools,” Yudice said. “We don’t want to wait until there’s a crisis. We want to get ahead of the game.”

School choice advocates spend freely on politics, WEAC Spending

Susan Troller

A rural legislator who received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from out-of-state school choice advocates took flak back home for supporting expansion of a Milwaukee voucher program when his own school district is struggling financially.
According to a story in the Sauk Prairie Eagle last week, an aide to Rep. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, had to use a gavel to bring order back to a budget listening session at Sauk Prairie Memorial Hospital on May 6.
Marklein, a freshman Republican legislator, was asked if campaign contributions were influencing his support for two pieces of recent school choice legislation which provide public tax dollars for families to spend in private schools in Milwaukee. This, at the same time that the River Valley School District, which Marklein represents, has been forced to cut programs and staff and is facing more cuts in Gov. Scott Walker’s budget.

How much do election-year firewalls cost to build? For the state’s largest teachers union, $1.57 million.
That’s how much the Wisconsin Education Association Council said last week it will spend trying to make sure four Democratic state senators are re-elected – enough, WEAC hopes, to keep a Democratic majority in the 33-member state body.
Although there are 15 Democratic candidates running for the state Senate, and 80 Democrats running for the state Assembly, the latest WEAC report shows that the teachers union is placing what amounts to an “all in” bet on saving just four Democratic senators who are finishing their first terms.

Wisconsin Teachers Union Tops Lobbying Expenditures in 2009, more than Double #2

Wisconsin Senate Bill 95 Testimony

TJ Mertz:

Thank you for this opportunity to testify on Senate Bill 95.

Due to time limitations — both the time allotted here and the very, very short time between the release of the Bill on Friday and the scheduling of this hearing for today — I will be confining myself to only two of the topics covered in this wide ranging measure. Those are the dilution of the Student Achievement Guaranty in Education (SAGE) and the use of student standardized test scores as a determinant of educator employment conditions. I will note that I believe every section of this Bill should be thoroughly sifted and winnowed.

Before directly addressing the proposals on SAGE and the use of student standardized test scores, I’d like to say a few things about the broader trend in educational thinking and policy in Wisconsin.

Not too long ago Senator Olson chaired a Special Committee on Review of State School Aid Formula. I sat though most of the meetings of that committee. Although little came of it, there was a sense of optimism and ambition in the work of that committee, a sense that we can and should do better. This spirit was captured in the title of the presentation by Professor Alan Odden “Moving From Good to Great in Wisconsin: Funding Schools Adequately and Doubling Student Performance,” (paper of the same title here) . It should be added that Doctor Sarah Archibald, who is anow dvising Senator Olson, was part of that work.

Much more on Wisconsin Senate Bill 95, here.

Madison Edgewood High closed after student’s death; school also deals with unrelated security issue

Matthew DeFour:

Edgewood High School closed Monday as students and parents grieved the unexpected death of a student Sunday, and school officials and police dealt with what they said was an unrelated security concern.
The death occurred the same day school officials met with parents to discuss concerns related to graffiti found in a bathroom Friday, according to emails Edgewood High School President Judd Schemmel sent to parents over the weekend.
“We don’t have any reason to believe the two are connected,” Madison Police Capt. Joe Balles said Monday, referring to the death and the security issue.
School officials did not tell parents that they decided to close school until late Sunday after learning of the student’s death, according to emails sent to parents.

Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men’s Website

Madison Preparatory Academy, via a Kaleem Caire email:

ased on current educational and social conditions, the fate of boys of color is uncertain. African American and Latino boys are grossly over-represented among young men failing to achieve academic success and are at greater risk of dropping out of school. Boys in general lag behind girls on most indicators of student achievement.
In 2009, just 52% of African American boys and 52% of Latino boys graduated on-time from Madison Metropolitan School District compared to 81% of Asian boys and 88% of White boys.
In the class of 2010, just 7% of African American seniors and 18% of Latino seniors were deemed “college-ready” by ACT, makers of the standardized college entrance exam required for all Wisconsin universities.
Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men (Madison Prep) is a public charter school being developed by the Urban League of Greater Madison. Madison Prep will serve as a catalyst for change and opportunity, particularly young men of color. Its mission is to prepare scholars for success at a four year college by instilling excellence, pride, leadership and service. A proposed non-instrumentality charter school located in Madison, Wisconsin and to be authorized by the Madison Metropolitan School District, Madison Prep will serve 420 students in grades 6 through 12 when it reaches full enrollment in 2017-2018.

Wisconsin Voucher program needs accountability

Tony Evers and Howard Fuller:

The children of Milwaukee deserve a quality education regardless of whether they attend Milwaukee Public Schools, a charter school or a private school through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.
A key element to support quality is transparency. Clear, easy to understand and readily available information, including test score results, helps parents and the public evaluate their schools. Traditional public and charter schools throughout the state have been using publicly reported test score results and other data to drive school improvement for years. This transparency was extended to the voucher program through laws enacted in the 2009-’11 budget.
This fall, for the first time, students attending private schools through the state’s voucher program had their academic progress assessed with the same statewide tests as their public school peers. Results reported this spring showed that some public, charter and private schools in Milwaukee are doing very well, but too many are not providing the education our children need and deserve.
We believe that students in the voucher program, receiving taxpayer support to attend private Milwaukee schools, must continue to take the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination. Standardized tests, including the WKCE, do not paint an entire picture of a student, and many private schools participating in the voucher program take other quality tests. We need to put all the schools in MPS, charter and choice programs on a common report card.

On “Parents with Options”

Patrick McIlheran:

A “dagger,” said the well-meaning man, “in the heart of public education.” That man, who superintends Green Bay’s public school system, was reacting to word that Gov. Scott Walker proposed letting parents statewide have the same option poor Milwaukeeans now have – to take their state school aid to a private school, if they choose it.
Parents with options: That was the violence that Greg Maass, that superintendent, was talking about. I don’t mean to single out Maass. He colorfully phrased the apocalyptic view that many others had toward Walker’s idea. A writer for The Progressive, the left-wing Madison magazine that figures we peaked in about 1938, tiresomely said it was “war on education.”
Right: To increase options is to war on education. Actually, though, that is the heart of the complaint of the public school establishment. Giving families more control over where they can get a publicly funded education necessarily means less control for those in charge of what had been the only place you could get one.
But will Walker’s idea kill off public education? Unlikely: Incumbent school systems already live with publicly funded competition.

Wisconsin school districts rank low on transparency

Kevin O’Reilly:

When it comes to transparency, Wisconsin school districts are like the kids who spent all night playing video games and the next morning pray that their teachers won’t call on them in class. They are falling behind, offering few of the answers that parents and taxpayers deserve.
Wisconsin’s 442 school districts have earned an overall grade of D on disclosure, according to an analysis conducted by Sunshine Review. The analysis tests the information publicly available on district websites against a 10-point transparency checklist in areas ranging from budgets to criminal background checks on employees.
The Madison Metropolitan School District – one of the state’s largest – did a little better, earning a C-minus.
Want to know basic information, such as what taxes are levied by your school district or how much money it receives from the state and the federal government? Sorry, but chances are you live in a district that does not list tax data on its website – 73% fail to do so.
Nearly two-thirds of school districts neglect to post their current budget along with budgets from previous years so taxpayers can compare spending from year to year. Less than 2% of districts post audits of their finances and performance online or disclose a schedule of upcoming audits.

Madison school officials want new standardized tests

Matthew DeFour:

Madison students are slated to get a double dose of standardized tests in the coming years as the state redesigns its annual series of exams while school districts seek better ways to measure learning.
For years, district students in grades three through eight and grade 10 have taken the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE), a series of state-mandated tests that measure school accountability.
Last month, in addition to the state tests, eighth- and ninth-graders took one of three different tests the district plans to introduce in grades three through 10. Compared with the WKCE, the tests are supposed to more accurately assess whether students are learning at, above or below grade level. Teachers also will get the results more quickly.
“Right now we have a vacuum of appropriate assessment tools,” said Tim Peterson, Madison’s assistant director of curriculum and assessment. “The standards have changed, but the measurement tool that we’re required by law to use — the WKCE — is not connected.”

Related Links:

The WKCE has been used for the District’s “Value Added Assessment” progam
The WKCE has been often criticized for its lack of rigor: Wisconsin’s Low State Test Score Standards (“The Proficiency Illusion”) by Alan Borsuk.
Many links on the WKCE.
Clusty Search: EXPLORE test; Blekko Search.
Clusty Search: Measures of Academic Progress (MAP); Blekko Search.

I’m glad that the District is planning alternatives to the WKCE.

Wisconsin Gov. Walker takes fight to privatize education to D.C.

John Nichols:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker continues to court national support for an extreme agenda of attacking public employees and public services while diminishing local democracy and shifting public money to private political allies. Despite the fact that Walker’s moves have been widely condemned in his home state, the hyper-ambitious career politician has repeatedly suggested that he will not moderate his positions because he wants to shift the tenor of politics and policymaking far beyond Wisconsin.
Walker’s stance has earned him talk as a possible dark-horse contender for a chance at the 2012 Republican nod, and the governor has not discouraged it.
To that end, Walker was in Washington Monday night to deliver a keynote address at the innocuously named American Federation for Children’s “School Choice Now: Empowering America’s Children” policy summit. It’s actually a key annual gathering of advocates for privatizing public education, and of some of the biggest funders of right-wing political projects nationally.
The appearance comes at a time when education cuts are becoming a front-and-center issue, as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has stirred an outcry in the nation’s largest city by proposing to lay off thousands of teachers.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s school choice bills face some hurdles

Susan Troller:

Republican Gov. Scott Walker will be on a national education stage tonight to tout his efforts to expand charter school and voucher programs, but he is running into obstacles back home, and not just from those you might expect.
At an Assembly Education Committee hearing last week, for example, a bill Walker backs that would allow parents of special education students to use state tax dollars to pay for private school tuition hit significant roadblocks. In fact, the Republican chair of the committee, Rep. Steve Kestell of Elkhart Lake, called the funding mechanism for the legislation in its current form a “fatal flaw” in a telephone interview Friday.
“The bill is an intriguing proposal,” Kestell says. “Where we have a big challenge is how to pay for it.”
Kestell and other representatives grilled the authors of the bill during committee testimony. The language of the proposal appears to be taken fairly literally from generic legislation used in other states that have passed special education voucher programs. Kestell says the legislation would have to be “Wisconsinized” to be acceptable.
The bill was also sharply criticized by disability rights groups, who say it would strip hard-won legal rights from families with special-needs children, and by the state Department of Public Instruction, which faults the bill for demanding no accountability from private schools for actually providing the special education services that would be the basis for the vouchers.

Wisc., Pa. governors to address pro-school voucher nonprofit; union leaders plan protest

Associated Press

Two Republican governors are scheduled to speak at a Washington conference hosted by a nonprofit that pushes for private school vouchers and charter schools.
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania will address the American Federation for Children’s second annual policy summit Monday.
Both are expected to talk about school choice. Walker has proposed expanding a school voucher program in Milwaukee. Corbett is proposing cutting $1.6 billion from public education while also pushing for vouchers, which would allow students in poor-performing public schools to transfer to private schools.
Union leaders and other activists are planning a rally outside the summit, which will also feature former District of Columbia schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. Opponents say the federation is trying to “dismantle public education.”

More, here.

What’s Bugging Madison Teachers, Inc. Executive Director John Matthews?

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:

In an article about teacher retirements in the State Journal a couple of weeks ago, Madison Teachers Inc. Executive Director John Matthews had some harsh comments about the Madison school district and school board. Referring to the Teacher Emeritus Retirement Program, or TERP, Matthews said, “The evidence of the ill will of the board of education and superintendent speaks for itself as to why we have grave concern over the benefit continuing. . . . They tore things from the MTI contract, which they and their predecessors had agreed for years were in the best interest of the district and its employees.”
In an article in Isthmus last week, Lynn Welch followed up with Matthews. Matthews comes out swinging against the school district in this article as well, asserting, “The bargaining didn’t have to [involve] so much animosity. . . . If they wanted to make revisions, all they had to do is talk with us and we could have worked through something that would be acceptable to both sides. But they didn’t bother to talk about it. You don’t buy good will this way.” While the contract includes very significant economic concessions on the part of the teachers, Matthews expressed unhappiness with the non-economic changes as well, labeling them “inhumane.”
In the Isthmus article, Matthews asserts that the changes in the collective bargaining agreement “show how Walker’s proposed legislation (still tied up in court) has already produced an imbalance of power forcing unions to make concessions they don’t want to achieve a contract deal.”
………
The collective bargaining process is useful because it provides an established framework for hammering out issues of mutual concern between the school district and its employees and for conflict resolution. However, if the collective bargaining agreement were to disappear, the school district wouldn’t immediately resort to a management equivalent of pillaging the countryside. Instead, the district would seek out alternative ways of achieving the ends currently served by the collective bargaining process, because the district, like nearly all employers, values its employees and understands the benefits of being perceived as a good place to work.
But when employers aren’t interested in running sweat-shops, organizations set up to prevent sweat-shop conditions aren’t all that necessary. It may be that John Matthews’ ramped-up rhetoric is best understood not as a protest against school district over-reaching in bargaining, since that did not happen, but as a cry against the possibility of his own impending irrelevance.

Chicago Study Finds Mixed Results for AVID Program

Sarah D. Sparks, via a kind reader’s email:

Individual interventions intended to improve academic skills, such as the popular Advancement Via Individual Determination, or AVID, program, may not secure a student’s path to graduation and college without a schoolwide structure to support it, according to a study from the Consortium on Chicago School Research.
In a report set for release in the fall and previewed at the American Educational Research Association convention in New Orleans in April, researchers analyzed how AVID, a study-skills intervention for middle-achieving students, played out in 14 Chicago high schools. They found AVID participants in 9th grade gained little advantage that year over peers not taking part in the program, and remained off track for graduation and college.
The study highlights a potential pitfall for the dozens of student-based interventions aiming to scale up nationwide through private support and programs like the federal Investing in Innovation, or i3, program: As programs move out of the schools for which they were originally developed, their success becomes increasingly dependent on individual schools’ context and capacity.

Madison School District AVID information.

Madison Preparatory Academy Finance Discussion with the Madison School Board

Madison School District 60K PDF:

The review of resources moving forward to be allocated for Madison Prep need further conversation for Administration to gain further direction. At the February 28, 2011 meeting dealing with Madison Prep differing ideas were talked about by various individuals as to the best way to deal with Madison Prep. In order to better understand the direction the board would like administration to head financially with this school, an understanding of what has been done in the past is necessary.
When the finances were completed for Badger Rock, they were put together with the express direction of the majority of the Board that they should break even and not cause reductions in other areas of the district budget. This was accomplished by transferring resources from Sennett Middle School specifically as those kids were moved from Sennett to Badger Rock. This worked for Badger Rock because they defined an attendance area, and agreed that 80% or 40 kids would be from the Sennett attendance area.
For Madison Prep, the issue of transfer becomes more difficult as they will technically pull students from all of our Middle School attendance areas. The amount of funds we are able to segregate for transfer with this model are much less if we are under the same circumstances where we should have a program that breaks even or doesn’t cause reductions in other areas of the budget.

Comments on the Madison School District’s Literacy Initiative and Budget Proposal

First of all, our thanks and compliments to you and the administration for undertaking the assessment of literacy in the District. Thanks also to staff and outside advisors for their contributions to making the Report and Recommendations the most meaningful and significant direction for systemic change toward achieving measurable results in student achievement and staff performance in the District’s recent history.
We urge the Board of Education support of the Literacy Report AND adoption of the recommendations for implementation of the initiatives and for the budget proposed in the Superintendent’s Preliminary Budget for 2011-12. It is vital for the Board to support the direction of the initiatives for balanced literacy with integrity at all grades levels of the District. It is deplorable that heretofore there has been no systematic plan to address the reading and writing shortcomings of the District that are the most fundamental causative factor contributing to the “achievement gap”. Finally, we have pro-active leadership from Dr. Sue Abplanalp, who has a full grasp of the organizational development and change processes critical and significant to the implementation and sustainability of difference- making strategies. The proposed design of systemic changes to the curriculum, instructional strategies, engagement of teachers, support staff, students and parents/other adults and the realignment of financial and other resources will result in measurable student growth. Board adoption of the $650,000.00 2011-12 budget considerations is an absolute necessity of the very highest priority. We urge you to get on with it. Thank you.
For further information contact: Don Severson, donleader@aol.com 577-0851
Print version: 222K PDF

Teachers, MTI head should offer apologies

Tom Consigny:

The April 28 State Journal editorial urged punishment of sick note scammers (some teachers and doctors during the recent protests), and included a column by Chris Rickert titled “Don’t cry for teachers who choose early retirement.” Many taxpayers in Madison and Wisconsin would say “amen.”
It’s ironic and hypocritical that a national radio ad expresses support for Teacher Appreciation Week and touts teachers so soon after over 1,700 Madison teachers didn’t show up for work — 84 of them turning in fraudulent sick notes. The teachers used students as pawns at protest marches and contributed to protester damage at our Capitol.
In the minds of many property taxpayers and even some students, teachers have lost much respect and trust. This could be reversed if teachers and their arrogant union boss John Matthews would express in a public statement regret for their selfish and illegal actions.

Questions & Suggestions for the Madison School District’s Innovation & Alternative Programs

225K PDF: As a result of the presentations and discussion at the first Committee meeting I have some questions and suggestions I want to share with you.
1. Regarding the “Charge” for the Committee: Is the identification and planning for expansion limited to “programs and educational options”?
Recommended suggestions: Think beyond programs, services and projects for processes to affect ‘systemic’ changes.
Much more on the Madison School District’s Innovation & Alternative Programs Initiative, here.

Questions and Concerns Regarding the “Findings and Recommendations” of the MMSD K-12 Literacy Program Evaluation report

The following questions and concerns are submitted to you for your consideration regarding the “findings and recommendations” of the MMSD K-12 Literacy Program Evaluation report:
1. What findings and recommendations are there for ‘year-around’ literacy experiences to help mitigate ‘losses’ over the summer months in achievement gains during the traditional academic year?
Although “summer loss” was not a particular focus of discussion during the evaluation process, there are several ways in which the recommendations address reducing the impact of summer reading loss. These include:
Recommendation I – curricular consistency will provide for a more seamless connection with content and instruction in summer school, Saturday school (pending funding) and after school supports.
Recommendation II – more explicit instruction focused in early grades will allow students to read for enjoyment at earlier ages.
Recommendation III – a well-developed intervention plan will follow a student through summer school and into the following academic year
2. What are the findings and recommendations regarding parental (significant adults in student’s life) participation, training, evaluation and accountability in the literacy learning process?
Parental participation opportunities to support their children’s enjoyment and achievement in literacy include:
Family Literacy Nights at various elementary schools and in collaboration with Madison School and Community Recreation. Town Hall Meetings that provide opportunities for families to share pros and cons of literacy practices at school and home.
Literacy 24-7: Parent training for Spanish speaking families on how to promote literacy learning. Read Your Heart Out Day: This event builds positive family, community and school relationships with a literacy focus and supports both the family involvement and cultural relevance components of the Madison Metropolitan School District Strategic Plan.
Tera Fortune: Professional development for parents about the Dual Language Immersion Program with a focus on bi-literacy throughout the content areas. MALDEF Curriculum Training: Nine-week training covering a variety of topics to assist parents in sharing the responsibility of student success and how to communicate effectively in schools.
Regular column in Umoja Magazine: Forum to inform families and community members about educational issues through African American educators’ expertise. Several columns have focused on literacy learning at home.
Training is provided for parents on how to choose literature that:
Has positive images that leave lasting impressions
Has accurate, factual information that is enjoyable to read
Contains meaningful stories that reflect a range of cultural values and lifestyles
Has clear and positive perspective for people of color in the 21st century
Contains material that is self affirming Promotes positive literacy learning at home
Evaluations of the Read Your Heart Out and Family Literacy Night were conducted by requesting that participating parents, staff, students and community members complete a survey about the success of the event and the effects on student achievement.
3. What are the consequential and remediation strategies for non-performance in meeting established achievement/teaching/support standards for students, staff and parents? What are the accompanying evaluation/assessment criteria?
A District Framework is nearing completion. This Framework will provide clear and consistent expectations and rubrics for all instructional staff and administrators. Improvement will be addressed through processes that include the School Improvement Plans and staff and administrator evaluations processes.
4. Please clarify the future of the Reading Recovery program.
MMSD proposes to maintain Reading Recovery teachers and teacher leaders as an intervention at grade 1. There are currently two Reading Recovery teacher leaders participating in a two-year professional development required to become Reading Recovery teacher leaders. One of these positions will be certified to support English Language Learners. The modifications proposed include: 1) targeting these highly skilled Reading Recovery teachers to specific students across schools based on district-wide data for 2011-12 and 2) integrating the skills of Reading Recovery staff into a comprehensive intervention plan along with skilled interventionists resulting in all elementary schools benefiting from grade 1 reading intervention.
5. How will the literacy learning process be integrated with the identification and development of Talented and Gifted (TAG) students?
The development of a balanced, comprehensive assessment system will result in teachers having more frequent and accurate student data available to tailor instruction. K-12 alignment uses tools such as Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) and Educational Planning and Assessment System (EPAS) are being implemented in Spring, 2011.
The Response to Intervention model is based on evidence-based instruction and responds to students who need additional challenge and/or support.
6. What will be the 2010-2011 budgetary priorities and strategies for undertaking the literacy program and resources recommendations outlined in the report?
PreK-12 literacy will be a priority for the 2011-12 budget process. In addition to the prioritization of funding within our budget parameters, MMSD is in the process of writing a major grant (Investing in Innovation – i3) to support the recommendations of the literacy evaluation as a key strategy to close achievement gaps and improve literacy for all students to be ready for college and/or careers.

Reality Check: Milwaukee Exceed’s Madison’s Black Not Hispanic 4 Year High School Graduation Rate: 59.5% to 48.3%

Andrew Shilcher, via email:

In response to the press release that the DPI put out today, I did some digging to see where Madison and Milwaukee stacked up. You can check out how each district breaks down for yourself by following the links at the bottom, but here are some of the highlights (if you want to call them that)
According to WINSS…
The 4 year graduation rate for Black Not Hispanic students in MMSD for the 2009-2010 school year was 48.3%.
The 4 year graduation rate for Black Not Hispanic students in MPS for the 2009-2010 school year was 59.5%.
The 4 year graduation rates for Hispanic students in MMSD and MPS for the 2009-2010 school year are comparable at 56.7% in MMSD and 59% in MPS.
The statewide average 4 year graduation rate for Black Not Hispanic students for the 2009-2010 school year was 60.5%.
The statewide average 4 year graduation rate for Hispanic students for the 2009-2010 school year was 69%.
I won’t go into the difference between the 4 year rates and Legacy rates, but you can check those out at the links below too. 4 year rates place students in a cohort beginning in their first year of high school and see where things stand within that cohort 4 years later. Legacy rates are a yearly snapshot of the number of graduates for a year compared to the number of students expected to graduate high school for that given year. For a further explanation of this refer to http://dpi.wi.gov/spr/grad_q&a.html.
Here is the link to the press release:
http://dpi.wi.gov/eis/pdf/dpinr2011_43.pdf
Here is the link to MMSD WINSS statistics:
http://data.dpi.state.wi.us/Data/HSCompletionPage.aspx?GraphFile=HIGHSCHOOLCOMPLETION&S4orALL=1&SRegion=1&SCounty=47&SAthleticConf=45&SCESA=05&FULLKEY=02326903““&SN=None+Chosen&DN=Madison+Metropolitan&OrgLevel=di&Qquad=performance.aspx&Group=RaceEthnicity
Here is the link to MPS WINSS statistics:
http://data.dpi.state.wi.us/data/HSCompletionPage.aspx?GraphFile=HIGHSCHOOLCOMPLETION&S4orALL=1&SRegion=1&SCounty=47&SAthleticConf=45&SCESA=05&FULLKEY=01361903““&SN=None+Chosen&DN=Milwaukee&OrgLevel=di&Qquad=performance.aspx&Group=RaceEthnicity

Would improved TAG program hurt other Madison School District Programs?

Chris Rickert:

Just when you thought the Madison School District had enough on its plate — perennially tight budgets, teachers incensed at Gov. Scott Walker’s union-busting, minority achievement gaps — it’s under a gun of a different sort:
Get your program for talented and gifted, or TAG, students in order, the state told the district in March, after a group of parents complained their kids were not being sufficiently challenged in the classroom.
I am dubious of efforts to devote additional time and money to students who already have the advantage of being smart — and often white and upper-middle class — and who have similarly situated parents adept at lobbying school officials.
Money, time and effort generally not being unlimited commodities in public school districts, the question over what is to be done about Madison’s TAG program strikes me as one of priorities.
Improving TAG offerings would seem to require an equal reduction in something else. And maybe that something else is more important to more students.
Not that it’s likely anyone on the School Board would ever acknowledge any trade-offs.
It’s a “false dichotomy,” said School Board member Ed Hughes, and “not an either/or situation.” Can the district be all things to all people? I asked. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

Much more on the Talented & Gifted Wisconsin DPI complaint, here.

John Matthews rips MTI contract concessions to the Madison School District

Lynn Welch:

A dispute has developed between Madison teachers and the school district over changes to contracts secured during quickie negotiations in March. John Matthews, executive director of Madison Teachers Inc., is upset about what he calls an “unfair and unreasonable” process.
“The bargaining didn’t have to [involve] so much animosity,” says Matthews. “If they wanted to make revisions, all they had to do is talk with us and we could have worked through something that would be acceptable to both sides. But they didn’t bother to talk about it. You don’t buy good will this way.”
Elsewhere, in an interview with the Wisconsin State Journal, Matthews referred darkly to “the ill will of the board of education and superintendent” toward his members, as shown in these contract talks.
But school board members and district administrators take a different view, saying Matthews and his staff were at the bargaining table and agreed to all changes made to the contracts during an all-night negotiation that ended March 12; MTI members ratified the deal the next day. School Board President Maya Cole suggests that Matthews now has “buyer’s remorse.”

Chicago Urban Prep charter school seniors get into Ivy League schools

Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, via a kind reader’s email:

Urban Prep Academy will mark another first this year — the city’s all-male, all-African-American charter high school will be sending its first students to an Ivy League school in the fall.
Urban Prep Academy will mark another first this year — the city’s all-male, all-African-American charter high school will be sending its first students to an Ivy League school in the fall.
Seniors Matthew Williams and Julius Claybron have been accepted into Cornell University. Williams also has been accepted into Dartmouth College and wait-listed at Harvard and Yale, school officials said.
The students and 102 others in the Class of 2011 announced the colleges they will attend at a ceremony Wednesday at U.S. Cellular Field. They put on baseball caps for their college picks, which included Morehouse, Oberlin, Grinnell and the University of Michigan.

Much more on Chicago’s Urban Prep Academy and the proposed Madison Prep IB Charter school here.

The Evidence Is In: School Vouchers Work

Jason Riley:

‘Private school vouchers are not an effective way to improve student achievement,” said the White House in a statement on March 29. “The Administration strongly opposes expanding the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program and opening it to new students.” But less than three weeks later, President Obama signed a budget deal with Republicans that includes a renewal and expansion of the popular D.C. program, which finances tuition vouchers for low-income kids to attend private schools.
School reformers cheered the administration’s about-face though fully aware that it was motivated by political expediency rather than any acknowledgment that vouchers work.
When Mr. Obama first moved to phase out the D.C. voucher program in 2009, his Education Department was in possession of a federal study showing that voucher recipients, who number more than 3,300, made gains in reading scores and didn’t decline in math. The administration claims that the reading gains were not large enough to be significant. Yet even smaller positive effects were championed by the administration as justification for expanding Head Start.

Whose school is it anyway? Under proposal, taxpayers could pay for experimental charter schools

Susan Troller

Kaleem Caire has spent much of the last year making a passionate, personal and controversial pitch for a publicly funded male-only charter school called Madison Preparatory that would operate independently of the Madison Metropolitan School District. It aims to serve primarily minority boys in grades six through 12 and their families.
Caire, a Madison native and the president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Madison, has mustered a great deal of community support by highlighting the struggles of and grim statistics surrounding black and Hispanic young boys and men in Dane County, and through telling his own powerful story of underachievement in Madison’s public schools.
“I learned about racism and lower expectations for minority kids when I arrived the first day at Cherokee Middle School, and all the black boys and a few other minorities sat at tables in the back. I was assigned to remedial math, and even when I showed the teacher I already knew how to do those worksheets, that’s where I was stuck,” Caire says.
With its emphasis on discipline, family involvement, preppy-looking uniforms and a non-negotiable stance on being a union-free school, Caire’s proposal for the boys-only middle and high school has won hundreds of enthusiastic supporters, including a number of prominent conservatives who, surprisingly, don’t seem particularly troubled by the school’s price tag.

Some might argue that certain programs within “traditional” public schools are experimental, such as Connected Math and Small Learning Communities among others.

State investigation finds problems with Madison talented and gifted program

Matthew DeFour:

The Madison School District is under added pressure to improve how it identifies and educates talented and gifted students after state officials found its program does not comply with state law.
In revealing shortcomings in the district’s offerings for talented and gifted (TAG) students, the Department of Public Instruction challenges the approach some schools, particularly West High School, have used in which all students learn together.
“The district is going to have to face (the question): ‘How do they reconcile their policy of inclusion with honors classes?’?” said Carole Trone, director of the Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth at UW-Madison. “If parents see the other districts are challenging their students more, they might send their students there.”
Developing a comprehensive system to identify TAG students — including testing and staff training — can be expensive, Trone said. Moreover, districts that don’t identify students from all socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds open themselves up to discrimination lawsuits, she said.
Superintendent Dan Nerad said it’s unclear how much such a revamped program will cost.

Much more on the talented & gifted complaint, here.

Good golly, our schools desperately need new leadership

Laurie Rogers, via email:

When our school administrators speak to the public, we often hear one or more of the following:

Blaming of others – Typical targets include teachers, parents, students, poverty, and a (fake) lack of money.

Deceitful presentation of student outcomes – They’ll speak glowingly of some stray statistic that supposedly shows them in a slightly more positive light, but which also depends on the public not knowing the entire truth of it.
Astonishing ignorance or accidental honesty. Sometimes the truth comes out of them – in shocking or comical ways.
Requests for more money, on the heels of low student achievement. As pass rates go down, the expense per student continues to increase.
New policy that will serve their ulterior purpose, but which will make life more difficult for students, parents and teachers.

And so it went, at two recent gatherings for Spokane Public Schools. Teachers were blamed. Administrators praised themselves. The superintendent’s comments caused a stir. And the school board voted to increase class sizes and cut 90 teachers.
…….
Increased expense for unproved programs
Taxpayers pay for scads of district and community programs devoted to reducing dropout rates and increasing on-time graduation rates. As district expenditures skyrocket, parents are still staring at students’ low pass rates, high dropout rates, high rates of college remediation, and low levels of basic skills.
Dr. Stowell praised the district for obtaining a multi-million-dollar grant for Rogers High School, which suffers from particularly low graduation rates. (Please note the illogic of awarding grants to failing programs because they are failing. Failure thus results in more money.) Dr. Stowell said the grant will pay for longer school days, extra teacher pay, a homework center, and – you knew it was coming – a pilot evaluation for teachers.

School Choice and Urban Diversity: Many more middle-class parents would live in big cities if they could pick the schools their kids attend.

John Norquist:

With several new GOP governors taking power, shock if not awe pervades the Midwest, particularly among those of us who are Democratic urban dwellers. Perhaps the wave of corporate tax breaks, service cuts to the needy, and transfer of school aid from poor to wealthy districts will be undone with the next swing of the political pendulum. Yet there is one GOP budget provision in Wisconsin that I hope survives.
For 20 years there’s been debate about parental school choice, but only a few places actually have it. Milwaukee has had choice since 1991. At first it was very limited–no religious schools, the program restricted to families with very low incomes, and a cap on total enrollment of 1,000. But parents are now able to choose religious schools, the income limit has been raised to 175% of the federal poverty line ($39,113), and the cap has increased to 22,500 students.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has proposed allowing any Milwaukee parent, regardless of income, to enroll their children in private and parochial schools. This will address two problems with the current choice program. One, the cap on total enrollment has forced parents onto waiting lists and into lotteries. Two, the income limit has the effect of isolating low-income students from other more affluent students.
Other jurisdictions, including Florida, Arizona and Cleveland, have choice programs. In Washington, D.C., choice was implemented under President George W. Bush and frozen under President Barack Obama. But Florida’s program requires a public school to fail, with failure measured by the state, not by parents. And all choice programs have limitations that undermine the desire of parents to have their children attend a school in which they have confidence. Yet if you think about it, America already has a school choice program in large metro areas. It’s a system that segregates the poor from the rich and works against Americans who want to live in cities. Here’s how it works.

Clusty Search: John Norquist.

The more things change: School finance edition

Steve Prestegard:

Several media outlets, including the Grant County Herald Independent in Lancaster (the first newspaper I worked for, back when Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush were president) and the Wisconsin State Journal, are reporting an unprecedented number of teacher retirements as the latest consequence of Gov. Scott Walker’s attempt to defang public employee unions.
The Herald Independent’s story (to which I can’t post since the Herald Independent is not online, so you’ll have to trust me) includes a number of teachers from not just my days at the Herald Independent, but from my wife’s days as a Lancaster High School student.
That is big news. It would be unprecedented big news if your memory includes only years that begin with the number 2. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s (and possibly before that), the state would occasionally encourage early retirements as, yes, a way to reduce spending on employee compensation, since the teachers in the classroom the longest were the highest paid given how teachers’ pay is set.
In those days, the “rule of 85” applied — if your age and years as a teacher (or other government employee, although I don’t recall covering other government employee retirements) totaled 85 (for instance, you were 55 years old and you had taught for 30 years), you could retire with full benefits. The “rule of 85” appears to have been replaced by “the rule of 30” — full retirement benefits kick in for anyone in the Wisconsin Retirement System with 30 years’ service, although retiring employees younger than 57 have reduced benefits until their 57th birthday.

Two-thirds of Madison teachers joined protests, district says

Matthew DeFour:

Two-thirds of Madison teachers participated in at least one day of a coordinated four-day absence in February to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to curb collective bargaining, according to information released by the school district Friday.
According to the district, 1,769 out of 2,655 teachers took time off during the four days without a legitimate excuse. The records also show 84 teachers submitted fraudulent sick notes; 38 received suspensions for failing to rescind the notes by April 15, a deadline set by the district.
The exact number of teachers who caused school to shut down on Feb. 16-18 and 21 was unknown until now. The numbers “validate our decision to close our schools,” Superintendent Dan Nerad said in a statement.
“We realize the challenges that our students’ families experienced as a result of these school closings,” Nerad said. “So we appreciate that we have been able to return since then to normal school schedules and that students have returned to advancing their learning through the work of our excellent staff members.”
Madison Teachers Inc. Executive Director John Matthews acknowledged Feb. 15 that the union was encouraging members to call in sick to attend protests at the Capitol. It was the union’s first coordinated work stoppage since 1,900 out of 2,300 teachers called in sick to protest contract negotiations in September 1997.
On Friday, Matthews emphasized that teachers accepted the consequences of their actions by agreeing to docked pay for the days missed. He called the suspension letters “a badge of honor for standing up for workplace justice.”

“Transparency Central” National Review of Education Schools

The National Council on Teacher Qualty:

Higher education institutions, whether they are private or public, have an obligation to be transparent about the design and operations of their teacher preparation programs. After all, these institutions have all been publicly approved to prepare public school teachers.
Here at Transparency Central, you can keep track of whether colleges and universities are living up to their obligation to be open. Just click on a state to learn more about the transparency of individual institutions there.
NCTQ is asking institutions to provide documents that describe the fundamental aspects of their teacher preparation programs: the subject matter teachers are supposed to know, the real-world classroom practice they are supposed to get, the outcomes that they achieve once they enter the classroom. Taken together, the evidence we gathering will answer a key question: Are individual programs setting high expectations for what new teachers should know and be able to do for their students?
A number of institutions have let us know that they do not intend to cooperate with our review, some even before we formally asked them for documents. As a result, we have begun to make open records requests using state “sunshine” (or “freedom of information act”) laws.
We’ll be regularly updating our progress, so come back soon to learn more about our efforts to bring transparency to teacher prep.

Related:

Georgia, Wisconsin Education Schools Back Out of NCTQ Review
Teacher colleges balk at being rated Wisconsin schools say quality survey from national nonprofit and magazine won’t be fair
When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Don’t cry for teachers who choose early retirement

Chris Rickert:

One indication of how disingenuous the world of public education has become is the sympathy some of us apparently feel for veteran Madison teachers who feel compelled to retire early.
As this newspaper detailed Sunday, early retirements have spiked over concerns about what Gov. Scott Walker’s bid to curtail public sector collective bargaining rights will mean for teachers’ retirements.
It’s clear teachers beginning their careers today could be subjected to lots of things the private sector has had to endure for a long time (e.g., merit evaluations, higher health care costs). What puzzles me is what veteran teachers risk by working a few more years — especially given the love they express for the job.
Take, for example, teachers’ ability to parlay unused sick days into health insurance coverage or other benefits after they retire.
District spokesman Ken Syke said the district’s legal team has not produced an opinion on this. But teachers union president John Matthews was certain it was a benefit long-time teachers would retain.

Madison Schools Found Non-Compliant on Wisconsin DPI Talented & Gifted Complaint

Madison School District 450K PDF and the DPI Preliminary Audit, via a kind reader’s email:

I. Introduction A.Title/topic-Talented and Gifted Compliance
B. Presenter/contact person -Sue Abplanalp, Jennifer Allen, Pam Nash and Dylan Pauly
Background information- On March 24,2011, MMSD received DPI’s initial findings in the matter ofthe TAG complaint. DPI found MMSD to be noncompliant on all four counts. The Board has forty-five days from the date of receipt ofthe initial findings to petition the state superintendent for a public hearing. If the Board does not request such a hearing, the findings will become final. Once the findings are final, regardless of whether a hearing is held, if there is a finding of noncompliance, the state superintendent may develop with the Board a plan for compliance. The plan must contain a time line for achievement of compliance that cannot exceed ninety days. An extension of the time period may be requested if extenuating or mitigating circumstances exist.
II. Summary of Current Information:
Current Status: Currently, DPI has made an initial finding of noncompliance against MMSD. While the Board is entitled to request a public hearing on the issue of compliance, the administration does not recommend this course of action. Consequently, at this time, the administration is working toward the development ofa response to DPI’s findings, which will focus on remedial steps to insure compliance.
Proposal: Staff are working on a response to the preliminary findings which we will present to the Board when completed. It is the administration’s hope that this response will serve as the foundation to the compliance plan that will be developed once the DPI findings are final. The response will include input from the TAG Advisory Committee, the District’s TAG professionals — our Coordinator and staff. A meeting to begin work one the proposed response is currently scheduled for April28, 2011 from 4:00 p.m.-5:00pm. Subsequent meetings will follow.

Much more on the Wisconsin DPI Parent Talented & Gifted complaint.
Watch Monday evening’s Madison School Board discussion of the DPI Talented & Gifted complaint, here (starts at 128:37). and here.

Madison Schools: Alternative School Redesign (Hoyt, Whitehorse & Cherokee “Mental Health Hubs”) to Address Mental Health Concerns: Phase 1

80K PDF, via a kind reader’s email:

I. Introduction A. Title/topic -Alternative Redesign to Address Mental Health Concerns B. Presenter/contact person- Sue Abplanalp, John Harper, Pam Nash and Nancy Yoder
Background information -The Purpose of this Proposal: Research shows that half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14.1 Scientists are discovering that changes in the body leading to mental illness may start much earlier, before any symptoms appear.
Helping young children and their parents manage difficulties early in life may prevent the development of disorders. Once mental illness develops, it becomes a regular part of a child’s behavior and more difficult to treat. Even though doctors know how to treat (though not yet cure) many disorders, a majority of children with mental illnesses are not getting treatment (National Institute of Mental Health).
II. Summary of Current Information: Success is defined as the achievement ofsomething desired and planned. As a steering committee, our desire and plan is to promote a strategic hub in three sites (Hoyt, Whitehorse and Cherokee) that connect, support and sustain students with mental health issues in a more inclusive environment with appropriate professionals, in order to maximize students’ success in middle school and help them achieve their aspirations in a setting that is appropriate for their needs. The new site will also offer mini clinics from a community provider
Current Status: Currently, there is one program housed at Hoyt that serves 28-30 students in self contained settings. There is currently a ratio of 1:4 with 4 staff and 4 special educational assistants assigned to the program. In addition, there is a Cluster Program housed at Sherman with 2 adults and 6-7 students in the program.
Proposal: This proposal leaves approximately half of the students and staff at the current Hoyt site (those students who pose more of a danger to self or others) and removes all of the students and staff from Sherman (no program at Sherman) to the new sites. Students will attend either Whitehorse or Cherokee Middle Schools with a program that provides ongoing professional help and is more inclusive as students will be assigned to homerooms and classes, with alternative settings in the school to support them when they need a more restrictive environment with support from a smaller student ratio and a psychologist or social worker that is assigned to the team.

This initiative was discussed during Monday evening’s Madison School Board meeting. Watch the discussion here (beginning at 180 minutes).

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