Search Results for: Least diverse
She is the product of an education system that cultivate and rewards stupidity.
At the K-12 level, education is lousy for several reasons.
First, the education model is the worst way to teach children. Few students learn by sitting down, being lectured to, and then going home and struggling with homework. I highly recommend the Montessori approach, for Maria Montessori looked at how children learn, rather than how adults think they ought to be taught.
Second, K-12 education is bedeviled by every stupid leftist trend, from the “whole word” approach to reading that left a generation illiterate to the insistence on bringing transgender sexuality to kindergarteners.
Third — and there are wonderful and notable exceptions to this problem — women’s lib meant that women at the top of their class were no longer limited to teaching, nursing, and secretarial work. They went on to become high-paying professionals. Most teachers are now drawn from the bottom third of any college class.
At the college and university level, the problem is that these institutions are leftist indoctrination classes. They have little time to teach reasoning and knowledge. They’re too busy shaping little Marxists to go out into the world and support Bernie Sanders.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Digitization and Divergence: Online School Ratings and Segregation in America
Sharique Hasan and Anuj Kumar:
We analyze whether widespread online access to school-performance information affected economic and social segregation in America. We leverage the staged rollout of GreatSchools.org school ratings from 2006–2015 to answer this question. Across a range of outcomes and specifications, we find that the mass availability of school ratings has accelerated divergence in housing values, income distributions and education levels as well as the racial and ethnic composition across communities. Affluent and more educated families were better positioned to leverage this new information to capture educational opportunities in communities with the best schools. An unintended consequence of better information was less, rather than more, equity in education.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Every Madison Metropolitan School District site had staff participating in the Black Lives Matter At School Week of Action this year.
The national movement to hold a week of support for black students ran Feb. 3-7 this year, culminating Thursday night in Madison with a sold-out staff showing of the movie “Just Mercy” and a post-show discussion.
Participating staff led lessons about the 13 Black Lives Matter Global Network principles, intersectionality and black contributions to history: restorative justice, empathy, loving engagement, diversity, globalism, queer affirming, trans affirming, collective value, intergenerational, black families, black villages, unapologetically black and black women.
Madison Teachers Inc. staff member Kerry Motoviloff, who helps leads the union’s social justice and racial equity work, said teachers customized the lessons for students in the age group they teach through an elementary and secondary curriculum provided through the national movement. She saw elementary teachers using things like picture books or having students illustrate how they knew black lives mattered, while older students had a chance to offer more feedback about how the school system was doing.
At Memorial High School, for example, the county’s Black Student Unions gathered Tuesdayin the auditorium to hear from a motivational speaker who told his “prison to Ph.D.” story and answered questions about how the students could continue activism.
“This year we’re seeing much more support for and engagement with our Black Student Unions, that’s very helpful,” Motoviloff said.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
From the Cap Times (Madison) editorial board, a rant on education — just not about students
More than 43,000 families in Wisconsin’s school choice programs likely will be surprised to learn that they constitute a “threat” to the state.
The editorial board of the Capital Times offered up that opinion in a recent attack on programs that serve these low-income and working-class families. The impetus for the editorial — what can charitably be described as a rant — was a school choice rally in the Capitol attended by more than 800 students and parents. It was also the first time a sitting United States vice president or president had been inside our state’s Capitol building.
In the 767-word editorial, the word “student” appeared but once. “Parent” and “family” were not mentioned at all. Milwaukee school board politics was heavily covered, however.
The editorial lauded Gov. Tony Evers for being “right” in opposing the state’s school choice programs. We can safely assume, therefore, that the editorial board will not object to assessing those programs based on criteria established by the governor during his tenure as Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Wisconsin’s three principal choice programs involve families in Milwaukee, Racine and the rest of state.
Let’s start with the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) where roughly 30,000 of the 43,000 students are enrolled. The DPI/Evers report cards rank schools using five categories, with the highest being “significantly exceeds expectations” or five stars. In the most recent ratings, this highest rank was awarded to 21 Milwaukee schools with a student population of color of at least 80%. Of those 21 schools, 14 are in the MPCP, five are autonomous charter schools and two are in Milwaukee Public Schools.
“An emphasis on adult employment”.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Will Wisconsin return to its ‘three-legged stool’ to pay for schools? Here are reasons to doubt it
Let’s focus particularly on Evers’ call for using some of the money to return state support of general operating costs of public schools to two-thirds of the total bill (with the other third coming generally from property taxes).
A bit of history: In the early 1990s, there was strong opinion, particularly for then-Gov. Tommy Thompson and Republican legislators, that property taxes in Wisconsin were too high and school spending was increasing too fast. The result was creation of what was called “the three-legged stool” that would provide something for school spending increases to rest on.
The three legs were: A cap on how much money school districts could collect in state aid and property taxes; a rule known as the QEO which effectively put a lid on how much pay and benefits for teachers could increase; and a commitment by the state to pay two-thirds of school costs in exchange for reduced property taxes (which actually worked, at least for a while).
Teachers unions’ hated the QEO and it died during the time Democrat Jim Doyle was the governor. Revenue caps (which also constrained teacher pay and benefits) are alive to this day.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Principal Commentary from Madison’s Jefferson Middle School
After a rocky first semester for Madison’s Jefferson Middle School, its interim principal assured parents Thursday she’ll work to address their concerns about safety.
“Here’s what I’m going to promise you, I am always going to be available to you,” said Mary Kelley. “I’m always going to be visible. I’m in the classrooms, I’m in the hallways.”
About three dozen parents showed up to a meeting about the school’s climate and culture, where Kelley outlined what the school would be focusing on and changing during the second semester.
Kelley, a retired Madison principal who most recently spent seven years at East High School, was named the interim head of the West Side middle school last month after the former principal, Tequila Kurth, told the district she was taking an extended leave of absence.
In December, two 13-year-old boys from Jefferson were arrested, one for shooting a BB gun out of a bus window and the other for bringing the BB gun inside the school the next day.
Two girls, ages 13 and 14, were struck by BBs as they were getting off the bus.
Last month, a Jefferson student suffered a concussion and was taken to a hospital after being punched by a classmate he said had been bullying him.
Background notes and links.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Wisconsin School Spending Transparency Bill Hearing on Thursday
A new bill to make school spending more transparent will get its first public hearing at the legislature on Thursday.
The bill, Assembly Bill 810, would create a computerized database of public school expenditures maintained by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI). The agency would then post the information on the internet for the public.
“DPI must present the data on its Internet site in a format that allows the public to download, sort, search, and access the data at no cost,” according to the Legislative Reference Bureau memo. “Finally, the bill requires DPI to annually conduct a public information campaign on the availability of financial data on its Internet site.”
The law, if passed by the legislature this session, would go into effect for the 2021-22 school year.
Libby Sobic, the Director of Education Policy for the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, explained in an interview by John Muir of WTAQ on Tuesday the importance of increasing school expenditure transparency.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Last week, the Iowa Department of Education released the 2019 school ratings with nine of our area school buildings earning a “commendable” or better score. Each public school receives a score out of 100 based on standards laid out in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). South Central Calhoun High School was the only building in the region to earn a “high performing” classification, scoring 62.57. Audubon Middle and High School, Carroll Middle School, Coon-Rapids-Bayard Elementary, Ar-We-Va Junior and Senior High School, Greene County Middle School, Paton-Churdan Junior and Senior High School and the East Sac County Middle and High Schools all rated as commendable, scoring between 54.91 and 60.60. Only one school, Audubon Elementary, was identified as a priority under ESSA, meaning they will need to develop an improvement plan to address targeted issues. A full list of local school and their ratings can be found included with this story on our website.
ESSA is a topic rarely heard around the taxpayer supported Madison School District.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Notes and links on previous Superintendent searches.
2013; 2019 Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
Meanwhile, Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 district continues to plan for a substantial tax & spending increase referendum this fall.
Commentary on a 2020 Madison School Board Candidate appearance
Three candidates for an open Madison School Board seat aligned on several issues facing the school district while offering their own solutions to other topics during a forum Tuesday.
The trio seeking the board’s Seat 6 — Karen Ball, Christina Gomez Schmidt and Maia Pearson — spoke of rebuilding trust between the community and the Madison School District, identified areas they would cut in a funding shortage, and made their pitches before the Feb. 18 primary.
Ball, director of academic success at Edgewood College, said she wants to ensure an effective transition for the new superintendent and prepare the community for two potential referendums this fall.
Gomez Schmidt, director of enrichment for Galin Education, a college preparation and admissions assistance company, said her focuses include increasing transparency and ensuring schools are safe for students and teachers.
Pearson, a revenue agent for the state Department of Revenue, said some of her priorities would be finding ways to expand 4-year-old kindergarten to full-day and strengthening partnerships with businesses.
The top two vote-getters in the February primary will compete in the April 7 election for Seat 6, which is being vacated by incumbent Kate Toews. The term is three years.
Candidates were asked what they would do to fix a lack of transparency from the district some people perceive and how they would go about rebuilding the community’s trust.
Gomez Schmidt talked about making sure the board has enough time and information to analyze important decisions so it is not rushed. She also said information about new proposals should be given to the public in a more timely manner.
Pearson cited the recent community forums with the superintendent finalists as good examples of the board being transparent.
She also said groups like the district’s Black Excellence Coalition, which is largely made up of community members, are good outlets for people to share their thoughts.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Meanwhile, Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 district continues to plan for a substantial tax & spending increase referendum this fall.
Phonics Gains Traction As State Education Authority Takes Stand On Reading Instruction
Late last month, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction took a stand on a long-debated method of teaching reading to students, ruling that phonics has a place in literacy education after all.
An approach that teaches students how written language represents spoken words, phonics got its endorsement from state schools Superintendent Carolyn Stanford Taylor during the 2020 Wisconsin State Education Convention in Milwaukee. Stanford Taylor said reading outcomes are “not where we want them to be,” and that DPI will make efforts to support schools in delivering phonics-based materials.
This announcement has some in the world of education rejoicing, saying this is a step in the right direction. John Humphries is one of them.
Humphries is superintendent of the School District of Thorp, which is about an hour west of Wausau, and educates about 650 students in grades K-12. The district has spent thousands of dollars on new programs, professional development and consultants to steer staff at toward this type of research-based teaching, he said.
And by the district’s own measurements, it’s working.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Notes and links on the Madison School District’s academic and safety climate
Board of education president Gloria Reyes demands “the conversation around school discipline needs to be centered on race,” according to the WI State Journal.
Those who counter that school discipline needs to be centered on behavior will be asked to leave the conversation. Maybe the answer is pick out some white kids and toss them out of school. Got to make the numbers work.
So, come clean, Madison teachers. Admit your guilt. Quit suspending kids who shoot a fellow student at Jefferson middle school. Stop picking on the ring leaders of those cafeteria brawls. Allow that girl to wreak havoc at that Whitehorse middle school classroom. Maybe tomorrow she will behave. Got to make the numbers work. Don’t want to wind up like Mr. Rob, an out-of-work pariah. Keep your heads down.
More:
Do you enforce order in your classroom? SHAME! Or do you press the earbuds in tighter and ignore the chaos? GREAT!
You believe adult authority figures have something to teach our young people? REPENT! Or are you doing penance for your complicity in 1619? YOU ARE SAVED!
Demand personal responsibility and academic performance? What are you? A Republican? !!!
Inspire students to work harder to overcome hurdles? How do you light your tiki torches, fella — with kerosene or paraffin?
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Notes and links on previous Superintendent searches.
2013; 2019 Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
Meanwhile, Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 district continues to plan for a substantial tax & spending increase referendum this fall.
New Madison Schools superintendent’s $250K+ contract up for vote Monday
The contract runs from June 1 to May 31 of the following year.
The agreement would allow Gutiérrez 25 vacation days each year, 10 holidays off and up to 13 personal illness days. It will provide up to $8,500 for moving expenses as Gutiérrez and his family move from Seguin, Texas, and cover “reasonable temporary living expenses” up to Nov. 1, 2020.
Gutiérrez was announced last Friday as the School Board’s choice among its three finalists for the open superintendent position, currently filled by interim Jane Belmore.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Notes and links on previous Superintendent searches.
2013; 2019 Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
Meanwhile, Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 district continues to plan for a substantial tax & spending increase referendum this fall.
As suspensions rise, Madison School Board unhappy with racial disparities
In the first semester of this school year, 1,524 out-of-school suspensions were issued. That’s up from 910 in the fall of 2015 — a 67% increase — and the number of fall semester suspensions has steadily increased during the past five years.
“If we say this is about how black kids behave, I think that that’s a problem,” Muldrow said. “If we say this is about how we interact with black and African American students, then I think we’re having a more accurate conversation.”
Board President Gloria Reyes said the conversation around school discipline needs to be centered on race but added that the good work teachers are doing to support the district’s anti-racism efforts also should be recognized.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
“When enough people who can afford to leave New York State are gone, who will be left to pay for the infrastructure, health care, schools and other necessities?” said Sen. Tedisco. “This is a bi-partisan effort to shine the light on this problem that’s causing people to leave our Upstate communities and to find out why the Empire State is fast becoming the ‘Empty State’ so we can change the agenda to keep them here,” he said.
Roundtable discussions with small businesses, workforce development, health care, education, economic growth and development, manufacturing and technology representatives will be held once data from the questionnaires have been collected.
According to U.S. Census information, N.Y.’s population has steadily decreased over the past 4 years. The Empire Center said they estimate approximately 1.4 million residents have moved out of N.Y. and gone to other states.
Let’s Compare: Middleton and Madison Property Taxes
2019: Madison increases property taxes by 7.2%, despite tolerating long term, disastrous reading results
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Meanwhile, Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 district continues to plan for a substantial tax & spending increase referendum this fall.
Commentary on Taxpayer Low Income Programs and Outcomes
Actually, we can find low income as the main cause of the hardships and damage of poverty by looking at the consequences of current welfare policies themselves. Government programs in which benefits have changed over time provide abundant data for isolating low incomes as a fundamental cause of problems.
Variations in government programs, or the creation of new programs, create what scholars sometimes call natural experiments. This “exogenous” increase in incomes offers an opportunity to measure the consequences of sudden increases in benefits and income compared to periods when funding was lower, or compared to those families who did not get increases.
Two sets of government-expanded income programs offered among the most interesting examples of natural experiments about the impact of money. The benefits of the Earned Income Tax Credit, which are especially helpful for families with children, were generously raised in 1993. The value of the credit increased by 40 percent on average for families with one child and roughly 100 percent for those with two children.
Researchers estimated how much improvement there was for those children in families with significant increases in tax credit income, comparing them to those where incomes didn’t rise as much. Such exogenous increases of income were separated from the effects of other potential coincident factors such as parental behavior or education. There were also increases in the EITC before 1993 and again in 2009 that add to the dataset on these issues. In addition, the state EITCs provided more information for analysis.
The results were a particularly fascinating affirmation that money makes a major difference. The children whose families had significant increases in EITC income as compared to those who did not had higher school grades and results on achievement tests, attended college in greater proportion, and were generally healthier. One study also showed that the birth weight of newborns was higher in these newly better-off families, and the stress level for mothers was also measurably reduced.
Looking back to the early 1970s, Richard Nixon proposed a guaranteed income program in the form of a “negative income tax” in order to continue but streamline the implementation of the War on Poverty. The lower the income of the poor family, the greater the tax refund benefits would be (to a maximum ceiling benefit); benefits would be distributed in the form of cash payments. It was a forerunner of the Earned Income Tax Credit. But in Nixon’s case, even if a family earned no income, it would receive a cash stipend. Opponents were concerned that it would encourage individuals not to work.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
About two-thirds of Colorado’s teacher preparation programs, including the state’s two largest, earned low grades for how they cover early reading instruction, according to a new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality.
The report, which is controversial for its reliance on documents such as course syllabi and textbooks, claims to assess whether teacher prep programs adequately cover five key components of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
Nationwide, about half of traditional teacher prep programs received an A or a B in this year’s report, the third round of evaluations published on the topic since 2013. In Colorado, six of the 19 programs evaluated received an A or B this year, including Adams State University, Colorado State University-Pueblo, Colorado Christian University, Western State University, and both the undergraduate and graduate programs at University of Colorado-Colorado Springs.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Old People Have All the Interesting Jobs in America
Why so many of America’s best and brightest college graduates go into management consulting, finance or law school is a perennial question. There are some compelling theories, which I will get to, but first I would like to turn the question around: Why are so many people in top positions, whether in the public or private sector, so old?
I submit that these two trends — and a third, declining productivity growth — are related: Many tasks have become increasingly complex in America, often more complex than people can learn in just a few years. By the time you have experience enough to perform them, you are less interested in taking risks. In your young adventurous years, by contrast, the only jobs you can get are those that don’t reward (or allow) adventure. The result of all this is a less audacious America.
Start with the Ivy Leaguers. I have no rancor against lawyers, financiers or management consultants, but the pursuit of these careers seems like a misallocation of human creativity. Those jobs do not comprise most of the value of the U.S. economy, so why are they such a magnet?
An emphasis on adult employment:
“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Commentary on School Choice and Madison’s K-12 climate
BULLETIN: Channel 3000 is reporting that “Several schools in Madison were on lockout status Wednesday morning because of a shooting, according to the Madison Metropolitan School District. Sennett Middle School, East High School, La Follette High School and Nuestro Mundo Community School were affected.
When you don’t have facts or reason, you try to drown out the speaker. Which is what protestors at the WI State Capitol attempted Tuesday (01-28-2020) in Madison as Vice President Mike Pence promoted school choice in the rotunda of the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison WI.
If you are The Capital Times, servile mouthpiece of the ruling liberal-progressive-socialist hegemony here in Madison — you hurl spittle-flecked diatribe invectives. Only “lackeys” of “the usual cabal of billionaire[s] support school choice, says Dane County’s Progressive Voice.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Meanwhile, Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 district continues to plan for a substantial tax & spending increase referendum this fall.
Leila Fletcher (Madison West High School Senior):
Simpson Street Free Press is invested in and applies the science of reading with our students. We have for decades.
It is true, however, that debates about reading instruction continue. Teachers and reading specialists continually discuss—and dispute—what methods of reading instruction are truly most effective, and ultimately, what method should be used in our schools.
Today, in our country, reading levels continue to decrease; only two-thirds of fourth graders can read at grade level, which leads to high school seniors still unable to meet proficiency. The numbers in Wisconsin are among the worst in the country. And reading results in Madison are at crisis level.
Many experts believe this is a result of the instructional methods that teachers nationwide are instructed in and taught to use. These instructional methods, called the “three-cueing” system, teach students compensation strategies that struggling readers come to depend on after falling behind without having learned to read. All students in three-cueing classrooms are being taught this way, and as reading researcher David Kilpatrick has noted, “[t]he three-cueing system is the way poor readers read.”
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Madison schools’ happy talk Cheat(ham)s black kids
A crusader has stuck his out out of the foxhole to take on the political correctness that is destroying Madison’s public schools. We introduced him to you Blaska Policy Werkers two weeks ago. He is Peter Anderson, an environmental activist.
Peter has put up a website called “Durable Justice.” Bookmark it. (We’ll wait. Got it?) Anderson headlines his introductory essay, “Why MMSD has failed to help disadvantaged black students.”
It is essentially the message Blaska has been sounding these past two years and in last year’s campaign for school board. Unlike that unsuccessful candidate, Anderson is not weighed down with Blaska’s conservative activism. In other words, he is a good Madison liberal. (Remains to be seen for how long, but Anderson says his group is looking for a permanent leader).
Anderson dares to take on the Madison establishment’s cowardice in confronting the school district’s obsession with “racial justice” at the expense of school discipline, personal responsibility, and educational achievement. We excerpt from that essay:
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Notes and links on previous Superintendent searches.
2013; 2019 Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
Meanwhile, Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 district continues to plan for a substantial tax & spending increase referendum this fall.
Research shows progressive places, like Minneapolis, have the worst achievement gaps
It is an open secret in Minneapolis and the Twin Cities that black and brown children are being left behind within the public school system. The dominant narrative places the blame on poor children of color and their parents, as well as their communities. When racial stereotypes are used as the default to explain away systemic failures, everyone loses; but especially children of color who lag behind their white peers in reading, math and high school graduation rates. They are relegated to the margins of society and the criminal justice system.
We recently celebrated the life and legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his work toward a more equitable society. But it seems as if, in the area of education, our city and other cities across the country have gone backward.
Thankfully, some cities are doing a significantly better job than others at closing the opportunity gaps in education — as is made clear in a newly published report by brightbeam, a nonprofit education advocacy organization.
One might expect that politically progressive cities would be leading the way in closing the opportunity gap in education, given the history of racial segregation and oppression in this country, and the rhetoric of progressives about overcoming that history and creating a more just and inclusive society.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Notes and Commentary on the Wisconsin School Choice Event
At the Pence rally. A lot of people here with yellow sashes in support of school vouchers. Many nonwhite.
— Rocknrolli OneAndOnly (@RocknRocknrolli) January 28, 2020
.@vp mentions @GovEvers‘s absence and a bill to be reintroduced today by @RepBrostoff to phase out school vouchers in Wisconsin: “I know the governor can’t be here with us today so let’s make sure he hears this, we’re not going to let that happen.”
— Mitchell Schmidt (@schmidtmitchell) January 28, 2020
Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday gave an election-year defense of President Donald Trump’s education policies — assuring parents at a Capitol rally that under the Republican president, children will not be stuck in poorly performing schools.
Pence and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos turned a state rally promoting alternatives to public schools into a stump speech for Trump, who needs to keep Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes in his corner as he faces reelection and an impeachment trial.
“I’m here in Wisconsin because this is where it all began,” Pence told a crowd of hundreds in the Wisconsin State Capitol’s rotunda, referring to Milwaukee’s private school voucher program — the nation’s first.
The visit to the statehouse — a first for a sitting vice president — put on alert local education officials and public school advocates who see the Trump administration as a threat to public school funding, which they argue has been decimated over the last 10 years by the programs Pence and DeVos promoted.
In a press conference after Pence’s speech, Rep. Jonathan Brostoff, D-Milwaukee, said his bill would phase out vouchers in the state and reinvest in public schools.
“(Pence) has no idea what’s going on here,” Brostoff said. “He represents a complete erosion of one of the most fundamental values and one of the greatest values of this country which is strong public education and that’s certainly a Wisconsin value.”
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, also spoke at the event, with both vowing to uphold the state’s voucher program.
“As long as Republicans control the Legislature, we plan to keep it,” Fitzgerald said.
During his speech, Vos encouraged students participating in the event to cheer for Trump, Pence and DeVos and boo “those who don’t like school choice.”
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin held an event in response to Pence’s visit, where party chairman Ben Wikler called the event a celebration for the attack on public schools by President Donald Trump and his administration.
“Trump and his cronies are sabotaging public education because it’s not their children who go to public school,” Wikler said.
Logan Wroge (fails to compare total spending)
The Milwaukee voucher program started in 1990-91 under former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, who attended Tuesday’s rally.
In the first year, the program enrolled 337 students. Enrollment has grown almost every year. This fall, 28,978 students attended 130 private schools on vouchers in Milwaukee.
Another voucher program in Racine started in the 2011-12 school year, followed by a statewide program in 2013-14 and a fourth for students with disabilities in 2016.
In the Milwaukee, Racine and statewide programs, 42,392 students enrolled in private schools this fall using a voucher, or just under 5% of the total school-aged population.
The use of vouchers, though, has yet to catch on in Madison as only three schools in the city signed up to accept students this school year through the statewide program, which state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said leaves Madison children with “limited choices.”
Vice President Mike Pence touted alternatives to a public school education during a visit Tuesday to the state where the private school voucher program began, stopping in battleground Wisconsin for a noontime celebration in the state Capitol.
Pence, and U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos were both briefly drowned out by chants of “shame” from dozens of protesters who gathered one floor down in the Capitol building. The protesters, some carrying signs calling for the separation of church and state, also booed throughout their comments.
School choice — which includes private school vouchers, charter schools and other nontraditional options — has long been an issue that divides Republicans and Democrats, particularly in Wisconsin. Conservatives have championed offering students an alternative to public schools, giving Pence a chance to appeal to Republican voters in a swing state during national school choice week.
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
2011: A majority of the Madison School Board aborted the proposed Madison Property Academy IB charter school.
Voucher schools spend far less per student than traditional government supported schools. Traditional K-12 School Districts capture local (property), redistributed state and federal funds, while voucher schools largely survive on state taxpayer funds.
Study: $3.2B in Economic Benefits with the growth of school choice
Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty:
On the first day of National School Choice Week, a new study (here) estimates how further growth of Wisconsin’s parental choice programs could result in $3.2 billion in new economic benefits to Wisconsin over the next two decades. Ripple Effect, authored by Will Flanders, PhD, builds upon a recent study which documented how students in MPCP are more likely to graduate from college to extrapolate the economic gains to Wisconsin if the parental choice programs were expanded.
Broken down, Wisconsin’s cities could expect to see:
$100 million in economic benefits for Madison
$75 million in economic benefits for Green Bay
$60 million in economic benefits for Appleton
$24 million in economic benefits for La Crosse
Kenya’s Story: These economic gains can be understood through Kenya Green. As a child in Milwaukee, she struggled at Milwaukee Public Schools. By the time she was in eighth grade, she was close to giving up, seemingly forced to attend unsafe, low-performing MPS schools. But through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, she discovered HOPE Christian Schools, which transformed her life. The school gave her the rigorous academics and the structure she needed. After graduating from HOPE, she attended Wisconsin Lutheran College, graduated, got a job, and is now in school to become an aesthetician.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
2011: A majority of the Madison School Board aborted the proposed Madison Property Academy IB charter school.
Voucher schools spend far less per student than traditional government supported schools. Traditional K-12 School Districts capture local (property), redistributed state and federal funds, while voucher schools largely survive on state taxpayer funds.
Seattle teacher and activist tells local educators to rebuild school systems to be equitable
The four demands are: end zero-tolerance policies, mandate black history and ethnic studies, hire more black teachers and increase funds for counselors in schools instead of police.
There are several ways school communities can take part in the Week of Action, Hagopian said, such as wearing the Black Lives Matter T-shirt, having a school assembly to talk about injustice in schools, or teaching lessons in classrooms that correspond with the 13 guiding principles of the Black Lives Matter movement. The coalition’s website has additional resources.
Hagopian said the four demands are “structural changes that must be in place” in order to create an equitable system. The goal is to be able to have an understanding across the board that there are different identities that exist in society, he said.
In Wisconsin, 2% of teachers and 5% of principals are African American, while 9% of students are African American, according to a report released in November.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Suppose you strongly desire to drastically increase the amount of education that people consume. What should you do?
The obvious answer: Make education completely free of charge – and have the government pay the the entire cost.
I say this obvious answer is obviously right. As I explain in The Case Against Education, I favor extreme educational austerity, because I think the education system is a waste of time and money. Nevertheless, given the goal of drastically increasing educational attainment, completely shifting the cost burden from consumers to taxpayers is highly effective.
Yes, there is some “crowding out” – when the U.S. government spends an extra billion dollars on education, consumption of education probably rises by less than a billion dollars. Still, total U.S. consumption of education has ultimately increased by trillions of dollars as a result of past government subsidies.
This seems undeniable, but Tyler Cowen now suggests that free college is a way to restrain education spending!
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Madison 2020 Referendum Climate: Taxpayers decide some states aren’t worth it
The average property tax bill in the U.S. in 2018 was about $3,500, according to Attom Data
Solutions, a real-estate data firm. But many residents in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and California had been deducting well over
$10,000 a year. In Westchester County, N.Y., the average property-tax bill was more than $17,000, the highest in the country.
Among the people who are uprooting, many say they had long considered a change. But they saw the tax law as a reason to finally undertake the potentially difficult task of changing their state residency.
“It was another bucket of straw on the back of the camel,” said John Lee, a wealth-management executive and longtime resident of the
Sacramento, Calif., area. Mr. Lee and his wife, Tracy, moved their primary residence last winter to Incline Village, a resort community on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.
Let’s Compare: Middleton and Madison Property Taxes
2019: Madison increases property taxes by 7.2%, despite tolerating long term, disastrous reading results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Nowhere Is the Hypocrisy of Progressives More Apparent Than in Education
Nikima Levy Armstrong:
In the years leading up to my run, progressives talked a good game about their desire for equity, diversity and inclusion. I watched as they marched in the streets with us during Black Lives Matter protests. They put #BlackLivesMatter signs up in their windows and on their lawns. Some of them helped to shut down streets and freeways; while others wrote op-eds and made passionately-written Facebook posts about the need to challenge injustice and end white supremacy. Their enthusiasm and exuberance in standing for justice seemed authentic, for a while.
However, all of that excitement and passionate commitment was put to the test when I decided to run for office on a racial justice platform, focused on ending racial disparities, closing the opportunity gaps in public education, and seizing power on behalf of communities of color that are too often marginalized and relegated to second class citizenship.
The lukewarm support that I received from some of the same progressives who had marched with me and shut shit down was like a splash of Minnesota ice cold water in my face, reminding me that things were not quite what they seemed. During my experience, I truly began to pay attention to the hypocrisy between the nice sounding words and actions of many progressives and their failure to fight for systemic changes to laws and policies and indifference to the plight of poor people of color.
When I put two and two together, it all made sense—people who are living comfortable lives and for whom the system was designed for their benefit will rarely, if ever, make any significant sacrifices that threaten their discomfort, sense of entitlement or political power.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Guilty white teacher defends Madison school chaos
This trenchant observation drew a response from one Stan Endiliver, who (contrary to his intention) betrays why virtue-signaling progressives like himself are piping at-risk kids to disaster by playing the victim fife.
MMSD teacher here; relax
1. If you are a parent of a student in MMSD, you have nothing to fear.[Blaska: as long as you stay out of the line of fire.] There are many caring teachers and principals that are doing great things. Our district is not perfect, but we are doing our best to serve all kids …
3. If you are looking to Blaska as a saviour, just move. [Blaska: Which is why Sun Prairie is building a second high school] He has no idea what he is talking about. I am in a MMSD school every day, and have been for 15 years, and his vision of us is ludicrous. Leading kids out of school to squad cars is exactly why we are in the position we are in. We have a lot of kids dealing with real trauma and there are a lot of problems that are rooted in mental health issues. Give the district more resources to heal, and that would be a great place to start.
5. It all comes to back to race. Have you done your homework on Madison? The zoning? The fact that our schools were only fully integrated in 1983? The days of blindly complying with your teacher are over, but many people would love to go back to the time when it was like that.
I hear teachers say things like “when I was in school, you would never…” well guess what, when we were in school we were being socialized into a white supremacist system. That system is coming down, and this worries a lot of people, whether they consider themselves woke or not. — Stan Endiliver
That system is coming down
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Notes and links on previous Superintendent searches.
2013; 2019 Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
School Board chooses Matthew Gutiérrez as next Madison superintendent
Gutiérrez said in the release he was “honored and humbled to be selected,” touting community engagement and support to teachers, students and families as “top priorities.”
“During my visit to Madison, I was extremely impressed with the high level of community involvement and how community members hold education as a top priority,” he said. “I realize that with this role comes a tremendous responsibility, and I will work hard to ensure that we keep our strategic framework goals and our students at the center of what we do.
In an interview Friday, Gutierrez, 39, said he was grateful to even be considered for the job and is excited to move to Madison.
While visiting Wisconsin last week, Gutierrez said he “would be the strongest advocate for every single learner.” He said there’s still work to do in the district, but believes “all the right structures are in place.”
Throughout the summer, Gutierrez said he plans on conducting a “listening tour” to better understand the community and the district. He said he is already looking at dates before June 1 to come to Wisconsin and learn more about Madison.
As part of the listening tour, Gutierrez wants to hear from teachers about what programs and initiatives the district should focus on to prevent teachers from feeling overburdened.
“So many of the decisions that we make in central office directly impact teachers,” he said. “Sometimes we forget because we’ve been out of the classroom for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, that we continue to pile things onto teachers.”
Gutierrez said his base salary will be $250,000, slightly higher than Cheatham’s annual salary of $246,374. He has been superintendent of the Seguin Independent School District, which is outside of San Antonio, Texas, since 2017.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Notes and links on previous Superintendent searches.
2013; 2019 Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
Matthew Gutiérrez links and additional comments.
Cap Times’ Esenberg cartoon takes political left to new lows
As I black man, I have had my fill of the patronizing and condescending self-righteousness of these self-appointed white guardians who justify any gutter tactic in the name of their causes. I am appalled that the irony of publishing the cartoon as we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (someone who never would have stooped so low) seems to be completely lost on the publisher. Of the racism I have experienced since I moved to Wisconsin over 25 years ago, the worst has come from white people on the political left who presume to tell me how bothered I should be about racism in Wisconsin. This self-flagellation to have black people absolve them as “one of the good ones” is as uncomfortable as it is pathetic. Further, do not champion yourselves as protectors of black people by presuming we are too stupid to figure out how to register to vote.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Why Black People in Madison Wisconsin are Impatient, and Should Be.
With regard to K-12 education, Madison has known about the widespread underperformance of Black children in our city’s public schools for more than 50 years, and the situation has gotten worse. Instead of creating important and transformationl systemic changes, we act like “programs” alone will solve our problems, when we know full well that they will not.
I hope after reading (or scanning) this list, that you join me in becoming extraordinarily and absolutely impatient in your desire to address these challenges, and engage in less talk and more action and investment so we can do a far better job or preparing future generations to climb out the potholes that previous generations, and ours, have created for them.
We have been dealing with these disparities for far too long. In K-12 education in Madison, despite modest investments in efforts to improve things, we have seen little progress. It’s not that we haven’t done anything. You will see below that work has been done and investments have been made. However, we have never really focused on creating and manifesting broad systemic and comprehensive change in the institutions that could help us move forward, such as our public schools. Going forward, we must do more and do better. We cannot afford to lose another generation to our ignorance, soft approaches or inaction.
Please read below and see for yourself just how long we’ve been spinning in circles. This is why Black people in Madison are impatient, and we should be.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
But the data don’t paint an entirely rosy picture for Madison. In a pattern researchers have mapped across the country, local black and Hispanic children are disproportionately concentrated in “very low opportunity” neighborhoods, and white children have significant advantages.
Michael Johnson, president and CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County, urged area residents to take a hard look at how the city is serving all children, not just those in affluent neighborhoods.
“We should be careful not to over-celebrate when there are too many young people still hurting from the challenges we face in our region,” he said. “On one hand, it’s a great win for the city to get a score like that, but it’s not reflective of how African American families are actually living — especially kids.”
The study adds to a growing body of research demonstrating that the places where children grow up influence their long-term health, education and career outcomes. Most famously, economist Raj Chetty’s Opportunity Insights project has shown how a child’s future is shaped by the ZIP code he or she lives in.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Only 8.9% of Madison’s African American high school students are proficient in English, according to 2019 ACT scores. One of every five African American students never graduate. In math, 65% of black students test below basic proficiency, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Not to worry, the district now prohibits teachers from telling parents if their child wants to change genders.
Cheatham’s behavior education plan, Anderson wrote, “led students to conclude that there are no longer any consequences for bad behavior.”
The parents and teachers at Jefferson Middle School know that all too well. They are wondering how a 13-year-old boy who shot another student with a BB gun in December remained in school after two dozen previous incidents, including threatening to “kill everyone in the school.” The district is hunting down the whistleblower who leaked the student’s chronic misbehavior record.
School gag rules hide much of the chaos in the classroom, but no schoolhouse door can contain the disrespect for authority — as when 15 to 20 young teenagers busted up Lakeview Library last March, taunting: “We don’t have to listen to the police.” In December alone, 56 cars were stolen in Madison. Police arrested 15 kids (all but two younger than 17), along with three adults.
The district’s brain-dead, zero-tolerance for the N-word — no matter the educational context — resulted in the summary dismissal of a beloved black security guard and of a Hispanic teacher. The district still hasn’t done right by a dedicated positive behavior coach at Whitehorse Middle School, who school officials threw under the bus even before the district attorney cleared him of all wrong-doing. (The man is white.)
Parents are voting with their feet. MMSD enrollment is expected to decline — even though more people are moving here than any other city in the state. Meanwhile, Sun Prairie is building a second high school. Between the state open enrollment program and private schools, just over 13% of Madison’s children are opting out. Good luck convincing their parents to vote for Madison’s $350 million spending referendums next fall.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Notes and links on previous Superintendent searches.
2013; 2019 Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
Religious-schools case heads to a Supreme Court skeptical of stark lines between church and state
Parents who believe religious schools such as Stillwater absolutely are the places for their children are at the center of what could be a landmark Supreme Court case testing the constitutionality of state laws that exclude religious organizations from government funding available to others. In this case, the issue rests on whether a scholarship fund supported by tax-deductible donations can help children attending the state’s private schools, most of which are religious.
A decision in their favor would “remove a major barrier to educational opportunity for children nationwide,” plaintiffs said in their brief to the Supreme Court. It is part of a movement by school choice advocates such as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to allow government support of students seeking what she recently called “faith-based education.”
Said Erica Smith, a lawyer representing the parents: “If we win this case, it will be the U.S. Supreme Court once again saying that school choice is fully constitutional and it’s a good thing and it’s something parents should have. And that will provide momentum to the entire country.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said such a ruling would be a “virtual earthquake,” devastating to the way states fund public education.
And Montana told the court that, as in 37 other states, it is reasonable for its constitution to prohibit direct or indirect aid to religious organizations.
“The No-Aid Clause does not prohibit any religious practice,” Montana said in its brief. “Nor does it authorize any discriminatory benefits program. It simply says that Montana will not financially aid religious schools.”
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Leaders of progressive cities often frame their policy proposals in terms of what’s best for those with the least opportunity and the greatest obstacles. And yet, students in America’s most progressive cities face greater racial inequity in achievement and graduation rates than students living in the nation’s most conservative cities.
As you read, keep in mind that this is a first look at the problem plaguing progressive cities. Our work is just getting started.
Progressive cities are failing to prepare students for their future.
Our most conservative cities are closing opportunity gaps.
This report is an attempt to highlight a problem we see as fixable.
All of us, whether we identify as progressive or conservative, should not be satisfied with impassioned rhetoric and token initiatives alone. We need positive action.
It’s time to stand up and make sure our leaders work with communities to create a path for success for all students.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Anti Parent and Student Choice Political Rhetoric
Conservatives are often accused of being “science deniers” when it comes to issues like climate change. But recent events reveal that those on the left suffer from significant confirmation bias when it comes to a stance that is increasingly central to the liberal education agenda — opposition to charter schools.
In December, the Network for Public Education put out a report entitled, “Still Asleep at the Wheel.” The study purports to examine the prevalence of waste in the Department of Education’s Charter School Program, which provides resources for new charter schools to get started, or for existing charter schools to expand and improve.
The NPE report claims that a significant number of charter schools that received grants under the program never opened, or had already closed. But even a cursory look at the data revealed to me that at least three of the schools in my home state described as “closed” are very much open — indeed, they are among the top-performing schools in the city of Milwaukee. If they got that wrong, what else might there be?
Further examination of the report’s findings led myself and the president of School Choice Wisconsin, Jim Bender, to write a post for the Fordham Institutethat brought to light some additional errors. Indeed, at least 10 Wisconsin schools that the report claims are closed remain open. Christy Wolfe, vice president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, identified similar errors in the identification of closed charter schools in California. Additionally, Nina Rees, president of NAPCS, pointed out that the total amount of money received by schools that never opened is likely to be far less than what is reported in the study because such schools are likely only to receive the planning portion of multi-year grants.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Why are Madison middle school principals leaving?
Wanted: More Milton McPikes, fewer guilt mongers
Obsessed with identity politics, Madison school board member Ali Muldrow posts on social media an article headlined: “The discomfort of white adults should never take priority over the success of our black and brown students.”
“I didn’t come here to teach those kinds of kids.”
As harmful as that kind of statement is, very few teachers are brazen enough to express their racist thoughts out loud. If teachers express bias at all, particularly White teachers, they do so silently or even unconsciously — implicitly.
Are they also victims of MMSD identity politics?
The clear implication is that school board member Muldrow is, once again, accusing Madison educators of racism most foul.
Hire more educators of color? Fine with us. Go For It!
But if race is so important, why have so many principals of our middle schools failed? Tequila Kurth stepped aside this week as principal of often-violent Jefferson middle school to take “an extended leave of absence.” That makes nine schools at MMSD’s 12 middle schools to experience a change of leadership in the last 3½ years, according to Chris Rickert in the WI State Journal.
Rickert also named Kenya Walker, who quit as principal of Black Hawk Middle School in April 2017 amid suspicions of financial mismanagement, and Sherman Middle School Principal Kristin Foreman the next year after a teacher alleged in a blog post that the school was “in crisis.” Those were the only principals Rickert named.
We reached out to Ms. Muldrow to ask why the leadership turnover at Madison’s middle schools? If these principals are incompetent, why were they appointed? If color is so critical, why did they fail?
Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results: middle school governance edition
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Candidate Quotes from Madison’s 2020 Superintendent Pageant
Behavior Education Plan
Vanden Wyngaard: “Just like in previous districts I have been in, it appears we have a perception issue in the community.”
Gutiérrez: “What I’ve seen is a rather comprehensive plan. I think it may be a little overwhelming for folks. How can we simplify that to be user-friendly, easy to read, easy to follow?”
Thomas: “There’s a group of teachers who are not excited and at the same time there’s a group of kids who are not excited about it, so I’m not exactly sure how we got there. We have to create structures and strategies to build relationships.”
Charter schools
Vanden Wyngaard: “I expect us to partner with charters. I would partner with any other group so why wouldn’t I do that as well? Parents made a decision on where their child could best learn. Our job is to make sure the children of Madison can be successful.”
Gutiérrez: “There are circumstances when public schools partner with a charter system to serve students. Those are very unique circumstances. I believe that we’ve got to continue to find a way to meet the needs of our students in the public school system. It’s just part of our democratic society.”
Thomas: “I’m an advocate of traditional schools. And I’m an advocate of ensuring that every school is of high-quality.”
No budget or reading discussion?
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Notes and links on previous Superintendent searches.
2013; 2019 Jennifer Cheatham and the Madison experience.
Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results: middle school governance edition
In at least two cases, principals left under a cloud.
In 2017, district officials decided not to pursue legal action against former Black Hawk Middle School Principal Kenya Walker, who abandoned her position and oversaw more than $10,000 in spending on the school’s credit card that could not be accounted for. In 2018, Sherman Middle School Principal Kristin Foreman decided to leave after a teacher alleged in a blog post that the school was “in crisis” due to deteriorating student behavior and disrespect for staff.
Tense hallways
Former Jefferson math teacher Mauricio Escobedo said Kurth had “lost control of the school” and described an environment there in which he felt threatened and had “all kinds of racial epithets and insults hurled at me” by students.
According to confidential student records obtained by WISC-TV (Ch. 3), the student in the Dec. 3 incident had been involved in 25 disciplinary incidents this school year prior to his suspension in the BB gun case.
Escobedo was fired on Dec. 20, he said, after pointing out to school leaders that the student who fired the BB gun had previously threatened to “shoot up the school.” Officially, he was let go for failing to earn a state teaching license, he said.
Kurth did not respond to email and Facebook messages seeking comment. Escobedo is one of five teachers who have left Jefferson during the current school year.
While declining to comment on specific employees, district spokesman Tim LeMonds said one of the teachers left for personal family reasons, two for another job in the district, one for “dissatisfaction” with her job and one for not meeting state licensing requirements.
Escobedo, who said he has more than 20 years of teaching experience, said he was properly licensed. But Department of Public Instruction spokesman Benson Gardner said that unless Escobedo “has used another name, he has never held a license to work in a school in Wisconsin.”
Just Wednesday afternoon (01-15-2020) a Jefferson middle school student hospitalized with a concussion after being punched by a classmate. The victim told police he had been bullied for some time by the boy who hit him.
A school staff member said the victim fell to the floor after the initial blow, and was then punched a couple of more times. The employee said the suspect was screaming and knocking over chairs.
Mauricio Escobedo told Blaska’s Policy Werkes:
“I was fired and ushered out the back door because I would not allow Tequila Kurth to cover up her dangerous lack of sound disciplinary policies. On Wednesday, yet another child was nearly killed at Jefferson. YOU helped to divulge the fact [earlier this week] that the Jefferson Administration was no longer in control of the school to a wider audience than I could ever reach. For that, I thank you.
And now that Tequila Kurth is gone, the job is remains unfinished. …
The idea that race should be considered before meting out disciplinary consequences (or disciplinary data) is inimical to the foundational principle that Justice is blind. This aberration of America’s justice System must be changed inside of the MMSD from which it was removed by verbal artifice and deception.”
Because of the leadership change, the parent/citizen meeting is rescheduled for 6 p.m. February 6 at the school.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
The central, unstated assumption of Hannah-Jones and other defenders of court-ordered busing is that the meaning of the crucial term “desegregation” remained constant from Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 to busing in Boston two decades later. To oppose busing in Detroit, Dayton, or Delaware (as Biden did), so the story goes, is to reject the most important Supreme Court decision of the 20th century. Moreover, if “desegregation” has a coherent, constant meaning, we should focus on the benefits of the entire project, from desegregation of the border states in the 1950s to the “reconstruction of Southern education” in the 1960s and 1970s, to the effort to create racially balanced schools outside the South during the 1970s and 1980s. There is no need to distinguish among the diverse projects lumped under the heading “desegregation.”
This story is just plain wrong, as anyone who has studied the history of desegregation well knows. The starting point for any serious evaluation of desegregation must be acknowledging how much the meaning of that key term changed over time. We can argue over the merits of this transformation, but not over the nature and extent of the change.
In his opinion for a unanimous court in Brown v. Board, Chief Justice Earl Warren presented arguments he hoped would not only convince legal skeptics, but appeal to the better angels of citizens in the North and South. He never explained what school districts must do to achieve desegregation. For that omission the Court has been justly criticized, since its silence allowed the South to evade its constitutional responsibilities for a decade and a half. Nor did Warren provide an adequate explanation for why state-sponsored segregation is wrong. His reliance on dubious social-science evidence needlessly left him open to attack by segregationists.
Although the Court never cited the famous words of Justice John Marshall Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson — ”Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens” — that understanding lay at the heart of the NAACP’s legal argument and formed the foundation of the Court’s discussion of remedies. In oral argument, the NAACP’s Robert Carter explained that the “one fundamental contention which we will seek to develop” is that “no state has any authority under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunity among its citizens.” Thurgood Marshall assured the Court that “the only thing that we are asking for is that the state-imposed racial segregation be taken off, and to leave the county school board, the county people, the district people, to work out their solutions of the problem to assign children on any reasonable basis they want to assign them on.”
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
A Brooklyn school district tackles school segregation
New york city is famous for its diversity. Yet the 1.1m pupils in the city, who are mostly non-white, attend some of the most segregated schools in the country. They are even more segregated than schools in some southern cities such as Atlanta. Complacency has reigned for decades. But a school district in Brooklyn is showing early signs of success in a drive towards integration.
District 15 encompasses expensive brownstone houses in Park Slope, immigrant enclaves in Sunset Park and one of the country’s largest public-housing projects in Red Hook. Despite that, it remained intensely segregated. The more affluent—and usually white—school-age children flocked to the district’s “good schools”. Last year, after a parents’ campaign, the district eliminated admission screens, which included test scores, attendance and behaviour records, for its 11 middle schools. Parents still rank their preferred schools, but now the district uses a lottery, with 52% of places at each school set aside for pupils who come from poor families, are still learning English or are homeless.
Eight of the 11 schools are now hitting integration-rate targets. Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation, a think-tank, calls it “one of the most exciting educational-reform efforts in the entire country”. One school, MS51, was 47% white last year. It is now 28% white.
It is still early days for District 15. But so far, integration appears to be stable. Fears of “white flight” out of the public-school system have not been realised. The middle schools’ incoming classes remain 31% white, roughly the same since 2015. MS88, which was only 9% white last year, is now 24% white. Ailene Mitchell, MS88’s principal, says children from different backgrounds are starting to socialise with each other and joining each other’s after-school activity programmes. Jason Hoffner, a teacher, says some of the “new” pupils had near-perfect exam scores, but in classroom discussions there is little difference.
Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
We can draw school zones to make classrooms less segregated. This is how well your district does.
Think about your elementary school.
If you attended an American public school, chances are you went to that school because your family lived in that school’s attendance zone. You probably didn’t think twice about it.
We tend to assume these are neutrally drawn, immutable borders. But if you take a step back and look at the demographics of who lives in each attendance zone, you’re faced with maps like this.
Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools, despite space in nearby facilities.
The lines that divide: School district boundaries often stymie integration
Laura Meckler and Kate Rabinowitz:
The move by Memphis to merge with the suburbs, he says, was a power play gone bad. He supported the separation to preserve local control and property values, and to avoid being controlled by a district he considered bureaucratic and dysfunctional.
“It wasn’t like the primary agenda was a racial agenda. It was about autonomy and local control,” he said. “Some people say, ‘Look at the white people in Germantown [who] don’t want to be around black poor kids.’ That’s an oversimplification of biblical proportions.”
Madison taxpayers recently funded the expansion of our least diverse schools, despite space in nearby facilities.
Madison has not changed school boundaries in decades.
Between now and the 2024-25 school year, the district will lose another 1,347 students, according to district projections. Since the 2011-12 school year when MMSD added 4-year-old kindergarten, the district has always had at least 26,000 students. Projections show it will drop below that in 2024-25 for the first time since.
Projections from Vandewalle and Associates show enrollment stability in the “long term,” the report adds.
The district’s projections are based on what the report calls a “sharp decrease” in the birth rates in the cities of Fitchburg and Madison in 2016 and 2017, the last two reported years. Continued drops in enrollment are significant for the district’s funding, as state aid is largely based on enrollment, measured each September on the third Friday of the school year.
The drops are projected to initially come in elementary schools, as kindergarten classes will continue a trend of being smaller than the year prior. At the high school level, East and Memorial are projected to grow in attendance by the 2024-25 school year, while West will have five students fewer than this year. La Follette is projected to lose 49 students from this year to 2024-25.
The overall enrollment decrease means that most buildings are projected to be at or below the “ideal” 90% capacity use five years from now, according to data included in the report, which is calculated using factors including class size policy, section availability and building size. The most significant exceptions are Falk Elementary School, which is projected to be at 104.4% of its capacity in five years, and West High School, projected at 98.7% — just below its current 98.9% utilization.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district recently expanded their least diverse schools.
“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
Madison School District projects loss of 1,100 students over next five years
But by 2024-25, the total number of students is projected to drop to 25,779 students, about 1,400 fewer students, or a 5% reduction, from enrollment 11 years prior, according to the report
Madison taxpayers recently expanded our least diverse schools, despite nearby available space. Yet, we have long tolerated disastrous reading results.
Commentary on Madison Schools’ Quietly spending taxpayer’s $4M
The plan didn’t become publicly available until Friday afternoon, when the meeting agenda was posted online.
Does the analysis include space in other facilities? The District expanded some of its least diverse schools (Van Hise and Hamilton) several years ago, when space was available in other nearby schools.
The Madison school district is planning a substantial tax and spending increase referendum in 2020.
Perhaps these funds might support those requirements.
Madison taxpayers spend far more than most K-12 school districts, yetwe have long tolerated disastrous reading results
Two Madisons: The Education and Opportunity Gap in Wisconsin’s Fastest Growing City
At Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD), there exist two distinct school systems.
Despite its economic growth, low-income families in Madison are more likely to stay poor for their entire lives.
While 60% of white students at MMSD are proficient or higher on the Forward exam, only 9.8% of African Americans are proficient. This achievement gap is worse than Milwaukee Public Schools.
While Hispanic proficiency is higher than that for African Americans, large gaps remain.
21% of African Americans and 18% of Hispanic students in MMSD do not graduate from high school within five years compared to just 6% of white students.
African American and low-income students are more likely to be in schools with significantly higher numbers of police calls.
Due to caps and restrictions, school choice is very limited in Madison. Unless your family has money. More than 4,300 children attend 31 private schools in Madison, primarily outside of the voucher program.
Related: Police calls near local high schools: 1996-2006.
Madison taxpayers recently funded expansion of our least diverse schools.
I am currently the reading interventionist teacher at West High School.
I’ve been there for 4 years. Previous to that I’ve been in the school district as a regular ed teacher for about 20 years. I started in the early 90s.
I have (a) question I want to ask you guys. What district-wide systems are in place as we use our map data to monitor the reading student achievement?
Student by student, not school by school but also school by school and provide support for the school the teachers and the students that need it.
And especially to help students who score in the bottom percentiles who will need an intervention which is significantly different than differentiation.
I was (a) TAG coordinator (talent and gifted coordinator) for 4 years at Hamilton and I have extensive background with the talent and gifted and differentiation training.
( and teaching of teachers). Now I’m in interventionist and they are significantly different we need interventions to serve the lowest scoring kids that we have.
Here’s my data from this year and this is why I’m here:
Of the 65 students plus or minus it kind of changes this year 24 of them are regular ed students.
Another way to say they don’t have an IEP so there is no excuse for that reading intervention in (that group).
12 of those 24 have been enrolled in Madison School since Pre-K kindergarten or kindergarden. 12 students have been in Madison Schools.
They have High attendance. They have been in the same (you know) feeder school they have not had high mobility. There is no excuse for 12 of my students to be reading at the first second or third grade level and that’s where they’re at and I’m angry and I’m not the only one that’s angry.
The teachers are angry because we are being held accountable for things that we didn’t do at the high school level. Of those 24 students, 21 of them have been enrolled in Madison for four or more years.
Of those 24 students one is Caucasian the rest of them identify as some other ethnic group.
I am tired of the district playing what I called whack-a-mole, (in) another words a problem happens at Cherokee boom we bop it down and we we fix it temporarily and then something at Sherman or something at Toki or something at Faulk and we bop it down and its quiet for awhile but it has not been fixed on a system-wide level and that’s what has to change.
Thank you very much.
Madison taxpayers have long spent far more than most K-12 school districts, now between 18 and 20k per student, depending on the district documents one reviews.
The Whiter, Richer School District Right Next Door
The Democratic presidential debates, when they have turned to education, have so far focused on busing, college affordability, and school safety. Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, notably, veered away from busing to talk about modern segregation during the second slate of debates, but only for a moment. But the schools trapped within these isolating, segregating borders will require more sweeping solutions to break free of them.
Related: Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools, yet we have long tolerated disastrous reading results. This despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts.
Need Extra Time on Tests? It Helps to Have Cash
From Weston, Conn., to Mercer Island, Wash., word has spread on parenting message boards and in the stands at home games: A federal disability designation known as a 504 plan can help struggling students improve their grades and test scores. But the plans are not doled out equitably across the United States.
In the country’s richest enclaves, where students already have greater access to private tutors and admissions coaches, the share of high school students with the designation is double the national average. In some communities, more than one in 10 students have one — up to seven times the rate nationwide, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.
In Weston, where the median household income is $220,000, the rate is 18 percent, eight times that of Danbury, Conn., a city 30 minutes north. In Mercer Island, outside Seattle, where the median household income is $137,000, the number is 14 percent. That is about six times the rate of nearby Federal Way, Wash., where the median income is $65,000.
Students in every ZIP code are dealing with anxiety, stress and depression as academic competition grows ever more cutthroat. But the sharp disparity in accommodations raises the question of whether families in moneyed communities are taking advantage of the system, or whether they simply have the means to address a problem that less affluent families cannot.
Related: Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools, yet we have long tolerated disastrous reading results. This despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts.
Commentary on a proposed 2020 Madison K-12 Tax & Spending Increase Referendum
If voters were to approve a $150 million referendum, the owner of a $300,000 house — near the median-value home in the district of $294,833 — could have their property taxes increase by $93 annually, according to district estimates.
A larger referendum of $280 million is estimated to raise property taxes on a $300,000 house by $159 annually.
If a $280 million referendum were approved, the Madison School District’s debt, excluding interest payments, would be $357 million, according to the district.
The district projects its debt as a percentage of the total tax base value under a successful $280 million at 1.3% — estimated to be the third lowest out of 15 Dane County school districts.
Currently, the Madison School District has $77 million in debt, which ranks last out of the 15 districts for debt as a percentage of total tax base value, according to the district.
Madison has long spent far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts.
Yet, we have long tolerated disastrous reading results.
Interestingly, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools, despite space at nearby facilities
2010: Madison School Board member calls for audit of 2005 maintenance referendum spending.
Madison’s property tax base has grown significantly during the past few years, curiously following the unprecedented $40B+ federal taxpayer electronic medical record subsidy….
“Whatever recommendations come forward, I want them to include using underutilized space we have in the district,” said School Board member TJ Mertz, Seat 5.
Mertz said that redrawing district boundaries could also help find space without having to build an entirely new building.
“I think that if we want to be good stewards of the investments we’re entrusted with, I think some set of those options need to be on the table,” Mertz said.
Another option that seemed unpopular would be to close a currently operating school in order to make more space available.
A challenge for having just one site is finding a location that is easily accessible via public transportation for all attendance areas. The idea of building a new space when not all district properties are at full capacity also raised concerns.
“We’ve got space and we’re not growing as a district (student-wise), and we need to use our space better,” said Kate Toews, Seat 6.
But for some, having one site provides an opportunity to put the needs of students at Capital High at the forefront.
Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools, despite nearby available space.
Related: “The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results. This, despite spending far more than most, now around $20,000 per student.
Researcher: School boundaries and segregation are linked
He said each instance where schools are rezoned can be an opportunity to address segregation. He said very few districts draw bad boundaries that exacerbate racial segregation.
He said many studies show that the achievement gap between black and white students is closed when schools are desegregated and the gap widens when they are segregated. The achievement gap has been a persistent issue in Columbia Public Schools.
“School districts desegregate when it seems to be badly needed,” Monarrez said. “Desegregation involves more travel. This is sort of the price of desegregating the school.”
He said it’s a trade-off that districts can consider.
“The only way to desegregate schools is to make people travel farther,” he said. Monarrez said districts seem to think about these issues when they’re drawing boundaries.
Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
But when you look at the manuscripts, the classroom texts, and the teaching methods of the early Middle Ages, you find habits and practices that I think would warm the hearts of pretty much everybody in this room. You find, for example, an obsessive attention to what today we would refer to as “literacy” and “critical thinking skills.” We find a true love of learning—even more admirably, a love of language, the nuts and bolts of language: how language works, how you put words together, how you put sentences together, how you communicate with other educated people. And you find that underlying all of this is an incredible sense of purpose, a real sense of mission. Thanks to the efforts of the monks of this era, within a generation or two, literacy was spreading, old books were being copied and preserved at unprecedented rates, and new books were being written for educational use.
So there are really a few things to discuss here this morning: What was this educational curriculum and where did it come from? And also, what made it so successful in such an uncertain and illiterate era?
The answers to those questions contain real lessons for those of us who teach writing, composition, and literature, and in the end I think they leave us with further interesting questions to ponder as well.
Hamilton is Madison’s least diverse (Madison K-12 statistics) middle school, yet, we recently expanded it.
“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
Some Madison schools sign on to Black Lives Matter event that calls for dumping police
Some Madison schools will participate next year in a Black Lives Matter event that features a call to “fund counselors, not cops” — despite the School Board’s decision this week to keep police officers in the Madison School District’s four main high schools.
Hamilton Middle School said in an email to community members Thursday that it would participate in Black Lives Matter at School week Feb. 4-8. “Other schools in Madison” are also participating in the event, according to the email.
The BLM at School movement began in 2016, according to the group’s website, and its first “week of action” was in February of this year. In addition to cutting funding for school-based police officers — commonly known as educational, or school, resource officers — the movement’s other three goals are to:
End “zero tolerance” discipline and implement more restorative justice programs.
Hire more black teachers.
Mandate black history and ethnic studies in K-12 curriculum.
Andrew Waity, president of the Madison teachers union, Madison Teachers Inc., said in a Friday email that “MTI members have been interested in participating in this event for a while and first brought it forward last year.”But that “does not change our existing position of support for Educational Resource Officers in (Madison School District) high schools,” he said. “We believe that it is the responsibility of the district and (the Madison Police Department) to develop a contract that defines the roles and responsibilities of these officers.”
Hamilton is Madison’s least diverse (Madison K-12 statistics) middle school, yet, we recently expanded it.
“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
K-12 Housing climate: Minneapolis vs Shorewood Hills
“Large swaths of our city are exclusively zoned for single-family homes, so unless you have the ability to build a very large home on a very large lot, you can’t live in the neighborhood,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told me this week. Single-family home zoning was devised as a legal way to keep black Americans and other minorities from moving into certain neighborhoods, and it still functions as an effective barrier today. Abolishing restrictive zoning, the mayor said, was part of a general consensus that the city ought to begin to mend the damage wrought in pursuit of segregation. Human diversity—which nearly everyone in this staunchly liberal city would say is a good thing—only goes as far as the housing stock.
It may be as long as a year before Minneapolis zoning regulations and building codes reflect what’s outlined in the 481-page plan, which was crafted by city planners. Still, its passage makes the 422,000-person city, part of the Twin Cities region, one of the rare U.S. metropolises to publicly confront the racist roots of single-family zoning—and try to address the issue.
“A lot of research has been done on the history that’s led us to this point,” said Cam Gordon, a city councilman who represents the Second Ward, which includes the University of Minnesota’s flagship campus. “That history helped people realize that the way the city is set up right now is based on this government-endorsed and sanctioned racist system.” Easing the plan’s path to approval, he said, was the fact that modest single-family homes in appreciating neighborhoods were already making way for McMansions. Why not allow someone to build three units in the same-size building? (Requirements on height, yard space, and permeable surface remain unchanged in those areas.)
Shorewood Hills rejects low income apartments (2010).
Shorewood Hills is part of the Madison School District.
We have long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.
Finally, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools, one of which supports Shorewood Hills (Hamilton Middle School). 18.8% of Hamilton’s student population are classified as low income, according to the Madison School District – far below the organization’s average.
The High Price for a Free Education
It’s been an exhausting summer for Yu Xi and her son, Fengfeng, but ultimately a successful one. The 6-year-old will start his first year at one of Shanghai’s best public primary schools this month — to the relief of his parents, for whom securing Fengfeng’s seat in the classroom has cost them sleepless nights and millions of yuan. “It’s been driving me crazy,” says Yu.
Like many middle-class parents in China’s big cities, Yu and her husband prepared for this summer years in advance. In 2015, they paid 2.6 million yuan (then around $400,000) for a 30-square-meter apartment in Lujiazui, an area of Shanghai better known for its glitzy waterfront skyscrapers than for its decades-old housing. It was an extortionate fee for a small, dilapidated property; a few streets away, more comfortable apartments sold for much less money. But Yu’s flat boasted one crucial advantage: It was located in the school district where the family hoped to enroll Fengfeng.
China’s middle class is expected to rise from 430 million people today to 780 million people by the mid-2020s. A substantial proportion of them are young, urban families anxious to guarantee a bright future for their children. A good education is key to realizing that dream, but the quality of public education in even the most developed Chinese cities remains highly variable. Consequently, reasonably wealthy parents are spending huge sums of money on xuequfang — school-district homes — in urban areas renowned for educational prowess. Children registered as residents of such homes are more likely to be placed in nearby schools.
Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools, which happen to reside among the more expensive real estate in the city.
Real Talk About Segregation in Boston Public Schools
Here’s the executive summary:
White children are not smarter than black and brown children. Parachuting white families into majority “minority” schools will not automatically improve academic performance.
Black and Latino children ARE more than capable of achievement. Just because a school is majority “minority” does not make it a failing school.
Student diversity is positive and is linked to better student achievement for all students.
The segregation in Boston Public Schools has more to do with class and poverty than race, although systemic racism and income inequality perpetuating the cycle of poverty hits communities of color a hell of a lot harder than white families — especially in Boston. If you want to understand why a school might be poor performing, take a look at the income levels of the students’ families before you even think about the racial diversity of the students. Family income will tell you a whole lot more about the educational challenges of the kids than their race.
All of these things are true.This is also true: People who can afford to buy $3 million condos in Boston are not going to send their children to underperforming schools in the opposite part of the city. They just AREN’T. Ever. No matter how progressive they claim to be. And if you think there is any amount of political pressure you can put on Marty Walsh to make him attempt to force it to happen — you’re nuts.
Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
We spend far more than most, yet have long tolerated disastrous reading results.
Increased segregation of Boston schools could deepen racial, economic divides, say advocates
John Hilliard and Emily Williams
:The increase in segregation of the Boston Public School system — decades after court-ordered busing strove to help diversify the city’s schools — will worsen divisions among families along racial and economic lines, parents and education advocates said Sunday.
The concerns came a day after the Globe reported that more of the city’s schools are segregated now than they were two decades ago — in many cases, leaving students of color increasingly isolated in low-performing schools.
Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
How Elite Schools Stay So White
Natasha Warikoo and Nadirah Farah Foley:
That question is being debated in Massachusetts, where court papers argue over Harvard’s use of race in its “holistic” admissions process, and in New York City, where politicians are trying to increase the number of black and Latino students at top public high schools.
But the answer has always been obvious: only the elite.
While standards of merit shift over time, prominent schools and even their critics usually take for granted admissions systems that uphold the privileges of elite groups. In the United States, “elites” are mostly white people. That means Asian-Americans and underrepresented minorities — Latinos, Native Americans and African-Americans — are pitted against one another for coveted spots at elite schools.
Madison recently expanded their least diverse schools.
In favor of deep (and complex) reporting
The lesson for journalists (or anyone) working amidst intractable conflict: complicate the narrative. First, complexity leads to a fuller, more accurate story. Secondly, it boosts the odds that your work will matter — particularly if it is about a polarizing issue. When people encounter complexity, they become more curious and less closed off to new information. They listen, in other words.
There are many ways to complicate the narrative, as described in detail under the six strategies below. But the main idea is to feature nuance, contradiction and ambiguity wherever you can find it. This does not mean calling advocates for both sides and quoting both; that is simplicity, and it usually backfires in the midst of conflict. “Just providing the other side will only move people further away,” Coleman says. Nor does it mean creating a moral equivalence between neo-Nazis and their opponents. That is just simplicity in a cheap suit. Complicating the narrative means finding and including the details that don’t fit the narrative — on purpose.
The idea is to revive complexity in a time of false simplicity. “The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete,” novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says in her mesmerizing TED Talk “A Single Story.” “[I]t’s impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person.”
Usually, reporters do the opposite. We cut the quotes that don’t fit our narrative. Or our editor cuts them for us. We look for coherence, which is tidy — and natural. The problem is that, in a time of high conflict, coherence is bad journalism, bordering on malpractice.
In the midst of conflict, our audiences are profoundly uncomfortable, and they want to feel better. “The natural human tendency is to reduce that tension,” Coleman writes, “by seeking coherence through simplification.” Tidy narratives succumb to this urge to simplify, gently warping reality until one side looks good and the other looks evil. We soothe ourselves with the knowledge that all Republicans are racist rednecks — or all Democrats are precious snowflakes who hate America.
Complexity counters this craving, restoring the cracks and inconsistencies that had been air-brushed out of the picture. It’s less comforting, yes. But it’s also more interesting — and true.Reporting depth is critical, but rarely found.
A few SIS examples:
Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results.
An emphasis on adult employment.
Expanding Madison’s least diverse schools.
They’re all rich white kids and they’ll do just fine, NOT!
Police calls, Madison area schools 1996-2006.
What my ‘liberal’ constituents had to say about our district’s plan to increase integration in 2009
This below is one of the nicer email I received from constituents when my board was attempting to make boundary changes so we could improve school integration.
“Because of your changes, there is a very good possibility that he will have to move from a top 5% school to a bottom 5% school based on test scores.”
I understand that due to budget constraints something has to be changed but I feel through this process that the neighborhoods in the open area have been disregarded. We are facing the brunt of the changes yet a petition to use Lindale and Barton [a magnet school] as the community schools was wholly ignored. I can only assume that Barton was left untouched because of the high percentage of district staff children in attendance there, better to help your own than to worry about the outsiders.
[as I remember, the reason Barton survived is because it was a magnet and the most diverse of the few school white folks would see as acceptable]
But what really bothers me is the changes made under the guise of budget constraints are really an attempt to reintroduce desegregation. In your stated goals, desegregation is number 3 on the list and in many cases this is considered before budget issues. I realize that the intention of desegregation is compelling, I agree with giving equal opportunities to all students, but I don’t recall busing has been highly successful where it has been used, including [Minneapolis Public Schools, integration failed spectacularly].
Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
How The Systemic Segregation Of Schools Is Maintained By ‘Individual Choices’
Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that when it comes to school segregation, separate is never truly equal.
“There’s never been a moment in the history of this country where black people who have been isolated from white people have gotten the same resources,” Hannah-Jones says. “They often don’t have the same level of instruction. They often don’t have strong principals. They often don’t have the same technology.”
Still, when it was time for Hannah-Jones’ daughter, Najya, to attend kindergarten, the journalist chose the public school near their home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, even though its students were almost all poor and black or Latino. Hannah-Jones later wrote about that decision in The New York Times Magazine.
Related: Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
‘Apartheid’ schools on the rise in N.J., study says
The percentage of New Jersey students attending “apartheid schools” — where only between 0 and 1 percent of the pupils are white — has nearly doubled from 4.8 percent to 8.3 percent since 1989, the report concluded.
“This report shows that New Jersey has moved another substantial step toward a segregated future with no racial majority but severe racial stratification and division,” said Gary Orfield, one of the report’s authors and co-director of UCLA’s Civil Rights Project.
New Jersey ranks as the sixth most segregated state in the nation for black students and the seventh most segregated for Latino students, the report said.
Related: Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
We can draw school zones to make classrooms less segregated. This is how well your district does.
Think about your elementary school.
If you attended an American public school, chances are you went to that school because your family lived in that school’s attendance zone. You probably didn’t think twice about it.
We tend to assume these are neutrally drawn, immutable borders. But if you take a step back and look at the demographics of who lives in each attendance zone, you’re faced with maps like this:
Madison recently expanded their least diverse schools.
$pending more on Bricks and Mortar in the Madison School District?
Madison School District Administration (PDF):
Build a new neighborhood elementary school in or near the South Allis attendance area, south of the Beltline, to serve all of the South Allis area and a portion of the Leopold area.
Invite Verona, Oregon, and McFarland to join with MMSD to rationalize the south border to better serve all communities.
—-
Build a new neighborhood elementary school on MMSD’s Sprecher Road site, located east of I-90, for enrollment growth in Kennedy and Elvehjem.
Relocate Nuestro Mundo (314 w/ waiting list) to Allis, a larger, better, district- owned school building. End the lease agreement.
Most Allis Main and Allis East students are closer to Elvehjem, could attend a new south school, or Elvehjem and/or options for Schenk, Glendale, or a possible new Sprecher Road school.
Invite McFarland to work with MMSD to rationalize the border near Yahara Hills to better serve all communities.
—-
Build a new elementary in the Allied Drive area (on the Allied side of Verona Road) with a broader attendance area (or magnet area). Invite Verona to join MMSD in a study of the southern border to better serve all communities.
For new developments on the far west side, plan ahead – purchase land suitable for an elementary school, plan to build a new elementary in 7-10 years depending on actual enrollment growth. MMSD might, depending on actual enrollment growth, require a new middle school in the far west area in 10-15 years.
There was a brief, failed attempt to close Lapham Elementary school in 2007.
Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools, despite nearby underutilized school space.
Madison has long spent more than most taxpayer funded school districts, yet we have tolerated disastrous reading results for decades.
The Two-Board Knot: Zoning, Schools, and Inequality
Old Town Road traces a choppy, swerving path that marks the southern edge of Trumbull, Connecticut. It is shaded by maples and oaks that frame the sensible New England homes of an affluent suburb. Across the double yellow lines of Old Town Road are similar homes in the city of Bridgeport, one of the poorest places in Connecticut.
Last July, Trumbull’s Planning and Zoning Commission approved a zoning change to allow a 202-unit apartment complex to replace a vacant office building a few blocks away from Old Town Road. Key to getting approval was that the apartment building was designed with only one- and two-bedroom units; the developer estimates that only 16 school-age children will live among the 202 new units.1 For Trumbull’s residents, eager to maintain their school district’s third-in-the-state ranking,2 a larger influx of potentially poor students might have been a deal-breaker.
According to Zillow’s estimate, the three-bedroom house at 1230 Old Town Road could sell for $287,000. Across the street in Bridgeport, a very similar home at 1257 Old Town Road is worth only $214,000. The Zillow interface helpfully informs the prospective buyer that any children living at 1230 Old Town Road have the right to attend Frenchtown Elementary School, rated 9 out of 10 by GreatSchools. Children on the south side of the street attend the Cross School, which rates a 2,3 and is part of the worst municipal school district in the state, according to the state’s own ranking.4
Madison’s non diverse K-12 governance model rejected the proposed indepedent Madison Preparatory IB Charter School. This, despite spending more than most (now nearly $20,000 per studentf) and tolerating long term, disastrous reading results.
Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Commentary on Madison Taxpayer Funded Schools’ PTO Budgets and Activity
Allis Elementary currently has no active PTO and its fundraising when it did have one last year was “very, very little,” according to interim principal Sara Cutler. Allis’ percentage of economically disadvantaged students last year was 67.9, according to state Department of Public Instruction data, or higher than the district percentage of 46.1. Allis’ non-white population is 77 percent, higher than the district’s 57.1 percent.
The PTO for Huegel Elementary, with an economically disadvantaged population of 41.4 percent, has an annual budget of around $22,000 a year, according to PTO co-treasurer Tony Parisi. The PTO for Schenk Elementary, whose percentage of poor students is 63.5, has an annual budget of about $6,000, according to president Heather Daniels.
The Lowell Community Organization, the PTO-like group for Lowell Elementary, where I’ve had at least one child enrolled since 2009, has a proposed budget this year of about $14,500. Budgets over the past five years have been in the $8,000 to $14,000 range, according to LCO treasurer Kerry Martin. Lowell’s rate of economically disadvantaged students is 37.3 percent.
Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools (Van Hise Elementary and Hamilton Middle), while tolerating long term, disastrous reading results.
Commentary On K-12 Governance Rhetoric
In the past two weeks, both support and criticism of Weingarten have centered on whether or not school vouchers actually increase segregation. A different question is whether or not Weingarten’s broadsides against vouchers, privatization, and disinvestment have anything to do with fighting segregation.
Elsewhere in the speech Weingarten recounted her joint visit to the public schools in Van Wert, Ohio, with U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Weingarten chose that particular district because “these are the schools I wanted Betsy DeVos to see — public schools in the heart of the heart of America.”
“The people of Van Wert are proud of their public schools,” she said. “They’ve invested in pre-K and project-based learning. They have a nationally recognized robotics team and a community school program that helps at-risk kids graduate. Ninety-six percent of students in the district graduate from high school.”
Those are things to be proud of. But in a speech condemning segregation, Weingarten failed to mention another facet of Van Wert public schools: Out of 1,991 students, just 18 are African Americans. Not 18 percent — 18 students.
Madison recently expanded its Least diverse school.
Not for Free: Exploring the Collateral Costs of Diversity in Legal Education
This essay examines some of the institutional costs of achieving a more diverse law student body. In recent decades, there has been growing support for diversity initiatives in education, and the legal academy is no exception. Yet for most law schools, diversity remains an elusive goal, some of which is the result of problems with anticipating the needs of diverse students and being able to deliver. These are some of the unseen or hidden costs associated with achieving greater diversity. Both law schools and the legal profession remain relatively stratified by race, which is an ongoing legacy of legal education’s origins as a project dominated by white male elites predominantly serving white male clients. Today’s law schools still lack in diversity, but major developments are increasingly changing student demographics. Perhaps the first push toward diversification of law schools came after the 1920s, when women won suffrage and began to enroll in law school in increasing numbers. Advocacy efforts over the next century would produce many breakthroughs, including in the present,where an unprecedented three women sit on the Supreme Court. With the creation of The Historically Black College/University (“HBCU”) law schools, which enrolled significant numbers of African American students, Civil Rights legislation and court cases in the 1950s and 1960s paved the way for a growing number of ethnic minorities to apply to law school and for a female explosion of matriculants. Today’s diversity initiatives seek to create classrooms with profiles based on a range of intellect and experience as a means to enhance learning for all students. As such, diversity may be understood as supporting the marketplace of ideas concept by seeking to create an environment where study and problem solving draw from a broad range of knowledge and experience. Law schools are also enrolling individuals with lower credentials to assuage the sting of lower enrollment. Maintaining and servicing diverse student bodies inevitably incurs downstream costs. This essay attempts to offer a snapshot of some the administrative, pedagogical, and regulative costs involved, and provide commentary on how law schools might meet these challenges.
Related: Commentary on diversity and academic goalposts.
Interestingly, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.
Commentary on Diversity and Academic Goalposts
Madison West students did better in every category where there is a basis for comparison. (The number of Madison West students of two or more races who took the test was below the threshold for DPI to calculate an average score.) So why does Middleton have the higher overall average? This outcome is completely determined by the demographics of the schools. There are more West students than Middleton students in the lower-scoring categories, and this effect overwhelmed West’s clear superiority in the category-by-category comparisons.
There is more evidence of diversity’s negative impact on school comparisons all around us. For example, Google “best schools in Dane County.” You’ll get greatschools.org, or perhaps Zillow, which incorporates GreatSchools ratings. GreatSchools assigns a rating on a 1-to-10 scale to every school around. From all that appears, the GreatSchools ratings are the most commonly referred to sources of information about the relative quality of schools available to newcomers to our area or those contemplating relocation.
The GreatSchools rankings of Dane County schools appear to be entirely based on the results of standardized tests, undifferentiated by school demographics, income levels, or anything else. Not surprisingly, there is a substantial diversity deduction in these rankings. To understand why, we need to focus on how the ratings reflect the achievement levels and preponderance of white students at our schools.
Looking at the standardized test scores of white students provides an evenhanded if partial basis for comparison, unaffected by the schools’ differing demographics. In addition, it is the white families in the Madison area who are in the best position to affect the level of diversity in our schools, primarily through their choices of whether to enroll their students in Madison public schools or suburban or private alternatives. In light of this, it makes sense to tailor the analysis to the considerations that would be most relevant for them, in part so that we can have some basis to assess the validity of a “school quality” explanation for choosing a non-MMSD school.
The following tables shows three data points for the high schools in the Madison area: 2015-16 average composite scores for white students taking the ACT Statewide exam administered to all students in grade 11; percentage of the student body comprised of white students; and GreatSchools ranking on its 1-to-10 scale.
Paul Fanlund commentary. Mr. Hughes served three terms on the Madison School Board. His candidacies were unopposed in each election!
He ran for a fourth term earlier this year in a three way primary, but, withdrew prior to the spring general election.
This points up one of the frustrating aspects of trying to follow school issues in Madison: the recurring feeling that a quoted speaker – and it can be someone from the administration, or MTI, or the occasional school board member – believes that the audience for an assertion is composed entirely of idiots.
A few notes on Mr. Hughes’ words:
a. Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results (Mr. Hughes on the District’s reading results in 2016). I see no benefit to muddying the achievement waters until we see substantial improvements in what should be the District’s core mission: reading, writing, math, history and science.
b. Why did he and a majority of the Madison School Board support the expansion of our least diverse schools, rather than addressing the substantial diversity gap in those buildings?
“No institution in America has done more to perpetuate segregation than public schools”
No institution in America has done more to perpetuate segregation than public schools. Until 1954, segregated schools were legal in America and it was the standard practice in much of the South.
Less recognized, but equally pernicious, is the structural segregation all across America, where zoned school systems maintain racial and economic segregation. Some parents of color have been jailed for trying to enroll their children in schools where they don’t live.
Today, one of America’s most segregated school systems is in New York City, where Randi Weingarten once ran the teachers union. As a recent fight on the Upper West Side of Manhattan shows, even white progressive parents resist integration.
School systems across America and the colleges and universities that prepare teachers have also done a terrible job recruiting people of color into the teaching profession and an even worse job keeping the few they have. Nationally, the student body is over 50 percent people of color, but the teaching profession is just 17 percent people of color. Only about two teachers in 100 are Black males.
The roots of this institutional racism in the teaching field go back to the 1950s, when the Supreme Court ruled segregation illegal. Tens of thousands of Black teachers working in all-Black schools could not find work in integrated schools.
Madison has recently expanded its Least diverse schools.
PTA Gift for Someone Else’s Child? A Touchy Subject in California
Of all the inequalities between rich and poor public schools, one of the more glaring divides is PTA fund-raising, which in schools with well-heeled parents can generate hundreds of thousands of dollars a year or more.
Several years ago, the Santa Monica-Malibu school board came up with a solution: Pool most donations from across the district and distribute them equally to all the schools.
This has paid big benefits to the needier schools in this wealthy district, like the Edison Language Academy in Santa Monica, where half the children qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The campus is decorated with psychedelic paintings of civil rights icons such as Cesar Chavez and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the work of the school’s art teacher, Martha Ramirez Oropeza, whose salary is paid by the pooled contributions. That money has also funded the school’s choral program, teacher aides, a science lab and a telescope.
Related: Madison recently expanded its least diverse school.
Laurie Frost and Jeff Henriques, via a kind email:
Dear Superintendent Cheatham and Members of the Madison School Board:
We are writing as an update to our Public Appearance at the December 12 Board meeting. You may recall that at that meeting, we expressed serious concerns about how the District analyzes and shares student data. For many years, it has seemed to us that the District reports data more with an eye towards making itself look good than to genuinely meeting children’s educational needs. As social scientists with more than two decades of involvement with the Madison schools, we have long been frustrated by those priorities.
Our frustration was stirred up again last week when we read the newly released MMSD 2017 Mid- Year Review, so much so that we felt called upon to examine a specific section of the report more closely. What follows is expressly not a critique of the MMSD elementary school in question, its staff, or its students. What follows is solely a critique of what goes on in the Doyle Building.
MMSD 2017 Mid-Year Review and Van Hise Elementary School’s “Special Sauce”
Near the end of the MMSD 2017 Mid-Year Review, there is an excited update on the “extraordinary [student] growth” happening at Van Hise Elementary School:
School Update: Van Hise students and families build on strengths
In last year’s Annual Report, Principal Peg Keeler and Instructional Resource Teacher Sharel Nelson revealed Van Hise Elementary School’s “special sauce,” which helped students achieve extraordinary growth in the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessments. We reported that seventy percent of the school’s African American third through fifth grade students were proficient or advanced and half of third through fifth grade students receiving Special Education services were proficient.We recently caught up with Principal Keeler and Ms. Nelson to get an update on their students’ progress.
“In the past, we felt that one of our strengths as a school was to hold kids to very high expectations. That continues to be the case. We promote a growth mindset and kids put their best effort toward their goals,” said Principal Keeler. “Our older students are provided a process for reflecting on how they did last time on the MAP assessment. They reflect on areas they feel they need to continue to work on and the goals they set for themselves. They reflect on what parts were difficult and what they can improve upon.”
Nelson discussed the sense of community among Van Hise students and how the Van Hise equity vision encompasses families as partners. “We have a comprehensive family engagement plan. We are working together with our families – all on the same page. The students feel really supported. We’re communicating more efficiently and heading toward the same goals,” Nelson said.
Principal Keeler added, “It’s been a fantastic year, it continues to get stronger.”
We got curious about the numbers included in this update — in part because they are some of the few numbers to be found in the 2017 Mid-Year Review — and decided to take a closer look. All additional numbers used in the analysis that follows were taken from the MMSD website.
As you know, Van Hise is a K-through-5th grade elementary school on Madison’s near west side. In 2015-16, it enrolled 395 students, 5% (20) of whom were African American and 9% (36) of whom received special education services. (Note: These percentages are some of the lowest in the District.) For purposes of explication, let’s say half of each of those groups were in grades K-2 and half were in grades 3-5. That makes 10 African American and 18 special education students in grades three-through-five.The Mid-Year Review states that in 2015-16, an extraordinary 70% of Van Hise’s African American third-through-fifth grade students were proficient or advanced (in something — why not say what?). But 70% of 10 students is only 7 students. That’s not very many.
The Mid-Year Review also states that in 2015-16, an equally extraordinary 50% of Van Hise’s third- through-fifth grade special education students scored proficient (in something). But again, 50% of 18 students is only 9 students.
To complete the demographic picture, it is important to note that Van Hise is the MMSD elementary school with the lowest rate of poverty; in 2015-16, only 18% of its students were eligible for Free/Reduced Lunch. (Note: The Districtwide average is 50%).
We would argue that this additional information and analysis puts the Van Hise Elementary School update into its proper context … and makes the numbers reported far less surprising
and “extraordinary.”The additional information also makes the Van Hise “special sauce” – whatever it is they are doing in the school to achieve their “extraordinary” results with African American and special education students – far less relevant for the District’s other elementary schools, schools with significantly higher percentages of African American, low income, and special education students.
In terms of its demographic profile, Van Hise is arguably the most privileged elementary school in Madison. Perhaps, then, its “special sauce” is nothing more than the time-worn recipe of racial, socioeconomic, and other forms of political advantage.
But be that as it may, it is not our main point. Our main objective here has been to provide a clear- cut example of how the MMSD cherry picks its examples and “manages” its data presentation for public relations purposes.
We believe the overarching drive to make the District look good in its glossy reports is a misguided use of District resources and stands as an ongoing obstacle to genuine academic progress for our most disadvantaged and vulnerable students.
The Appendices attached to this report consist of a table and several graphs that expand upon the foregoing text. We hope you will take the time to study them. (When you look at Appendices E and F, you may find yourselves wondering, as we did, what’s going on at Lindbergh Elementary School, where the African American students are performing much better than one would expect, given their demographics? Similarly, you may wonder what’s going on at Randall Elementary School, where the African American students are performing much worse than one would expect?)
Please feel free to contact us with any questions you may have about this analysis. As School Board members, you cannot work effectively on behalf of our community’s children unless you understand the District’s data. We are happy to help you achieve that understanding.Respectfully,
Laurie Frost, Ph.D.
Jeff Henriques, Ph.D.APPENDICES
Appendix A: MMSD Elementary School Demographics (2015-16)Appendix B: Percentage of All Students Scoring Proficient/Advanced on Spring 2016 MAP Testing as a Function of the School’s Poverty Level
Appendix C: Percentage of All Students Scoring Proficient/Advanced on Spring 2016 MAP Testing as a Function of the School’s African American Student Enrollment
Appendix D: Percentage of All Students Scoring Proficient/Advanced on Spring 2016 MAP Testing as a Function of the School’s Special Education Student Enrollment
Appendix E: Percentage of African American Students Scoring Proficient/Advanced on Spring 2016 MAP Testing as a Function of the School’s Poverty Level
Appendix F: Percentage of African American Students Scoring Proficient/Advanced on Spring 2016 MAP Testing as a Function of the School’s African American Student Enrollment
Appendix G: Percentage of Special Education Students Scoring Proficient/Advanced on Spring 2016 MAP Testing as a Function of the School’s Poverty Level
Appendix H: Percentage of Special Education Students Scoring Proficient/Advanced on Spring 2016 MAP Testing as a Function of the School’s Special Education Enrollment
Note:
Appendices B through H utilize Spring 2016 MAP data for MMSD third-through-fifth grade students only. The scores for each school are simple averages of the percentages of students scoring proficient or advanced in reading or math across those three grades. We freely acknowledge that these calculations lack some precision; however, given the data we have access to, they are the best we could do.
Source: https://public.tableau.com/profile/bo.mccready#!/vizhome/MAPResults2015- 16/MAPResultsWithSchool
The Madison School District’s 2016 “Mid Year Review“.
Madison expanded its least diverse schools, including Van Hise, via a recent tax increase referendum.
Madison School District “Capacity Report”
Madison School District Administration (PDF):
1. Most MMSD schools are not over capacity. One elementary school and no middle or high schools had a Third Friday enrollment above their calculated capacity as currently configured.
2. Eighteen of the 32 elementary schools, three of the 12 middle schools, and one of the five high schools had a Third Friday enrollment above the ideal 90% of capacity.
A recent tax and spending increase referendum funded the expansion of our least diverse schools: Van His elementary and Hamilton Middle Schools.
Enrollment projections (PDF).
Madison Middle School Academic Performance and Variation…
Madison School District Administration (PDF):
“Inconsistency in grading and academic expectations between the middle schools may contribute to difficulty in transitioning to high school. The differences between the feeder middle schools are significant.”
– MMSD Coursework Review, 2014
A recent tax increase referendum funded the expansion of Madison’s least diverse middle school: Hamilton.
We’ve long spent more than most, now about $18,000 per student annually, despite long term, disastrous reading results.
Worth a deep drive: Madison measures of academic progress (MAP) results….
School District Economic Segregation
The chasms between our school districts are growing wider. Today, half of America’s children live in high-poverty school districts, where they are more likely to experience poor health, be exposed to violence, and attend schools in decaying buildings. This is not always due to a lack of resources in the area, however; often, these high-poverty districts border affluent areas where better-off students benefit from greater funding.
In 1974, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling in the case Milliken v. Bradley that actually strengthened the hand of segregationists: the justices held that integration plans may not be enforced across school district borders. This outcome cleared the way for district borders to be used as lawful tools of segregation.
Because property taxes play such an important role in school funding, well-off communities have an interest in school district borders that fence off their own neighborhoods from lower-wealth areas and needier students—and most states’ laws allow this kind of self-segregation.
ironically, Madison is currently expanding its least diverse school: Hamilton.
Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City
I grew up in Waterloo, Iowa, on the wrong side of the river that divided white from black, opportunity from struggle, and started my education in a low-income school that my mother says was distressingly chaotic. I don’t recall it being bad, but I do remember just one white child in my first-grade class, though there may have been more. That summer, my mom and dad enrolled my older sister and me in the school district’s voluntary desegregation program, which allowed some black kids to leave their neighborhood schools for whiter, more well off ones on the west side of town. This was 1982, nearly three decades after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that separate schools for black and white children were unconstitutional, and near the height of desegregation in this country. My parents chose one of the whitest, richest schools, thinking it would provide the best opportunities for us. Starting in second grade, I rode the bus an hour each morning across town to the “best” public school my town had to offer, Kingsley Elementary, where I was among the tiny number of working-class children and the even tinier number of black children. We did not walk to school or get dropped off by our parents on their way to work. We showed up in a yellow bus, visitors in someone else’s neighborhood, and were whisked back across the bridge each day as soon as the bell rang.
Madison is expanding its least diverse school….
Real Estate Activity Around Madison Middle Schools
“I want to live in the Hamilton/Van Hise attendance area.” I’ve heard that statement many times over the years. I wondered how that desire might be reflected in real estate activity.
Tap for a larger view. xlsx version.
Happily, it’s easy to keep up with the market using the Bunbury, First Weber, Restaino or Shorewest apps. For the middle schools, I’ll use the First Weber app iOS Android. Next week, I plan to take a look at elementary schools using the Restaino app. I also hope to dive into property tax variation.
Tap the search link on your iPhone, iPad or Android with the First Weber app installed. You can then interact with the data and properties.
Black Hawk Middle School Attendance Area Search. Stats.
Cherokee Middle School Attendance Area Search. Stats.
Hamilton Middle School Attendance Area Search. Stats.
Jefferson Middle School Attendance Area Search. Stats.
O’Keeffe Middle School Attendance Area Search. Stats.
Sennett Middle School Attendance Area Search. Stats.
Sherman Middle School Attendance Area Search. Stats.
Madison’s median household income is $53,933 ($31,659 per capita).
Finally, Madison, via a 2015 referendum, is expanding Hamilton, its least diverse middle school.
** As always, much of the property information beneath these statistics is entered by humans. There may be an occasional mistake… 🙂
Dave Baskerville (7 April 2016)
Mr. Ed Hughes, Member, MMSD Board 4/7/16
Ed, I finally got around to reading your “Eight Lessons Learned” article in the 3/9/16 edition of CT. Interesting/thanks. As you know from our previous discussions, we have similar thinking on some of the MMSD challenges, not on others. For the sake of further dialogue and to continue your tutorial style (‘learned’, ‘not learned’) without my trying to be either facetious or presumptious., let me comment as follows:
LESSON ONE. “It’s Complicated”. Certainly agree, but not an excuse for catching up with the rest of the First World. Did you learn that? Challenges which you rightly say are ’multiyear and multipronged’ become far more complicated when there is not a clearcut, long term direction for a company or system. It seems that every responsible board of private/public or NGO institutions has that responsibility to the CEO (read Superintendant).
You talk of improvement (kaizen), but “better” for the status quo alone is not enough when we have been falling behind for several generations. What you apparently did not learn is that with our global rankings and radical changes in technology and the future world of work, serious transformation of our system is needed?
LESSON TWO. “No Silver Bullet”. There can be 1~3 long term goals, but agree, 426 WI school districts need to figure out in their own ways how to get there. (And where things are measured, they are more often done. Dare you provide, as 300 HSs around the country and 14 in WI have done, the PISA tests for all of our MSN 15 years olds. $15,000 per HS, and indeed, does that ever prod Supt’s, and citizens to set their goals long term and higher! And execute!)
LESSON THREE. “Schools Are Systems”. Agree with Gawande that “a system-wide approach with new skills, data-based, and the ability to implement at scale” is needed. Look at Mayo Clinic where my wife and I spend too much of our time! As you say, a significant cultural shift is required. But what you did not learn is what he said later: “Transformation must be led at the top”. That means clearly articulating for the CEO, staff and public the long term destination point for rigorous achievement and the quantitative means to measure. You did not learn that it does not mean getting involved in the vast HOW of ‘defining the efforts of everyone’, innovation, implementation and details. A good CEO and her team will handle all of that.
LESSON FOUR. “Progress Requires Broad Buy-in”. True. Yet, are you not as a Board getting way into the nitty gritty issues, while at the same time not having a clear long term goal with a Scorecard that not only educators can comprehend but all of us citizens? You did not learn that much of strategy and most all of tactics is not a Board’s prerogative to dwell in/muck around in. But the responsibility to articulate a few goals and a scorecard to vigorously monitor for the broader public is a critical constituency responsibility for the MMSD and the broader buy-in.
LESSON FIVE. “Buy-in can’t be bought”. Agree, many business values are not relevant in education.. But to me , what was not learned from the Zukerberg:Newark disaster was rather that you cannot transform a poorly performing system by simply pouring many more resources and monies into it and enabling/enhancing the status quo. (Believe now in San Francisco, Zuckerberg has learned that as well.)
LESSON SIX. “No substitute for Leadership”. Certainly. That’s why I give you folks a rough time! But your reference to a balance of ‘the best system’ and’ teacher /staff commitment’ is valid. Very much mutually needed for global achievement. And you certainly should be discussing those with Jen, as she sees fit.. But it’s not primarily your Board responsibilities. Again to repeat, by mucking around too much in those Supt. Management, and tactical areas and completely missing the long term, measurable goals/ direction, you have not learned the most critical Board role as I outlined in Lesson One above. In addition where management meets political or union road blocks to substantial progress towards those goals, boards must often step in.
And I would add in most institutions, charisma does not transfer. Milt McPike was a great leader that I’m sure considerably improved the achievement levels at East HS. But is not the Purgolders back to mediocre? If the MMSD Board would have had a transformed system with very clear long term goals for East with a PISA Scorecard that involved the public, I’m betting Milt’s accomplishments would be being built on. If we lose Jen in the next few years, I fear likewise. (Or better, you really challenge her with some 20 year global targets, get out of the way, and maybe she’ll stay with us that long.)
LESSON SEVEN. “Improvement Takes Time”. Of course. But you have simply not learned a sense of urgency. Finland, South Korea, Japan, Shanghai-China, etc….are not going to just watch and wait for 20 years our MMSD kids to catch up. They are all forthrightly after further improvement. Those countries unlike you MMSD Board Members really believe/expect their kids can be trained with the best in the world. Very high expectations! You look at where investment in the world is made…where in the USA millions of jobs lack needed skilled people….why over 65% of the UW-MSN doctoral/ post doc students in almost all of the critical science, engineering and math courses are non-Americans. You have not learned, ED, that a long term direction AND urgency must go together!
LESSON EIGHT. “Incremental progress is good progress”. Agree, lurching about in goals/system approach is not good. A “sustainable school…and coherent approach guided by a system-wide vision…” is good. But as said above, you’ve not learned that your ‘incremental progress’ is not enough! The MMSD approach essentially does not recognize the global job market our kids will walk into. Does not recognize that 20 years hence 65% of the careers now do not exist. ( So only major achievement/competency in the basics {MATH, Science, Reading} will provide some assurance of good work/salaries/further trainability during their lifetime.) That with todays transformation of technology, STEM and blue collar jobs as well as universties will definitely require those kinds of skills for social mobility and self-sufficiency.
That’s it for now. See you at the Club, give me a call if you wish to discuss further,
And either way, best regards,Dave Baskerville (608-259-1233) www.stretchtargets.org.
Much more on Ed Hughes, here.
Unfortunately, Madison’s monolithic, $17K+ per student system has long resisted improvement. We, as a community have tolerated disastrous reading results for decades, rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter school and astonishingly, are paying to expand our least diverse schools (Hamilton middle and Van Hise elementary) via a 2015 referendum….
Further reading, from 2005! When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before.
2006! “THEY’RE ALL RICH, WHITE KIDS AND THEY’LL DO JUST FINE” — NOT!
Two of the most popular — and most insidious — myths about academically gifted kids is that “they’re all rich, white kids” and that, no matter what they experience in school, “they’ll do just fine.” Even in our own district, however, the hard data do not support those assertions.
When the District analyzed dropout data for the five-year period between 1995 and 1999, they identified four student profiles. Of interest for the present purpose is the group identified as high achieving. Here are the data from the MMSD Research and Evaluation Report from May, 2000:Group 1: High Achiever, Short Tenure, Behaved
This group comprises 27% of all dropouts during this five-year period.
Characteristics of this group:Finally, a few of these topics arose during a recent school board member/candidate (all three ran unopposed this spring) forum. MP3 audio.
Change is hard and our children are paying a price, as Mr. Baskerville notes.
Why the Atlanta superintendent wants to close successful schools
Atlanta school Superintendent Meria Carstarphen’s plan to turn around the struggling school system calls for closing schools that, by Atlanta standards, are succeeding and merge those students with now-failing schools.
The closures will allow her to replace hundreds of teachers, bring in new leaders and save money by closing half-empty schools. District officials says the goal is to improve education for thousands of Atlanta children.
In addition to closing three schools, Carstarphen has also proposed hiring charter school groups to run five low-performing schools.
But her plan doesn’t make sense to some parents.
“Why would you close a school that’s improving?” asked Antonia Mickens, whose daughter attends one of the schools up for closure.
Meanwhile Madison is expanding its least diverse middle school: Hamilton.
A rather remarkable chart from the Madison School District Admini$tration
Tap for a larger version (view the complete pdf slide presentation).
I am astonished that the Madison School District’s administration published this chart. Why not publish the change in redistributed state (and federal) tax dollars over time as a percentage of total spending, along with academic outcomes?
This chart displays Madison’s redistributed state tax dollar receipts from 1995 to 2011-2012 (more here and here):
Further, this (PDF) enrollment document is a surprise after the community (small percentage voting) passed a rather large facility expansion referendum in early 2015. These funds include the expansion of Madison’s least diverse school: Hamilton Middle School.
Somewhat ironically, Madison has unused capacity in a number of schools, yet a successful Spring, 2015 referendum will spend another $41M+ to expand certain schools, including some of the least diverse such as Hamilton Middle School.
Madison School District (PDF):
Key Findings
1. Most MMSD schools are not over capacity. Six of the 32 elementary schools and one of the 12 middle schools had Third Friday enrollment numbers above their calculated capacities.
2. Thirteen of the 32 elementary schools, two of the 12 middle schools, and one of the five high schools had Third Friday enrollment numbers above the ideal 90% of capacity.
Portland Schools’ Proposed Boundary Changes
Twenty out of 29 of the district’s K-8s have too few students in the middle grades, making it challenging to offer the same level of programming middle schools can, the district found. The district also has 11 schools that are over-crowded and nine that are under-enrolled.
The district developed performance indicators to show the impact of each proposal. Both would drop the number of over-crowded and under-enrolled schools to one. The percentage of students attending over-crowded schools would decline from 20 percent to 1 percent.
Madison is currently expanding one of its least diverse schools – Hamilton Middle School.
Rather interesting data from the District’s latest $413,703,424 2015-2016 budget document.
The budget document includes total spending and a good amount of detail.
Tap for a larger view.
Van Hise and Hamilton are Madison’s least diverse schools, yet the District plans to expand their facilities. The staffing differences are rather illuminating, particularly when one considers the effectiveness of increased adult counts…
A PDF version is also available. The District document includes a few per school spending data points. It would be useful to see total spending per school.
Commentary on Madison Schools’ Governance, Priorities & Spending
Voters just approved a $41 million spending referendum. Now the Madison Metro School District says it needs to cut $10.8 million to cover a deficit. This is after rewarding its unionized teachers and support staff with a 2.5% pay increase in the budget approved late last year.
Who is running this store? Hint: It ain’t the Koch Brothers.
The cuts will require eliminating 110 positions, mostly teachers. How does this help minority achievement?
The school board rushed to ratify union contracts four years ago while protesters were still camping overnight in the State Capitol. The district scheduled a special meeting on a Saturday morning with only the minimally required public notice. I attended that meeting, but the public — the three of us who found the meeting — were not allowed to speak. The contract required no teacher contribution to their generous health insurance coverage.
School districts that took advantage of Act 10 are not laying off teachers.
Madison is paying for this folly by collecting teachers union boss John Matthews’ dues for him. Some of that money finds its way back to finance the school board members’ election campaigns. Sweet deal for the union, wormy apples for the students and their families, self-tapping screws for the taxpayers.
I continue to find it fascinating that Madison plans to expand two of its least diverse schools: Hamilton and Van Hise, despite capacity elsewhere and the District’s long term disastrous reading results.
Commentary on Madison’s April 7, 2015 Maintenance Referendum; District spending data remains MIA
If approved, the referendum would raise property taxes about $62 on the average $237,678 Madison home for 10 years. The district is still paying off $30 million in referendum debt for the construction of Olson and Chavez elementary schools in the late 2000s, according to the district. The final payment, for the Olson project, is due in 2026.
The aggressive school district campaign to get the word out to voters about the proposal and a community group that has been knocking on doors advocating for its passage have largely been met with very little opposition.
“It’s really quiet,” said board vice president James Howard. “I guess we’ll just have to wait until April 7 to find out” whether it has community support.
Board member T.J. Mertz, who has worked closely with the pro-referendum nonprofit Community And Schools Together, said the board has received about a half-dozen emails questioning the increase in property taxes.
“But there is no organized opposition,” Mertz said. “Whether that’s a function of apathy, the political culture of Madison or the lack of a strong Republican Party (in the city), or whether this is a popular measure, it’s impossible to read in the absence of no organized opposition,” adding that there also has not been a conservative school board candidate in about six years.
The proposal comes at a time when the school district faces at least a $12 million gap in its $435 million operating budget for the 2015-16 school year. The maintenance work and $2 million in technology costs also included in the proposal would ease pressure on the district’s budget, Mertz said.
I emailed Michael Barry to confirm Ms. Beck’s $435,000,000 Madison Schools’ budget number, which is 8% or $32,000,000 higher than the previously discussed $402,000,000 2014-2015 budget. I’ve not heard from Mr. Barry.
That said, pity the poor citizen who wishes to determine total spending or changes over time using the District’s published information.
At a forum this week on the referendum projects, many in the crowd on the city’s near west side focused on property taxes and “what we’re doing to save money,” Silveira said Tuesday in a meeting with the Capital Times editorial board.
“People get confused. They think if we pass the referendum, we won’t have the gap on the operating side,” said Silveira, the current president of the school board who is retiring at the end of her term next month.
In fact, cuts in state funding will contribute to a shortfall that, if voters approve the referendum bond sale, would demand a property tax increase next year of up to nearly 5.2 percent to balance the budget, about 1 percent of which would be due to spending approved by the referendum.
Those projects to expand crowded schools, add accessibility and update mechanical systems, as listed in this article about referendum advocacy and detailed on a school district web page.
The State Journal editorial board endorses this reasonable request.
Madison’s per-pupil spending on schools is more than $1,000 above the state average of about $12,000. That’s mostly due to operational costs, including higher pay and benefits for employees.
Madison property taxes are high, too. That’s partly because the state sends less aid to Madison, based on a formula that penalizes communities with higher property value.
But when it comes to construction, the Madison School District has been conservative. The district with nearly 50 schools and 28,000 students has built only three new schools in the last 45 years.
Moreover, Madison’s debt per student is the lowest among all of the school districts in Dane County, and half the state average, according to district figures. At the same time, interest rates are incredibly low.
The proposed maintenance tax & spending referendum includes plans to expand two of the District’s least diverse schools: Van Hise & Hamilton.
Only 20 Percent Turnout Expected Statewide for Tuesday’s Election.
Facebook can be a weird place on Martin Luther King Day. Some of my friends post famous passages from MLK’s speeches. Others post statistics on racial inequality. Still others, mostly white parents, post photographs of their children assembled in auditoriums and schoolyards. These are always hopeful images, the next generation stirring toward interracial harmony. Except for one thing: nearly everyone in the photos is … white.
In her public school this year, my first-grade daughter learned that Daisy Bates helped integrate the Little Rock schools. She knows that Ella Baker, someone I’d never heard of till I went to college, was part of the civil rights movement. Meanwhile, her school has a combined black and Latino population of 15 percent, down from nearly 30 percent just seven years ago.
Other stories recommended for youIn school, white children are taught to be conscious of race and racism in a way I never was when I was as a kid in the 1970s. Yet they go to schools that are in some respects more segregated now than they were in the 1970s. In 1972, under Richard Nixon, 36 percent of black students in the South attended white-majority schools. By 2011, under Barack Obama, that number had plummeted to 23 percent. In every region of the country, a higher percentage of black students go to nearly all-minority schools than was the case in 1988. The same is true of Latino students in the South, the West and the Midwest.
Related: One size fits all vs. increased rigor and expanding the least diverse schools.
A scientist with West African heritage refuses to “check the box” on his NIH application.
It means his team’s “application is more likely to lose on ‘diversity’ grounds,” but he thinks it’s “immoral and narcissistic to use race to gain an advantage over other applicants. All that should matter is the merit of my application.”
The NIH’s insistence on DEI criteria is “a double wrong. Not only is the system rigged based on nonscientific—and possibly illegal—criteria; it encourages me to join in the rigging.”
Do I deserve to jump the line? If I say yes, I may play a leading role in ending the scourge of atherosclerosis—also known as hardening of the arteries. If I play fair, I may lose the opportunity to save people around the world from heart attacks and strokes. I’m angry at the National Institutes of Health for putting me in this position. I’m even angrier it has done so in the name of racial equity.
My quandary comes down to whether I should “check the box” on an upcoming NIH grant application attesting to my recent African heritage. Since at least 2015, the NIH has asserted its belief in the intrinsic superiority of racially diverse research teams, all but stating that such diversity influences funding decisions. My family’s origins qualify me under the federal definition of African-American. Yet I feel it’s immoral and narcissistic to use race to gain an advantage over other applicants. All that should matter is the merit of my application and the body of my work, which is generally accepted as foundational in atherosclerosis research.
The selection of Joe Gothard as Madison’s next public schools superintendent has met with widespread praise, including from me. But digging a little deeper into his record raises some concerns.
Let’s start with the good stuff. Gothard has led the St. Paul school district since 2017. That district is bigger and more diverse than ours and so he should be up to the task here. In fact, Gothard was named Minnesota Superintendent of the Year and then won National Superintendent of the Year just before he was selected for the Madison job in late February.
In addition, Gothard is well known in Madison and, apparently, well-respected by many. He grew up here, went to Madison public schools, got his education degrees from Edgewood College, started his teaching career with MMSD, and had administration experience in the Doyle Building. In fact, he was a runner-up for the top job when the board picked Jen Cheatham instead back in 2013.
Now for the concerns.
Let’s start with that Superintendent of the Year award. It’s given out by the School Superintendents Association. The criteria for selection include leadership, communication, professionalism and community involvement. Notice what’s missing? None of the criteria for that award have anything to do with the actual success of students. And, in fact, the criteria the Madison school board developed for selecting the new superintendent didn’t include that either.
That was lucky for Gothard because St. Paul students are not performing well. Numbers available as of August 2023 showed that only 26% of St. Paul third through eighth graders were proficient in math, only 34% in reading and only 24% in science. In addition, only 57% of St. Paul students were showing up in school at least 90% of the time, compared to almost 70% statewide in Minnesota. The St. Paul math scores are even worse than Madison’s, and those lag both the state and national averages.
Large Language Models and Diversity
Put aside the political issues, do Large Language Models too often give “the correct answer” when a more diverse sequence of answers might be more useful and more representative? Peter S. Park, Pilipp Schoenegger, and Chongyang Zhu have a new paper on-line devoted to this question. Note the work is done with GPT3.5.
Here is one simple example. If you ask (non-deterministic) GPT 100 times in a row if you should prefer $50 or a kiss from a movie star, 100 times it will say you should prefer the kiss, at least in the trial runs of the authors. Of course some of you might be thinking — which movie star!? Others might be wondering about Fed policy for the next quarter. Either way, it does not seem the answer should be so clear. (GPT4 by the way refuses to give me a straightforward recommendation.)
Interestingly, when you pose GPT3.5 some standard trolley problems, the answers you get may vary a fair amount, for instance on one run it was utilitarian 36% of the time.
I found this result especially interesting (pp.21-22):
It was 2018, two years before the tidal wave of diversity initiatives unleashed by George Floyd’s death, and Starbucks needed a public relations win. The coffee giant was under fire after an employee at one of its stores mistakenly called the police on two black men, prompting the company to announce a “multiphase effort” to become “more diverse, equitable, and inclusive.”
Part of that effort was a series of “civil rights assessments” conducted by Covington & Burling, one of the top white shoe law firms in Washington, D.C., under the leadership of former attorney general Eric Holder, a senior counsel at the firm.
Holder—who has charged as much as $2,295 an hour for such work—issued a final report in 2021 that outlined the steps Starbucks had taken to promote “equity.” They included tying executive pay to diversity targets, setting spending goals for “diverse suppliers,” and launching a mentorship program for “BIPOC” employees, which Holder pressed the company to expand. Each initiative, he wrote, demonstrated the coffee maker’s “commitment to civil rights and equal treatment.”
But one year later, Starbucks was fending off a civil rights lawsuit over precisely the programs Holder had blessed. The lawsuit, which is still ongoing and was filed last August by the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative nonprofit that is also a Starbucks shareholder, argued that the programs violate non-discrimination laws as well as the company’s fiduciary duties. Such claims may have come as a surprise to Starbucks executives: At no point did Holder’s report address the legality of the policies at issue.
When a law firm’s “civil rights” advice gets its client sued for race discrimination, one might expect the firm to dispense less of that advice, or at least to warn other clients about the risk of taking it. But Covington, which represents some of the largest companies in the world, did neither.
Prohibit DIE Statements for College Faculty
At least one out of five job candidates in academia are formally evaluated based on their commitment to “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI). Faculty departments, sometimes at the behest of university administrators, are formalizing an ideological litmus test for hiring. State and federal legislators can, and should, stop them.
The words “Diversity,” “Equity,” and “Inclusion” are all immensely slippery, as we show in a recent report. Taken individually, each carries the connotation of a cardinal social virtue. Diversity appears to mean appreciating and respecting differences; equity appears to mean giving individuals what they need to succeed; and inclusion appears to mean making people feel welcome. The inherent probity of these virtues should mean that everyone respects them, but “DEI” is enforced through mechanisms typically used to curb disgraceful vices: mandatory trainings, legal threats, and socially-sanctioned stigmatization.
Academic positions increasingly require candidates to show their commitment to DEI when they apply for jobs or when they seek promotion. At Boise State University, for instance, most academic jobs required a diversity statement last year. A Clinical Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering had to submit a “one page statement on diversity, equity and inclusion.” Candidates for an Assistant Professor of Cell, Molecular or Developmental Biology had to show “evidence of a commitment to create a diverse and inclusive working environment” as a job qualification and provide “a description of how the candidate’s research program and teaching philosophy would address BSU’s diversity and inclusion goals.”
““bloated” central office and “unconscionable” transportation failures”
The discussion came one day after the release of the state’s latest report on Boston schools, which tracked the district’s progress since 2020 in addressing a series of critical shortcomings. The review, part of an ongoing process of state oversight, found a few encouraging results, but mostly highlighted wide swaths of continuing stagnation, intensifying fears that the state’s next step will be to seize control of local schools, as it has done elsewhere in the state.
For now at least, the state’s approach appears to be gentler than some had feared. Board members — who would need to vote to approve a state receivership — appeared in no hurry to call the question. Several acknowledged the passionate opposition to receivership voiced by students, parents, teachers and elected officials who testified at the meeting, and some expressed doubt that a full state takeover could work in the face of such aversion.
James Morton, the vice chairman, said the goal should be a “negotiated plan to address six or seven critical core needs,” undertaken “with a collaborative spirit.” Board member Paymon Rouhanifard, a former superintendent in Camden, N.J., invoked the impact of “decades of institutional racism” in the current state of BPS, and called for a sensitive approach.
“I think you can pathologize a community, and [impact] young people,” he said. “To do it delicately is the task at hand.”
Josiehanna Colon, a student at New Mission High School who testified Tuesday, said she has felt the impact of state oversight. Too much of her education has been centered around standardized testing, she said; further intervention would likely bring more emphasis on tests and less diverse curriculum. “I’m angry that our voices may be ignored,” she said, “and that again and again we care about a test score instead of a child.”
Commentary on the future of education
Last week I sent a note to regular readers:
Perhaps it’s a sense that things are possible post-pandemic, but I’ve been asked for comments on the future of education three times since the beginning of the year. While I have some unscientific and undoubtedly biased thoughts I’m happy to share it occurs to me this group is exceptionally diverse.
So the request: Could you write a bit about what you’d like to see in education going forward? The subject is huge and readers represent at least seven countries so just pick a few and stay away from clear needs in some countries – like affordable and equitable education. Those are incredibly important, but perhaps some thoughts on curriculum, teaching, etc.. I’ll collect and post them with my comments in a week – say a cutoff on the 24th of April. Let me know if you want your name attached or not. And don’t worry about it if you don’t have time.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school District continues to resist open records requests
Fourteen districts eventually responded with at least some of the data. The county’s two largest and most racially and socioeconomically diverse, Madison and Sun Prairie, required the newspaper to file public records requests for the data. To date, they remain unfilled.
In Madison, students could be marked present simply by exchanging messages with “the homeroom teacher and any specials teacher they are scheduled to receive instruction from that day.” In Verona, “two-way communication” with a teacher of staff had to occur at some time during the 24-hour day when the class occurred for the student to be marked present.
By contrast, the Marshall School District expected students to show up for each online class just as they had to show up for each in-person class pre-pandemic. It saw its rate of chronic absenteeism rise from 7% to 12% from the first semester of the last school year to the first semester of this one.
Seven school districts in Wisconsin, including three in Dane County — Madison, Sun Prairie and Mount Horeb — dispensed with enforcing state attendance laws altogether. The law identifies actions districts have to take when students are regularly absent without valid excuses.
Madison, the county’s largest district, did not respond to multiple requests for comment on why it sought the waiver.
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 University as the Woke Mission Field: A Dissident Women’s Studies Ph.D. Speaks Out
I have a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies, but I’m not woke anymore. I write under a pseudonym because, if my colleagues were to find out about my criticisms of this field, I would be unable to find any employment in academia. That someone who critiques the axioms of a field of study feels compelled to write under an assumed name tells you everything you need to know about the authoritarianism underpinning this ideology. I no longer believe that the fundamental ideas of Women’s Studies, and of Critical Social Justice more generally, describe reality; they are at best partial explanations—hyperbolic ideology, not fact-based analysis. I have seen this ideology up close and seen how it consumes and even destroys people, while dehumanizing anyone who dissents.
I’m sad to say it, but I believe that Critical Social Justice ideology—if not beaten in the war of ideas—will destroy the liberal foundation of American society. By liberal I mean principles including, but not limited to, constitutional republican government, equality under the law, due process, a commitment to reason and science, individual liberty, and freedom—of speech, of the press, and of religion. Because Critical Social Justice ideology is now the dominant paradigm in American academia, it has flowed into all other major societal institutions, the media, and even corporations. Far from being counter-cultural, Critical Social Justice ideology is now the cultural mainstream. A diverse spectrum of liberals, libertarians, conservatives, and all others who, to put it bluntly, want the American constitution to continue to serve as the basis for our society have to team up to prevent this ideology from destroying our country.
I became “woke” around 2003, so I have nearly two decades of experience with Critical Social Justice ideology. As the oldest daughter in a working-class family with six kids, neither of my parents had a college degree, although my mom had taken some community college classes. My high school teachers emphasized the importance of going to college. While I wasn’t sure what opportunities a college education would bring, I decided that it would best to attend, given the urgency with which all the teachers and guidance counselors discussed college as a necessity. I was a good, not great, student, who scored highly very highly on the verbal component of standardized tests. I loved literature and writing, so I figured that I’d get a bachelor’s degree in English literature, then maybe find a job as an administrative assistant and write in my free time. For a seventeen year-old girl who wasn’t especially ambitious, it seemed like a decent plan. At least it was better, I thought, than continuing to work part-time as a waitress. And through a combination of scholarships and part-time work, I realized that I’d be able to complete a bachelor’s degree without incurring any debt.
Amid COVID-19 pandemic, Dane County school districts waive requirements for graduation
All 16 of the school districts completely or partially within Dane County have waived or loosened at least two academic standards to help seniors graduate at a time when schools have been shut down since mid-March due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Information from the districts and the state Department of Public Instruction also shows that the poorer and more diverse a district’s student body, the more likely the district’s leadership sought graduation requirement waivers from the state and lowered other standards.
The Wisconsin State Journal asked the districts to report whether they had:
• Changed grading standards after schools shut down;
• Reduced the number of credits needed to graduate;
• Sought waivers of the state’s civics exam, minimum instructional hours and educator effectiveness requirements;
• Made any other changes to help seniors graduate.
Every district had loosened requirements in at least two areas, and two districts — Middleton-Cross Plains and Sun Prairie — had loosened them in six, including waiving the requirement that students complete a certain number of community service hours to graduate.
The county’s largest district, Madison, reported reducing the number of credits needed to graduate from 22 to the state minimum of 15, moving to a pass/fail grading system and getting state waivers for the civics test and minimum number of instructional hours.
DPI had made clear at the beginning of school shutdowns that it would not seek to deny waivers of the civics, minimum instructional hours and educator effectiveness requirements. Some districts did not need waivers for the civics exam because it had already been administered by the time the schools were closed.
Linn Posey-Maddox, an associate professor of educational policy studies at UW-Madison, said the pandemic exacerbates existing racial inequities in education
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 the Madison School District 2020 Superintendent Search
The full report was not made available to the public Monday night, but was expected to be posted Tuesday afternoon.
Board members voted to accept a leadership profile that will be used to help develop interview questions and screen candidates with a 6 to 1 vote, with Nicki Vander Meulen voting against, having requested more time to read the full report before making that choice.
The profile includes qualities like seeking a visionary team-builder who has experience with diverse populations and an understanding of MMSD’s commitment to high levels of academic achievement for all students. Other parts of the profile included a background as an educator, student-centered and personal qualities like confidence, dedication, sincerity, honesty and organization.
Hill said the district needs to make itself stand out to the “small pool” of candidates who fit the profile and have experience in a district at least as large as Madison.
“Lots of districts are looking for the same people,” Hill said. “The competition is much higher at this particular point.”
Notes and links on previous taxpayer supported Madison School district Superintendent searches.
Madison’s Taxpayer Supported K-12 School Superintendent Cheatham’s 2019 Rotary Talk
2013: What will be different, this time? Incoming Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham’s Madison Rotary Talk.
December, 2018: “The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:
On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.
According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.
Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.
2013: “Plenty of Resource$”.
Madison has long spent far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts, now around $20,000 per student.
More, here.
A machine generated transcript of Superintendent Cheatham’s 2019 Madison Rotary Club talk:
Thank you, Jason on this spring equinox. Our speaker is superintendent of Madison schools Jennifer Cheatham who has been in the role since 2013. She’s a graduate of Harvard who started her career as an eighth grade English teacher. She’s titled Her speech leading for equity. And will share her personal leadership Journey as an educator sure implications and Reflections on leading a school district for race racial equity. Join me in welcoming welcoming superintendent Cheatham to the podium.
Hi everyone. It’s good to be back at Rotary. I’m a little more nervous than usual because I have current board members and future for members of the audience. I feel like I’m interviewing today. It really is nice to be back. There is a lot happening in our city right now. There’s a lot to talk about.
I would like to recognize a couple of people before we dive in I want to recognize Gloria Reyes our newest board member who is in the audience. Can we give her a round of applause? She’s a phenomenal board member and I’m very lucky to have her as one of my seven bosses and I want to recognize James Howard. Who is here. He is our most senior board member. He only has a couple more weeks.
Find the board and I might shed a tear before I leave the podium today. He’s been the board president for five years during his nine years on the board and I pretty much talk to this guy every day for the last six years. So I just want to extend my heartfelt appreciation for your leadership. James couldn’t give him a round of applause.
I also want to recognize Reggie Cheatham who’s in the audience. Who’s my husband my rock? I love you, babe. Can we give him a round of applause? All right. So, you know, it seems right to reflect on one’s leadership at a major Milestone on April first. April fools day. I will have my 6 year anniversary in the district, which is surpassing the typical tenure for a female. Urban superintendent is want to put that out there. Thank you. Thank you. This fall we launched a brand new strategic framework that is more ambitious than ever that centers black student Excellence very proud of that. And on April 2nd as we all know.
We have a School Board Race that I believe will demonstrate the extent to which our community wants to follow through on that promise. And I want to personally thank everyone who’s running for school board. That’s a big deal. It matters to me a lot. Let’s give the candidates another round of applause. So rather than my typical update on progress that I know you guys really enjoy when I come here. I am going to do something a little different. I want to share with you a story of me. I want to share with you a story of us and the story of what I think it means for us right now. This will be my leadership story, which I do think demonstrates. How I’m becoming a stronger leader for Equity. It’s a story of confidence-building risk-taking personal identity development and teamwork. So this is me in kindergarten. I went to gray school in Chicago. I was an early reader reciting nursery rhymes for relatives begging to go to school as soon as I could talk. When asked by my neighbor’s I used to tell everyone how much I loved school and I was always surprised by the adults reaction because they were surprised by my response.
By fifth grade. I had already decided on a potential career path. I would sign all of my school papers. Dr. Jenny Perry. That’s my maiden name because I thought I wanted to be a doctor Someday My Teacher nicknamed me. Dr. J that Year little did I know I would become a doctor the first in my large extended family, but not the medical kind. Make sure I got this. These are my parents. That’s Wanda and skip my mom grew up in a humble Farm family and Whitewater, Wisconsin. She married my dad who grew up on the west side of Chicago with much without much financial means or family support but he was he was Scrappy and he was the first in our large extended family to go to college.
From their early days in Chicago and they lived in an apartment above a pet store. I live there too to their later days in the suburbs on a one-acre lot all that grass. I watched my parents grow up together. I watched them raise our family together. I watch them transform our lives together. It has been amazing for me to Bear witness to the positive impact these two people have had not just on my immediate family, but all of my cousins all of their children these this is the couple that opened the door to possibilities that hadn’t previously existed for any of us.
But what strikes me most about their parenting was their curiosity and me and my siblings the four of us, each of us were unique they expressed interest in each of our interests. They were curious about what we were curious about and they recognized our real talents and not the ones that they wished we had. Looking back for everything that they did for us. That was the greatest gift. My parents gave me their curiosity in me. This is an important lesson as a parent. I think their curiosity in me was this incredible confidence Builder from the from a young age?
I don’t actually remember them ever reading to me. I don’t remember them pushing me hard to excel which I think some people May Be Imagined happened to my family for me. It was just a blessing to be seen and that’s important. Because confidence is needed to take risks. And I’ve learned that. To teach requires risk-taking.
Well, I thought I’d be a doctor for their a while. They’re in elementary school. I changed my mind when I got to high school decided. I wanted to be a teacher. In graduate school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where I trained to be a teacher I came to view teaching as a form of activism. This is me as a first-year teacher. I worshipped Paulo Freire e right this idea that teaching should be designed to liberate and never to oppress. I studied vygotsky’s zone of proximal development. I think Ali Mahdi. All right. We got it as a way to stretch my students thinking to their learning Edge. I remember forever being changed by reading the book Savage inequalities by.
Jonathan kozol and forever inspired by Gloria ladson-billings conception of culturally relevant teaching that was. Well over 20 years ago. I loved what I was learning about action research as a way to capture my own learning as an educator. I was absolutely convinced. This is what I wanted to do with my life. And then I started my student teaching at Wayne High School outside of Detroit where I was given three classes to teach for a full semester or two of those classes were called teen fact and fiction and it was an English class that was. For under credited Juniors and seniors essentially was the class to just get kids graduated that make sense.
I was given a poorly designed curriculum a set of Cortex that were dumbed-down inspiring. I remember one of the books was the boy who drank too much. It was turned into like some side kind of daytime movie that starred Scott Baio and was filmed here Kali. That’s right. I learned that. Yeah, it is interesting how these courses are given to the least experienced teachers, right? I was a student teacher.
Anyway, I decided that I would rework the entire curriculum with the students themselves. We took the first weeks to get to know one another and we laid out all the themes that we wanted to explore together things. That would be relevant to teenagers the group wanted to talk about race. They wanted to talk about gender. They wanted to talk about sexuality substance abuse depression. I think they were surprised when I agreed with them. I searched for high-quality literature as the focal point of our exploration. We read black literature even feminist literature. We read lgbtq literature that was before it was called that. Fine introduce a reading workshop to reignite students interest in reading right there identity as readers and I searched continually for things that I thought individual students would like based on my individual conferring with them all I did back in those days.
I had no life.
I don’t have much of what now, but outside all I did was planned my teaching teach and reflect on its Effectiveness all I did my mentor teacher. I almost let her know. I’m not going to say it. I loved her because she entrusted me with teaching this class and she sat in the lounge while all this was happening. I was crossing some boundaries you guys it was a good thing. She was in the lounge and yet students. Cooper regularly skipping school started coming back. They were sneaking into school to go to this class and I wouldn’t call it. My cousin was our class. There was a buzz about this class the kids and I were in some kind of solidarity with one another we felt like we were in cahoots, which is unfortunate, right?
It shouldn’t be like you’re having to sneak in really good high-quality instruction.
But we’ve become this community of Learners. They were learning so much. They were constructing knowledge. They were challenging each other. They were challenging me. I was learning a ton and then at the end of the semester I had a student tell me Miss Perry. I really want to recommend this class to a friend, but I know it’ll never be the same. leaving. That school was hard but fresh out of my experience with student teaching. I was just desperate to start my career.
Remember I’m from Chicago jobs were scarce at that time in Chicago and I had heard that there was a teacher shortage in California. I never planned on teaching at a junior high. No one ever. Does this just to be clear? Yeah. I never planned on leaving. Home. But I interviewed for this job over the phone as an 8th grade language arts teacher in Newark, California in the East Bay of San Francisco.
I drove 2,000 miles across the country without knowing so I arrived in California the day before school started that year my first day seeing my classroom like walking in the door was the first day of school. The kids came about 30 minutes later. It was the first major professional risk. I’ve ever taken but I was finally a teacher and my identity formed around him after a decade of teaching and teacher leadership in California working in partnership with amazing teachers amazing principles like the women in this picture. I thought I had some serious instructional jobs as what a lot of perspective on what it takes to support teachers and doing their best work passionate about our profession. I set out to take yet another professional risk and explore what it would take to lead instructional Improvement on a large scale.
Maybe even become a superintendent someday the kind that I had dreamed about someone who actually knew something about teaching. But if someone told me just recently sometimes you need to be stripped of your ego your confidence to become even stronger. I went back to graduate school this time as a member of the 16th cohort of the urban superintendents program at Harvard, which to me I got to tell you was some kind of Miracle there were Great Courses. Micro economics politics lot instruction and it was incredible. I loved it. I excelled in those courses, but I was also assigned a mentor to test and develop my thinking about leadership.
I would come to learn that that relationship with my mentor one that has lasted now well over a decade. Was more powerful than any book. I had ever read or any course I had ever taken. I was assigned to the renowned Carl cone. All right Collegiate. He’s wowing up here. Someone knows that I’m talking about. I was assigned to the renowned Carl cone Carl an African-American leader had left Seminary school to become a high school counselor in Compton at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. He eventually became the superintendent in Long Beach California leading the district transformation into one of the highest performing urban districts in the country. And that is still true today. He was not an instructional leader. And he intimidated the hell out of me.
I just saw Carl this past summer and he recalled a familiar story. We’re really close till at the very start of our mentoring relationship. Carl said to me he’s got this low gravelly voice and very slow way of talking Jen white female instructional leaders. Like you are a dime a dozen. That’s what he told me a dime a dozen what makes you think you could ever gain the street credibility to lead in an urban District at this is like a weeks into my mentoring relationship with him. I think I cried when I got home did my rent. I was crushed. I remember the first wave of feelings. I felt misunderstood. I was actually kind of pissed at first right? I felt misunderstood undervalued. I felt stereotypes. I’ve felt sick to my stomach and unsettled. I felt like I was on a rocking boat. Now that feeling by the ground was not solid underneath my feet and it was because I felt that my identity as an educator does felt fundamentally threatened and that moment.
After I got over the good cry I realized the Carl was not criticizing me in that moment. He was trying to open a door to a new conversation about who I was about who I could become and what it would actually take for me to lead and it was the first time I’m a bit embarrassed to say this the first time I had to name out loud and I have been an educator for over a decade at that point the first time I did name out loud and begin to actually understand my privilege as a white woman. I would have to acknowledge that my parents success and economic Mobility which I was very proud of did not happen just because of their hard work. I would have to come to understand that my ability to pick up and pack my stuff and move across the country for my first job was not simply an act of my own bravery. I would have to see that my singular focus on instruction and instructional Improvement may have been a convenient way to avoid looking inward at my own bias or outward at the institution that was reproducing the outcomes that I said that I wanted to change all along.
I had been a beneficiary. My white privilege and Carl he was pushing me to try to figure out how to use it and uncompromising Alliance of people who didn’t have it which would mean taking real risks, right? Not the fake risks that I thought. I was taking real risks right to start risking failure my own personal failure. By the way, I hope that that song that we sing in the beginning wasn’t about me the ring of fire. So I took that a little personally I’m letting it go. Okay. Carl had I just I don’t doubt it Carl had a ton of respect for what I could do as an instructional leader.
He just knew that dramatically changing outcomes for students would require a totally new order of things and that’s when I started to begin a New Journey right to create a richer identity not just as a teacher not just as a champion for the profession, which I am. But as a faithful Ally to the children and families, we serve and someone dedicated to creating empowering spaces for teachers and students so they can change the world. I’ve learned other things too.
I’ve learned the importance of assembling talented teams. I’ve learned the importance of assembling talented and diverse teams. This is not about heroic leadership. It is about empowering capable people who have different points of view to work together towards a common goal. I’ve learned about quiet determinations and Steely resolve. I’ve learned about how to feel my way through complexity. I’ve learned about the trust and respect necessary for people to excel especially those who work most closely with children. I’ve learned about leading with more humanity and vulnerability. And most recently I’ve been learning about what it actually takes to Center the voices and experiences of the people who are most affected by the challenges.
And problems we face what it looks like to authorize the people the many people who are already out there doing the work and to pave the way for more work to be done. Now last year of this is animated this lag kind of drives me crazy you guys this is happened to me before there we go last year. I listened personally to over a thousand people in this community. In over 50 hours of meetings prioritizing listening to the voices of students staff and families of color. I wanted to know how we could build on the progress that we’ve made but more importantly what it would actually take to transform our schools into the places that we want them to be right the truly represent what we want for our community. And we use those discussions to inform the development of our new strategic framework, which I will say is on the back table if you want one on your way out. Well what I want you to know is what I heard.
When I talked to educators of color, which I did in depth over many hours, they told me that we needed to commit. Once and for all to being an anti-racist organization and learning what that actually means right to enact it from the Board Room all the way to the classroom. They told me that policy is budget Investments are long times wait ways of working. They all had to be tested deconstructed rebuilt. They also said that we had to make deep and long term investments in our staff as anti-racist Educators, right? If you sign up for this profession, that’s what you’re signing up for and then that is not just Technical Training that is about doing deep inside out work on your personal identity right for the lifetime that you’re in this career.
Students of color told me that they needed stronger more trusting relationships with staff. Right? And that’s because you can’t be in what is called the struggle of learning, right? If you’re not interesting relationship with the teachers in the the friends and colleagues that are in your learning community where you can’t actually struggle through learning without trust. They told me that they believed in their white staffs like their white teachers ability to do so they do they believe that and they need more teachers of color, right? They need more representation. They told me they needed more cultural. Well, not more they needed cultural representation and historically accurate curriculum for just fed up with it with it not being so. But not just because they wanted but it’s because they want to challenge the world around them, right? They want to understand that what they want to analyze that they want to challenge us right there desk. They’re seeking deep and Rich learning opportunities.
They want full participation in advanced coursework with their peers. Right, which is fully integrated into those courses and separate spaces to talk about racism and the micro aggressions that they’re experiencing everyday in this community. They need both. Parents of color told me that they wanted to share power with schools. Like we’re doing at our community schools. They wanted rich and deep learning experiences for their children as well. Not just more programs to support struggling students. This is important, right?
They see the path right to eliminating the achievement Gap is about rich and deep learning experiences. Not more intervention. I hope that makes sense. But that’s the only way you actually get there and they want aggressive execution of strategies and programs that ensure meaningful exploration of College and Career options for every child. The message was clear to me after all those discussions that the next level of transformation in our district would require a New Order of Things. Which is why? We’ve made such a strong commitment Central commitment to lifting up black excellence in our district. This is not a programs not an initiative, right? This is a good-sized central commitment. So we’ll learn together right about how to enact will learn with and alongside the black community that we serve because we.
And the Brilliance the creativity the capability and Bright Futures futures of black students in Madison and everywhere are measures of success is a school system have to be aimed at more than narrowing gaps.
I’m tired of that language but focused on cultivating the full potential of every child creating space for healthy identity development and new and more importantly true narratives about black youth. And this community that doesn’t mean that we diminish our commitment to other students right Latino students Latino Community ICU, right? I see you too, right? I see everyone. But that we recognize that all of our fates are linked. And of course this school year maybe that’s where the ring of fire song came from has been.
With all of its promise. It’s been trying right? That is an understatement. Yeah, it’s been trying it’s been testing our core values in our commitment. In a way that I predicted to some extent but didn’t understand until I’ve been in it. So I want to be real clear. I am extraordinarily proud of the progress. We’ve made we wouldn’t even be able to have this discussion right now without it.
But now we’re being asked by even more people to do even more and better right and we will. But we will only do so if as a community not just the school district, we are centering the lives of people of in color in a way that we’ve never done so before right. I’m going to tell you what I’ve been telling my staff all year. I have sort of a mantra that I just keep telling them. So I’m going to share it with you. I’ll try to not cry as I say it. I see the gifts and talents you bring to this work.
Let’s take more risks on behalf of the students and families we serve. Sorry, it’s been a rough few weeks. Let’s embrace our common identities as both proud Educators and consequential allies. We’ll work together as a team. remain faithful. You are enough you have to be. I know it is my honor and privilege to continue to serve alongside you especially when the boat is rocking.
Thanks everybody. Thank you superintendent Cheatham. Please take advantage to speak with our school board candidates that are with us today on your way out. We are adjourned.
Amanda Ripley Rekha Tenjarla Angela Y. He:
In general, the most politically intolerant Americans, according to the analysis, tend to be whiter, more highly educated, older, more urban, and more partisan themselves. This finding aligns in some ways with previous research by the University of Pennsylvania professor Diana Mutz, who has found that white, highly educated people are relatively isolated from political diversity. They don’t routinely talk with people who disagree with them; this isolation makes it easier for them to caricature their ideological opponents. (In fact, people who went to graduate school have the least amount of political disagreement in their lives, as Mutz describes in her book Hearing the Other Side.) By contrast, many nonwhite Americans routinely encounter political disagreement. They have more diverse social networks, politically speaking, and therefore tend to have more complicated views of the other side, whatever side that may be.
We see this dynamic in the heat map. In some parts of the country, including swaths of North Carolina and upstate New York, people still seem to give their fellow Americans the benefit of the doubt, even when they disagree. In other places, including much of Massachusetts and Florida, people appear to have far less tolerance for political difference. They may be quicker to assume the worst about their political counterparts, on average. (For an in-depth portrait of one of the more politically tolerant counties in America, see our accompanying story on Watertown, New York.)
To do this assessment, PredictWise first partnered with Pollfish to run a nationwide poll of 2,000 adults to capture people’s feelings about the other party. The survey asked how people would feel if a close family member married a Republican or a Democrat; how well they think the terms selfish, compassionate, or patriotic describe Democrats versus Republicans; and other questions designed to capture sentiments about political differences.
Based on the survey results, Tobias Konitzer, the co-founder of PredictWise, investigated which demographic characteristics seemed to correlate with partisan prejudice. He found, for example, that age, race, urbanicity, partisan loyalty, and education did coincide with more prejudice (but gender did not). In this way, he created a kind of profile of contemporary partisan prejudice.
“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
Endorsements in this month’s School Board primary from the influential Madison teachers union include one for a candidate who sends her two children to the kind of charter school strongly opposed by the union.
Madison Teachers Inc. this week endorsed Ali Muldrow over David Blaska, Laila Borokhim and Albert Bryan for Seat 4; Cris Carusi over Kaleem Caire for Seat 3; and incumbent TJ Mertz and Ananda Mirilli over Amos Roe for Seat 5.
Muldrow was among a group of parents and other advocates for Isthmus Montessori Academy when it sought to become a district-authorized charter school in 2017, after first opening as a private school in 2012.
The School Board voted down that plan 4-3, and Isthmus Montessori Academy pursued and won a charter through the University of Wisconsin System Office of Educational Opportunity. It converted to a tuition-free, state-supported independent charter in 2018. Muldrow’s children continue to attend the school.
MTI executive director Doug Keillor said the decision to endorse Muldrow “was based on numerous factors important to Madison educators and was not dependent exclusively on the school that her children attend.”
Former Madison School Board member Ed Hughes:
“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….”
Madison School Board candidate Kaleem Caire:
If we don’t reach our benchmarks in five years, they can shut us down”. There is no public school in Madison that has closed because only 7 to 9% of black children have been reading at grade level for the last 20 to 30 years”.
Much more on the 2019 Madison school board election, here (primary February 19, general April 2)
Laurie Frost and Jeff Henriques on Madison’s disastrous reading results:
Children who are not proficient readers by fourth grade are four times more likely to drop out of school. Additionally, two-thirds of them will end up in prison or on welfare.
Though these dismal trajectories are well known, Madison School District’s reading scores for minority students remain unconscionably low and flat. According to the most recent data from 2017-18, fewer than 9 percent of black and fewer than 20 percent of Hispanic fourth graders were reading proficiently. Year after year, we fail these students in the most basic of our responsibilities to them: teaching them how to read.
Much is known about the process of learning to read, but a huge gap is between that knowledge and what is practiced in our schools. The Madison School District needs a science-based literacy curriculum overseen by licensed reading professionals who understand the cognitive processes that underlie learning how to read.
Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.
Routing around Madison’s non-diverse K-12 legacy governance model:
In March 2016, Cheatham said that it was her intent to make OEO “obsolete — that our schools will be serving students so well that there isn’t a need.”
Since then, the district has tried to keep tabs on any new charter proposals for Madison, going so far as to send former School Board member Ed Hughes to a September meeting of the Goodman Community Center board of directors to express the district’s opposition to another proposed charter school, Arbor Community School, which was looking to partner with the Goodman center.
Hughes gave the board a letter from Cheatham to UW System President Ray Cross that expressed the district’s dismay at allegedly being kept out of the loop on Arbor’s plans, pointed to alleged deficiencies in Arbor’s charter proposal, and asked that Arbor either be rejected or at least kept out of Madison.
Hughes also told the board that as a Goodman donor, he did not think other donors would look kindly on a Goodman partnership with Arbor.
Becky Steinhoff, Goodman executive director, later told the Wisconsin State Journal that Goodman was “experiencing a period of enormous change,” including the recent opening of a new building, and chose not to work with Arbor.
“I understand the climate and the polarizing topic of charters” in Madison, McCabe said, but he wasn’t concerned the district would attempt to thwart Milestone and he said it would “be a dream come true” if Milestone were one day folded into the district.
He said Community—Learning—Design has an application due to the state Feb. 22 for a federal planning grant.
2019 Madison school board election notes and links:
Seat 3
Kaleem Caire, 7856 Wood Reed Drive, Madison
Cristiana Carusi, 5709 Bittersweet Place
Skylar Croy, 502 N. Frances St., Madison
Seat 4
David Blaska, 5213 Loruth Terrace, Madison
Laila Borokhim, 2214 Monroe St., Madison
Albert Bryan, 4302 Hillcrest Drive, Madison
Ali Muldrow, 1966 East Main St., Madison
Seat 5
TJ Mertz, 1210 Gilson St., Madison
Ananda Mirilli, 1027 S. Sunnyvale Lane Unit A, Madison
Amos Roe, 5705 Crabapple Lane, Madison
A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).
Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.
The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.
On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.
According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.
Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.
2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”
2009: An emphasis on adult employment.
2013: What will be different, this time?
Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:
Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”
“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015
2013: What will be different, this time?
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.
Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.
The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.
Sarah Manski and Ed Hughes “withdrew” from their respective races in recent elections. The timing, in both cases was unfortunate for voters, and other candidates.
Much more on the election (February 19 Primary and April 2 general):
