Search results
1257 results found.
195 Million Chinese Students Are In School. Why Aren’t Our Kids?
Right now in China, 195 million students K-12 are learning in-person in Chinese public schools. Meanwhile, millions of American public school students are learning in a failed remote system that can’t even keep track of thousands of students who haven’t shown up for class all year.
In 2018, 15-year-olds in dozens of countries participated in the triennial Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The PISA test measures reading ability, math and science literacy, and other key skills. American scores are decidedly unimpressive, with students scoring in the middle of the pack for all categories. Most frighteningly, China beats the United States in every category.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.
Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.
K-12 Governance, late 2020
Tide has turned on schools. Seems to be fairly widespread agreement they should be open and that harms caused from keeping them shuttered are grave. And yet… schools in CA have never opened, never gotten close. And there is no proposal or possible date for opening on the table. https://t.co/lPLaBJad8J
— Jennifer Sey (@JenniferSey) November 29, 2020
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.
Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.
K-12 Governance Rhetoric & Reality
A 0.28% covid positive test rate in New York City schools during the last six weeks—a ????? of the 3% rate in the city in general. It would’ve been so reasonable and right (and politically painless!) for @NYCMayor to keep the schools open. Crazy. pic.twitter.com/MXGsvQzSCI
— Kurt Andersen (@KBAndersen) November 29, 2020
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.
Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.
Estimation of US Children’s Educational Attainment and Years of Life Lost Associated With Primary School Closures During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic
Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH, Wil Van Cleve, MD, MPH2; Frederick J. Zimmerman, PhD3:
Question
Based on the current understanding of the associations between school disruption and decreased educational attainment and between decreased educational attainment and lower life expectancy, is it possible to estimate the association between school closure during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and decreased life expectancy of publicly educated primary school–aged children in the United States?
Findings This decision analytical model found that missed instruction during 2020 could be associated with an estimated 5.53 million years of life lost. This loss in life expectancy was likely to be greater than would have been observed if leaving primary schools open had led to an expansion of the first wave of the pandemic.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.
Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.
Remote school is leaving children sad and angry
Hannah Natanson, Laura Meckler:
Sophia Sanchez, age 9 and stuck in perpetual Zoom school, is crying a lot lately.
Her mother and sister rush in and ask what went wrong. Did the Internet go out again? Is her computer plugged in? Is the math too confusing? Sophia can’t really answer. She’s too upset, wondering whether she’ll ever learn new things again, fearing she’ll fail the fourth grade and, more than anything, missing her friends. She hasn’t seen a single friend since March, when she was in third grade.
“So I just get really angry and frustrated,” she said. “I cry.”
Some children are doing fine with remote school; some even prefer it. But many others are like Sophia: They are suffering emotionally, mentally and even physically from so many hours, often alone, in front of a computer screen.\
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.
Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.
Failing grades spike in Virginia’s largest school system as online learning gap emerges nationwide
A report on student grades from one of the nation’s largest school districts offers some of the first concrete evidence that online learning is forcing a striking drop in students’ academic performance, and that the most vulnerable students — children with disabilities and English-language learners — are suffering the most.
Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, which has been mostly online since March, published an internal analysis this week showing that, between the last academic year and this one, the percentage of middle school and high school students earning F’s in at least two classes jumped by 83 percent: from 6 percent to 11 percent. By the end of the first quarter of 2020-2021, nearly 10,000 Fairfax students had scored F’s in two or more classes — an increase of more than 4,300 students as compared with the group who received F’s by the same time last year.
Experts have warned since the beginning of the pandemic, and the unexpected national experiment in online learning, that remote schooling would take a serious academic toll on children.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.
Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19, by Age and Race and Ethnicity
What is already known about this topic?
As of October 15, 216,025 deaths from COVID-19 have been reported in the United States; however, this might underestimate the total impact of the pandemic on mortality.
What is added by this report?
Overall, an estimated 299,028 excess deaths occurred from late January through October 3, 2020, with 198,081 (66%) excess deaths attributed to COVID-19. The largest percentage increases were seen among adults aged 25–44 years and among Hispanic or Latino persons.
What are the implications for public health practice?
These results inform efforts to prevent mortality directly or indirectly associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, such as efforts to minimize disruptions to health care.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.
‘I’ll leave the city for my kids to get educated’
Several parents noted that many private schools are teaching in person. City-funded preschool programs are operating if they’re in private schools, but closed if they’re in district buildings.
If the chaos and incompetence drives middle-class families out of the city or into private schools and students who remain have learned little but knock-knock jokes, New York City’s public schools will go into a death spiral.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.
Wisconsin high court must rule on Racine’s power overreach
It’s one thing when an individual school district, such as Racine or Kenosha Unified, decide that they are going to go virtual. It’s another thing for the Racine health department to step in and rule that all schools, including private schools, in its jurisdiction must also shut their doors.
Yet that is exactly what Racine’s health director did when issuing an order saying that all schools within the department’s jurisdiction must switch to virtual learning from Nov. 27 through Jan. 15. That includes not just schools in private and public schools in Racine, but also Elmwood Park and Wind Point.
Now, local parents along with the assistance of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty are fighting the order, trying to stop it before it goes into effect.
And they are right to fight it. It’s an overreach by the City of Racine.
It’s exactly the type of order that the Wisconsin Supreme Court halted in September when Dane County and Public Health Madison tried to require virtual learning there for grades 3-12.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
‘Mr Biden, the COVID task force said it’s safe for children to be back in class,’
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Asked Biden if he will encourage teacher unions to cooperate to get kids back in school because the COVID task force said it is safe to be in the classroom. He didn’t answer.
“Why are you the only guy that always shouts out questions?” he said. pic.twitter.com/x2DsG5Fmgo
— Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) November 20, 2020
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
The kids aren’t alright: How Generation Covid is losing out
When Mary Finnegan, 27, and her sister Meg, 22, left their Brooklyn apartment to return to their parents’ home in March, they took enough clothes to last two weeks.
Their stay stretched into months. “It was like a return to homeschooling: no boys, no play dates, nowhere to go, except home and the liquor store,” Mary told the Financial Times.
As the coronavirus pandemic worsened and universities closed, Mary and Meg were followed by three other siblings, turning the parental four-bedroom house in Washington, New Jersey, into a “food hall, a bakery and a gym”, according to their mother Lori.
The Finnegans are among the millions of young adults around the world who have moved back in with their parents since Covid-19 struck. In the US, the share of 18- to 29-year-olds living at home is the highest ever recorded.
While they are less at risk of developing severe forms of Covid-19, students and young workers are suffering from the pandemic’s economic fallout more harshly than other groups, data show. The pandemic has also amplified previous trends including low wages, stagnant job markets and rising student debt.
A global survey by the Financial Times, to which more than 800 16- to 30-year-olds responded, shows that these difficulties are translating into growing resentment towards older generations, which are both better off and holding greater political sway.
“We are not in this together, millennials have to take the brunt of the sacrifice in the situation,” said Polina R, 30, from Montreal, Canada. “If you won’t watch out that we don’t end up jobless and poorer, why should we protect you?”
Here is what they told the FT about their experiences during the pandemic:
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.
“Try as best as possible to keep the schools open…”
From Dr. Anthony Fauci today: “Try as best as possible to keep the schools open…” @GovInslee #waleg @lauriejinkins2 https://t.co/zUmp12Cww3
— Beth Sigall (@btsigall) November 17, 2020
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.
Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.
“Schools Should Be the Last Things We Close, Not the First/Why do we keep asking children to bear the brunt of a lockdown?”
Cases have definitely been more common in school-age children this fall. But when schools do the right things, those infections are not transmitted in the classroom. They’re occurring, for the most part, when children go to parties, when they have sleepovers and when they’re playing sports inside and unmasked…. The playbook for keeping schools as safe as possible has been understood for many months…
[O]ur schools are not, for the most part, prepared to deliver high quality educational content online. Kids are also social animals and need safe in-person interactions for their mental health and development…. Closing schools also exacerbates social and economic disparities…. Students who fall behind will have an incredibly difficult time catching up….
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.
Projecting the Potential Impact of COVID-19 School Closures on Academic Achievement
As the COVID-19 pandemic upended the 2019–2020 school year, education systems scrambled to meet the needs of students and families with little available data on how school closures may impact learning. In this study, we produced a series of projections of COVID-19-related learning loss based on (a) estimates from absenteeism literature and (b) analyses of summer learning patterns of 5 million students. Under our projections, returning students are expected to start fall 2020 with approximately 63 to 68% of the learning gains in reading and 37 to 50% of the learning gains in mathematics relative to a typical school year. However, we project that losing ground during the school closures was not universal, with the top third of students potentially making gains in reading.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.
Teachers unions have kept schools closed. Now they want more money?
Since March, millions of students have been out of school. Nearly half of the nation’s 50 largest school districts haven’t yet reopened or are only now planning to do so. Hybrid reopening plans have been a start-and-stop, hit-and-miss endeavor. Given the mounting evidence that the public health risks of reopening schools are modest and manageable, it’s no surprise that parents are growing more supportive of in-person schooling.
Here is a moment for educators to rise to the challenge: to insist that schools safeguard the well-being of staff but also that they find ways to serve their charges. Unfortunately, a rather different narrative has taken hold. Indeed, last week, El Paso teacher Lyn Peticolas took to Education Week—K-12 education’s newspaper of record—to publish an op-ed titled “What Demands to ‘Open Schools Now!’ Sound Like to a Teacher” in which she ardently denounced the “coronavirus-deniers” who hurl “vitriol” at school districts for not reopening.
Utterly ignoring that thousands of private schools have reopened without incident, that many thousands of public schools have safely opened their doors, or the grave concerns about remote learning, Peticolas waxes enthusiastic about the miracles of virtual teaching before declaring that the “sole aim” of those seeking to reopen schools “seems to be to cause strife and unrest.” She goes on, at great length, to explain how overburdened and underappreciated teachers are.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases
https://www.reopenourschools.org.
Political affiliation and union representation were more strongly related to Wisconsin school district decisions to opt for virtual or in-person instruction this fall than COVID-19 positivity rate, according to a new report.
The study from the conservative Wisconsin Institute For Law & Liberty (WILL) published Monday found that 14% of districts in the state with a union began the year with virtual-only instruction compared to just 3% of those without union representation. Political affiliation, measured by the 2016 vote share for Donald Trump in a school district’s county, had an even larger correlation.
Average COVID-19 cases per 100,000, meanwhile, were nearly identical between districts going virtual and those returning for in-person instruction. In the three weeks before the school year began, when many districts made decisions about the upcoming year, the rates were 10.96 in districts going virtual and 10.99 in those returning to in-person school, study author Will Flanders said in an interview.
“(That was) the most surprising aspect to me,” Flanders said. “I thought that union presence and political ideology probably would play a role but I didn’t expect the rate of coronavirus in the area to play no significant role.”
The findings locally mirror a national study of about 10,000 districts across the country highlighted in the Washington Post last week.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.
“Why are Madison Schools Closed?”
https://www.reopenourschools.org.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.
Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.
K-12 Governance & Special Interests
4 people on Biden’s transition team for the Department of Education are from the nation’s two largest teachers unions.
— Corey A. DeAngelis (@DeAngelisCorey) November 11, 2020
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin (state) Senators
“An emphasis on adult employment“.
England: ‘shocking’ decline in primary pupils’ attainment after lockdown
There has been a “shocking” decline in primary school pupils’ levels of attainment in England after lockdown, testing has revealed, with younger children and those from disadvantaged backgrounds worst affected.
The results provide the first detailed insight into the impact of the pandemic on academic attainment among young children and show an average decline in performance of between 5% and 15% on previous years. The biggest drop was in maths scores, and overall seven-year-olds were the most impacted.
The data, shared exclusively with the Guardian, is based on standardised tests sat by a quarter of a million pupils earlier this term. Researchers said they expected attainment to drop after more than five months out of school for most pupils, but were surprised at the scale of decline.
“Purely statistically speaking, it’s a massive drop,” said Dr Timo Hannay of the education data analytics company SchoolDash, who analysed the results. “We could have expected something like this. But it’s absolutely shocking in terms of its size.”
The tests by RS Assessment from Hodder Education are widely used in primary schools across England, usually on a termly basis, to assess children in maths and English to track their progress.
Tests which were scheduled to take place during the summer term were postponed as a result of school closures, and children in 1,700 schools sat them four months later when they returned at the beginning of the autumn term.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Replace school with ‘pandemic camp’
Remote learning isn’t working, especially for younger children, but “normal” schooling wasn’t working well either, writes Erika Christakis, an early childhood educator, in The Atlantic.
She envisions an alternative — year-round “pandemic camp” — to focus on children’s needs for “exercise, outdoor time, conversation, play, even sleep.”
Parents should demand “a broader and deeper curriculum with more chances for children to explore, play, and build relationships with peers and teachers,” Christakis writes. “The most obvious demand should be for more time outside.”
Outdoor learning is safer right now, she writes. But even if coronavirus goes away, getting kids outside has many other benefits, from reducing hyperactivity to improving science learning. “The biggest obstacle is a lack of will and imagination.”
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
UMich students were locked down for two weeks, data show it was unnecessary
The Health Department of Washtenaw County, which governs the University of Michigan, recently put Michigan undergraduates under a “stay-in-place” order for two weeks. Once the order had expired, cases had slightly fallen in students, but they rose in older, more vulnerable populations, data show.
The October 20 order said “all U-M undergraduate students enrolled in U-M Fall 2020 on the Ann Arbor Campus, living in on-campus, near-campus or off-campus housing will be required to ‘stay in place’ and remain in their current designated residence.” The order ended November 3.
The results toward the end of the lockdown showed, however, that “cases among 18- to 29-year-olds in the county have decreased slightly, while there has been a steady rise in the infection rate in the 30- to 49-year-old age group,” wrote University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel in an October 30 email to students.
As Schlissel’s email noted, cases had decreased slightly among undergrads, but older populations in the county saw their cases rise despite the fact that students were sheltering in place.
Even the lockdown order had stated that “COVID-19 cases among 18-24 year-old persons, thus far in Washtenaw County, have not resulted in increased hospitalization or death rates. Additionally, thus far, the increased incidence in 18- to 24-year-old persons has not been linked to increased incidence in other populations in Washtenaw County.”
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
In San Francisco, Closed Public Schools, Open Private Schools
In San Francisco, restaurants, movie theaters and museums are open at reduced capacity. The share of coronavirus tests that come back positive in the city has stayed low since a surge over the summer.
But as some of San Francisco’s private and parochial schools have begun to reopen their doors, its public school district has not set a timeline for resuming in-person instruction, except to say that it is not likely in this calendar year.
That has made San Francisco the latest flash point over school reopening. This politically progressive city is also California’s most unequal area, and its sharp debate about how best to safely educate low-income and minority students during the pandemic resonates across the country.
Frustrations boil over
Last month, in the wake of months of protests for racial equity across the country, San Francisco’s district administrators recommended a significant move. They told the principals of roughly one-third of the district’s 125 public schools that their communities should start brainstorming new names for their schools, because the current names had historical associations with slavery, genocide, colonization or other injustices.
The list included schools named for George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, as enslavers; Abraham Lincoln, for his treatment of Native Americans; and even the state’s senior U.S. senator, Dianne Feinstein, over reports that, as mayor in 1984, she replaced a vandalized Confederate flag outside City Hall.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Decisions on in-person or online school in two neighboring Wisconsin school districts mirror national debate
Jordan Meulemans’ weekday routine used to begin at 6:30 a.m., when she would wake up and get ready for school.
But for the past month, the De Pere High School junior’s days have looked starkly different. Meulemans rolls out of bed around 7:30 a.m., puts on some sweats, wakes her little sister, eats breakfast and settles in at her family’s dining room table. She opens her laptop and logs into her first class of the day: advanced placement calculus, held on Google Meet.
Because new cases of COVID-19 have soared in Brown County and across Wisconsin over the last couple of months, Meulemans and the roughly 4,500 students in the Unified School District of De Pere have been attending class online since the district closed its schools on Sept. 25.
Meanwhile, just across the Fox River, senior Maria Miller’s school days begin at 6:55 a.m. sharp, when she and her sister hop in the car and head to West De Pere High School.
After switching to online learning for two weeks on Oct. 1, West De Pere reversed course and returned its 3,500 students to classrooms after parents pressured leaders to make the change — even after the city health department advised against returning the spread of COVID-19 worsened
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Rethinking Public-Service Unions
America’s labor movement has become increasingly concentrated in the public sector. As a result, modern debates about formal labor relations often take for granted that many of the workers involved are government workers. For people holding public office in much of the country, building relationships with these public-sector unions has become a priority.
The public sector’s importance to the labor movement is beyond dispute. As of 2019, 49% of America’s 14.7 million union members worked for government units. And while about 34% of public-sector workers today belong to unions, less than 7% of those in the private sector do. The handful of unions that have gained strength in recent years are primarily either groups devoted almost entirely to unionizing public-sector workers, like the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), or entities that organize in both public and private sectors, like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
When unions engage in politics, they lean heavily to the left. This, too, is beyond dispute. In recent election cycles, Democrats never received less than 85% of organized labor’s campaign contributions. They also received nearly 100% of the contributions from public-sector unions not involved in public safety. This group of “public-service” unions, which will be the focus of this article, represents a major source of opposition to conservative candidates and many of the policies they support. This has led to a deeply antagonistic relationship between public-service unions and most right-of-center officeholders.
Weac four senators for $1.57m
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Madison K-12 budget proposals don’t include raise levels pushed by union
As the Madison School Board is set to consider a vote on two 2020-21 budgets next Monday, the final proposals do not include the maximum base wage increase Madison Teachers Inc. has pushed for.
The board must approve two spending measures: a $495.7 million version in case the Nov. 3 operating referendum passes and a $478.9 million version that would be used if it fails. State law requires boards approve budgets before the end of October.
MTI leadership has asked district officials and School Board members to include a cost-of-living base wage increase at the full amount allowed, 1.8%, which would cost about $4.7 million, according to projections from earlier this year. The budget proposals released Friday, however, only include a 0.5% base wage increase — and that would only come if the operating referendum is approved, as the “non-passing” budget does not include a base wage increase.
The district’s proposals instead both fully fund “steps and lanes” increases for staff based on longevity and professional development. In the budget narratives, officials point out that alone is a “2% salary increase on average for employees,” at a cost of $5 million to the district, and that staff salaries in MMSD compare favorably to surrounding districts for “most employee groups.”
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
UW study: High school sports have not spread the coronavirus (Madison K-12 Students are stuck at home)
new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that the state’s high school sports have not caused an increase in COVID-19 infections among athletes.
The UW School of Medicine and Public Health released the study Thursday. Researchers led by Dr. Andrew Watson surveyed 207 schools that restarted fall sports in September, representing more than 30,000 athletes, more than 16,000 practices and more than 4,000 games.
The survey found 271 athletes contracted the virus overall compared with 2,318 Wisconsin children aged 14-17 over the month of September. No sports were found to have a higher incidence rate of COVID-19 overall than 14-17 year-olds. None of the cases among the athletes resulted in hospitalization or death.
Of the 209 athletes who knew where they contracted the virus, only one case was attributed to participation in sports.
All the schools reported they had a formal plan in place to reduce the risk of transmission, including monitoring for symptoms, temperature checks at home and on site, masks for staff and players off the field, social distancing, increased facility cleaning and staggered arrival and departure times for events.
The findings suggest participation in sports isn’t associated with an increased risk of COVID-19 among athletes but call for expanded studies to build a more complete picture, the researchers wrote.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
The pandemic has eroded democracy and respect for human rights
People were hungry during lockdown. So Francis Zaake, a Ugandan member of parliament, bought some rice and sugar and had it delivered to his neediest constituents. For this charitable act, he was arrested. Mr Zaake is a member of the opposition, and Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has ordered that only the government may hand out food aid. Anyone else who does so can be charged with murder, Mr Museveni has threatened, since they might do it in a disorderly way, attract crowds and thereby spread the coronavirus.
Mr Zaake had been careful not to put his constituents at risk. Rather than having crowds converge on one place to pick up the food parcels, he had them delivered to people’s doors by motorbike-taxi. Nonetheless, the next day police and soldiers jumped over his fence while he was showering and broke into his house. They dragged him into a van and threw him in a cell. He says they beat, kicked and cut him, crushed his testicles, sprayed a blinding chemical into his eyes, called him a dog and told him to quit politics. He claims that one sneered: “We can do whatever we want to you or even kill you…No one will demonstrate for you because they are under lockdown.” The police say he inflicted the injuries on himself and is fishing for sympathy with foreign donors.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
“I’ve heard parents say that they feel like their children have wilted,”
Suicides are up in Dane County this year compared to last year, especially among youth and young adults, with mental health providers seeing a link to COVID-19 and a related uptick in treatment for depression.
The county had 57 suicides this year as of last week, more than the total of 54 for all of last year, according to preliminary data collected by Journey Mental Health Center, said Hannah Flanagan, its director of emergency services .
Among people age 24 and younger, 15 suicides were reported as of mid-September, up from eight for all of last year. Suicides are also up for ages 25 to 38, according to this year’s unofficial data, Flanagan said.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
West Ada cancels school Monday after more than 650 teachers call out sick
CBS2:
Hundreds of teachers are taking a sick day for Monday, according to the West Ada School District, one day after the board voted in favor of a hybrid schedule.
A spokeswoman for the district says out of 2,145 classroom teachers, 652 have taken a sick day for Monday.
The sick calls leave approximately 500 positions unfilled, the district’s superintendent, Dr. Mary Ann Ranells, said in a letter to parents.
“Principals, administration, teachers and staff worked hard to cover the absences, but unfortunately, we cannot,” the letter said. “With safety in mind, and due to supervision concerns, we are regretfully unable to hold school Monday.
The district will “reassess the situation” on Monday, the letter said.
Related: Frustrated Middleton-Cross Plains parent group calls (school board) recall effort a ‘last resort’.
Recall Mount Horeb School Board Member Leah Lipska.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
California teacher unions fight calls to reopen schools
Howard Blume and Laura Newberry:
As parents express widespread dissatisfaction with distance learning, two influential California teachers unions are pushing against growing momentum to reopen schools in many communities, saying that campuses are not yet safe enough amid the pandemic.
Leaders with the California Teachers Assn., with 300,000 members, and United Teachers Los Angeles, representing 30,000 in the state’s largest school district, said that districts do not have the resources to provide the level of protection they say is needed to bring teachers and children together in classrooms.
Related: Frustrated Middleton-Cross Plains parent group calls (school board) recall effort a ‘last resort’.
Recall Mount Horeb School Board Member Leah Lipska.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
San Francisco Mayor Urges Opening Schools
Today I issued a statement on the need for our School District to focus on reopening our public schools, not renaming them. To address inequities, we need to get our kids back in the classroom. pic.twitter.com/nHnauVZzFe
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) October 16, 2020
Related: Frustrated Middleton-Cross Plains parent group calls (school board) recall effort a ‘last resort’.
Recall Mount Horeb School Board Member Leah Lipska.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Frustrated Middleton-Cross Plains parent group calls (school board) recall effort a ‘last resort’
She said the curriculum offered to students was not intended to be delivered digitally and her children now have online meetings with their teachers for five hours each week compared to 30 hours of live teaching prior to the pandemic.
“We need to give parents options so those who feel safe sending their children to the school should have that option, teachers who feel they can teach in the classrooms better than they can virtually should have that option, and the school board has not given us that option,” she said.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
As the Governor and the Mayor Disagree, NYC Parents and Educators Search for Clear Guidance on In-Person Schooling
For Brooklyn parent Priscilla Santos, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Tuesday announcement that he was releasing his own plan for temporary New York City COVID-related school closures dispelled any lingering remnants of faith she had in political leadership after a bleak, confusing summer.
Santos is the special education representative for her district’s Community Education Council in Coney Island. Her children, ages 12 and 14, attend Mark Twain I.S. 239 for the Gifted and Talented, where they study media and art. The area where her family resides is currently marked yellow on the governor’s map, signaling that school closures could happen there, if neighborhood positivity rates worsen.
Meanwhile, the blocks around nearby Brighton Beach Avenue and the famed amusement park are marked orange. The confounding boundary between Santos’s zip code and the “hotter” neighboring ones cut right through some streets and buildings, she noticed.
The advocate and mother knows the value of virus containment measures firsthand: her community was among those hit hardest when the pandemic overtook the city this spring. Still, she’s troubled by the way officials have laid everything out.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Covid-19 and Madison’s K-12 World
Scott Girard (Machine generated transcript):
Hi, I’m cap tines K-12 education reporter Scott Gerard. Today. Our cap times IDFs panel will discuss how will COVID-19 change K-12 education. I’m lucky to have three wonderful panelists with me to help answer that question. Marilee McKenzie is a teacher at Middleton’s Clark street community school, where she has worked since the school was in its planning stages.
She’s in her [00:03:00] 11th year of teaching. Dr. Gloria Ladson billings is a nationally recognized education expert who was a U w Madison faculty member for more than 26 years, including as a professor in the departments of curriculum and instruction, educational policy studies and educational leadership and policy analysis.
She is also the current president of the national Academy of education. Finally dr. Carlton Jenkins is the new superintendent of the Madison metropolitan school district. He started the districts top job in August, coming from the Robbinsdale school district in Minnesota, where he worked for the past five years, Jenkins began his career in the Madison area.
Having worked in Beloit and at Memorial high school in early 1990s before moving to various districts around the country. Thank you all so much for being here. Mary Lee, I’m going to start with you. You’ve been working with students directly throughout this pandemic. How has it gone? Both in the spring when changes were very sudden, and then this fall with a summer to reflect and [00:04:00] plan, it’s been interesting for sure.
Um, overall, I would say the it’s been hard. There has been nothing about this have been like, ah, It’s really, it makes my life easy. It’s been really challenging. And at the same time, the amount of growth and learning that we’ve been able to do as staff has been incredible. And I think about how teachers have moved from face-to-face to online to then planning for.
A myriad of possibilities. And then, you know, ultimately not knowing where the next step might be. And so, um, although it’s been challenging and there has been so many times where there’s been frustration or glitches or those kinds of pieces, I also have watched. Staff, um, grow and blossom and try to [00:05:00] make the best of a situation.
Um, and I’ve also watched our district try to figure out, okay, how do we negotiate this? So it’s been hard. There’s no, no way around that. And, um, I also think we are learning and positioning ourselves to make some bigger changes down the road. Thank you, dr. Jenkins. You’ve spoken about how the transition to virtual learning went and Robbinsdale.
When you were there this spring, what lessons did you learn from that experience that you were able to bring here in Madison as you started the job with just a month until the school year began? Well, um, there were a lot of lessons out of this, the first one, the whole idea that the science. Was real. Um, we initially, uh, sent out a communication about COVID-19 February to six in our district.And then again in February 28th, and we were watching what was coming out of Hopkins in terms of the information CDC, [00:06:00] but it was from afar, but when it hit us and we had the initial, um, case in our district, even though we had read up on it, it was real. And so in terms of all of your plans, when you have a crisis that we’ve done before, we’ve had crisis in schools, but nothing like this things we had talked about doing way out five years, 10 years from now with technology, we talked about it.
We’ve been talking about building our infrastructure. We went from being the first district to close in the state of Minnesota thinking we were closing for two days to disinfect, right. And we’ll be right back. To now the real reality of what we’re going through. But the lessons we learned in is in terms of how much we depend on one another and how much we need our children to be in close proximity to us, our realization of the children who are [00:07:00] behind, uh, during the traditional schools.
Or just illuminated 10 times, you know, more that, wow, we really need to do a better job of trying to engage, not only the children, but the families. This went from her, just totally child centered to whole family, whole community. And so COVID-19 for us has said let’s pause and check on the social, emotional wellbeing, the mental health aspect, and understanding our community even deeper.
Because the economic employment, the health, all these things that happened. So as a staff, we had to change our delivery models for instruction. Uh, initially in a crisis, we were trying to put in model the same things we were doing in traditional schools that did not work. And we learned from our students and our staff and our community, we needed to change it and not be so much it’s just on associate motion or that we didn’t.
Continue to [00:08:00] try to continue with the high levels of instruction. But initially we were just thrown off guard. I’m gonna be honest with you. And over the summer, you know, we worked together to really come up with a model that we think is better, but we’re not done. We’re still learning. Even being here in Madison.
Now the transition Madison staff did a lot in terms of just like across the country. People were taking food out to the community, getting devices out in the community, getting hotspots out. And we were not prepared for that level of support that we needed to give, but I was amazed at how all the staff and the community came together to try to get those things done.
Yeah. I still remember the lack of sharedness around the closures and how long it would be here. I talked to a number of teachers who said bye to their students for two weeks, and then it ended up being the whole semester. Thank you so much, dr. Ladson billings, this summer, you were involved in a program at Penn park that had some students outdoors learning STEM lessons for three [00:09:00] days a week.
What were the most important aspects of that sort of programming this summer for you? Well, I think dr. Jenkins actually hit upon what was central for me. I know that people are concerned about learning loss or learning, uh, opportunities, missed learning opportunities. But first let’s be clear. Our children are learning all the time.
They are human beings. There is no time when they are not normal. Maybe when they’re sleeping, I learned they’re always learning. Now, whether they’re learning academic things or curricular based things, that’s something different. But what I was doing really focused on and developing that program and we call it smartly in the park, um, I knew that the, the STEM.Attraction will be there for the wider community. But my focus was on the children’s social, emotional and mental health needs. So many of [00:10:00] our kids are isolated. They, you know, they got a parent who was trying to go to work. Who says you may not leave the house. Okay. You got to stay here. And we figured that out when we started this with the lunches kids, weren’t coming to get the lunches because they were told don’t leave the house.
So, uh, at Mount Zion, one of the things we did is we got, we got the van together. We collected the lunches and we delivered them. So I said, this can’t be good for our kids to be this isolated. So, you know, we did not have sort of assessment metrics or any of those things in place for the summer. What it was, was the opportunity for kids to be in face to face communication with one another and with caring adults.
And I think that’s what we’re learning in this whole process. We can talk about curriculum. We can talk about instruction. But we are in the human being business. We don’t have any human beings. We have no business. And so indeed until we meet those basic [00:11:00] needs, those social, emotional, and mental health needs, we are, we’re not going to be successful.
And I think those were really underscored, uh, as, as spring went on and into the summer. Thank you very much. And that actually leads into another question I have here. Uh, all of you have spoken to me or publicly about social, emotional learning, being as important right now, uh, as academic learning, but how can that be done through a screen?
Um, I’m going to start with Mary Lee just because you’ve been trying to do that with your students. Okay. Um, so there’s a number of ways to do it. Um, It would be a misnomer to think that all of our students were showing up to school on a daily basis when we were seeing them face to face. And so, as teachers, as staff members, we’ve developed ways of connecting with students beyond the physical classroom to begin with.Right. But there’s also ways to do that in front of a screen. Right. Taking the [00:12:00] time to check in with students. Yeah. I have 50 minutes with my group of students. But guess what? I spend that first five, 10, and that’s at least checking in, maybe it’s a silly question. What’s your favorite fall activity to do or fall flavor.
Right? It could be something silly like that, but it also could be something of like, how are you right now? Where are you at? Um, and then on top of that, it’s meeting students where they’re at some of our students. I have students who are not ready to do a zoom meeting. It’s too much for them. The and a number of ways.
So guess what I’m doing? Phone calls and text messaging and finding ways to connect with them in, in lots of different ways. Do I wish that I could be face to face with them? Absolutely. A hundred percent. And we are, we are finding ways to make those small connections that then lead to being able to open up to bigger connections.
And trying to provide some space during our class time or whatever, you know, [00:13:00] synchronous time that we have to also let them talk with each other. Because like dr. Ladson billings said our kids are isolated in their houses and some of them haven’t seen peers or reached out to peers. So creating some structures and spaces to have some of those conversations, to be able to have engaged in that discussion, that would happen in a classroom.
And, you know, creating those spaces. What are you hearing from staff and what are staff doing in Madison to foster those sorts of things? First of all, let me just say thank you, Mary. I mean, she really spoke to what I’m hearing from a number of our staff and, uh, not just here in Madison, but just throughout the country, as a meeting with other superintendents regularly on a national level to talk about what we can do to continue to build these relationships.
And funny go back to doctor Lassen billings. When she started talking about culturally relevant pedagogy and always look at that in terms of relationship building. [00:14:00] And that’s what Mary was talking about so way before everyone else was talking about it, that the last and bill has been talking about this whole thing of relationship relationship.
And we talk about relationships, but the reality of relationships as just describe that’s where our teachers are. Another thing in terms of uplifting. The voices of the teachers, all of the assessments. Some individuals think that when still need to be hard on the AP exam, harder and act, that’s not the main thing right now.The main thing is that we put our arms around our students, around our staff, around our community. We see one another and we uplift the voices of the students and of the staff. How are they really experiencing this new thing? Taking those voices in the emphasis of our planning in the past, a lot of times we have gotten to planning from my office, all the other offices, the hierarchy that we’ve known must be flipped up on his head right [00:15:00] now that has not even worked doing a traditional for all.
Children serve some children. Well, but not all children. This is the time that we’re saying before you start the lesson, ask a simple question. But a big question. How are you today? And then pause and listen. Okay. And so our staff intentionally, but when we design our lessons and coming back and looking at how we get students in groups, how we’ll listen to them, individually, students talk to students and we have to be very careful about, um, just doing the content at this time.
But at the same time, our students. They want the structure. They need the structure to help them have some sense of what am I to do today. Parents need it. The other thing we’re doing, trying to connect more with parents and for us, we’re finding that we are actually having more contact with some parents than what we did prior to COVID in particular black and Brown [00:16:00] families.
We have the one group that’s been disengaged before Kobe that’s even more now. Particularly with black and Brown and special needs students. But right now, at this time, we’re trying to make sure we have that additional communication for those students who have been most marginalized prior to covert and now doing covert.
And so I think those things, uh, and students know we’re paying attention to them, staff know that we’re hearing their voices, parents know that we’re hearing their voice and then being prepared to pivot right now we’re in the middle of making shifts from what we’ve learned, even since school started back.
Our early learners, we have to define what the screen time mean, how we’re approaching our earliest learners, our ELL students, how do we give them the support? How do we support our students who may be special needs and just students who may be having anxiety and social, emotional issues and staff. So that’s what we’re trying to do to build a relationship, see people, and then actually.
Serve them based on [00:17:00] their needs and then provide the overall support, uh, systematically, not just an isolated classroom, how will all of our teachers in our face with our students now, that’s what we’re doing. Thank you so much for detailing all of that. Dr. Ladson billings, what sorts of best practices are you seeing on social, emotional learning right now?
So, you know, it’s interesting, there is an instructional practice that we had before all of this called the flipped classroom. And it suggests that a lot of the learning take place online and then you come face to face to do sort of minimal things. Well, I’m seeing that we have in flipped relationships.
What do I mean by that? Is this this stuff worried about in terms of communicating electronically, our kids already know how to do that. They can sit in a room right next to their best friend, and they’re not talking, they’re texting them. It’s become their way of communicating so we can learn some things [00:18:00] from them and not presume that we have to be the ones who are telling them, uh, I want to know, and visited a class, you know, visit as an electronic yeah.
In Baltimore. And I asked the kids, uh, what they liked or didn’t like about. Oh, virtual learning. And one kid said, Oh, I love it. He said, cause when she gets on my nerves, I just turn her off. He’s he’s I couldn’t do that when, when I was in the class, but to sit there and listen. So it’s interesting that the way that they are adjusting and adapting, um, and I think we can take some hints from them.
Uh, no, we don’t want everybody on screens all the time. I think we’re all sick of that. But I do think we can be a lot more creative with it and what I will say. And I think, you know, thinking of dr. Jenkins sitting there, I think that we’re having a diff totally different relationship with our it departments that before they were this group on the side, they were the [00:19:00] resource people.If my internet goes down, if I can’t get my email, I call them they’re there moved to the center. And we are now in a partnership with them, which is the way it should have been, that they should have been our instructional technology folks as opposed to information technology on the side. So I think we’re learning a lot of how to improve education, uh, as a result of this.
Thank you so much. Are any of you concerned about the screen time for students right now? Does anyone want to talk about how they’re trying to manage it? Well, interesting. You asked that question because that’s been our conversation the last several weeks from parents, from students and staff, uh, and our team.
First of all, we need to redefine what the screen time and all the research prior to Colvin, we need to look at that research with a critical eye [00:20:00] because. You may be on a zoom. And as with dr. Lessen villain just said, the kid may be there. It may be working independently. It’s on, but you’re working independently.
You’re not just interfacing eyes and concerned about, um, whether or not the students engage from a visual straight up point. It just may be on. And so we need to define it first of all, and that’s what we’ve been talking about, but we do need to pay attention to our learning earliest learners. You know, four and five year olds and what can they really manage?
And do we want them to be in such a structured environment? Whereas they’re not being able to be them be independent learners because students can learn independent in what some would call it, unstructured environment. I’d say playtime playtime is very important. So we need to think about it on levels of primary and secondary.
Now, secondary students. They’re on it, but they’re doing it in a totally different way than what our early learners. And so we just need to be respectful. Then [00:21:00] that goes back to listening to the student. And sometimes they can’t manage as much as we were trying to. We’re trying to give them, we have, the pendulum has swung from last spring, not being as much.
And people say, Hey, we want more too. I think sometimes now we’ve got a little too far. And we need to engage the students, hear that voice engaged the teachers. The most important thing right now is to engage that teacher, those formative assessments will allow us to know how we need to pivot along with engaging the voices of the studio.
That’s where we are with. What about you for high schoolers, Mary Lee. I mean screen time is a conversation that we have with our high schoolers, even when we’re face to face in the building of how much time are they spending on their Chromebook in the classroom. Um, because. It’s still a lot. And then we expect them to go home and do homework.
And that a lot of times is on [00:22:00] the Chromebook or on a computer or on their phones. And then you bring in the phone piece. So are a lot of times my high schoolers are definitely multitasking with a phone in one hand and a zoom meeting in the other. And we’ve had some really good conversations about that.
Um, because as we kind of go back to that social, emotional learning, The high school students. And not that the elementary aren’t either, but like the high school students are searching and seeking that social connection. And right now it’s the device. It’s the phone that brings that social connection right level than it already did, even beyond, you know, students sitting next to each other and texting each other.
Like there’s, there’s so much more there. Um, I don’t know if there’s a good answer. For any of that? I think we have to keep learning. I think we have to keep a critical eye of thinking about how can we make our screen-time meaningful. And how can we also pull off the [00:23:00] screen? How can we get creative and pull off of the screen and get kids back outside?
I think of the STEM program that dr. LED’s and billings talked about of being outside working, um, one benefit we’ve had is we’ve had students in our, uh, community garden that we have outside of our school. And I look at that and seeing that is been amazing. Um, that they are engaging with, um, the food chain and how things are produced and you know, how can we build that into schools all over, not just at school, but in their homes, in their communities and connecting there.
I feel that it’s in billings. I know screen time was a concern. And part of the reason that you were so happy with the program this summer, that was outdoors. What are your thoughts on students avoiding too much screen time? So earlier this year, well, probably late, late, late summer, as we were thinking about going back to school, I did a workshop [00:24:00] for.
A local bank that has branches in Milwaukee and green Bay. And because a lot of those, uh, employees, so, you know, I still have to work, but what about my kids? And so we had really good conversation and I literally helped them build a schedule for whether it was elementary, middle, or high school. And I built into that schedule, like stop and go outside.
Like that was like written there. Oh, cause one of the things that we are forgetting is that, you know, as human beings, we, we are mind, body and spirit. We’re not just minds. And so this is an opportunity to literally say it’s important that you get some exercise. I talked to, to the parents about having more than one in one place in their home.
Or their kids to be engaged in their learning. So yeah, maybe the, the den or their room is where they, they might do English or [00:25:00] literacy or reading and mathematics, but maybe it’s the kitchen table or the kitchen Island where you’re going to do the craft activity. And then get outside, you know, minimum amount of time.We need the very things that we need to do in a well-developed face to face program. We still can keep going, uh, modify at home. We want to make sure that our kids are taking care of their bodies. Um, you know, one of the unanticipated. A result of this pandemic is that a number of our high school students are, are taking jobs.
And we hadn’t thought about that. A merely talked about knowing that that some of the kids are not checking in. They’re not checking in cause they’re working. Uh, and they’re adding hours if they already had a job. So they need to be active. They need to minimize the amount of time that they have to be.
In front of those [00:26:00] screens. Um, cause they haven’t drawn to the many way. Um, my generation was drawn to the TV and back then it was like the television producers had enough sense to turn us off at midnight. It’s like, we go watch no more, but we are, you know, we’re in, in a generation in which. People getting most of their information through the screen.
So we’ve got to break it up and make it, uh, an opportunity for them to also get their bodies moving. And so that they just don’t, you know, secondary, um, activity is what leads to all the sort of heart disease and diabetes and things like that. So we don’t want to set them up for, um, a negative future.
Well, I have one other part about that, and I know we we’re talking about with the students screen time. We’ve also been talking about we’re wrestling as adults. When do we begin our day? When does our day end? So we’ve got to have more calibration around this whole moment. We’re [00:27:00] in, it seems like there’s no ending to it.
We did have a set time doing traditional, but now you’re at that desk. You’re in your space working from early morning to late at night. So we have to recalibrate on that. And I think as we think about ourselves, That will help influence what we’re doing with our students. Realizing too, as you mentioned about the phone’s constantly going, and if we don’t do that as dr.
said, it impacts our health. When our minds never shut down. And that’s whole about the whole sleep time study. And that’s another discussion, but yeah, that’s a great point. I mean, Mary Lee, how, how has that been for you as a teacher wanting to connect with students, but trying to live your own life? Well, and I, I thank you for bringing that up.
I really appreciate it because I do think as teachers, we spend a lot of time thinking about our students screen time, and then we’re not necessarily reflecting on how exhausted we are and understanding why that is. Um, I, I taught [00:28:00] online before online was the cool thing too do. And so I had to learn that I was, I was balancing both teaching some face to face some online.
And when I first started teaching that online piece, I realized I was working all hours of the day and I was responding to emails at eight o’clock at night and at five 30 in the morning. And I realized I had to set some boundaries for myself and. As a community of staff members, we haven’t, we haven’t, I don’t think we’ve gotten there yet because we feel like there’s so much to do and we’re learning and trying to stay on top of so many things.
And as I think about our staff, um, yesterday we were in a professional development and we, we did try to take some times to take a break, but it just becomes all consuming. And, um, I appreciate dr. Jenkins thinking about the staff and how [00:29:00] yes. We might be teaching face to face or not face to face, but on zoom, synchronous, you know, from nine to two, but guess what?
Our job doesn’t end there. And so then we’re on the computer on a screen beyond those hours, a lot of times, many hours beyond those hours. And so, um, And I think we are, we’re learning and we’re going to hopefully get into a place where we’ve gotten through the first term. We’ve started to realize, okay, here’s some strategies that really work and how we can set some of those boundaries.
Thank you both for speaking to that aspect of this, one of the other pieces that we’ve spoken about Mary Lee is that sort of this time has illustrated. That no learning system is going to work for everyone, including virtual, but, but I think, uh, a lot of people assumed the other system was just the way it was, but this has highlighted that it’s not going to work universally.
How can education move forward with that? [00:30:00] Understanding that not all systems work for every student. Um, I’ll actually start with dr. Ladson billings on this one. So now that you’ve, um, Toss me a nice softball, cause it’s kind of what I’ve been talking about all along all, since we’ve been in the pandemic and I’ve suggested that, um, this is an opportunity for us to do what I’ve called the hard reset, and I’ve actually used the analogy of the devices that we all have, that when they don’t work.
Um, we, you know, try something, things, we take the SIM cards out, put them back in the battery out, put it back. They don’t work, they don’t work. And we, we, we head off to the store, whether it’s the Apple store or the Samsung store, Android, wherever you got your device and somebody who was about 17 years old, wearing a tee shirt, tells you the dreaded words, we’re going to have to do a hard reset.
And what they mean. I mean, by that is if you haven’t backed up everything. When [00:31:00] they give you that phone back, all your contacts are going to be gone. All your pictures are going to be gone wherever you were in the candy crush. Thing’s going to be gone. You’re going to have a phone that’s like it was when it came to you from the factory.
And that’s really where I believe we are in education. I don’t think, I think we can, you know, when people say I can’t wait to get back to normal, well, normal. For the kids that I’m most concerned about was a disaster. Normal was they weren’t reading normal was that they were being suspended at a disproportionate rate.
Normal was, they were over identified for special education. Normal was, they were being expelled normal was they weren’t getting an advanced placement. So with the heart reset, We have this opportunity, you know, I’ve been siting a Indian novelist by the name of our Arundhati Roy who says this, the pandemic is a portal.
It’s a gateway from the old world into the new, [00:32:00] and that we have an opportunity. I know we’re all talking about how horrible this is, but I want to say that it’s also an opportunity. There’s also a chance for us to have a clean slate, to think differently about what we’re doing too. Focus differently.
I’ve got a panel coming up next week with the national Academy. And one of the things I’m going to say is that we need to center science and I’m not just saying science curriculum, but the problems of living in a democracy, whether it is climate change, whether it’s economic downturn, whether it’s an inability for people to access a quality education, that if we send it problems, then the curriculum will come along because.
You know, you, you can’t make a case if you’re not literate. Right. So I don’t want you to, just to read, because I want you to have a set of skills. I want you to be able to solve a problem. So I just think, yeah, again, I can’t remember whether it was [00:33:00] Ronald manual or some political person who said we should never let you know, not take advantage of a good crisis.
Well, we got a good crisis here and we need to take advantage of it. Mary Lee, how can you bring that idea of systems? Not universally working for every student into teaching? Uh, so I I’ve been really lucky. Um, I work at Clark street community school. We have started this step. We’ve gotten rid of grades.
Not, standard-based not one, two, three, four. Like we have truly, there is no GPA, there’s no grades. We are mastery-based. So we’re actually looking at when you write something or when you read something or when you do some math work, we’re looking at that and saying, okay, where can you improve? Where have you really mastered this skill, that kind of piece.
Um, we’ve looked at how do we. [00:34:00] Look at personalized plans for students. And how are the students taking the lead on that plan? What do they want to do? What do they want to pursue? I do think this, I cannot second enough. What doctor Ladson billings is saying is this is such an opportunity. That we can start saying maybe one size doesn’t fit all.
And here is our chance to actually make those changes that maybe we don’t need all of our students in our building at the same time, in order for them to be growing and learning, maybe we can connect with our communities. I think of, um, what dr. Jenkins was saying about how, you know, the outreach and the connection with community centers and community groups.
Maybe we need to make that the norm as compared to just the crisis situation. So I think there’s so many different opportunities within that to say, huh? Turns out when we take some of these pieces away, not everything [00:35:00] falls apart and maybe we are actually seeing students grow and seeing students thrive in, in a way that we haven’t seen before.
How can a whole school district embrace those ideas? Do you think. I think it’s critical that we all pause and look at what we have and turns out COVID-19 intersecting with the whole racial injustice. Um, since the emphasi of our country. For me, when I publicly witnessed mr. Floyd being lynched 16.2 miles from our home.
Um, a moment as an educator of 30 years, I said, I’m not doing my job. I’m not being disruptive enough. It came full circle, the historical wrongs of black and Brown, poor children, special needs children. [00:36:00] And I’m saying, what can we do? That was the question I asked. And I said, it’s time that we go back and look on the promise of America.
Of America and hold America accountable, but it’s reciprocal accountability. We have to do our parts and America must do their parts. We’re fundamentally flawed, no matter which system we try to implement right now, we’re fundamentally flawed how we resource education. We need to make education, the main thing.And when I say resource, see, it’s not just money. It’s the resources. Be it human. Be it an opportunity for advancement once. An individual would come educated. This is an opportunity for us to hold America true to his promise. When Abraham Lincoln said we came together to form a more perfect union. This is the time to form a more perfect union and to be all inclusive, put the schools in a community and hold the community accountable.
Put the community in the schools [00:37:00] to hold schools accountable. It’s a shared responsibility. It’s not just schools is businesses. Is healthcare. It’s all about the employment. And I just think, regardless of where we stand, which system, if we don’t see the people, and if we don’t have a service mentality about the people, right.
And trying to support the people and we develop policies that impact our practices, that impact the people that are still not taken into that promise. We are Americans. I think this is the greatest opportunity in my time in education. It’s like I’ve had a rebirth. I consider myself as a first year educator right now, not superintendent dropped the titles.
That’s nonsensical, drop the titles and let’s just come together and do the work whichever system we designed, make sure it’s one of excellence and not non excellence. I think critically when we say excellent [00:38:00] excellence is not some children reading at 18% and other children reading it. 64%. And we’re trying to compare the students, black and Brown students to white students who are scoring at 64%.
64% does not put us on a competitive level internationally. That’s the very reason in math and science, we had 32 and 34 in terms of our rating. When you look at the performance of international that says, this is an opportunity for America to really lead how America can lead. And I truly believe with the great science that’s here in Madison.Number one public institution share parking lots with MMS D share a parking lot is no reason that we can’t come together. Take the science, take the practice, listening to the students, listen to the staff and listen to the community. Whichever system we come up with. We’ve come up with it together. And it’s all in.
That’s what I believe that we have to do in a system that we choose must maintain [00:39:00] unhuman perspective. And not just test outcome perspective. Thank you all very much for that per those perspectives. We need to take a quick break here and we’ll be back to talk more about teaching and learning. Going forward.
Cap times idea Fest 2020 is made possible by the generous support of our spots. Presenting sponsor the bear-ish group that UBS a financial services firm with global access and a local focus to pursue what matters most. For its clients. Major sponsors are health X ventures, backing entrepreneurs who are creating value with digital health solutions, exact sciences pursuing earlier detections and life changing answers in the fight against cancer courts.
Health plans built with you in mind and Madison gas and electric. Your community energy company with goal is net zero carbon electricity. By 2050 co-sponsors are Epic systems and the Godfrey con law firm, [00:40:00] other sponsors are Wisconsin alumni research foundation savings bank, UnityPoint health Meriter cargo coffee, and the forward theater company, media partners are the Wisconsin state journal and madison.com.
Welcome back to our panel on how COVID-19 will change the future of education. So one of the things I think a lot of students and adults are facing right now through this pandemic is uncertainty. Uh, in their lives, how can teachers and, uh, educational institutions help students through that uncertainty, uh, while also managing, you know, their, their own, uh, challenges, Mary Lee, I’ll start with you.
Um, I think it starts with. Well, going back to the question of [00:41:00] how are we approaching social, emotional wellness? How are we looking at the wellness needs of our students, of our families and of our teachers? Um, I think we have spent a lot of last spring. Early this fall saying, okay, we’re going to check the box on making sure our kids are okay.And I do have some concern that we’re going to, you know, get further in and be like, Oh, well we already checked that box. So we don’t need to continue to do that. And that’s where I think parents and staff members and students and administration and the greater community can help, continue to check in to.
Keep that pulse. Um, we’re going to head into winter here soon, whether or not the weather today actually looks like that. Um, and that’s going to change the dynamic. And so as we continue through these different phases, as the data changes as well, different events come through in the next few months, we need to continue [00:42:00] to check in, um, because the uncertainty is not right, going away, not for awhile.
And. The more that we are being aware of the mental health need. The more that we continue to message to families that the wellness of your family is of the utmost importance. Yes. We want students learning. We want students growing and they’re going to continue to do that. Especially when they are. Wow.
Especially when they have levels of security and that could look like a lot of different things, whether that’s a schedule. I love how dr. Ladson billings talked about working with families of how do you do a schedule? How do you actually, we make a schedule I’m going, I wonder if we’ve done that with our parents?
I don’t know if we have, we’ve talked with some of our high schools students about doing that, but that might be really great for our elementary students to think about. We’ve actually set up a schedule as teachers I’m really skilled at that. It’s what I live in, right? Like that’s my world that I live in.
Not everybody lives in that world. So as we [00:43:00] continue on, we have to continue doing those checkpoints. We can’t just check a box and say that we’re moving forward. Dr. Jenkins on that similar note. I mean, how can the district give parents and students certainty right now? I think right now we have to truly just be honest with the community.
We’re in a state of uncertainty and it’s all about how you view it. Uh, it doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world because we’re uncertain. We’ll give you as much information as we can, based upon the information we’re getting, but I’m also really pushing for parents and for staff to be very careful about what information coming to you.For example, there is a, an economist out of Harvard Shetty. He just put this piece out based upon his metrics really would fall into discern online curriculum about Wisconsin [00:44:00] and the high socio economic students have increased learning 83.3% on his own online curriculum and the lower socioeconomic students have.
Decrease by 1%. So we know we have gaps, we’re Wisconsin, number one in the nation. Right. But what does this type of data mean inflammation when you get it, it contained to perpetuate narratives of someone else versus trying to understand your own realities. And so that narrative individual may take, do we even use the Zurn curriculum in all of Wisconsin?
No, but right now the narrative is, these are the things that’s happening. So no, the information and from where it come, no, the metrics do your homework as much as you can to be in alignment with the guidance that’s coming out, we’re in a medical situation, the academic piece. And I wholeheartedly agree [00:45:00] with dr.
Our students are learning right to the staff. I’m saying, Hey, give yourself some space and grace and give the students in space and grace. You didn’t turn it in about two o’clock. Nope. Zero, hold up. Wait a minute. That kid was at home helping three of their siblings. You don’t know all the situation, ask questions before we make those final decisions.
Same thing to parents in particular, parents who are working and have children at home, give yourself some space and grace give you students in space and grace. And one of my former people, uh, student services, um, supervisor, she said that to our team. Because when we first started, we were in a crisis. She say, hold up, everybody, let’s just give some space.
And grace. And I really embraced that philosophy of saying, you’re not going to be perfect. I’m not going to be perfect, but we’re just striving to do better. And as long as we can understand that we’re going to strive to get better. You don’t have to be perfect. That’s the other thing, [00:46:00] too. Right? As long as we know our intent and we’re really working hard.
To get there. I think we’ll be a little bit better off, but that adds to the social emotional. I have to be perfect. I’ve had to have more psychologists talking to our 4.0 students over time because of the anxieties they have. Wait a minute. I just scored a 97 on that test. Oh my goodness. I didn’t get a hundred, hold up, slow down.
You know, that wasn’t all that bad, you know, and that’s not low expectations. But it’s just saying, relax, you know, and we all going to have to do that, help one another, uh, do that. And I think we’ll be better off the anxiety’s a real amongst all of us right now, dr. Ladson billings, how can uncertainty and, you know, disruption to routine affect kids’ learning, um, and development.
Um, so I think what’s important for us to understand is even though this panel is about COVID-19, we are in the midst of four readily [00:47:00] identifiable pandemics. We do have COVID-19 it’s the reason why, you know, people are distancing, why I’m here and not in the studio with you. We understand that one, but we’re also in a pandemic of anti-black racism that that’s everywhere.
I mean, was George Floyd and Arbery, um, C’mon Arbery and Brianna Taylor, and then lo and behold, Jacob Blake, I mean, right down the road and Kenosha. So that’s all around too, but we also are facing a terrible economic situation. We haven’t talked much about it, but the truth of the matter is that, um, even though the governor has, you know, had a landlord stay the requirement for people to pay their rent, those rents are going to come due.
And people don’t have jobs or they’ve had to cut hours. So rents and mortgages and all those things will come down, come, come due. And then the fourth one, although we think of [00:48:00] ourselves as kind of safe from it in the upper middle is the coming climate catastrophe. You know, I’m a grandmother who all of her grandchildren are on the West coast, so they can’t even go outside because the air is so bad.
So those fires raging in California, or if you live in that, um, in the, in the Gulf coast area, uh, we are now through all of the regular alphabet with storms and now into the Greek alphabet, Louisiana is bracing for, uh, the Delta, right? So all of these things are happening. So uncertainty is not just around COVID-19 it’s around living in this world right now.
So one of the things that I think will help us with the uncertainty is that as teachers, we have to begin to build our pedagogical repertoires, COVID-19, it’s forced you to do it. To some extent you can’t just do the same old [00:49:00] stuff. Uh, I recall as a professor at UWA because, you know, unlike, um, K-12 school and we don’t get a room.
You know, you don’t have a room. That’s your room. You have your office, what you teach, wherever they assign you, wherever their space. And I, I made a decision that whatever space I’m in, I’m going to take advantage of whatever, whatever resources are there. So my last. Couple of rooms were connected to our IMC, which meant I had all of this technology.
I had smart boards, I had docu cams. I had, uh, all kinds of listening and I decided to start doing some things differently. I began to run a, um, uh, a class hashtag. A Twitter feed. And what did I find out that many of my international students absolutely loved because they don’t like raising their hands and speaking out because that’s not how they came into education in their countries, but they can pull out their [00:50:00] devices and tweet about what we’re doing.
I would not have thought about that without that resource there in front of me. So I think the, again, you know, I want to look at the opportunity. So the opportunities are for us to build, um, better, um, pedagogical repertoires to learn, to teach together. That’s another thing that I think we, we, we give lip service to team teaching, but I think now we do have to work together.
Uh, and that as that Jenkins had said earlier, the whole notion of the community and the school and the school and the community, that, that, that gives us another opportunity. Um, Mary Lee talked about a community garden. Um, we could be doing so many more things, uh, and not letting the assessment tail wag the dog here that.
Uh, I just wanna, I just don’t want us to lose this opportunity to miss it because it really is, uh, an [00:51:00] opportunity. Thank you so much, dr. Jenkins, dr. Ladson billings just spoke a lot about teacher development and growth and learning right now. What are you doing as an administrator to learn and grow through this period of time?
JFK said that leadership and learning are indispensable. You can’t be a leader without wanting to continue to grow. And I am listening a whole lot more to everyone. Uh, and what I’m hearing from the children, uh, when I go out in the community, when I’m going and tapping into the schools, when I’m meeting yesterday with the principal groups and what, uh, when I’m listening to the parents.Okay. When I say I’m in my first year of my new education, As a leader, this is my first year. And it’s exciting. It’s given, it’s rejuvenated me in a way as a learner, you know, reading, uh, [00:52:00] any and everything, because there’s not a blueprint for this where we are now. So as I walked through it and looking at the models, not of what has been, but what could be, I think what dr.
Less ability to say, this is an opportunity. I am in that mode of saying this is the learning should be occurring for myself, trying to educate also working in collaboration with our board, working with the staff and yesterday the principals, we had a great time conversations and we’re going to flip our model central office, bringing in all the experts central office, come in and leave.
No, no, no, no, no. Principals will lead the PD. They were going to come up with the topics and working in concert with the staff. And, um, I met with some amazing principals. Yes,
we have so much talent in MMS. D I just, I mean, I’ve been in a lot of places and I knew that when I left and it’s still [00:53:00] here. So that’s what I say as a, as a new leader, you know, I am in a learning mode. And I think I’ve been rejuvenated by this COVID-19, but it’s racial the whole injustice piece. So I think that’s what, from my level and lens, we have to do throw out what we were before this and start a new.Yeah, in sort of to build on that. Are there any specific curricular or content changes that you see happening as a result of everything that’s going on right now? Mary Lee? I mean, do you plan to build any of what’s been going on in the world into your content going forward? We are, that’s a really amazing part.
Um, so the school that, uh, I work at, um, we’ve been doing this for almost 10 years now of looking at, um, how do we bring what students are already passionate about? How do we bring what is already, um, in [00:54:00] both popular culture, in the news in science and bring it into our focus. So right now our students are split into two cohorts.
One cohort is working on a, um, the theme is growing. You’re growing our future. So looking at food, sustainability, planetary health, looking at philosophy, how does philosophy impact how we, we, um, interact with the world poetry? So how can poetry and. Within that hip hop and language be impactful for communicating your ideas.
So that’s our one strand. And so we have a group of teachers who are then working with our half of our students for this entire first term interspersing, all of those ideas I’m in the coming of age. So thinking about what does it look like to come of age? Both in this time and in times, All over the world.
Right. [00:55:00] So thinking about it from a global perspective and right here in our community, so what are we looking at? What are we doing? How do we look at statistics and use that to inform our, our decisions that we’re making? How do we use literature to have that windows and mirrors effect? Right. What do I see in literature that is similar to me?
What is literature that opens my eyes to different pieces? Um, so. I’ve been really lucky that I’ve been doing this for many years now. And I think we are now we have an opportunity to say, how can we use what is happening in our world right now? If you take any of the pandemics that dr. Ladson billings talked about, you could develop curriculum for years on those topics alone.
And. We have an opportunity to do that. We have the materials, we have the ideas out there, but it’s going to take a massive shift. It’s a massive shift to shift away [00:56:00] from what we’ve been doing to what we can do. And I think this might be the time and yes, it’s going to be hard. It’s already hard. So what can, what are those steps that we can start taking as we look at that?
Dr. Ladson billings, how important do you think it is for teachers to do that sort of curricular adjustment, uh, for their students? Um, I think it’s imperative, you know, it’s interesting some years ago, um, psychologist, how a gardener who most people know from multiple intelligences, Howard said, you know, We keep talking about what schools need to do or what, you know, how, how to get better.
He said the truth of the matter is if you look around the world, there are different places in the world that are X.
[00:57:00] We keep talking about what schools need to do or what w you know, how, how to get better. He said the truth of the matter there is, if you look around the world, there are different places in the world that are expert at different aspects of it. He said, if you want, wanted to have a child have a perfect education, you put them in preschool, Italy at Reggio Emilia.You put them in elementary school in Finland. You then put them in high school in Germany, and then you send them to college in United States. That indeed that’s the best system seemed to be. So we have this opportunity to look or what what’s going on at Reggio Emilia, how can our preschools be less sort of structured and focused and more whole child oriented what’s going on in Finland?
Why are the fins doing so well in elementary school? Uh, How much [00:58:00] latitude do their teachers have to make curricular decisions what’s going on in Germany, uh, with high school? Well, one of the things I know for sure is that German high school offers a promise. If you stick through this, this is what we’re promising you at the end.
So they’ve sat down with industry and ha and postsecondary ed and said, Buhr people come through the program. We guarantee them a route to one of these. They want to go work in the Mercedes Benz plant. They can do that, but if they want to go to belong, yeah. Uh, to study, they can do that. And then of course our colleges are the cream of the crop.
Everybody comes here. Everybody wants to go to a college and university in the U S we have to find a way to synthesize all of this great information and great opportunities, because we were one of the best resource countries, nations the world’s ever seen. And I don’t actually think it’s about quote money.
I think it is about our [00:59:00] political will. It is about our political, do we want to invest in just the fence or do we want to invest in our people? Thank you so much, dr. Jenkin, you spoke a little earlier about sort of some conversation about achievement gaps, uh, nationally, and that’s something that’s been certainly a big part of the conversation over the past seven months is the potential for widening achievement gaps through this time.Uh, is that a concern here and how can you stop that from happening? Well, I think achievement gap is one thing, but the opportunity gap and based upon just even what you just heard. They were talking opportunities, right? And the higher, more wealthy families have opportunities before school, after schools on the weekend spoken language at home is so many opportunities.
And when I said there’s a resource with fundamental flaw, how we resource, this [01:00:00] is what I mean, it’s bigger than just money to these opportunities we can create, uh, for our children. And I’m still on the narratives. We have to shift the narratives. I said this when I was speaking at, um, the editorial board for the state journal, I think the media has a lot to do with shifting this narrative.
And when I mentioned Shetty’s work earlier or some other individuals who are economists or, and we should be shooting, what were you doing? The other side?
…. the remaining audio is indecipherable.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Schools Aren’t Super-Spreaders
In early August, the first kids in America went back to school during the pandemic. Many of these openings happened in areas where cases were high or growing: in Georgia, Indiana, Florida. Parents, teachers, and scientists feared what might happen next. The New York Times reported that, in parts of Georgia, a school of 1,000 kids could expect to see 20 or 30 people arrive with COVID-19 during week one. Many assumed that school infections would balloon and spread outward to the broader community, triggering new waves. On social media, people shared pictures of high schools with crowded hallways and no masking as if to say I told you so.
Fear and bad press slowed down or canceled school reopenings elsewhere. Many large urban school districts chose not to open for in-person instruction, even in places with relatively low positivity rates. Chicago, L.A., Houston—all remote, at least so far.
It’s now October. We are starting to get an evidence-based picture of how school reopenings and remote learning are going (those photos of hallways don’t count), and the evidence is pointing in one direction. Schools do not, in fact, appear to be a major spreader of COVID-19.
Since early last month, I’ve been working with a group of data scientists at the technology company Qualtrics, as well as with school-principal and superintendent associations, to collect data on COVID-19 in schools. (See more on that project here.) Our data on almost 200,000 kids in 47 states from the last two weeks of September revealed an infection rate of 0.13 percent among students and 0.24 percent among staff. That’s about 1.3 infections over two weeks in a school of 1,000 kids, or 2.2 infections over two weeks in a group of 1,000 staff. Even in high-risk areas of the country, the student rates were well under half a percent. (You can see all the data here.)
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Our Times
Pupils start the new school year in Taez, Yemen pic.twitter.com/O52B5idWij
— James Denselow (@jamesdenselow) October 8, 2020
“Many (educators) are at a breaking point,” said @WEAC president Ron Martin. “Hearing this in October is very alarming, and if schools don’t start looking at this, there are going to be long-term effects on education.”
My latest, with help from @JSEdbeat:https://t.co/fqShKcayt7— Sami West (@BySamanthaWest) October 8, 2020
2010: WEAC. $1.57M for Four (State) Senators.
Lockdowns Intended To Preserve Our Health Are Making Us Poorer and Angrier
The U.S. economy may be slowly pulling itself out of the doldrums inflicted by social distancing and government lockdown orders promoted as efforts to stem the spread of COVID-19, but many Americans continue to suffer.
Half of Americans who lost their job because of the pandemic are still out of work, and the resulting damage to finances falls hardest—as you might expect—on lower-income people who have little cushion against hard times. That’s something to keep in mind as politicians contemplate renewed restrictions, especially given the potential for economic pain to worsen already-simmering social tensions.
“Overall, 25 percent of U.S. adults say they or someone in their household was laid off or lost their job because of the coronavirus outbreak, with 15 percent saying this happened to them personally,” Pew Research reported last week. “Of those who say they personally lost a job, half say they are still unemployed, a third have returned to their old job and 15 percent are in a different job than before.”
What makes the situation even worse is that the burden falls hardest on those who can least afford it. “Lower-income adults who were laid off due to the coronavirus are less likely to be working now than middle- and upper-income adults who lost their jobs (43 percent vs. 58 percent),” Pew adds.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Stats Hold a Surprise: Lockdowns May Have Had Little Effect on COVID-19 Spread
Jay Richards, William Briggs and Douglas Axe:
In 1932, Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis famously called the states “laboratories of democracy.” Different states can test out different policies, and they can learn from each other. That proved true in 2020. Governors in different states responded to the COVID-19 pandemic at different times and in different ways. Some states, such as California, ordered sweeping shutdowns. Others, such as Florida, took a more targeted approach. Still others, such as South Dakota, dispensed information but had no lockdowns at all.
As a result, we can now compare outcomes in different states, to test the question no one wants to ask: Did the lockdowns make a difference?
If lockdowns really altered the course of this pandemic, then coronavirus case counts should have clearly dropped whenever and wherever lockdowns took place. The effect should have been obvious, though with a time lag. It takes time for new coronavirus infections to be officially counted, so we would expect the numbers to plummet as soon as the waiting time was over.
How long? New infections should drop on day one and be noticed about ten or eleven days from the beginning of the lockdown. By day six, the number of people with first symptoms of infection should plummet (six days is the average time for symptoms to appear). By day nine or ten, far fewer people would be heading to doctors with worsening symptoms. If COVID-19 tests were performed right away, we would expect the positives to drop clearly on day ten or eleven (assuming quick turnarounds on tests).
To judge from the evidence, the answer is clear: Mandated lockdowns had little effect on the spread of the coronavirus. The charts below show the daily case curves for the United States as a whole and for thirteen U.S. states. As in almost every country, we consistently see a steep climb as the virus spreads, followed by a transition (marked by the gray circles) to a flatter curve. At some point, the curves always slope downward, though this wasn’t obvious for all states until the summer.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Civics: High court strikes down Michigan Governor Whitmer’s emergency powers; gov vows to use other means
Beth LeBlanc, Craig Mauger and Melissa Nann Burke:
In a landmark ruling with far-reaching implications, the Michigan Supreme Court decided Friday that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer violated her constitutional authority by continuing to issue orders to combat COVID-19 without the approval of state lawmakers.
The state’s high court ruled 4-3 that a state law allowing the governor to declare emergencies and keep them in place without legislative input — the 1945 Emergency Powers of the Governor Act — is unconstitutional.
The court was unanimous in ruling that a separate law — the 1976 Emergency Management Act — did not give Whitmer the power, after April 30, to issue or renew any executive orders related to the COVID-19 pandemic after 28 days without Legislative approval.
The ruling, which was requested by a federal judge earlier this year, serves as advice to the federal court and indicates how the court would rule on a suit challenging Whitmer’s emergency powers.
K-12 Tax, referendum and spending climate: Garver risked thousands of dollars in fines if it continued large outdoor music gatherings
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Commentary on Taxpayer supported Madison Schools’ compensation practices (and budget)
The budget vote this summer took place in a June 29 public meeting, and district spokesman Tim LeMonds pointed to a mention in the June 26 staff newsletter, which he called “the primary mechanism used for communicating to all staff.” In that newsletter, a “Budget Update” section on page two includes a mention of the pay freeze in its fourth paragraph among other details of the preliminary budget timeline.
“This effectively pauses our previously planned compensation increases and a few Strategic Equity Projects, not previously approved,” the newsletter states. “Although it is our hope that our budgetary landscape improves by late fall, we also need to be prepared for State budget reductions that may be coming in the upcoming months.”
Another teacher wrote in an email she did not know “anyone who was aware of the pay freeze until we got an email with a preview of our checks and we all realized our salaries were not updated.”
At the time of the preliminary budget approval, district chief financial officer Kelly Ruppel was projecting a loss of $7.6 million in state aid from what had been anticipated in earlier projections. Removing the salary increases saved $7.8 million.
Sadlowski wrote in an email the union is seeking “clarification on whose authority the unilateral change” was implemented. He added that they hope for “a swift resolution that adheres to the agreed upon terms” and that resolving it now would “help to avoid further acrimony than this adverse action has already created.”
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Schools reopen, no surge
Florida reopened schools for in-person teaching in August. The feared coronavirus surge didn’t happen, reports a team of USA Today reporters. “The state’s positive case count among kids ages 5 to 17 declined through late September after a peak in July.
More than half of Florida families returned their children to school in-person, while the rest chose remote learning. “As weeks ticked by and a surge of school-linked cases did not materialize, requests to return remote learners to the classroom have surged in some places,” the team reports.
Caitlynne Palmieri was among the Martin County parents wanting to return her child to the classroom. She initially enrolled her 9-year-old in the remote learning option because of high community infection rates. Her son, a fourth grader, had trouble focusing on schoolwork from home. When she saw how safety measures were implemented and adhered to, Palmieri sent him back to the classroom.
“I knew it was right for us,” she said. “He wanted to be back, and I felt safe.”
Cases are up for young adults in some counties. But not schoolchildren.
In Belgium, Germany, Norway and Switzerland, coronavirus outbreaks in schools are rare, report Michael Birnbaum, Loveday Morris and Quentin Ariès in the Washington Post. “So despite rising coronavirus cases, and although universities have emerged as sites of concern, European countries remain wholeheartedly committed to in-person learning for primary and secondary schools.”
Belgian health officials think in-person classes might “be safer than virtual schooling, assuming students tend to be less rigorous about social distancing when they’re not being supervised in classrooms,” they write.
Many countries in Europe have dropped rules about wearing masks in schools, reasoning that it’s difficult for students to concentrate when they have them on all day. Public health authorities have spent more energy devising ways for children to study within relatively small cohorts, so that if quarantines are required, fewer people will be affected.
“The view in Norway is that children and youth should have high priority to have as normal a life as possible, because this disease is going to last,” said Margrethe Greve-Isdahl, a senior physician at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Fact-check: Does Joe Biden want to end school choice?
What Biden says about school choice
The Biden campaign said he’s firmly against using public money for private K-12 schools. Here’s the full statement we received:
“Joe Biden opposes the Trump/(Betsy) DeVos conception of ‘school choice,’ which is private school vouchers that would destroy our public schools. He’s also against for-profit and low-performing charter schools, and believes in holding all charter schools accountable. He does not oppose districts letting parents choose to send their children to public magnet schools, high-performing public charters or traditional public schools.”
As part of a broader education policy outlined on his website, Biden calls for nearly tripling the Title 1 funding for aid to schools serving lower income neighborhoods and raising teacher pay.
The Trump-Pence 2020 website claims that Biden said “that if he’s elected, charter schools are gone.” The campaign links to a comment Biden made at a December 2019 forum on public schools. Biden was attacking Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ policy on student sexual assault accusations. At the very end of condemning that policy on assaults, he said, “If I’m president, Betsy DeVos’ whole notion from charter schools to this are gone.”
Biden didn’t otherwise discuss charter schools or school choice broadly.
Assessing Biden on school choice
EdChoice, an advocacy group that aims “to advance educational freedom and choice,” lists a number of practices that fall under the school choice umbrella. In addition to vouchers, that list includes charter schools, specialized magnet schools (for example, for math and science or the arts) and allowing students to choose which public school they want to attend.
Biden’s platform includes all of those elements except vouchers.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
We are throwing the working class under the bus – an interview with Professor Martin Kulldorff
In this interview with Reaction’s Deputy Editor Alastair Benn, Martin Kulldorff, Professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and leading figure in the field of infectious disease epidemiology, argues for an age-targeted response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Lockdowns result in too much collateral damage, he argues, and impose unreasonable costs on the working class and the young in particular. He also has some fascinating comments on the uses and misuses of “the science” in the debate over public health.
Alastair Benn: This week Boris Johnson urged the British public not to “throw in the sponge”, a boxing metaphor. How helpful is the language of conflict when we are trying to deal with a disease?
Martin Kulldorff: It is an enemy, in a sense, so we have to use the weaknesses of the virus against it. The key feature with Covid-19 is the huge difference in mortality between the old and the young. The older people among us have more than a thousand-fold risk of death compared to the youngest among us. We have to use that in order to deal with this virus. So that means we have to protect the elderly among us and other high-risk persons while we wait for herd immunity which will either come via a vaccine or natural infections or a combination of the two.
AB: The British government tends to stress that everybody is at a similar level of risk. So whenever there is a specific acknowledgement of the threat of Covid to the elderly, it is caveated with comments about how young people can get seriously ill too.
MK: This is very unhelpful. There is an enormous difference of risk. For older people this is much worse than the annual flu. For children the risks are much less than the annual flu. This is not a dangerous disease for children. We don’t close schools because of the annual flu. We don’t ban people from driving cars because there are people who die in car accidents. We let people live normal lives with standard precautions.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Reimagining a more equitable and resilient K–12 education system
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended school systems around the world. The pace has been frenetic as systems have had to stand up remote learning overnight, plan whether and how to reopen schools amid changing epidemiological circumstances, and support students academically and emotionally. The scope of the challenge has thus far left little time for deeper reflection.
Yet crises often create an opportunity for broader change, and as education systems begin to make decisions about investments for the new school year, it’s important to step back and consider the longer-term imperative to create a better system for every child beyond the pandemic.
The process starts with a key question: What are we trying to achieve, for whom, by when, and to what standards? Our research shows that top-performing school systems can vary significantly in curricula, assessments, teacher behaviors, and even desired outcomes. What unites them is a focus on excellence for every child, regardless of race, gender, income level, or location. That core value should inform the areas to keep in our current systems and where to innovate to create more effective and equitable education for all.
While we mustn’t lose sight of what we have learned through decades of research and education reform, the COVID-19 pandemic is driving educators to accelerate new models of learning and innovate beyond the classroom. Lockdowns forced students around the world to learn from home, resulting in a dramatic increase in the use of online tools, such as videoconferencing, learning-management platforms, and assessment tools. In a month, Google Classroom doubled its number of users and Khan Academy saw a 20-fold increase in parent registrations. At the same time, the pandemic has highlighted and even exacerbated many of the inequities in the school system, from the learning environment at home to access to devices, internet, and high-quality education. There is now both the political will and a sense of urgency to take on the challenge of fixing long-broken delivery models. We applaud that instinct.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Inside a California Covid Revolt
Pontes is now the county executive officer of Shasta County in Northern California and goes to work in thin socks, but another crisis has found him. “You cannot get closer to total disobedience of any kind of law,” he said, referring to the local response to Covid-19 strictures. “What’s happening up here is full-on anarchy.” Then he listed for me a few of the things that had happened recently: The county sheriff had announced that he wouldn’t enforce the state’s pandemic restrictions on social gatherings and businesses. People who had never before attended county board meetings were accusing local officials of treason. The county’s health officer, who had the unhappy job of imposing the state’s Covid rules on the citizens of Shasta County, was now receiving so many threats that Pontes had brought in a new threat-assessment team; he’d also ordered the bushes cut back away from her house, installed a security system and floodlights, and ordered police patrols of her neighborhood. “She still doesn’t feel safe out there,” he said. “At all.”
In just the past few months, a bunch of county health officers across California have been run from office. But what was happening in Shasta County felt to Pontes like a new stage of the crisis in governance. He thought it was “80-20” in favor that, at any moment, a citizen army would form, invade the public buildings, and perform citizens’ arrests of the five members of the county’s Board of Supervisors and any other government officials they could get their hands on. “Before Covid I felt I could talk my way out of just about anything,” he said. “But I had to ask the sheriff, ‘What are you going to do if they arrest us?’ He reassured me that he’s not going to take me anywhere.”
There was one other thing Pontes had noticed: The inconveniences caused by the state’s restrictions had attracted a new sort of person to the political process. Elissa McEuen was a case in point. She’d moved up to Shasta a few years ago from San Francisco, where she’d worked in private equity. She was a stay-at-home mom with little kids who, six months ago, couldn’t have told you where the Board of Supervisors met, much less what they did.
Now she showed up to every meeting, and spoke every time, with eloquence. Almost single-handedly she had organized a bunch of vaguely lunatic groups — the anti-vaxxers, the Second Amendment people, the chemtrail crowd — into a unified fighting force. “She’s taken it to another level,” Pontes said. “If you remove her, all of a sudden a lot of those people say, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t believe what you believe.”
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Government is Losing the Trust of the People
I’ve repeated this often over the last few months. We have lost sight of the goal. I think it’s reasonable for everyone to take a step back and ask “how did we end up here?”
How did we go from “we need to flatten the curve for the month of April” to “we are going to shut your business down in September and October if you decide to stay open?”
In California, the goalposts continue to move. At the beginning the goal was to make sure we had enough hospital beds, make sure we had enough PPE equipment, make sure we weren’t having to choose between who could live and who couldn’t. Thankfully because of the people of San Diego and the great work from our local public health officials, we never had any of those problems.
Now though, the goal has changed. In California, we have a flawed color-coded system and that doesn’t even have a green tier, with full openings. Businesses are going to limited capacity for an indefinite time.
We’ve been told that life won’t get back to normal until there’s a vaccine. So, if the goal truly is to keep everyone locked down until there is a vaccine, we have to start being honest. An Axios/Ipsos poll was done last week that said only 13 percent of Americans would be willing to try the vaccine when it comes out.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Dane County Board continues to duel with the University of Wisconsin; budget assumes status quo (!)
Brenda Gonzalez, director of community relations at UW-Madison who spoke during the County Board meeting in opposition of the resolution, said testing and protocol put in place should keep the number of positive cases on campus low. She said Public Health Madison and Dane County is monitoring possible transmission of cases from campus to the surrounding community and hasn’t found evidence to support a large number of campus-to-community case transmissions.
“We do not believe that further limiting in-person instruction is prudent or necessary,” Gonzalez said.
Dane County Sup. Michele Ritt, a mother of a UW System student, voted against the resolution but questioned the effectiveness of policies meant to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 on campus.
“Sending all students from residence halls home is unsafe and unrealistic,” she said. “If we close residence halls and move classes online, this will encourage students to engage in more reckless behaviors.”
In response to the vote, UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank reiterated that many students will stay in Madisonregardless of whether classes are delivered entirely online because they are members of the community who live, work and vote in the city. Further, she said, no faculty or staff have become infected in classrooms or lab settings and the latest testing data on campus shows a lower infection rate than in Dane County.
“Given the low case numbers at UW, our extensive testing and messaging regime, and our students’ commitment to being part of the Madison community, we disagree with calls for the university to send student(s) home,” Blank said in a statement. “The university, the city and the county need to work together to make sure that all people — students and non-students alike – follow county health protocols and remain healthy
The Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce opposed the resolution, saying it strikes the wrong balance and would cause “unnecessary economic hardship” on businesses.
“Ending in-person classes and sending students ‘home’ is not a productive public health strategy and sends a terrible message to the students that are members of our community,” the Chamber said in a statement.
Dane County plans a 3.4% property tax increase….
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
COVID-19 emergency measures and the impending authoritarian pandemic
COVID-19 has brought the world grinding to a halt. As of early August 2020, the greatest public health emergency of the century thus far has registered almost 20 million infected people and claimed over 730,000 lives across all inhabited continents, bringing public health systems to their knees, and causing shutdowns of borders and lockdowns of cities, regions, and even nations unprecedented in the modern era. Yet, as this Article demonstrates—with diverse examples drawn from across the world—there are unmistakable regressions into authoritarianism in governmental efforts to contain the virus. Despite the unprecedented nature of this challenge, there is no sound justification for systemic erosion of rights-protective democratic ideals and institutions beyond that which is strictly demanded by the exigencies of the pandemic. A Wuhan-inspired all-or-nothing approach to viral containment sets a dangerous precedent for future pandemics and disasters, with the global copycat response indicating an impending ‘pandemic’ of a different sort, that of authoritarianization. With a gratuitous toll being inflicted on democracy, civil liberties, fundamental freedoms, healthcare ethics, and human dignity, this has the potential to unleash humanitarian crises no less devastating than COVID-19 in the long run.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Wisconsin’s largest teachers unions again ask state leaders to move all schools to virtual-only instruction
The news conference, which also featured Madison Teachers Inc. President Andy Waity, was part of a national day of action by teachers unions across the country, calling for safe working conditions in schools during the pandemic.
The renewed push to bar in-person instruction comes as the number of COVID-19 cases has spiked in the state and two weeks after a Green Bay-area school teacher died of the virus.
On Wednesday, DHS reported an additional 2,319 individuals tested positive, about 19.7% of those tested. It reported a record number of COVID-related deaths, at 27, and hospitalizations, at 91.
Wisconsin has also been labeled a “red zone” by the White House Coronavirus Task Force, which has called for increasing social distancing here “to the maximal degree possible.”
Cases among school-age children have spiked dramatically since late August, according to new data released Wednesday by DHS. Numerous cases involving students and staff have been reported at schools across the state, according to DHS and a database created by the Journal Sentinel and USA Today Network-Wisconsin.
Scott Girard: “we know best”, continued.
“We cannot rely on individuals to make good decisions in a pandemic,” Mizialko said, citing reports of parents knowingly sending symptomatic children to school. “It requires a systemic response. This is why we have government and it’s why we pay taxes and it’s why we have elections.”
Many private schools had planned to open for some in-person instruction the week after the Public Health Madison & Dane County order was issued after 5 p.m. on a Friday. PHMDC officials have encouraged schools to use the metrics they issued for reopening schools even if its order is not in effect.
In Dane County, public health officials in late August ordered all schools closed for grades 3-12, while allowing in-person instruction for grades K-2 with certain requirements in place. The state Supreme Court put that order on hold in response to a legal challenge from various private schools, parents and membership organizations, allowing schools to open.
“The notion that parents inherently know what school is best for their kids is an example of conservative magical thinking.”; “For whatever reason, parents as a group tend to undervalue the benefits of diversity in the public schools….” – former Madison School Board member Ed Hughes.
We Learn Faster When We Aren’t Told What Choices to Make
Ontario doctors sign letter to Premier advising against sweeping lockdowns
‘If you are under the age of 50 you have a 99.98% chance of surviving from COVID-19’
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
“I am particularly unhappy about the fact that Dane County has chosen some very low numbers of case limits to decide whether to allow K-12 to start back up again in person”
“I am particularly unhappy about the fact that Dane County has chosen some very low numbers of case limits to decide whether to allow K-12 to start back up again in person,” she said. “I have asked that the county should revisit some of those K-12 limits.”
One particular area of concern with off-campus spread is the return of the Badger football games and the tailgating events that will inevitably come with.
“While we all love our football Saturdays, the festivities that come with them are going to serve as new spreading events within our community,” Parisi wrote in a statement after the Big Ten announced that its football season would resume in late October.
On Tuesday, Blank defended the choice to restart the season, which she and the other heads of Big Ten schools agreed upon unanimously. Before that decision was made, she said, a Big Ten Medical Advisory Group supplied a list of recommendations with which a safe season would be possible, and that the schools will implement those recommendations.
The Chancellor also said that there would be no fans in attendance at Badger football games.
“There’s no way you can have, even if it’s only one quarter of your stadium, 20,000 people walking in and standing in line for the restrooms,” Blank said. “There are no fans in the stadium this year.”
Blank ended the call by emphasizing the agency of students in behaving responsibly and limiting the spread of the virus.
Blank also thinks the bar for closing local public schools is too low & should’ve planned for a UW case spike.
“I am particularly unhappy about the fact that Dane County has chosen some very low numbers … I have asked that the county should revisit some of those K-12 limits.”
— Will Cioci (@wjcioci) September 30, 2020
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Grants help parents form ‘equity pods’
Pods and microschools aren’t just for affluent parents who can afford to hire a teacher or tutor, writes Beth Hawkins on The 74. Lower-income and minority parents are using small grants to create “equity pods” and microschools.
With a $10,000 grant from the National Parents Union, Brandice Hatcher is opening her Righteous Voice Mentoring pod in her Wisconsin home. She’ll help six girls in grades 4 through 8 use the district’s remote learning program, adding “membership in the national Black Girl Book Club, encounters with strong Black women in their community and other activities to promote the development of healthy identities,” writes Hawkins.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Tennessee students likely experienced ‘significant’ learning loss due to school closures this year, state says
Tennessee students have likely experienced significant learning loss, especially in reading and math, this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Preliminary data released Wednesday by the Tennessee Department of Education projects an estimated 50% decrease in proficiency rates in 3rd grade reading and a projected 65% decrease in proficiency in math.
“The department has identified trends that indicate real challenges that have been experienced by students at all levels.” Gov. Bill Lee said during a news briefing Wednesday. “It just shows how important it is that our kids get back into the classroom and that’s why we’ve put such a strong effort in making sure our kids do return back to classrooms for in-person learning.”
Lee characterized the data as “an alarm that’s been sounded.”
“We are seeing through this report an alarm that’s been sounded, especially with regard to not only the short term impacts on kids but the long-term impact on our state,” Lee said.
Most students traditionally experience some sort of learning loss over the summer, but educators have worried that students might experience greater loss since schools initially closed in March thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
The Moral Case for Reopening Schools—Without Masks
If you’re a public-minded student or teacher committed to reducing the death toll from Covid-19, what is the morally correct way to behave?
According to the epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, you should do just about the opposite of what’s being preached by college presidents, teachers’ unions, political leaders, and the scientific and media establishment. Unless you’re elderly or particularly vulnerable, you shouldn’t be wearing a mask all day, or shaming others for going unmasked. You should be careful not to endanger the vulnerable, but otherwise you should be exposing yourself to the virus in order to promote herd immunity.
Gupta, 55, wants to teach her classes at Oxford in person, without a mask, and she is appalled at her colleagues’ reluctance to go back to the classroom.
“It’s such a disservice to this generation of students,” she says. “Teachers and students who are vulnerable should have the option to go online, but for the rest of us this virus is no bigger than other risks we take in daily life. It’s not rational, and certainly not communitarian, to avoid being infected with a pathogen that carries such a low risk to you when there’s a high benefit to the community by helping to create herd immunity.”
Gupta’s strategy is heresy to the public-health establishment, but it seems to be paying off in Sweden, and her research team at Oxford has a far better track record on Covid-19 than the scientists whose work inspired the widespread lockdowns and mask mandates in the first place. In March, when Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial College London terrified politicians and the public with its projections of Covid deaths—more than 500,000 in Britain and 2 million in the United States—Gupta’s team warned that this scenario was based on dubious assumptions about the virus’s spread and lethality.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Q&A: Maxine McKinney de Royston says virtual instruction is a chance to “reimagine education”
Maxine McKinney de Royston has a pair of perspectives on virtual learning.
The parent of three is also an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education, seeing the clash between the reality of what the Madison Metropolitan School District is implementing and what she considers best practices.
MMSD has moved to a nearly full-day schedule of live, remote instruction this fall after its unexpected transition to virtual learning in the spring, when students were learning through screens for fewer hours. McKinney de Royston is concerned the fall plan has “gone a little too far” in requiring too much active screen time.
“I feel like it’s just gone too far to the over-planning side and the over-structured side, which is unfortunate, but I also understand that there’s competing needs,” she said during the first week of school. “There’s the needs by the Department of Public Instruction to get a certain number of instructional minutes. And so everybody’s between a rock and a hard place.
“It’s just as somebody who studies learning I’m like, ‘No!’”
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
UW-Madison fires back at Dane County for proposing online classes, sending students home
The best way to reduce the number of infections, Blank said, is “not by issuing press releases calling for students to leave, but to partner in developing collaborative solutions for the benefit of all residents.” She warned that the county is unlikely to see a rapid decline in cases until agencies with jurisdiction over off-campus areas take action.
“It’s long past time to stop arguing,” Blank said in a statement. “We’d welcome a conversation on how we can work together to help our community.”
UW campuses forge ahead in reopening this fall despite growing COVID-19 concerns
Parisi was baffled by Blank’s latest statement, saying UW-Madison went ahead in reopening this fall despite both he and officials with Public Health Madison and Dane County expressing concern.
“The university did not ask for our permission,” he said in an interview. “They informed us. For them to somehow shift the responsibility of their decision onto the community doesn’t really pass the smell test.”
UW-Madison started the semester with an inadequate testing ability and number of contact tracers on staff, straining the county’s public health resources, Parisi said.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Madison estimated to lose 400 students this fall; continuing to seek a new school building via 2020 tax & spending increase
Ruppell estimated Monday that the district would see a 400-student drop in enrollment this school year, though that won’t be finalized until the state certifies enrollment numbers in early October. That’s up nearly 350 students from the estimated drop of 51 pre-COVID, which is why the district implemented a hiring freeze over the summer, Ruppell said.
“We have a game plan in place regarding this,” Ruppell said. “These numbers can get much better by the time we hit Friday.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Majority of surveyed Wisconsin districts offering in-person school
With the bulk of schools back in session now, a majority of Wisconsin school districts representing about half of the state’s public school students report plans to open up school buildings for some form of in-person instruction during the ongoing pandemic.
A Wisconsin State Journal review found in rural parts of the state the decision was driven in part by a lack of reliable broadband internet access for students and teachers; districts representing about a third of students, including most large urban districts, started entirely online; and some schools’ plans have already been set back by positive cases of COVID-19.
The state Department of Public Instruction sent a survey to school districts on Aug. 3 asking for descriptions of reopening plans. As of Friday, about 310 of the state’s 421 school districts responded to the voluntary survey.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Preschool of the Arts expands to include elementary students amid COVID-19 pandemic
The early childhood center on Madison’s West Side, which previously served children from ages 17 months to about 5, has added kindergarten through second grade this fall as it pivots to address the new realities amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The new arrangement helps the preschool families who were juggling jobs and assisting their elementary-age children with online learning at home.
“Our families that had kids here previously or still had little ones here were a little panicked,” said Preschool of the Arts executive director Penny Robbins.
In addition, organizations caring for children have been hit hard by the pandemic, said Robbins, whose own facility was closed from March 13 to June 1. When it reopened it had only about half the normal enrollment, which also meant fewer staff members.
Robbins, who started in her position Jan. 6, was about two months into her new job when the coronavirus pandemic rocked the preschool world. As the Preschool of the Arts looked for ways to continue to support its teachers and the school, opening up to older grades made sense, Robbins said. The school runs a summer program for kindergarten through second-grade students.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Minnesota’s broad COVID-19 testing under microscope
Criticism grew after Harvard’s Dr. Michael Mina told the New York Times last month about his concerns over test results with cycle levels of 30 or more. He argued for lower cycle thresholds but increased and more rapid testing, including of asymptomatic people who can spread the virus without knowing it.
A Canadian study this spring underscored his concerns, because researchers for the most part could not grow viral cultures from samples in COVID-19 patients whose positive PCR tests required more than 25 cycles or whose symptoms had occurred more than seven days prior to testing.
The takeaway shouldn’t be to reduce PCR testing or cycle thresholds, though, because all positive cases inform health officials as they conduct contact tracing and try to contain an outbreak, said Dr. Jared Bullard, a lead author and assistant medical director of the Cadham Provincial Laboratory in Winnipeg that conducts COVID-19 testing.
Cycle thresholds vary and are set by manufacturers based on the validated limits by which their tests are accurate.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Dane County digging in for a fight over in-person class ban
ane County officials are hunkering down for a fight over its health department’s order barring in-person instructions in local schools, including religious and private ones, for most students.
“The order for schools is lawful and we will defend it vigorously, because the reason Public Health put it in place is worth fighting for—the health of our kids and community,” Dane Co. Executive Joe Parisi stated.
Parisi and Public Health Madison & Dane Co. drew their line in the sand Wednesday after a second lawsuit was filed in as many days challenging the order. Parisi noted that COVID-19 cases among children in the U.S. has nearly doubled and doctors still aren’t sure what the lifelong ramifications are for children if they contract the virus.
This latest case, which was taken straight to the state Supreme Court, was filed by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) on behalf of eight families, five schools, and two other organizations.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Anders Tegnell and the Swedish Covid experiment
So he looks at schools not just as a place where the virus might spread but also the most important part of health for a young person. “If you succeed there, your life will be good. If you fail, your life is going to be much worse. You’re going to live shorter. You’re going to be poorer. That, of course, is in the back of your head when you start talking about closing schools,” he adds.
In June, Tegnell described the rush to lock down in the rest of Europe and the US as “it was as if the world had gone mad”. He appears more emollient today, but he still displays signs of disbelief at the approaches of others. Adopting face masks is “more of a statement than actually a measure”. He adds: “Face masks are an easy solution, and I’m deeply distrustful of easy solutions to complex problems.” I ask him about another previous comment: hadn’t he said that Sweden, in the local vernacular, had “ice in its stomach” whereas other nations had acted emotionally?
Diners in Stockholm in April. Although they have been hit by tight restrictions, Tegnell says ‘you probably can’t open and close restaurants . . . too many times’ in response to other countries’ varying public policies © Andres Kudacki
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Madison School District plans to apply for waivers from some state requirements
The Madison Metropolitan School District plans to apply for a series of waivers from state requirements later this month for the 2020-21 school year.
On the same day as students began the school year virtually, administrators told the School Board about three waivers they plan to request — as long as the board approves them later this month. That vote is expected at the Sept. 21 board meeting.
The waivers would allow exemptions from state requirements on attendance, instructional minutes and the Civics Exam. Assistant superintendent for teaching and learning Lisa Kvistad told the board the waivers would allow flexibility for whatever learning model is in place as the year goes on.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Frustrated by virtual classes, families use open enrollment to transfer children to schools with in-person learning
Catherine Winkel was prepared for the usual back-to-school expenses. The notebooks and binders, pens and pencils, new clothes, new shoes.
There was one expense she hadn’t expected: thousands of dollars in tuition to send her 7-year-old to private school where she could attend classes in person.
But after the Mequon-Thiensville School District announced it would be starting the school year remotely as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Winkel enrolled her first grader at Christ Alone, a small, neighborhood Lutheran school.
The district has since reversed itself, offering in-person instruction for families that want that option. Winkel’s older child, who is a freshman this year, will stay in the district. But she’s keeping her youngest at her new school.
“We had to take a big dent in the savings account,” said Winkel. “We were saving for other essentials, not at the last minute to pay for private tuition for an elementary school student.”
Winkel is among a number of Milwaukee-area parents who have decided to transfer their children to other schools — public and private — to avoid having them spend their school days online.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
State Supreme Court puts pause on Dane County Madison public health order barring in-person school
Schools in Dane County that want to open for in-person education can do so immediately for all grades after the state Supreme Court temporarily blocked enforcement of the Public Health Madison & Dane County order requiring virtual learning for grades 3-12.
The court’s conservative majority issued the 4-3 ruling [PDF document], which combined three cases brought against Emergency Order No. 9 since its Aug. 21 announcement, just before 6:30 p.m. Thursday.
The court will consider the arguments against the case on its merits in the months to come, but the order is on hold in the meantime. Thursday’s opinion, which lawyers believe is the first time the court has weighed in on a local COVID-19 order since the pandemic began, indicates those seeking to overturn the order will have a good chance to win.
“First, based upon the briefing submitted at this stage, Petitioners are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim,” the opinion states, adding that “local health officers do not appear to have statutory authority to do what the Order commands.”
Parents, private and parochial schools and membership associations brought the lawsuits challenging Public Health Madison & Dane County director Janel Heinrich’s authority to close schools. They maintain that schools planning to open took precautions over the summer to follow guidance issued by PHMDC to make in-person learning safe.
In its announcement of the Aug. 21 order, PHMDC outlined positive case averages that would be required to allow in-person school for grades 3-5 and 6-12. With the recent uptick in positive cases, mostly among UW-Madison students returning to campus, Dane County was unlikely to reach those numbers anytime soon.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
‘It’s probably too late.’ Head of UW-Whitewater gives prognosis for fall term amid virus
UW-Whitewater’s interim chancellor said the university was “not far behind” UW-Madison, which on Wednesday night announced it would move all classes online for two weeks because of rising coronavirus cases.
Less than a week into his current role, Interim Chancellor Greg Cook spoke during a Whitewater City Council meeting Wednesday. Elected officials were considering a proposed ordinance that would have maxed out indoor gatherings at 10 people and outdoor gatherings at 25 (with several exemptions).
The proposal was rejected.
Article with images UW-Whitewater chancellor on paid leave for investigation into complaint
University officials, including Cook and student government leaders, spoke during the meeting and asked for the ordinance to pass because it would give UW-W “teeth” to take action against students who hosted large parties off-campus without proper safety precautions, such as mask-wearing and physical distancing.
Additional comments.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Taking Stock of 2020 with Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway
Madison School Board Member Ali Muldrow (WORT-FM):
Today, Wednesday host Ali Muldrow spends the hour with Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway to take stock and openly discuss issues facing the city, with the input of listener callers.
It’s a wide-ranging conversation that covers topics like racial injustice in Wisconsin, the mayor’s opinion of the Madison Police Department and their handling of the summer protests, investing in education, affordable housing and combating displacement on the isthmus, and leading Madison through the twin crises of the pandemic and the fight for Black lives.
Satya Rhodes-Conway is the 58th mayor of Madison. She was elected in 2019 after serving three terms on the Madison Common Council.
Transcript [Machine Generated]
Notes and links: Ali Muldrow and Satya Rhodes-Conway.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Dane County Executive Writes to Close University of Wisconsin On Campus Classes
Dane County Executive asks @UWMadison to send everyone home from UW Housing and increase testing, quarantine space, and contact tracing on campus.
“The University made the decision to proceed with holding classes this fall despite recommendations from local and national experts” pic.twitter.com/XHTQec2RVu
— Will Cioci (@wjcioci) September 9, 2020
Kelly Meyerhofer: UW-Madison moves to all-online classes
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Madison’s new grading policy will only let students fall through the cracks
The implications of this grading floor are even more important considering that MMSD is known to have a significant racial achievement gap. There is a stark difference between a grade of 0% and 50%, and it has value. By getting rid of this important distinction, the district risks letting students fall further through the cracks by simply passing them even if they demonstrate no knowledge of a subject. Instead of simply adjusting the scale, MMSD should work to address the cause of these low grades. Without intervention on the front end, artificially enhancing failing grades does nothing to help disadvantaged students in the long run.
Further, the lack of clear grading this past spring will play a major role in what occurs when students return to school, regardless of that return being virtual or in person. There is a well-documented phenomenon of learning loss during out-of-school time, be it summer vacation or weather-related closure, and coronavirus closures are no different. Studies have predicted that students will start the school year with just 70% of their learning gains in reading from last year and only 50% of math gains.
The reality is that students will be playing a massive game of catch-up this fall. Grading acts as an indicator for where a student is in the learning process, and this fall, more than ever before, schools will need to have clear indicators of what portion of knowledge students have imparted in the classroom or online, even if that is below 50%. This fall, students need their schools and their teachers to champion them and push them to regain the time in the classroom lost during the lockdown. MMSD’s new policy seems to be doing just the opposite, giving way to what has been called the bigotry of low expectations.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
A country level analysis measuring the impact of government actions, country preparedness and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes
Rabail Chaudhry, George Dranitsaris, Talha Mubashir, Justyna Bartoszko and Sheila Riazi:
Increasing COVID-19 caseloads were associated with countries with higher obesity (adjusted rate ratio [RR]=1.06; 95%CI: 1.01–1.11), median population age (RR=1.10; 95%CI: 1.05–1.15) and longer time to border closures from the first reported case (RR=1.04; 95%CI: 1.01–1.08). Increased mortality per million was significantly associated with higher obesity prevalence (RR=1.12; 95%CI: 1.06–1.19) and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) (RR=1.03; 95%CI: 1.00–1.06). Reduced income dispersion reduced mortality (RR=0.88; 95%CI: 0.83–0.93) and the number of critical cases (RR=0.92; 95% CI: 0.87–0.97). Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people. However, full lockdowns (RR=2.47: 95%CI: 1.08–5.64) and reduced country vulnerability to biological threats (i.e. high scores on the global health security scale for risk environment) (RR=1.55; 95%CI: 1.13–2.12) were significantly associated with increased patient recovery rates.
Interpretation
In this exploratory analysis, low levels of national preparedness, scale of testing and population characteristics were associated with increased national case load and overall mortality.
We have embraced outdoor classrooms in the past.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Prep sports: Area programs’ plans for the fall (or alternative spring) seasons
A list of decisions made by schools in the Wisconsin State Journal core coverage area on whether to play fall or alternative spring seasons in various high school sports.
Prep football 2020: Who’s playing in the fall, and who’s waiting for springA list of football programs in area and region conferences, and their decisions on whether to play in the traditional fall or alternative fall season next spring:
We have embraced outdoor classrooms in the past.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Private schools, parents ask Supreme Court to block Dane County health order that limits in-person classes
It notes that schools spent months developing detailed plans, per earlier county orders, to safely reopen. Tseytlin also argues that the statute defining local health officials’ duties says they can inspect schools, but reserves the right to close them to the head of the state Department of Health Services.
In a response to the St. Ambrose petition, Bitar wrote Heinrich’s was a proper exercise of her statutory power to “do what is reasonable and necessary for the prevention and suppression of disease.”
“It is not a complete shutdown of the school system; learning is still happening under this Order virtually and in other ways. Religious studies are not prohibited; to the contrary, religious teachings, instructions and missions are all allowed and can be accomplished virtually and in other ways.”
In the St. Ambrose petition, Tseytlin argues the parents are currently suffering irreparable harm, while an injunction against the order would not harm the county.
We have embraced outdoor classrooms in the past.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
‘We have an important first day coming up’: MMSD set to begin year with virtual learning
While schedules vary from school to school, some are publicly available online and show a more traditional school day — in front of a screen instead of in a classroom.
At Elvehjem Elementary School, for example, second graders will have a morning meeting from 8:30-9 a.m., a “foundational skills” lesson from 9-9:30 a.m. and fill out their morning with 45-minute sessions on literacy and math, a 30-minute lesson in science, social studies or social-emotional learning and two 15-minute breaks.
An hour for lunch from noon to 1 p.m. is followed by “number corner” for 30 minutes, “specials” time for art, recess, choice time or physical education from 1:30-2:30 p.m., 30 minutes on the learning platform Seesaw and a “closing circle” from 3-3:30 p.m.
21% of University of Wisconsin System Freshman Require Remedial Math
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
School in Western India paints village walls to conduct classes
WION:
But, teachers in Nilamnagar, western India, have started a unique initiative to make sure that children don’t miss out of learning due to technological shortfalls.
They have set up outdoor classrooms for a total of 1,700 students for age group 6-16, where a small group gather around painted walls, which are used for teachings.
From writing to trigonometry, the murals in the village cover many subjects, written in local Marathi and English.
In one of the walls, objects that begin with the letter ‘s’ are made, including scooter, spade and swing and are painted in black underneath the words such as “look, listen and say”.
“Since most of the families lack resources to educate their kids digitally, we had to come up with an innovative method to keep children invested in education,” said Ram Gaikwad, a teacher at Asha Marathi Vidyalaya school, reported news agency AFP.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Comfortably Numb
Sterility as Douthat uses the word refers to the below-replacement birth rates that are observed in almost every advanced nation. Low birth rates have a variety of adverse economic consequences, but that’s not the main point. Societies without many young people “are simply less likely to be dynamic, less interested in risk taking, than societies with younger demographic profiles.” The growing number of young adults who say they don’t even want children is linked with solipsism and anomie. Their rates of depression increase, along with those of people who vaguely wanted to have children but never got around to it.
* * *
The increasing sclerosis of institutions has been documented and widely accepted for half a century thanks to Mancur Olson’s two seminal books, The Logic of Collective Action (1965) and The Rise and Decline of Nations (1982). Institutional sclerosis is baked into the politics of advanced democracies, Olson argued, the result of forces that James Madison anticipated in The Federalist. A small interest group composed of people who are intensely motivated to pass a law or regulation that benefits them can overcome the diffuse opposition of the great mass of the population (the persistence of sugar subsidies is a standard illustration). The response to the COVID-19 pandemic will doubtless provide a worldwide basis for comparing the stages of institutional sclerosis across nations. No one who has studied the functioning of the American administrative state in recent decades can doubt that the United States is suffering from an advanced case.
So far, I have summarized aspects of advanced civilizations that are probably inevitable but are not necessarily all that bad.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Civics: Math Rigor…
It is not just random social-media postings. In March, MSNBC’s Brian Williams went on the air and endorsed a tweet that stated: “Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. U.S. Population, 327 million . . . He could have given each American $1 million.” His guest, New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay, concurred that “It’s an incredible way of putting it. It’s true. It’s disturbing.”
It is not true. Instead it is a spectacular failure of arithmetic. Michael Bloomberg’s $500 million in ad purchases could have otherwise given each American $1.52 — not $1 million. And dividing Jeff Bezos’s $200 billion in wealth equally among 330 million Americans would provide $600 each, not $1 million or $3 million.
Additionally, 260,000 people “liked” a tweet condemning how “Jeff Bezos is about to become the world’s first trillionaire” (he has $800 billion to go).
It is tempting to dismiss these claims as random, innocent mathematical errors. In reality, they are central to the growing “Democratic Socialist” worldview, which is increasingly united around the belief that seizing the wealth of Jeff Bezos and other billionaires can finance the future they want. This belief explains the far Left’s non-stop fixation with billionaire wealth (such as the widely circulated but false claim that billionaires have added $584 billion in wealth since the pandemic began). In particular, the Left is obsessed with the world’s richest man (“Jeff Bezos has decided he will not end world hunger today” recently received 500,000 Twitter likes). Just last week, protesters built a guillotine in front of Bezos’s home.
21% of University of Wisconsin System Freshman Require Remedial Math
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Choosing a good-citizen school (Milwaukee)
Thirty years ago, Milwaukee launched a private-school voucher program for low-income students. In 1998, when religious schools were allowed to participate, enrollment expanded.
Overall, test scores for voucher students resemble their public school counterparts. But there’s a critical difference: Voucher students are more likely to complete high school, enroll in college and earn a degree.
They’re also more likely to become law-abiding citizens, concludes a study, published in the Journal of Private Enterprise.
Participation in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) “predicts lower rates of conviction for criminal activity and lower rates of paternity suits” by ages 25 to 28, conclude Patrick Wolf, a professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas, and Corey DeAngelis of the Reason Foundation. “Exposure to the MPCP is associated with a reduction of around 53 percent in drug convictions, 86 percent in property damage convictions, and 38 percent in paternity suits,” Wolf and DeAngelis found.
Effects tend to be “largest for males and students with lower levels of academic achievement at baseline.”
2011: A majority of the taxpayer supported Madison School Board voted to abort the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
The High-Performing School Deserts of Rural America
Among education reform advocates, improving urban education is often the focus. That’s no surprise since tens of thousands of kids in cities suffer from decades of educational failure and limited opportunity. But often overlooked are the challenges and problems plaguing rural education. Sometimes opportunities for success are just as limited, or even more so, than for students in cities.
One example of this is found in Mattoon, Wisconsin, a village of just 400 residents. When the elementary school closed in 2016, most students from the North Central Wisconsin village found themselves riding the bus 45 minutes to Antigo. The distant, sprawling Unified School District of Antigo has five low-performing schools but only one high-performing elementary school. For the kids in Mattoon, attending a high-performing school isn’t really an option.
The problem of high-performing school deserts is highlighted in in a new studyfrom the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL). The study identifies ZIP codes and regions in the state of Wisconsin without access to high-performing schools. High-performing school deserts are defined as locations that have no high-performing schools within ten miles, based on WILL’s value-added analysis of state test data.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Middleton High School student’s petition asks for pass/no pass grading during virtual learning
Many districts moved to pass/no pass grading in the spring during the sudden switch to virtual as the COVID-19 pandemic forced unexpected closures. But with more time to plan and build their virtual learning environments, schools are moving back to letter grades for high school students this fall.
The Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District, for example, is moving back to its traditional letter grading system for high school, it informed students in an Aug. 28 email.
Not everyone supports the decision.
Middleton High School junior Daria Rudykh started a petition that has gotten more than 175 signatures asking MCPASD to keep the pass/no pass system in place as long as virtual learning continues. Distractions at home, whether siblings to care for or the stress of families losing income during the pandemic, can make it a challenging environment to learn in, she said, in addition to the stress and anxiety of the ongoing pandemic.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Biden says school reopening a national emergency
Joe Biden delivered a speech in Delaware Wednesday on the issue of safely reopening America’s schools, which he says is a “national emergency.”
In his second speech in three days, the Democratic presidential candidate outlined his plan to keep students and teachers safe during the pandemic. The remarks come ahead of a planned trip to Wisconsin Thursday.
During the campaign event in Wilmington, Biden said that if he were elected president, he would have the Federal Emergency Management Agency guarantee access to disaster relief for K-12 schools.
Biden criticized President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic Wednesday, saying he “still doesn’t have a real plan.”
“This is an emergency and Donald Trump and his FEMA should treat it as one,” Biden said.
FEMA officials said this week that the agency would no longer pay for cloth face masks and disinfectant in schools.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Acting collectively and systemically for equity in pandemic schooling
Maxine McKinney de Royston and Erica O. Turner:
Let’s be clear: an uncontrolled COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Black racism, xenophobia, climate crises and economic collapse are deepening existing inequities. A large body of research, including our own, shows that students of color are systematically denied access to safe and high-quality education. Maxine’s article, “I’m a Teacher, I’m Gonna Always Protect You,” details how anti-Black racism operates every day via harmful disciplinary practices, teacher-student relationships and stereotypes to make classrooms and schools physically, emotionally, psychologically and academically unsafe spaces for Black children. These inequities do not get resolved by families securing “the best” for their children through “white flight” and opportunity hoarding.
Indeed, Erica’s book, “Suddenly Diverse: How School Districts Manage Race and Inequality,” demonstrates how a focus on the individual actions of privileged families obscures systemic inequities such as racialized wealth inequality and the defunding of public schools and contributes to the adoption of managerial policies that, in failing to disrupt inequity, actually exacerbate it. As before, in this new “normal,” individualized actions layered onto ongoing systemic inequities continue to have stark consequences for public schools and the children they serve. Individualized actions that do not consider the collective further privatize education by taking away much-needed resources and eroding the social safety nets public schools provide as a public good. They also often foreclose resources needed to disrupt the inequities and racism seen in Maxine’s work.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Parents Press For Dane County Schools To Teach In-Person During Pandemic
Dane County parents upset over online instruction at schools that were intending to hold classes in-person are speaking out following a recent emergency order by the local health department, which restricted all public and private schools to virtual instruction for grades 3-12 because of COVID-19.
Parents and their children carried signs outside city hall Wednesday night before a virtual meeting of the Board of Health. Speakers at the meeting told members of the board how their children cried because they missed their teachers, and some schools said they spent “countless hours and thousands of dollars to prepare for opening.”
“To have this blanket order is heartbreaking to me and to our families,” said Liz Goldman, principal at St. John the Baptist Catholic School in Waunakee. “Public health officials need to realize we are not only looking at the physical health of our children and families. We need to look at the emotional and social health too.”
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
Molly Beck and Madeline Heim:which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Our Civic Duty
I’ve now gotten several emails from readers asking what an alderman is, and .. is this not a commonly known term? Genuinely wondering.
— Julie Bosman (@juliebosman) September 3, 2020
Wisconsin is an “outlier,” says Hess. The state is one of just 10 that does not require that students take a dedicated high school civics course.
National polls consistently show that a majority of Americans know little about how our system of government works. In this year’s national survey of civic knowledge, sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, just two in five (39 percent) adults out of 1,104 polled could correctly name the three branches of government. Twenty-two percent couldn’t name any branch. Remarkably, this is an improvement — only 32 percent in last year’s poll could name all three branches. The pollsters say the survey “found a link between high school civics classes and civics knowledge.” People who took high school civics classes and who said they were greater consumers of the news were more likely to know such things as the three branches of government.
Why does it matter?
Critics say ignorance about and detachment from democratic governance play a role in everything from low voter turnout to the country’s growing political divide to the decline in media literacy.
A bill pending in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Civics Learning Act of 2019, authored by Rep. Alcee Hastings, a Democrat from Florida, would allocate $30 million in grants to schools for programs that strengthen “civics education and learning.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
“Public schools keep collecting tax revenue regardless of whether school opens on time.”
I was supposed to go back to class next week, but the public school I attend won’t open even for remote learning for three weeks. Its classrooms will be shut for at least another two months.
My twin sister and younger brother, who attend a Jewish school in a Boston suburb, are going back this week. The city’s Catholic schools are advertising on Twitter : “If your school in the Greater Boston area has a delayed opening or is going fully remote, check our website to find a Catholic school near you that is offering live in-person instruction.”
Time will tell which school made a safer decision. For now, though, it seems like my siblings are better off. It’s frustrating to see them excitedly preparing their school supplies and finding out their classes while I sit around the house wondering what the heck is going on with my school this fall. I love seeing my friends each day, even on Zoom, and it’s upsetting to be unable to do so because of a weekslong delay I can barely understand. I’d rather be in class learning and discussing new things than sitting at home scrolling through my phone. I miss screaming my friends’ names in the busy halls as I pass them on my way to class, or the laughter-filled sharing of “do nows” at the beginning of each class.
There are complex reasons why private schools are quicker to reopen. Public schools have influential teachers unions, whereas the National Labor Relations Board and the U.S. Supreme Court have limited union power at religious schools. Private-school budgets depend on families choosing to enroll and pay tuition. Public schools keep collecting tax revenue regardless of whether school opens on time.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Dane County Madison Public Health issues hundreds of warnings for alleged COVID-19 order violations
Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been 5,568 cases of COVID-19 in Dane County, including 41 new cases reported Wednesday and 40 documented deaths. Statewide there have been 77,129 cases and 1,142 deaths.
SSM Health, which owns St. Mary’s Hospital, was sent warning letters on Aug. 7, 13 and 19 for alleged face covering, cleaning and social distancing violations at clinics in Madison, including its cancer care center on John Q. Hammons Drive, according to Public Health.
In a statement, SSM Health outlined the precautions it’s been taking at its facilities and said it used the warnings from Public Health “as another opportunity to talk with our employees and remind them of our policies.”
The village of Mount Horeb Recreation Department was sent a warning letter on Aug. 10 for reportedly not abiding by social distancing guidelines during a sports program, according to the Public Health records. Village officials did not respond to requests for comment.
One school and three parishes within the Madison Catholic Diocese saw complaints. Diocese spokesman Brent King said a complaint about a mass gathering at St. Dennis School was likely related to a meet-and-greet picnic for which the school had received Public Health’s approval.
Public health received mask-related complaints about Blessed Sacrament and St. Maria Goretti in Madison and St. Mary of Pine Bluff in Cross Plains.
Two public school districts also show up on the health department’s list, including Marshall, for alleged violations of the mask and mass gatherings rules.
Marshall district administrator Dan Grady said the district hasn’t received the letter sent Aug. 27 and wasn’t sure what it could pertain to.
He said the cross-country team began practicing Aug. 17, staff gathered Aug. 24 and teachers have been meeting with parents of some students, but all such activities have been carried out in compliance with the county rules and no one has come to him with concerns directly.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Disrupted Schooling Spells Worse Results and Deeper Inequality
Of the 50 largest school districts in America, 35 plan to start the coming term entirely remotely. The opportunity to squelch the virus over the summer has been lost, upending plans for “hybrid” education (part-time in-person instruction). This means more than just child-care headaches for parents. The continued disruption to schooling will probably spell permanent learning loss, disproportionately hurting poorer pupils.
“Achievement gaps will become achievement chasms,” warns Robin Lake, director of the Centre on Reinventing Public Education, a research group. Analysts at McKinsey, a consultancy, reckon that the typical American pupil would suffer 6.8 months of learning loss if in-person instruction does not resume until January 2021 (which looks plausible). This would fall heaviest on black pupils, who would regress by over ten months’-worth of instruction, and poor ones, who would fall behind by more than a year. There could also be 648,000 more high-school dropouts.
The true scale of the educational fallout will be unknown for years, because it manifests itself in future decisions like dropping out of high school or university. It will also remain murkier because typical barometers, such as the standardised tests administered in crowded school halls, have also been impeded. What evidence exists now does not look encouraging.
A team of five education scholars recently calculated that American schoolchildren in 2020 learned 30% less reading and 50% less maths than they would in a typical year. Despite that, the top third of pupils posted gains in reading. Data from Opportunity Insights, an economic-research outfit at Harvard University, show that after lockdowns began in March pupils from low-income neighbourhoods fell permanently behind on online maths coursework, whereas those from richer areas quickly rebounded (see chart).
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Protecting union jobs rather than giving parents $3,000 to educate the children
Most schools in Washington will remain closed this fall. Some school districts are tightening their belts in anticipation of the COVID-19 budget cuts that are coming. Last week Governor Inslee bypassed the legislature and the decisions of local school districts to protect the jobs of union school bus drivers. He’s made sure money will keep flowing for school buses that are not carrying schoolchildren. His next step may be to keep the money flowing to school buildings with no students.
Here is the background. In early August the school districts of Edmonds and Blaine announced layoffs of bus drivers and other school employees. On August 17th, six unions, including the WEA union, wrote Governor Inslee and State Superintendent Reykdal, demanding protection from these layoffs.
Nine days later, in a proclamation dated August 26th, Governor Inslee rewrote state funding for student transportation. His proclamation cancelled RCW 28A.160 (Student Transportation), which requires districts to fund transportation based on student enrollment. In March when schools closed, the state waived this portion of the law to keep bus drivers employed. Now he has moved to make this change permanent by forcing districts to keep union school bus drivers employed, even though they are no longer driving students to school.
Governor Inslee claims his emergency powers under COVID-19 allow him to rewrite the student transportation funding law. But after examining the law, it turns out he does not have this power. The Governor’s emergency powers are limited as described in RCW 43.076.220, and they are circumscribed to “help preserve and maintain life, health, property or the public peace,” not to protect the jobs of favored union constituencies.
A recent Gallup Poll shows that public school enrollment will drop this fall from 83% to 76%. This fact is alarming school administrators because school district funding is based on student enrollment. If student enrollment falls off as expected this fall, the financial impact on school districts across the state will be large.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Dane County Madison Public Health amendment allows in-person instruction for students with disabilities
Students with disabilities who need some in-person instruction will be allowed to go to schools this fall after Public Health Madison & Dane County amended its previous order Tuesday.
PHMDC had announced on Friday, Aug. 21, that no students beyond grades K-2 were allowed for in-person instruction until certain metrics were met.
After a challenging spring for students with disabilities, who have Individualized Education Programs that outline therapies and goals, some area districts had been planning for limited in-person opportunities prior to the order. That work, part of the IEP process that includes parents and school representatives, can now continue.
The Madison Metropolitan School District had nearly 4,000 students with disabilities of nearly 27,000 students total in the 2019-20 school year. Some therapies like speech and language were easier to adapt to a virtual environment than practices like physical therapy or the social interactions that are an important part of development for students.
The Aug. 21 order, Emergency Order No. 9, is facing multiple legal challenges from area private schools, supporting groups and parents. Many private schools were set to open last week, just after the order was published.
The state Supreme Court has asked PHMDC director Janel Heinrich and County Executive Joe Parisi to respond by Wednesday at noon.
The order allows public and private schools to open for grades K-2 in person with certain hygiene, mask and distancing requirements in place.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
In Person School Begins (Appleton, not Madison)
Happy first day of school from this Wisconsin education reporter!!! I’m starting my day at Lincoln Elementary in Appleton, and I’m STOKED to be back chatting with kiddos, teachers and parents as I work to chronicle a school year that’s sure to be unlike any other. pic.twitter.com/e5Ym1wwTlT
— Sami West (@BySamanthaWest) September 1, 2020
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Dane County Madison Public Health Slides (late Friday) on Schools; “activity tracker”
Dane County Madison Public Health:
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services’ (DHS) Activity Tracker, Harvard guidance, COVID-local and COVIDActNow served as the main sources of the targets used for determining in-person instruction by grade level.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
19-year-old activist helps spearhead youth-led Black Lives Matter movement
A 2018 graduate of West High School, Obuseh comes from a military family and moved to Madison in 2016 after having lived in Germany for some six years. Her younger brother is about to start his sophomore year at West.
Before Germany, they lived in Delaware, Alabama and Georgia, where Obuseh was born in Atlanta. She said moving a lot as she was growing up taught her the importance of “finding structure within chaos.”
“I’m not the type of person to really get in the mix of things,” Obuseh said. “I feel like I can instead try to create a little bit of order.”
She said even though activism takes up a lot of her time, she is “still 19” and likes to hang out with friends and go outside and paint, and enjoys poetry and TED Talks.
She is a student at UW-Madison exploring her interests in law and healthcare but took some time off in the spring to focus on an internship at the Capitol and other roles, including creating the youth-led group Impact Demand. Obuseh said she and some of her peers who she used to protest with in high school wanted to organize for the Black Lives Matter movement and show the community where youths stand.
Why is it important to get the youth voice out there?
The youth is the future. The youth are the people that are living through all the policies that are being created. A lot of people you see protesting will be the loudest people in the room, or at the Capitol, but not making any legislation. A lot of things don’t get done in terms of writing the legislation and holding people accountable. We have all this energy, and now it’s directed energy towards a purpose. In terms of our group, I helped to spearhead the policy action. We still have a lot more to do and a long way to go, but we’re putting the work in.
Do you find it hard for people to take the youth seriously?
I think people support the youth vocally and make it seem like they take it seriously but not on the ballot where it matters or monetarily. The youth right now has the energy, the motivation and the will to educate themselves and others to make this movement stronger. I feel like if you see somebody younger than you doing something bigger than themselves, that has an impact. A lot of the older generations are coming around and realizing that we need to be able to have the floor. We’ll always need them to mentor and give us advice, but let the youth be empowered. I think that’s the biggest thing right now is just letting us take the lead and allowing us to move with our energy and momentum towards policy.
What are Impact Demand’s goals?
The biggest goal is to see accountability across the board, whether it be in the police department, in hospitals, in housing. Our group, Impact Demand, we demand action. We demand change immediately. I want to see policies in place because we deserve more as a community. Change should be immediate, things like town halls and civilian oversight. At the end of the day, we’re all in this community and all want the best for ourselves. We all want to live equally and live freely, and it takes everyone to do that.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
School “opening”, Election Posturing and K-12 “advocacy”
There seems to be a rhythm to the text message touch attempts.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Madison Council member catches heat for reposting flyer that called on protesters to ‘f— s— up’
Ald. Max Prestigiacomo, who has represented the student-dominated 8th District since winning a special election to fill a vacancy in April, posted the flyer circulating online on his Facebook page after the shooting in Kenosha.
“Madison stands with Kenosha,” reads the flyer promoting protests Sunday and Monday. “F—- Kenosha PD. F—- Madison PD. F—- Milwaukee PD. F—- Chicago PD. No bad protesters. No good cops. Come prepared. Wear a mask. Bring water. No peace police. Do what you want. F—- S—- up.”
On Monday and Tuesday nights, peaceful protests in Madison became violent with some people starting dumpster and trash fires, breaking windows, looting multiple businesses, and throwing projectiles at police officers, who deployed chemical agents and made at least 10 arrests. Peaceful protests continued through the week without major incidents.
On Tuesday, when he saw the posting, resident Barnaby Kerr posted a comment on Prestigiacomo’s Facebook page and said Prestigiacomo blocked him. Kerr sent a screenshot of the posting to all City Council members and also contacted other city officials. Kerr said he intends to ask the council to censure Prestigiacomo at Tuesday’s council meeting.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
The media needs to stop spreading fear about ‘pandemic pods’
Are they a saving grace for families displaced from traditional schooling or yet another mirage hiding serious educational inequities.
Like most things it matters who you ask.
Much of the media coverage of pods has shown a deceptively white face which predictably has drawn significant warnings of widening gaps in educational outcomes.
I understand the concerns, but it’s still a damned shame there is more vigilance about hamstringing solutions rather than finding them.
The idea of self-determined home-based solutions for education has barely made it into the mainstream. The public has only a slight idea of what pods are, but already the always-on social justice naysayers and self-interested bureaucrats are breakdancing chicken little suitsall over pod news stories.
Of course we should care if the unintended consequences of educational trends will hurt societies most marginalized children, but that fear shouldn’t immobilize creative attempts to stem the learning loss school shutdowns have caused.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul files briefs in support of Dane County emergency school closures
In his briefs, Kaul states, “For over a century, Wisconsin has maintained a public health infrastructure that empowers local health officials to be a critical line of defense, barring public gatherings and swiftly taking any actions that are reasonable and necessary to suppress spreading diseases. That is precisely what Dane County did here, barring in-person school instruction in order to prevent outbreaks of COVID-19.”
The petitions challenging the emergency order were filed on behalf of eight Dane County families, five private schools, School Choice Wisconsin Action, and the Wisconsin Council of Religious and Independent Schools, by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL).
In its petitions, WILL states the emergency order exceeds Heinrich’s statutory authority and violates petitioners’ religious liberties and right to direct their children’s education by barring in-person education.
“This order injected unnecessary chaos, confusion, and frustration into the lives of children, families, and school leaders preparing to navigate a difficult new school year,” WILL President and General Counsel Rick Esenberg said in a statement.
Unsurprising.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Lawsuits challenge Dane County Madison Public Health’s authority to close private schools
Two separate lawsuits are seeking to block a new public health emergency order that allows only a fraction of elementary school students to attend classes in person in Dane County.
The legal challenges come days after Public Health Madison and Dane County officials in their ninth emergency order restricted in-person schooling to grades K-2 and outlined metrics required for students in higher grades to return in-person.
PHMDC’s Friday announcement at 5:18 p.m. came just days before many area private and parochial schools were set to return with at least some in-person instruction. At least one school already had, which formed the basis for the first challenge, filed directly to the Wisconsin Supreme Court Tuesday.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
MMSD tells some staff to accept in-person child care reassignment or resign
He added that MTI “recognizes the need” for supporting families through child care, but believes safety remains the top priority. MTI has also asked the district to seek volunteers, including within the teaching workforce, to staff in-person services and is encouraging all staff to get a COVID-19 test prior to working with students and families.
LeMonds wrote that the district had put together a “thoughtful health and safety plan” and said the summer child care model was “very successful.” Safety guidelines include masks, social distancing when possible, a symptom check before starting the program, staying home with a positive test or symptoms and working with public health to determine who should quarantine if there is a positive case within a building.
The classes are expected to be limited to 15 students per room and located at many elementary schools around the district.
When the district announced it was going virtual, Dean was initially relieved, he wrote, as he remains concerned about COVID-19. But if he had to work in-person he would “be extremely hurt if I caused harm to a kid or adult by spreading something I can’t tell is in my system.”
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Lawsuit filed against head of Public Health Dane County madison over emergency order requiring virtual start to school year
A lawsuit was filed in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Tuesday arguing that Janel Heinrich, the Public Health Officer of Madison and Dane County, does not have the legal authority to keep children home from school.
Public Health Madison and Dane County issued Emergency Order #9, which went into effect Monday. It orders all Dane County schools to begin the 2020 school year virtually for students in grades 3-12. That includes private schools, many of which had intended to reopen to in-person classes.
The order says “At issue is whether one unelected official has the power to order children to ‘stay home’ from school whether or not they are sick, or to prohibit them from gathering in-person with other children to receive a religious education.”
The petitioner in the case is Sarah Lindsey James. Within the order she is identified as a Fitchburg single mom, who enrolled her two children at Our Redeemer Lutheran School saying “she believes that it is essential that her children’s education take place ‘in-person’ and ‘together with others as part of the body of Christ.’” It says her children began in-person learning Wednesday.
The order asks the Supreme Court to end Emergency Order No. 9, and prevent Heinrich from creating any other orders that would close private schools or restrict private gatherings. The court has asked Heinrich to respond by 4 p.m. Friday.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
Parents, private schools ask state Supreme Court to toss Dane County Madison Public Health order limiting in-person school
A group of parents and private religious schools is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to void a Dane County order barring in-person school for most students, saying the order issued in response to the COVID-19 pandemic infringes on the right to worship and to an education.
“This case challenges the authority of one unelected bureaucrat to upend the education plans of thousands of students and families and their schools located throughout Dane County via the stroke of a pen,” asserts the petition filed Wednesday by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty on behalf of 14 parents, five religious schools, and interest groups for school vouchers and religious and independent schools.
Issued Friday and effective Monday, Emergency Order No. 9 bars schools from offering in-person instruction for grades 3 through 12 until the county meets certain benchmarks showing the coronavirus is better contained. In effect, it applies almost exclusively to private schools because public schools in Dane County had already decided to start the year online for almost all students in almost every grade.
In the WILL petition and a separate one filed on behalf of Fitchburg mother Sara Lindsey James on Tuesday, attorneys argue that Janel Heinrich, director of Public Health Madison and Dane County, doesn’t have authority under state law to close schools and that the order runs counter to the decision the high court made in May striking down the statewide stay-at-home order.
In the May case, the court did not strike down the part of the stay-at-home order closing schools, but that order only closed them through the end of last school year. James’ petition argues state law allowing the state’s public health director to close schools in a public health emergency does not extend to local public health directors such as Heinrich.
(Some) Madison Governance Rhetoric on University of Wisconsin Governance Plans
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
(Some) Madison Governance Rhetoric on University of Wisconsin Governance Plans
Blank defended the decision to reopen campus at a faculty committee meeting on Monday, saying UW-Madison will nearly double the number of tests administered within the county and add 35 contact tracers to the county’s ranks.
The number of tests UW-Madison plans to administer — up to 8,000 weekly, covering roughly 15% to 20% of the students and employees expected on campus — closely compares to the percentage of people being tested at the Alliant Energy Center, she said. UW-Madison will run the tests in its own labs and shoulder the cost, which is estimated to be $15 million.
Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.
Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Assembly against private school forced closure.
Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration
More Evidence of the Futility of “No Strike” Laws
For a very, very long time I’ve written about why teacher “no strike” laws are pointless at best, and serve only to mislead the public about what we have politely termed “labor peace.”
Last Friday, the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, which modestly calls itself “the world’s leading source of expertise on managing and representing workers, designing effective organizations, and building strong employment relationships,” revealed its research on every teacher strike since 2012.
According to the center, there have been 92 strikes in 21 states from 2012 through 2019, of which 42 were illegal in the state where they took place. Thirty-five of these occurred in just the last two years.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
