Catharine B. Hill:

The recession continues to create challenges for higher education in the US. Appropriate responses depend on expectations for the economy in the future, and whether the shocks we have experienced are short- or longer-term trends. Moody’s US Higher Education Outlook Negative in 2013 report does little to address these issues.
The optimal response to a cyclical change is to not allow significant changes to the structure of the colleges and universities. But if a change is permanent, adjustments are warranted. Of course, it is difficult to know whether shocks are permanent or temporary – there is a tendency to assume positive shocks are permanent and negative ones temporary, leading to inappropriate policy responses when wrong. This explains some of the problems facing many colleges and universities.
One of the most important developments in the US economy is the growth of real incomes. In the past decade, real incomes have suffered, putting downward pressure on tuition increases at many institutions. If real income growth picks up, so will the ability of some institutions to increase tuition.

Joseph Stiglitz:

President Obama’s second Inaugural Address used soaring language to reaffirm America’s commitment to the dream of equality of opportunity: “We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.”
The gap between aspiration and reality could hardly be wider. Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity. This is especially tragic: While Americans may differ on the desirability of equality of outcomes, there is near-universal consensus that inequality of opportunity is indefensible. The Pew Research Center has found that some 90 percent of Americans believe that the government should do everything it can to ensure equality of opportunity.
Perhaps a hundred years ago, America might have rightly claimed to have been the land of opportunity, or at least a land where there was more opportunity than elsewhere. But not for at least a quarter of a century. Horatio Alger-style rags-to-riches stories were not a deliberate hoax, but given how they’ve lulled us into a sense of complacency, they might as well have been.

Motoko Rich:

Of all the changes sweeping through the American public education system, one of the most significant is simply demographic: the growing population of Hispanic students.
A new analysis released Thursday of nationwide test results in the five most populous states — California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas — shows that depending on where they live, Hispanic students’ academic performance varies widely.
According to the report, which examines data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often cited as the most reliable standard in academic testing, Hispanic students accounted for more than half of all eighth graders in California in 2011, the highest proportion in the country. But only 14 percent of those students were proficient on eighth-grade reading tests administered by the United States Department of Education.

I applaud the Wisconsin State Journal’s efforts to dig deeper into the Madison Superintendent search process. A kind reader pointed out to me how “shocking” it is that Barbara Thompson was NOT one of the two finalists.
The Madison School Board named these two finalists:

Jennifer Cheatham – apparently selected.
Walter Milton, Jr. – withdrew under a cloud of controversy.
from a larger group that included:

• Joe Gothard, Madison’s assistant superintendent for secondary education.
• Barbara Thompson, a former Madison principal and New Glarus superintendent who is currently superintendent in Montgomery, Ala.
• Tony Apostle, a retired superintendent from the Puyallup School District near Tacoma, Wash.
• Curtis Cain, administrator of the Shawnee Mission School District near Kansas City, Mo.
• Sandra Smyser, superintendent of Eagle County Schools in Eagle, Colo.

Thank you MMSD BOE ,”unanimously opposed to the Governor’s proposed expansion of Private School Voucher Programs.” Public=public.

— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) February 24, 2013

Madison School Board.

Chris Rickert:

There’s also the obvious point: If seniority and degree attainment make for better teachers, why are seniority protections and automatic raises for degree attainment necessary in a collective bargaining agreement or an employee handbook?
One would think good teachers should have secure employment, dibs on choice positions and regular raises by virtue of being, well, good teachers.
I’m not drawing attention to the ridiculousness of seniority and degree-attainment perks because I think Walker’s decision to effectively end public-sector collective bargaining was a good one.
But support for these common contract provisions is one way to measure school board candidates.
There’s a difference, after all, between being pro-union and union-owned.

Focus needed on long-term educational goals by Dave Baskerville:

There is now much excitement around Madison and the state with the selection of a new Madison School District superintendent, the upcoming election of new School Board members, the expected re-election of State Superintendent Tony Evers, the rollout of new Common Core state standards, and now a vigorous debate, thanks to our governor, over the expansion of school vouchers.
The only problem is that for those of us who pay attention to classroom results and want to see our students really move out of second-class global standings, there is no mention of long-term “stretch goals” that could really start getting all of our kids — black and white, poor and middle class — reading like the Canadians, counting like the Singaporeans or Finns, and doing science like the Japanese — in other words, to close the gaps that count long-term.
Let’s focus on two stretch goals: Wisconsin’s per capita income will be 10 percent above Minnesota’s by 2030, and our eighth grade math, science and reading scores will be in the top 10 globally by 2030.
This would take not only vision, but some serious experimentation and radical changes for all of us. Can we do it? Of course, but not with just “feel good” improvement and endless debate over means to that end, and without clear global benchmarks, score cards, and political will.

www.wisconsin2.org
The New Madison Superintendent Needs to “Make Things Happen”, a Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

Barely half of the district’s black students are graduating from high school in four years. That’s a startling statistic. Yet it hasn’t produced a dramatic change in strategy.
Ms. Cheatham, it’s your job to make things happen.
Your top priority must be to boost the performance of struggling students, which requires innovation, not just money. At the same time, Madison needs to keep its many higher-achieving students engaged and thriving. The district has lost too many families to the suburbs, despite a talented staff, diverse offerings and significant resources.
Being Madison’s superintendent of schools will require more than smarts. You’ll need backbone to challenge the status quo. You’ll need political savvy to build support for action.
Your experience leading reform efforts in urban school districts is welcome. And as chief of instruction for Chicago Public Schools, you showed a willingness to put the interests of students ahead of the grown-ups, including a powerful teachers union.
We appreciate your support for giving parents more options, including public charter schools and magnets. You seem to understand well the value of strong teacher and student assessments, using data to track progress, as well as staff development.
The traditional classroom model of a teacher lecturing in front of students is changing, and technology can help provide more individualized attention and instruction. The long summer break — and slide in learning — needs to go.

Madison School Board Election Intrigue (Public!)

he top vote-getter in Tuesday’s Madison School Board primary said Friday she ran for the seat knowing she might not be able to serve out her term because her husband was applying for graduate school in other states.
Sarah Manski, who dropped out of the race Thursday, said she mentioned those concerns to School Board member Marj Passman, who Manski said encouraged her to run. Passman told her it wouldn’t be a problem if she had to resign her seat because the board would “appoint somebody good,” Manski said.
Passman vigorously denied encouraging Manski to run or ever knowing about her husband’s graduate school applications. After learning about Manski’s statement from the State Journal, Passman sent an email to other School Board members saying “I had no such conversation with her.”
“It’s sad to believe that this kind of a person came close to being elected to one of the most important offices in our city,” Passman wrote in the email, which she also forwarded to the State Journal.
Manski said in response “it’s possible (Passman) didn’t remember or it’s possible it’s politically inconvenient for her to remember.”

And so it continues, part 1.

Justin McCloskey:

References to procrastination have been dated back to as long as 3,000 years ago. However, research on procrastination is ironically enormously behind the curve in active research on its antecedents and effects. Academic procrastination is a unique outlet of procrastinatory tendencies and is the object of much less scientific research. Academic procrastination occurs when students needlessly delay completing projects, activities or assignments and has been linked to lower academic grades, poorer well-being, and more stress. Studies have found procrastination to be a vital predictor of success in college and the development of a scale upon which to measure it could be quite profitable to colleges and universities. Numerous scales such as the Lay (1986) General Procrastination Scale, the Solomon and Rothblum (1984) Procrastination Assessment Scale for Students, and the Choi and Moran (2009) scale have been used to measure procrastination. However, the Tuckman (1991) Procrastination Scale is the most widely-used scale to identify academic procrastinators.The current study examined these scales as compared to a new scale, the Academic Procrastination Scale (APS). The main goal of the current study was the development of a superior academic procrastination scale. The 25-item APS was originally developed in a pilot study using 86 undergraduate college students and was based on six different characteristics of procrastinators: Psychological belief about abilities, distractions of attention, social factors, time management skills, personal initiative, and laziness. The current study examined the relationship between the APS and the personality trait of conscientiousness and the predictive ability of the APS in regards to academic success as compared to the other procrastination scales.In the current study, a total of 681 participants responded to a survey. Participants were, on average, 21 years of age and came from diverse academic majors and demographic backgrounds. The APS exhibited greater reliability and internal consistency, á = .94, as compared to the four other scales. The APS also exhibited ample convergent validity and was significantly correlated with the other scales. The APS was also significantly related to Grade Point Average (GPA); as individuals procrastinated more, they possessed a significantly lower GPA. Yet, the APS proved far superior at predicting grades in school as compared to the four most widely-used procrastination scales. The APS even added incremental validity beyond these four scales in predicting semester grades. The APS also predicted variance in grades beyond a well-known personality predictor, conscientiousness. Moreover, scores on the APS fully mediated this established relationship between conscientiousness and grades.A factor analysis of the APS revealed one underlying factor, seemingly indicating that the scale was measuring academic procrastination. Test bias could possibly destroy a scale’s validity and was therefore assessed using two different procedures. An Analysis of Variance revealed that scores on the APS did not systematically vary with such irrelevant variables as gender, ethnicity, academic major or academic year. The Lautenschlager and Mendoza (1986) approach found that scores did, however, vary across ethnicity with Caucasians exhibiting a higher GPA across all levels of the APS when compared to African Americans. This trend was also found for the Tuckman scale, however. However, this bias could potentially be explained by GPA varying across ethnicity with Caucasians exhibiting a significantly higher cumulative GPA as compared to Hispanics or African Americans. Although the internal consistency of the APS was quite high, it is also symptomatic of redundant items. Thus, the possibility of reducing the scale to five items was assessed and validated. This shortened scale also exhibited adequate reliability, á = .87.Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores are used across the country to select students on the basis of success in college. However, both the APS and SAT uniquely predict college grades and together, account for 16% of the variance in college grades. It is even proposed that the current scale be used in conjunction with SAT scores to predict success in college. The APS could add significant validity to such a collegiate selection procedure. If procrastination is consistently found to have negative consequences, then students who exhibit higher scores on the APS could also be remediated in educational settings. Thus, based on results from the current study, the APS could be used as a valid, reliable, and instrumental tool within the educational community.

The New York Times:

From a national standpoint, the 20-year-old charter school movement has been a disappointment. More than a third of these independently run, publicly funded schools are actually worse than the traditional public schools they were meant to replace. Abysmal charter schools remain open for years, even though the original deal was that they would be shut down when they failed to perform. New York City’s experience, however, continues to be an exception.
For the second time in three years, a rigorous study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes shows that the typical New York City charter school student learns more in a year in reading and math than his or her peers in their neighborhood district schools. The difference, over a typical year, amounts to about a month’s more learning in reading — and a whopping five months’ more learning in math.

Lynn Zinser:

At first blush, the news item that Maryland has announced plans to buy an iPad for every one of its roughly 500 athletes at a cost of about $300,000 seems like just another case of temporary insanity caused by the recruiting arms races.
But when you realize this is the same Maryland athletic department that announced it was bolting as a founding member of the Atlantic Coast Conference for the big payday of joining the Big Ten because of its crippling department debt, which prompted it to drop seven sports programs, the insanity seems more than temporary.

Judith Burns:

Pupils in England are at risk of missing out because their schools do not have good enough wi-fi, figures suggest.
Schools need fully accessible wi-fi if they are to embrace digital learning in all subjects, argues Valerie Thompson of the E-Learning Foundation.
But only a quarter of schools achieve this, suggests the British Educational Suppliers Association (Besa).
“It’s vital to a 21st Century learning environment,” said Ms Thompson.
The data comes from surveys of a representative panel of some 600 state schools across England, carried out by market research company C3 Education for Besa.
Of 250 secondary schools, about 22% said they had wi-fi in most or all classrooms, 39% had it in some classrooms, leaving 39% with wi-fi in only a few or no classrooms.

Serena Valdez:

At Wednesday night’s Oakland school board meeting, there were few empty seats and dozens of people with speaker cards to discuss the several adult education programs that may be cut. Adult education, however, was not on the agenda and the board did not make any comments regarding any cuts.
Instead, the board approved to deny the charter renewal for East Oakland Leadership Academy High.
Philip Dotson, acting director of the Office of Charter Schools, read the report highlighting why the charter should not be renewed for EOLA based on figures developed over the five years the charter has been in place.

David Cohen:

As we settle into 2013, I find myself increasingly optimistic about the future of the teaching profession. There are battles ahead, debates to be had and elections to be contested, but, as Sam Cooke sang, “A change is gonna come.”
The change that I’m most excited about is the potential for a shift towards teacher leadership in schools and school systems. I’m not naive enough to believe it will be a linear or rapid shift, but I’m confident in the long-term growth of teacher leadership because it provides a common ground for stakeholders to achieve their goals, because it’s replicable and scalable, and because it’s working already.
Much of my understanding of school improvement comes from my teaching career – now approaching two decades in the classroom, mostly in public high schools. However, until six years ago, I hadn’t seen teachers putting forth a compelling argument about how we might begin to transform our profession. A key transition for me was reading a Teacher Solutions report from the Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ). That 2007 report, Performance-Pay for Teachers: Designing a System that Students Deserve, showed how the concept of performance pay could be modified and improved upon with better definitions of a variety of performance, and differentiated pay based on differentiated professional practice, rather than arbitrary test score targets. I ended up joining the CTQ Teacher Leaders Network the same year, and have had the opportunity ever since to learn from exceptional teachers from around the country.

Tracy Larrabee:

One might say that the advent of online education has been disruptive for higher education in California. One might also say that the advent of penicillin was disruptive for the practice of medicine.
More than 20 years ago, technology began to creep into my teaching. Ten years ago, I began to use electronics to present information in my classrooms and to allow students, even remote ones, to give me input during class.
Now, everything I say, present or draw during class is posted to the class website as it happens; any student with Web access can submit questions, suggestions or comments to me during my lectures. I love how dynamic my lectures have become with the varied opportunities for student input. I am hooked, and so are my students.

Bruce Vielmetti:

Teachers all over Wisconsin lost benefits after Bruce Vielmetti:Act 10 eliminated most collective bargaining by public employees.
But maybe none lost more than those in Neenah, where hundreds of veteran educators are now headed to court in a class-action lawsuit to try to win back $170,000 in stipends, which supplemented their regular pensions.
District officials said changes to the retirement plan were necessary in light of $185 million in unfunded retirement liabilities.
“Obviously, you care about what your neighbors think, but ultimately you have to look out for your family,” said Tim Hopfensperger, 49, who noted he passed up administrative jobs in other districts because the extra pay over 10 years still wouldn’t match what he thought he had coming from Neenah, where he’s been an elementary school teacher since he was recruited from Germantown schools in 1990.
For years, Neenah’s teachers enjoyed one of the most generous retirement plans in Wisconsin. Many who were hired in the 1990s could retire at age 55 if they had 15 years with the district and get big stipends on top of their regular state retirement, plus health care coverage until they were eligible for Medicare.
The payment was based on 10 annual payments of one-half the starting teacher salary in the district, which last year was $34,319, or about $170,000. Teachers hired after July 1, 1998, had to work 20 years and reach age 57 to collect eight annual payments. Those hired after 2003 were eligible for less lucrative retirement enhancements.

Related on the adult employment focus of school districts.

Alan Borsuk:

Just what is a charter school? That’s the question I get most often when I talk to people in the general public. It’s a good question. What’s going on with charter schools around here is both important and tough to grasp.
Gov. Scott Walker unveiled ideas last week for momentous steps related to education around the state as part of his budget proposal for the next two years.
One of them was not allowing public schools to spend more money for operations in the next two years than they’re spending now. I was betting Walker would back a modest increase, at least in line with increased state aid for schools. By not increasing what is called the revenue cap on schools, Walker effectively proposed using increased education aid for property tax relief, not education. That would mean putting public schools statewide in increasingly tight circumstances. Will Republicans in the Legislature accept that or moderate it? A big question for the coming months.
Another Walker proposal would allow launching private school vouchers in as many as nine more cities in the state (Milwaukee and Racine have them now). It’s very controversial and we’ll talk about it in coming weeks.
But Walker’s budget proposal also includes important charter school changes. Those have gotten less attention, so let’s focus on them here, mostly in the form of a primer on charters.

Mark Smith:

This week, I will not go to the library.
I did not go to the library last week either, or the week before that. I have not borrowed from a library for 25 years. The one I used as a boy in Aberdeen has been pulled down and is now a field; many more in the city and across the country are threatened with closure. But I’m not upset by any of this; I do not cry over what’s happened or bemoan the end of libraries because they are based on an idea that is no longer working.
The orthodoxy says otherwise – and it’s an orthodoxy delivered with aggressive certainty. Libraries do all kinds of wonderful things, say their supporters: they promote justice, literacy and health, minimise social division and, these days, provide free downloadable books and a coffee and a bun as well. This diversification is presented as the solution to the decline of libraries, but is, in fact, the problem: going into a library now is like going into HMV or Woolies just before it closed. It is a model that is confused and unclear; it no longer knows why it is there. And as for free downloadable books in libraries: like Kindles in Waterstones, that is like inviting a pussy cat into an aviary – the route to certain destruction from within.

The Capital Times:

Here’s how five citizens answered this week’s question (on the expansion of Wisconsin voucher school opportunities) posed by Capital Times freelancer Kevin Murphy. What do you think? Please join the discussion.
“Yes, I think parents should have the choice to decide which school their children will attend and this would allow them to have the money to make that choice instead of having to go to the one in the area they live. Choice is better for everyone — parents too. When you give people the power to decide, it gives school districts an incentive to improve their programs for the students or they will go elsewhere.”
Beatrice Makesa
financial analyst
Madison
“I don’t think taking money away from public schools and giving it to private ones is right. I’m from California where our schools are in (bad) shape because the public schools don’t have enough money to do a good job of educating. I don’t want to see that happen here. In the city of Los Angeles, there’s a handful of relevant public schools due to lack of state funding and that leaves everyone else trying to get into private schools, which can pick and choose who they want to enroll. As a general rule, taking away more money from the public school systems doesn’t seem wise.”
Charlie Frederich
technical service rep
Madison

Jay Matthews:

Is Laura Linder’s son Chris being pushed out of Thomas Stone High School?
It seems that way. Charles County school officials did not honor several credits the transfer student earned in Yuba City, Calif., where he was a 12th-grader. He is 18, but Maryland says he is still in 10th grade. He has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He has difficulty with math and science. But he does not qualify for full learning disability services.
Linder says Charles County Schools Superintendent James Richmond and other officials have suggested that Chris go back to California. That sounds harsh, but consider the context. Even smart educators like Richmond are at the mercy of a national movement to raise academic standards and graduation rates. The effort contradicts itself and is often at odds with educators’ instincts and students’ circumstances. Chris is a prime example.
Linder and her son moved to Waldorf last summer. Neither anticipated that the move would threaten his desire to get a high school diploma. He had fallen far behind in California when, Linder says, he was hospitalized four times for having suicidal thoughts. He also spent two months in juvenile hall for graffiti violations.

computer based math:

Oxford, United Kingdom–11 February 2013–computerbasedmath.org announced that Estonia will be the first country to make use of its revolutionary and widely praised rethink of math education in a project to build a new school statistics course.
“Since the start of computerbasedmath.org, I’ve been asking, ‘Which country will be first?'” said Conrad Wolfram, Founder. “Now we have the answer: it’s Estonia.”
Jaak Aaviksoo, Minister of Education and Research, Estonia, said, “In the last century, we led the world in connecting classrooms to the internet. Now we want to lead the world in rethinking education in the technology-driven world.”

Douglas Belkin:

Traditional colleges and a new breed of online-education providers, trying to figure out how to profit from the rising popularity of massive open online courses, are pouring resources into efforts to solve a problem that has bedeviled teachers for centuries: How can students be stopped from cheating?
David Walter Banks for The Wall Street Journal
Satia Renee, a 50-year-old from Smyrna, Ga., sees incidences of cheating as a byproduct of course design.
Coursera, a Silicon Valley-based MOOC, recently launched a keystroke system to recognize individual students’ typing patterns. EdX, its East Coast rival, is employing palm-vein scans. Other strategies include honor codes, remote web-camera proctors and test-taking centers.
Until recently, MOOCs have offered only certificates of completion that in some cases come with a letter grade. Typically, papers have been assessed by fellow students and tests marked by computers. Students frequently study together in online chat rooms–and there is often little to prevent them from cheating on tests or papers.
The efforts to stamp out cheating underscore just how much the stakes are rising. Until now, MOOCs have generally been free of charge and the most popular classes have attracted 150,000 students at a time. More than three million students from at least 160 countries have signed up for courses ranging from “A Beginners Guide to Irrational Behavior” to “Financial Engineering and Risk Management.” Given the vast profit potential, MOOCs are scrambling to ensure the academic integrity of the courses.

Michael Alison Chandler:

Alexandria city officials have ramped up efforts in recent years to improve the stubbornly dismal academic performance of Jefferson-Houston School. They brought in a new principal and a group of new teachers; they hired an outside turnaround consultant and math coaches; they instituted extra tutoring, drew up blueprints for a state-of-the-art makeover and scheduled the longest school day in the city.
But Virginia lawmakers say it’s too late. The state plans to take over the school, thanks to bills passed in the General Assembly last week that would create a statewide school division to oversee Virginia’s chronically under-performing schools.
The move is galvanizing protests from teachers, principals and school board leaders in Alexandria and around the state. They argue it’s impractical for a distant school board to manage the day-to-day details of bus rides and school lunches. And they say it’s out of sync with a long American tradition of locally controlled public schools.

Katy Murphy:

I know it’s late, but I was just at the check-out counter reading magazine covers still touting magical resolutions that would change us for the better in 2013. I was musing about what I would list for OUSD to tackle in 2013 that would benefit students with disabilities. My partial list, in no order:
1. Identify and publicly celebrate those achieving positive results for these students. There are a lot of success stories out there – programs and individual educators and administrators who are helping students to reach their full potential. It continues to surprise me how infrequently OUSD highlights these achievements and we only hear about the same few examples. C’mon, OUSD – brag a bit!

Simon Kuper:

Way back in 2008, the three most admired personalities in sport were probably Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong and Oscar Pistorius. They were portrayed not just as great athletes but as great men, role models: Woods was the ultimate professional, Armstrong had overcome cancer to rule cycling, and the double amputee Pistorius had become an outstanding sprinter. It later turned out that Woods was a serial adulterer, Armstrong a drugs cheat, and on Thursday in South Africa Pistorius was charged with murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. His family and management have disputed the accusation “in the strongest terms”.
Any sentient person over the age of eight already knew that great athletes are not necessarily role models. That’s not what the scandals have taught us. Rather, we can see now that the sports-industrial complex – the machine of media and advertising that cranks out myths about athletes – has gone into overdrive. As with investment banking it might be time to shrink it before it destroys society.

Peter DeWitt:

A positive school culture should be a never-ending goal these days. There are so many mandates and changes happening in education. The cloud of accountability seems to follow us as we negotiate our way through the days and weeks. Sometimes we worry about them so much that they take our eyes off what is really important about what we do day in and day out. A positive school culture can help us refocus on our goals of educating students and expose them to opportunities they may not get anywhere else.
One of the ways teachers do this is through readers’ theatres. It helps them make strong literacy connections with students. Readers’ theatres are simple to do, and once you get passed the idea that you don’t need to be Andrew Lloyd Weber to create one, they are a great deal of fun as well. Teachers find a good script (resources below) and students act them out with the script in hand. No need for acting lessons or a big Hollywood production! It gives students a real opportunity to use their voice and practice inflection.

Matthew DeFour:

The top vote-getter in Tuesday’s Madison School Board primary said Friday she ran for the seat knowing she might not be able to serve out her term because her husband was applying for graduate school in other states.
Sarah Manski, who dropped out of the race Thursday, said she mentioned those concerns to School Board member Marj Passman, who Manski said encouraged her to run. Passman told her it wouldn’t be a problem if she had to resign her seat because the board would “appoint somebody good,” Manski said.
Passman vigorously denied encouraging Manski to run or ever knowing about her husband’s graduate school applications. After learning about Manski’s statement from the State Journal, Passman sent an email to other School Board members saying “I had no such conversation with her.”
“It’s sad to believe that this kind of a person came close to being elected to one of the most important offices in our city,” Passman wrote in the email, which she also forwarded to the State Journal.
Manski said in response “it’s possible (Passman) didn’t remember or it’s possible it’s politically inconvenient for her to remember.”

I am pleased and astonished that substantive questions are being raised by our local media…..

Ruth Starkman:

In private conversation humanities scholars increasingly give voice to a strange confession regarding digital scholarship: “Actually, I’m O.K. with it, but the institution is not.” Such a stark opposition between an assertion of individual progressiveness and a hesitation about institutional entrenchment hides a more complex story.
As institutions become increasingly open to new approaches, resistance to digital work still emanates more from a traditionalism rooted in departmental lore. It’s hard to change cultures, but academic publishing currently confronts a major structural transformation, and contributors as well as evaluators seek advice on how to assess digital projects. What steps should scholars, especially younger ones, take with their digital work to ensure that it will “count” toward hiring, promotions and tenure?
When I advise doctoral students assembling their dossiers for humanities teaching positions, most report great excitement about their digital projects, but remain uncertain whether to mention these for fear that they won’t “count” or that they may even count against their applications. Some tell me their advisers have encouraged such projects, but also doubted that one can be hired or promoted solely on the basis of digital contributions.

Sue Shellenbarger:

Nobody wants to be that hothead who flies off the handle in the face of some everyday annoyance, causing others to roll their eyes and wonder, “What’s wrong with him?”
But people who experience extreme reactions to stress–from a racing heart to full-blown rage–may be hard-wired to do so, researchers are finding. It isn’t known how many people are highly reactive to stress, but the tendency can endure for years or a lifetime.
People who overreact often can’t explain why a minor project setback or a child’s spilled juice can unleash a volcanic response.
“They think they’re weird, wondering, ‘Why don’t other people react like this?’ ” says Lois Barth, a New York-based life coach who works with stress-reactive people on performing better at work and reaching personal goals. “But many people can’t help it.”

Patrick Range McDonald:

After Los Angeles Unified School District board members approved a Parent Trigger earlier this week, mayoral candidates Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel refused to comment on the historic vote, which allows parents to take over a chronically failing elementary school in West Adams.
Now mayoral candidate Kevin James and two Parent Trigger heavyweights are speaking out about that silence — and Garcetti and Greuel’s commitment to education reform is being questioned. With an alarming 21 percent dropout rate at L.A. Unified, it’s no small matter.
On Tuesday, L.A. Unified board members approved the first Parent Trigger to take place in the district, which is the second largest public school system in the United States. The Parent Trigger is a California law that allows parents to institute changes at a chronically failing school through petition.
In this case, parents sought to bring reform to 24th Street Elementary School in West Adams, which serves mostly poor Latino students.

Robert Cottrell:

For much of my adult life I was a diligent producer of daily and weekly journalism. In recent years I have become a gargantuan consumer of it. It is a privilege to earn one’s living by writing but, as I discovered, it is also a privilege, and a less stressful one, to earn one’s living by reading.
I read all day. Were it not for the demands of sleep and family life, I would read all night. My aim is to find all the writing worth reading on the internet, and to recommend the five or six best pieces each day on my website, the Browser. I pass over in silence here the Browser’s many virtues. My purpose here is to share with you four lessons I have learnt in five years’ drinking from the fire hose.
My first contention: this is a great time to be a reader. The amount of good writing freely available online far exceeds what even the most dedicated consumer might have hoped to encounter a generation ago within the limits of printed media.
I don’t pretend that everything online is great writing. Let me go further: only 1 per cent is of value to the intelligent general reader, by which I mean the demographic that, in the mainstream media world, might look to the Economist, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs or the Atlantic for information. Another 4 per cent of the internet counts as entertaining rubbish. The remaining 95 per cent has no redeeming features. But even the 1 per cent of writing by and for the elite is an embarrassment of riches, a horn of plenty, a garden of delights.

Nicole Pagowsky:

Gamification in libraries has become a topic of interest in the professional discourse, and one that ACRL TechConnect has covered in Applying Game Dynamics to Library Services and Why Gamify and What to Avoid in Gamification. Much of what has been written about badging systems in libraries pertains to gamifying library services. However, being an Instructional Services Librarian, I have been interested in tying gamification to library instruction.
When library skills are not always part of required learning outcomes or directly associated with particular classes, thinking more creatively about promotion and embeddedness of library tutorials prompted me to become interested in tying a badging system to the University of Arizona Libraries’ online learning objects. For a brief review on badges, they are visual representations of skills and achievements. They can be used with or instead of grades depending on the scenario and include details to support their credibility (criteria, issuer, evidence, currency).

OVetta Wiggins:

Fernandez and Lee are among 14,000 eighth-grade students in the Washington region each year who spend a day of school visiting the finance park, making real-life decisions about health care, housing, investments and banking. Most of the students who participate — 13,000 — are from Fairfax County, with the rest coming from Alexandria, Arlington, the District and Prince George’s County.
The students attend the finance park, which sits on the campus of Robert Frost Middle School and W.T. Woodson High School, after spending five weeks learning about interest and credit; the risks and benefits of saving and investing; the difference between gross and net monthly income and other aspects of financial literacy during math and social studies classes.

Richard Irwin:

We’ve all heard of the Grand Design, leaving us to wonder what kind of world we would design if we were given the opportunity.
Sophomores at Walnut High are taking the time to design their own domains in the school’s new Academic Design Program. It’s part and parcel of the program that asks students to learn through hands-on problem-solving.
The teens aren’t given the answers to their worldly problems, they have to uncover the answers on their own. And so it was with a little trepidation that we stepped into their domain last week.
School officials say 75 sophomores volunteered for the innovative program that has proven successful in other Walnut Valley schools such as Chaparral Middle School in Diamond Bar.
In fact, program coordinator Jennifer La Certe transferred from Chaparral to share her expertise in design-based learning. The math instructor earned a master’s degree from Cal Poly Pomona in integrative studies.
“Our emphasis on hands-on activities really motivate the students. Their interests are piqued when we ask them to do some real-world problem solving,” La Certe explained.
Working in small groups, the students approach unusual challenges that require critical thinking and multi-disciplinary approaches. That’s why the Academic Design Program blocks off the first three periods of the day for these teens.

Tom Davies:

Some parents and others have succeeded in stirring up debate in the Statehouse over whether Indiana should withdraw from uniform reading and math education standards that most states have adopted.
It seems, however, that they’ll have a much more difficult time winning their cause against the Common Core State Standards education initiative.
A bill that could be voted on by the state Senate in the coming week would suspend implementation of the benchmarks at Indiana schools until after the state Board of Education has finished a new review of the standards it adopted in 2010.

Matthew DeFour:

The newspaper sought the names of all candidates interviewed by the School Board and background material provided. The district disclosed those names along with background materials for the two finalists it named publicly, Milton and Cheatham.
The other finalists were:
• Joe Gothard, Madison’s assistant superintendent for secondary education.
• Barbara Thompson, a former Madison principal and New Glarus superintendent who is currently superintendent in Montgomery, Ala.
• Tony Apostle, a retired superintendent from the Puyallup School District near Tacoma, Wash.
• Curtis Cain, administrator of the Shawnee Mission School District near Kansas City, Mo.
• Sandra Smyser, superintendent of Eagle County Schools in Eagle, Colo.
Cheatham and Milton were the only finalists the board named on Feb. 3. They were scheduled to appear together at a community forum on Feb. 7, but Milton abruptly dropped out two days before the event amid questions about his background.

Cathy Davidson:

The academic conversation on MOOCs is starting to polarize in exactly the talking-past-one-another way that so many complex conversations evolve: with very smart points on either side but not a lot of recognition that the validity of certain key points on one side does not undermine the validity of certain key points on the other. I regret this flattening of online learning into a simple binary of “politically and financially motivated greed” on the one hand and “an opportunity to find out more about learning” on the other. Some of both in different situations can be true. It’s always hard to be able to hold two complex and even contradictory ideas in one’s mind at once but, well, that’s life. Both can be true. And there is so much to be gained from a sustained conversation on every side and from each side’s learning from the other without assuming the other side is being naive or callous in its concerns.
Here’s a case in point: although I’ve not done a data count, I would say that, about a year ago, the majority of articles on higher education in the mass media ran the gamut from snide to extremely negative, often springboarding off entrepreneur Peter Thiel’s offering cash rewards to students choosing not to go to college. The rhetoric of so many articles seemed to be “is higher education really worth it?” These articles (I bet there were dozens if not hundreds) were often filled with hard data about the soaring costs of higher education and horrific student debt pitted against anecdotes of unemployment among the college educated. It was virtually a meme, that if you are fool enough to go to college, you end up deeper in debt and unemployed and therefore college isn’t worth it. The tone in the press emphasized that latter point, demeaning the importance of higher education, laughing slyly at anyone who thinks higher education is a worthy goal.
Enter the MOOC: whatever else one may think about MOOCS, their vast popularity proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt that seemingly everyone wants–really, really wants–more not less higher learning. Has anyone else noticed that the tone of the conversation has now shifted from “is college worth it?” to “how can we make necessary, important, invaluable learning available to the widest number of people for the lowest cost”? I certainly have.

Demetria Gallegos:

I’ve been listening this month to the conversation at our house, and it is deflatingly predictable: “Have you finished your homework? Then why are you playing computer games?” “Your room is still a mess, put that down until it’s done.” “Have you gotten off the couch today?” And this recent favorite, “You are banned from playing games until the end of the school year.”
We have a bad case of digital distemper, but it has been hard to find a solution. As with going on a diet, you still have to eat. Our girls have hours of computer-based homework almost every night. We have a terrible time knowing when the work is done and when the play has begun.
On one infamous Sunday in December, we watched 14½ hours of Netflix. I knew it was bad but didn’t know how bad until I looked back at the log and spotted a dozen episodes of “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.” I immediately canceled Netflix. But that’s like cutting the head off the hydra.
What would Hercules do?

Steven Greenhouse:

One of the nation’s largest nurses’ unions — the National Federation of Nurses — plans to announce on Thursday that it will affiliate with the far larger American Federation of Teachers.
Barbara Crane, the president of the nurses’ federation, said her group’s national board voted to join forces with the teachers’ union to give the nurses more political clout and money to try to unionize more nurses.
“We were not going to be able to achieve some of our goals unless we found a partner,” said Ms. Crane, whose union represents 34,000 nurses in Montana, Ohio, Oregon and Washington. “We wanted a professional union that believes in growth through organizing.”
Competition has been growing among various labor groups wanting to expand the unionization of the nation’s three million nurses, including the Service Employees International Union, which represents 90,000 nurses, and National Nurses United, a union that represents only nurses, 185,000 of them.

Alexis Madrigal:

The British Library has been digitizing some of its prize pieces and they announced a new round of six artifacts had been completed including Beowulf, a gold-ink penned Gospel, and one of Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks.
“Each of these six manuscripts is a true splendour, and has immense significance in its respective field, whether that be Anglo-Saxon literature, Carolingian or Flemish art, or Renaissance science and learning,” Julian Harrison, the library’s curator of medieval artifacts, blogged. “On Digitised Manuscripts you’ll be able to view every page in full and in colour, and to see the finer details using the deep zoom facility.”
All of these texts can be appreciated on a visual level, particularly because the scans are so good. Even the grain of the paper is fascinating.

Ruth Simon & Michael Corkery:

U.S. and state officials are intensifying efforts to hold colleges accountable for what happens after graduation, a sign of frustration with sky-high tuition costs and student-loan debt.
Sens. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) are expected to reintroduce this week legislation that would require states to make more accessible the average salaries of colleges’ graduates. The figures could help prospective students compare salaries by college and major to assess the best return on their investment.
A similar bipartisan bill died last year, but a renewed push has gained political momentum in recent weeks. “This begins to introduce some market forces into the academic arena that have not been there,” said Mr. Wyden, adding that support for the move is unusually broad given the political divide in Washington. Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.), the House majority leader, said he intends to support a similar measure in the House.

Jarrett Skorup:

When the government is in the business of handing out money, interest groups lobby to get it — or advocate to receive more than they are already getting.
So it is with spending on higher education.
As the Michigan Legislature debates the state budget for the upcoming fiscal year, more money for preschool, college and everything in between is being proposed. Over the long-term, the funding for those areas has increased dramatically. Taxpayers should be skeptical of the current reasons for subsidizing universities further.
Requests for more higher education funding is reported willingly in the media: It’s the “most important investment” people can make. It “returns $17 in economic benefits” per dollar spent. It results in “lifetime earning power.”
But the central arguments are dubious for five main reasons:

open.avenues:

In the fall of 2012, clinical psychologist, author and school consultant Michael Thompson visited Avenues to talk to parents about the pressures facing students today. The talk was recorded and is now being made available through OPEN and our YouTube channel. Check out the three-part series below, or start from part one on YouTube.

Larry Cuban:

“History doesn’t teach lessons, historians do.” Because historians interpret the past they often disagree, even revise, the meaning of events from the French Revolution to the American Civil War to school reform.
What historians can do is show that in the flow of time constant change occurs. As a wise ancient Greek said: you cannot step into the same river twice. Thus, the past differs from the present even when they seem so similar. Consider, for example, U.S. involvement in Vietnam a half-century ago and Afghanistan since 2001. Or “scientific management” dominating school reformers’ vocabulary and action in the early 1900s and the audit culture of test-driven accountability pervasive a century later. Historians can show the complexity of human action in the past and offer alternative perspectives that can inform current policy making but they cannot give policymakers specific guidelines. Although some try.
With that in mind, I turn to the current conventional wisdom among school reformers that focusing on the state and district are the best units for engineering change in schools and classrooms. In examining past generations of school reformers, however, it becomes clear that where change must occur has shifted time and again from the smallest unit-the teacher in the classroom-to the school, the district, the state, and nation. As political, economic, and social changes occurred in the U.S., previous generations of reformers skipped back and forth among these units of change as to which would best produce the changes they sought.
For example, in the early 1900s, few, if any, school reformers thought of the state or nation as the unit of reform. They saw the district and individual school as appropriate levers for change. A century later, however, with No Child Left Behind, test-driven accountability rules, Race to The Top incentive funds, and Common Core standards in math and reading adopted by nearly all the states- many policymakers see both the state and nation as the dominant units for reforming schools.

Jessica Vanegeren:

The weekend news that Gov. Scott Walker hopes to drastically expand the state’s school voucher program has been met with a swift response, not only from public school advocates but members of both political parties.
How far his proposal gets as part of the next two-year state budget remains to be seen. He plans to unveil the 2013-15 spending package in its entirety on Wednesday.
Republicans enjoy an 18-15 majority in the Senate. But at least two — Sen. Mike Ellis of Neenah and Sen. Luther Olsen of Ripon — have spoken out recently against a state-imposed expansion of voucher schools. Ellis has said, among other things, that local school district residents should be able to vote on bringing in voucher schools.
“The governor can propose anything he wants in his budget,” Olsen says. “But I’m thinking we (the Legislature) want to do something else.”

Christopher Mims:

Baxter, the affordable, humanoid industrial robot recently unveiled by Rethink Robotics, is so easy to program that I once did it one-handed and drunk. We were at a party at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and he was standing in the corner, looking lonely. No, really–Baxter has expressive eyes projected on a touchscreen where you’d expect it to have a face, virtually guaranteeing that you’ll anthropomorphize it.
Drink in hand, I walked over and, with only the vaguest sense of how to get it to respond to my touch, grabbed it by the wrist. I guided its “hand” over to a box full of small objects. Its caliper-like fingers closed on a widget. Then I moved its hand, which offered almost no resistance at all, to another position on the table. It dropped the object.
After that, it dutifully repeated the procedure I had taught it, again and again, emptying the box. In a display of the sort of capabilities that used to be almost impossible in robotics but are now routine, its machine vision allowed it to cope with the differences in position and shape of each of the widgets. Baxter was untroubled by the poor lighting, loud music or my clumsiness. In less time than it takes to update my calendar, I had, in essence, trained Baxter to pack a box for shipping, or to transfer goods from one conveyor belt to another–two tasks that are common in manufacturing and distribution centers.

Franklin D. Roosevelt:

Governor Earle, President Beury, friends of Temple University, and, I am glad to be able to say now, my fellow alumni:
I have just had bestowed upon me a twofold honor. I am honored in having been made an alumnus of Temple University; and I am honored in having had conferred upon me for the first time the Degree of Doctor of Jurisprudence.
It is a happy coincidence that we should meet together to pay our respects to the cause of education not only on the birthday of the Father of this Nation, but also in the halls of a very great institution that is bringing true education into thousands of homes throughout the country. I have always felt certain that in Washington’s wise and kindly way, he deeply appreciated the importance of education in a Republic–I might say throughout a Republic–and also the responsibility of that thing known as Government to promote education. Let this simple statement stand by itself without the proof of quotation. I say this lest, in this year of 1936, if I quoted excerpts from the somewhat voluminous writings and messages of the first President of the United States, some captious critic might search the Library of Congress to prove by other quotations that George Washington was in favor of just the opposite! Therefore, on this anniversary of his birth I propose to break a century-old precedent. I shall not quote from George Washington on his birthday.
More than that, and breaking precedent once more, I do not intend to commence any sentence with these words–“If George Washington had been alive today” or “If Thomas Jefferson” or “If Alexander Hamilton” or “If Abraham Lincoln had been alive today–beyond peradventure, beyond a doubt or perhaps the other way around, etc., etc., etc.”
Suffice it to say this: What President Washington pointed out on many occasions and in many practical ways was that a broad and cosmopolitan education in every stratum of society is a necessary factor in any free Nation governed through a democratic system. Strides toward that fundamental objective were great, as we know, in the first two or three generations of the Republic, and yet you and I can assert that the greatest development of general education has occurred in the past half century, indeed, within the lives of a great many of those of us who are here today.
As literacy increases people become aware of the fact that Government and society form essentially a cooperative relationship among citizens and the selected representatives of those citizens.

Chris Rickert:

think of it this way: The government contracts for goods and services all the time. Contracting out our societal obligation to educate our children isn’t all that different.
As with any other private organization that wins a publicly funded contract, private schools that take vouchers should provide the same kind of quality and access we expect of our other public services and infrastructure.
Jim Bender, president of the pro-voucher School Choice Wisconsin, largely agrees.
And Department of Public Instruction spokesman Patrick Gasper said his agency “is in conversation with legislators, private schools and the governor’s office to find a way to bring schools participating in the voucher program into an accountability system.”
Voucher students in private schools already have to take the same state-mandated tests as public school students, and private schools must use admissions lotteries to prevent them cherry-picking the best voucher students.

Numerous notes and links on vouchers, accountability and per student spending can be found here.

Stephanie Simon:

A federal commission on Tuesday said the U.S. education system had “thoroughly stacked the odds” against impoverished students and warned that an aggressive reform agenda embraced by both Democrats and Republicans had not done enough to improve public schools.
The report from the Equity and Excellence Commission – a panel of 27 scholars, civil rights activists, union leaders and school officials – describes an American public education system in crisis.
The commission, which was dominated by more liberal members, called on the federal government to take a more active role in public education – traditionally considered a local matter – by pushing states to desegregate schools, equalize funding and demand better training for beginning teachers. The group also echoed President Barack Obama’s recent call for universal preschool.

Pamela Cotant:

Students say Spoken Word is a nonjudgmental club where they can write poetry, some of which they later recite at poetry slams.
“I feel like I found my people,” said Selin Gok, 16, a sophomore at West High School who wrote a poem about body image and named it “Thick Chick.”
Selin competed Friday in a regional slam at West for the chance to take part in the state competition March 2 in Milwaukee, and her poem was chosen. Poems are limited to three minutes.
Other slams were held at Goodman Community Center. East High School will hold its slam Thursday.
Those who advance at state will have the opportunity to attend the national event, Brave New Voices, Aug. 7-11 at the University of Chicago.
The slams are open to those ages 13 to 19, and Madison School & Community Recreation supports Spoken Word clubs at East and West.

Jason Stein and Patrick Marley:

Gov. Scott Walker is proposing increasing by at least 9% the taxpayer funding provided to private and religious voucher schools – an increase many times larger in percentage terms than the increase in state tax money he’s seeking for public schools.
The increase in funding for existing voucher schools in Milwaukee and Racine, the first since 2009, comes as the Republican governor seeks to expand the program to nine new districts, including Waukesha, West Allis-West Milwaukee and Madison. Walker is also proposing allowing special-needs students from around the state to attend private schools at taxpayer expense.
Even after the proposed increase to voucher funding and the substantial cuts Walker and lawmakers approved for public schools in 2011, the aid provided to voucher schools would still be substantially less on a per-pupil basis than the overall state and local taxes provided to public schools.
But to provide that bigger increase to voucher schools, the Republican governor will need to persuade lawmakers to break a link in state law that currently binds the percentage increase in aid to voucher schools to the percentage increase in state general aid given to public schools.

Related links:

• Credit for non-Madison School District Courses.
• An interview with Henry Tyson, Superintendent of a successful Milwaukee voucher school.
• 61 Page Madison Achievement Gap Plan: Accountability Plan & Progress Indicators:
  

  “The other useful stat buried in the materials is on the second page 3 (= 6th page), showing that the 3rd grade proficiency rate for black students on WKCE, converted to NAEP-scale proficiency, is 6.8%, with the accountability plan targeting this percentage to increase to 23% over one school year. Not sure how this happens when the proficiency rate (by any measure) has been decreasing year over year for quite some time. Because the new DPI school report cards don’t present data on an aggregated basis district-wide nor disaggregated by income and ethnicity by grade level, the stats in the MMSD report are very useful, if one reads the fine print.”

• Madison area reaction to the Governor’s voucher proposal.
• Alan Borsuk on voucher schools, politics and per student spending.
• 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 (2005)
• Richard Zimman’s 2009 Madison Rotary Club speech is always worth listening to, along with his recent letter to Wisconsin Governor Walker.

Finally, perhaps everyone might focus on the big goals: world class schools.

Pallab Ghosh:

Scientists are set to release the first batch of data from a project designed to create the first map of the human brain.
The project could help shed light on why some people are naturally scientific, musical or artistic.
Some of the first images were shown at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston.
I found out how researchers are developing new brain imaging techniques for the project by having my own brain scanned.
Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital are pushing brain imaging to its limit using a purpose built scanner. It is one of the most powerful scanners in the world.
The scanner’s magnets need 22MW of electricity – enough to power a nuclear submarine.
The researchers invited me to have my brain scanned. I was asked if I wanted “the 10-minute job or the 45-minute ‘full monty'” which would give one of the most detailed scans of the brain ever carried out. Only 50 such scans have ever been done.
I went for the full monty.
It was a pleasant experience enclosed in the scanner’s vast twin magnets. Powerful and rapidly changing magnetic fields were looking to see tiny particles of water travelling along the larger nerve fibres.

Matthew DeFour

Walker’s reform proposals include:

• Expanding private school vouchers to school districts with at least 4,000 students and at least two schools receiving school report card grades of “fails to meet expectations” or “meets few expectations.” The expansion, which would include Madison schools, would be capped at 500 students statewide next year and 1,000 students the following year.
• Creating a statewide charter school oversight board, which would approve local nonreligious, nonprofit organizations to create and oversee independent charter schools. Only students from districts that qualify for vouchers could attend the charter schools. Authorizers would have to provide annual performance reports about the schools.
• Expanding the Youth Options program, which allows public school students to access courses offered by other public schools, virtual schools, the UW System, technical colleges and other organizations approved by the Department of Public Instruction.
• Granting special education students a private school voucher.
• Eliminating grade and residency restrictions for home-schooled students who take some courses in a public school district. School districts would receive additional state funding for home-schooled students who access public school courses or attend virtual schools.

Additionally, Walker’s spokesman confirmed plans to make no additional funding available for public schools in the budget he plans to propose Wednesday.

Related links:

• Credit for non-Madison School District Courses.
• An interview with Henry Tyson, Superintendent of a successful Milwaukee voucher school.
• 61 Page Madison Achievement Gap Plan: Accountability Plan & Progress Indicators:
  

  “The other useful stat buried in the materials is on the second page 3 (= 6th page), showing that the 3rd grade proficiency rate for black students on WKCE, converted to NAEP-scale proficiency, is 6.8%, with the accountability plan targeting this percentage to increase to 23% over one school year. Not sure how this happens when the proficiency rate (by any measure) has been decreasing year over year for quite some time. Because the new DPI school report cards don’t present data on an aggregated basis district-wide nor disaggregated by income and ethnicity by grade level, the stats in the MMSD report are very useful, if one reads the fine print.”

• Madison area reaction to the Governor’s voucher proposal.
• Alan Borsuk on voucher schools, politics and per student spending.
• 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 (2005)
• Richard Zimman’s 2009 Madison Rotary Club speech is always worth listening to, along with his recent letter to Wisconsin Governor Walker.

Finally, perhaps everyone might focus on the big goals: world class schools.

Penelope Trunk:

I wrote today about how Obama’s proposal for universal pre-K is stunningly out of touch with the realities of today’s society. It’s clear that most mothers do not want to work full-time when they have kids, and it’s clear that Obama is advocating school as a daycare system rather than an educational system. You can read the whole post here.
But what I noticed, as I was writing it, was how mainstream media manages to report this story without mentioning homeschool. What is best for kids when they are four years old? Unstructured play. This is well documented, but if you push parents to provide unstructured play to a four-year-old it’s like pushing them to provide breastfeeding to a one-year-old: maybe it’s too hard on the parent!
So it’s not politically correct to tell parents to suck it up and do what’s right for their kids. And it’s not politically correct to advocate spending tons of money to let low-income parents stay home with their kids. But it is politically correct to tell low-income parents to drop their kids off at daycare even if they would rather stay home with their kids?
It’s obviously ridiculous, but it’s in keeping with the way media reports on homeschooling, which is that they ignore it. Mainstream media misses the opportunity to point out that homeschooling works for everyone, no matter where they are in the economic spectrum.

Arthur Camins:

The U.S. Department of Education has used the economic downturn to drive a marketplace-based educational agenda in which test scores, merit pay and charter schools figure prominently. States and districts, desperate for funds, quickly agreed to these requirements in the Race-to-the-Top and Title I School Improvement Grants. Based on the same principles, private foundations have used their economic power to sway elections, sponsor and influence the content of administrative leadership training programs and fund the opening of charter schools that draw students and funds away from regular public schools.
How to build public support for a longer-term, more broadly focused education reform agenda is very challenging. The December shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut may be a tragic historic moment that provides insight into the value of the social and emotional dimensions of children’s school experience. We may never know what complex set of factors led a young man to commit such unfathomable violence against innocent children. But we do know on a deep emotional level that children’s safety, their sense of belonging and value as members of their communities are of paramount importance.
Many, maybe with some sensitivity in mind to the recent demeaning of teachers and their profession, have appropriately called attention to the heroism and selflessness of Newtown’s educators. However, this may also be an occasion for public reflection about whether our economic anxiety has caused us to get our educational priorities far out of balance.

Related: www.wisconsin2.org

Mark Naison:

Every spring, without fail, a Teach For America recruiter approaches me and asks if they can come to my classes and recruit students for TFA, and every year, without fail, I give them the same answer.
“Sorry.”
Until Teach For America becomes committed to training lifetime educators and raises the length of service to five years rather than two, I will not allow TFA to recruit in my classes. The idea of sending talented students into schools in impoverished areas, and then after two years encouraging them to pursue careers in finance, law, and business in the hope that they will then advocate for educational equity really rubs me the wrong way.
It was not always thus. Ten years ago, when a Teach For America recruiter first approached me, I was enthusiastic about the idea of recruiting my most idealistic and talented students for work in poor schools. I allowed TFA representative to make presentations in my classes, filled with urban studies and African American studies majors. Several of my best students applied, all of whom wanted to become teachers, and most of whom came from the kind of high-poverty neighborhoods where TFA proposed to send its recruits.

Solidarity newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Bettner email (65K PDF):

Reducing one’s teaching contract by any percentage used to be a major risk. In doing so, one not only was at peril to remain part-time for the rest of their career, but their contract percentage could be varied year-to-year by the District, and worse yet, the District could unilaterally decide not to continue the contract. This is because part-time contracts are not covered by the “continuing contract law” by which teachers’ contracts are renewed annually.
Because of the demands by MTI members, the Union negotiated the right of one to temporarily reduce their contract and return to full-time the following year. This enables one to spend time with a child, an aging parent, or for any reason the teacher desires. Additionally, MTI negotiated that those employed under part-time contracts in Madison are issued individual contracts annually.
Requests to reduce one’s contract for a one-year period, with the right to return to full-time the following year, must be made in writing to the District’s office of Human Resources on or before March 1 for the 2013-14 school year.
Reducing one’s contract without using Section IV-W of MTI’s Contract has major negative implications. Members considering this are urged to contact MTI Headquarters (257-0491).
These steps seem like steps every employer should have to follow. They are not, but MMSD must follow them because of MTI’s Contracts. Governor Walker’s Act 10 destroys these protections. MTI is working to preserve them.

Ruth Simon & Rob Barry:

Most people assume a degree in the arts is no guarantee of riches. Now there is evidence that such graduates also rack up the most student-loan debt.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of new Department of Education data shows that median debt loads at schools specializing in art, music and design average $21,576, which works out to a loan payment of about $248 a month. That is a heavy burden, considering that salaries for graduates of such schools with five or fewer years’ experience cluster around $40,000, according to PayScale.com.
The data also show that graduates of research universities tend to carry less debt than those of liberal-arts colleges. Median debt loads average $19,445 for liberal-arts schools, versus $18,100 for research universities.

Dawn Dugan:

What’s more expensive than going to college? Until recently, the answer was easy: not going to college. Numerous studies over the years have shown that individuals with college degrees significantly out-earn those with high school degrees by $1 million or more over the course of a lifetime.
But as the cost of education increases faster than inflation and the economy remains relatively weak, people are beginning to question how they spend their education dollars. As student loans hit the $1 trillion mark and more and more graduates are faced with years of paying staggering monthly payments, many are starting to ask themselves, “Is it worth it?”
While there’s no doubt that a college degree increases earning power and broadens opportunities, today’s high cost of education means it makes sense to more carefully consider which degree you earn. When it comes to return on investment (ROI), not all degrees are considered equal. This article exposes eight college degrees with poor ROI.

Superintendent Jane Belmore (652K PDF):

This information is provided in response to a request for more information made at the January 28th Regular Board of Education meeting regarding the implication of CogAT for the 2012-13 school year. Communication with DPI TAG consultant has occurred on numerous occasions. A Review Committee, with additional members, met twice since January 28 and a survey of options was developed and distributed to the Assessment Review Committee and elementary and middle school principals. Results from this survey, in addition to previous Review Committee information, were used to develop the recommendation.
The BOE requested a report on CogAT which is attached to this memo.

A few charts from the report:

Much more on the 2010 parent complaint on Madison’s “Talented & Gifted” program, here. The move to more one size fits all classes, such as English 10 a few years ago, reduced curricular options for all students. East High School “Redesign” halted.

Andrew Statz, Chief Information Officer (PDF):

Project Description: Hanover offers school districts a service to aggregate, compile, and analyze data, gather intelligence, and identify best practices suited to specific needs of their district. They will do market research, surveys, benchmarking, and evaluating efficiencies.
Analysis: MMSD guides the analysis topics assigned to Hanover. With a single track of service, Hanover works on one topic at a time from start to finish before moving on to another topic. MMSD was a member for the first time in early 2010. Examples of reports prepared or being prepared specifically for MMSD since that time include:
Compilation and coding of public input for the Building Our Future Plan to address achievement gaps
Review of the effectiveness of the four block schedule at La Follette High School;
Determining the impact and satisfaction level of summer school offerings;
Survey of various stakeholders to determine what makes the “ideal
graduate”;
Review of staff recognition programs of other districts;
Identification of a methodology to approve new handheld and wireless
technology in classrooms; and
Various information papers.

Clusty Search: Hanover Research Council.

Kenneth Bernstein, via Valerie Strauss:

You are a college professor.
I have just retired as a high school teacher.
I have some bad news for you. In case you do not already see what is happening, I want to warn you of what to expect from the students who will be arriving in your classroom, even if you teach in a highly selective institution.
No Child Left Behind went into effect for the 2002-03 academic year, which means that America’s public schools have been operating under the pressures and constrictions imposed by that law for a decade. Since the testing requirements were imposed beginning in third grade, the students arriving in your institution have been subject to the full extent of the law’s requirements. While it is true that the U.S. Department of Education is now issuing waivers on some of the provisions of the law to certain states, those states must agree to other provisions that will have as deleterious an effect on real student learning as did No Child Left Behind–we have already seen that in public schools, most notably in high schools.
……
I mentioned that at least half my students were in AP classes. The explosive growth of these classes, driven in part by high school rankings like the yearly Challenge Index created by Jay Mathews of The Washington Post, is also responsible for some of the problems you will encounter with students entering your institutions. The College Board did recognize that not everything being labeled as AP met the standards of a college-level course, so it required teachers to submit syllabi for approval to ensure a minimal degree of rigor, at least on paper. But many of the courses still focus on the AP exam, and that focus can be as detrimental to learning as the kinds of tests imposed under No Child Left Behind.
Let me use as an example my own AP course, U.S. Government and Politics. I served several times as a reader for the examination that follows the course. In that capacity, I read the constructed responses that make up half of the score of a student’s examination. I saw several problems.

Matthew DeFour:

But because the district has made significant progress and expects to make further improvements to its program, it won’t face any penalties at this time, DPI spokesman Patrick Gasper said.
Parents who filed a complaint with the DPI about Madison’s TAG program in September 2010, and wrote the DPI another letter last fall about shortcomings in the district’s middle school offerings, were pleased with the results of the latest audit.
“The preliminary report achieves a good balance of recognizing effort without losing sight of continued weaknesses,” parent Laurie Frost said in an email. “I am happy the district was found to be in only partial compliance, but also very glad the DPI did not levy any financial penalty.”
The DPI determined the district’s program was deficient in 2011, but agreed to an Aug. 22, 2012, compliance deadline. The School Board adopted a TAG plan and hired a program administrator in 2011.

Much more on the 2010 parent complaint on Madison’s “Talented & Gifted” program, here. The move to more one size fits all classes, such as English 10 a few years ago, reduced curricular options for all students.

Keith Bradsher:

Wu Yiebing has been going down coal shafts practically every workday of his life, wrestling an electric drill for $500 a month in the choking dust of claustrophobic tunnels, with one goal in mind: paying for his daughter’s education.
His wife, Cao Weiping, toils from dawn to sunset in orchards every day during apple season in May and June. She earns $12 a day tying little plastic bags one at a time around 3,000 young apples on trees, to protect them from insects. The rest of the year she works as a substitute store clerk, earning several dollars a day, all going toward their daughter’s education.
Many families in the West sacrifice to put their children through school, saving for college educations that they hope will lead to a better life. Few efforts can compare with the heavy financial burden that millions of lower-income Chinese parents now endure as they push their children to obtain as much education as possible.
Yet a college degree no longer ensures a well-paying job, because the number of graduates in China has quadrupled in the last decade.
Mr. Wu and Mrs. Cao, who grew up in tiny villages in western China and became migrants in search of better-paying work, have scrimped their entire lives. For nearly two decades, they have lived in a cramped and drafty 200-square-foot house with a thatch roof. They have never owned a car. They do not take vacations — they have never seen the ocean. They have skipped traditional New Year trips to their ancestral village for up to five straight years to save on bus fares and gifts, and for Mr. Wu to earn extra holiday pay in the mines. Despite their frugality, they have essentially no retirement savings.

Employment Contracts for Administrative Personnel (350K) PDF:

IT HEREBY AGREED by and between the Madison Metropolitan School District (herein referred to as the “District”) and _________________ (hereinafter referred to as the “Administrator”) that the District does hereby employ the Administrator under the terms and conditions specified herein.
This contract shall cover a period of one year, beginning on July 1, _______ and ending on June 30, _______.
RESPONSIBILITIES
The Administrator agrees to perform his/her assigned services, duties, and responsibilities at a professional level of competence, and in compliance with the laws and regulations of the State of Wisconsin and the rules, regulations and policies of the District which are now existing or which may be hereinafter enacted by the District.
At all times, the Administrator shall maintain such licensure (i.e., active and in good standing) with the State of Wisconsin (1) as is required by the State for an individual performing the administrative duties assigned to the Administrator by the District, and (2) as may be separately and additionally required by the District as a discretionary qualification for the assigned position/duties. Failure to maintain such licensure is sufficient grounds for termination of this Contract and the Administrator’s employment with the District.
The Admin’1strator agrees to devote full time to the duties and responsibilities normally expected of the Administrator’s position during the term of this contract, and shall not engage in any pursuit which interferes with the proper discharge of such duties and responsibilities.
The Superintendent of Schools shall have the right to make such assignments or transfers of the Administrator’s services as the interests of the District may demand.
The Administrator shall have the responsibility to become familiar with the contents of the District’s Affirmative Action Plan and shall take an active role in implementing its policies and practices.
SALARY AND LENGTH OF CONTRACT
For the 2013-14 school year the Administrator will be placed on the Administrator’s salary schedule at Salary Grade in consideration for services rendered, the District will pay the Administrator a salary of ___________ for a minimum of _______ days worked (July 1, 2012 through June 30, 2013), as such days are defined by the District’s Human Resources Department for payroll purposes. Additional work at times such as weekends, after typical business hours, etc. may sometimes be necessary or required, but does not entitle the Administrator to additional compensation (except as provided herein in regard to additional assigned summer work).
The function of specifying a number of working days within this contract is to define the extent to which the Administrator’s annual salary is pro-rated off the annual amount that would be applicable to a “225 day” (i.e., 100% of specified salary) contract at the same salary Grade and Step. Administrative personnel employed on a Jess than 225 day basis shall be available for additional employment during the summer months when requested/required by the Superintendent of Schools. When such additional summer work is expressly requested or required by written direction from the Superintendent, the Administrator shall receive additional compensation at a daily salary rate of _________ for the number of full additional days requested or required.

The timing and content of Administrator contracts has been somewhat controversial over the years (more). It appears that contracts continue to be in place (based on the dates contained in this document) prior to the District’s annual budget cycle.

Norman Matloff:

In the old days, the U.S. program for foreign-student visas helped developing nations and brought diversity to then white-bread American campuses. Today, the F-1 program, as it is known, has become a profit center for universities and a wage-suppression tool for the technology industry.
International students are attractive to strapped colleges because they tend to pay full tuition or, in the case of public institutions, pay more than full price in out-of-state rates.
Last year, this was taken to a new level at California State University, East Bay, a public institution just south of Oakland. The school directed its master’s degree programs to admit only non-California students, including foreign students. Even before this edict, international students made up 90 percent of its computer-science master’s program.
The pursuit of foreign students by U.S. schools affects not only college access for Americans but also their careers. Back in 1989, an internal report of the National Science Foundation forecast that a large influx of F-1 doctoral students in science, technology, engineering and math — the STEM fields — would suppress wages. The stagnant salaries would then drive the American bachelor’s degree holders in these fields into more lucrative areas, such as business and law, after graduation, and discourage them from pursuing STEM doctorates.

Associated Press:

Gov. Scott Walker will propose a modest increase in funding for Wisconsin public schools in his budget to the Legislature on Wednesday, two years after his steep cuts and all but elimination of collective bargaining for teachers sparked the unsuccessful movement to recall Walker from office.
Walker is also making incentive money available, which could be used as incentive payments for teachers based on how well schools perform on state report cards, Walker told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview.
Walker provided details of his education funding plan to the AP ahead of its public release Sunday. Not only will he put more money into K-12 schools in his two-year budget, Walker will increase funding for the University of Wisconsin System and technical colleges two years after their funding was also slashed.
The roughly 1 percent increase in aid to schools Walker is proposing comes after he cut aid by more than 8 percent in the first year of the last budget. Schools would get $129 million in aid under Walker’s plan, but total K-12 funding would go up $276 million

Related: Wisconsin State Tax Based K-12 Spending Growth Far Exceeds University Funding (2008).
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to propose modest increase in public school funding by Erin Richards & Scott Bauer::

Tom Beebe, project director for Opportunity to Learn Wisconsin, a liberal-leaning group and former executive director of the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools, has been critical of Walker’s cuts to education.
He said the amount of general aid increase proposed for this next biennial budget – $129.2 million over two years – only amounts to about $161 for each of Wisconsin’s 800,000 public-school students.
“If the revenue cap does not go up, then there is no new money going to schools no matter how much aid increases,” Beebe said. “The increase in school funding simply goes to property taxpayers not into the classroom.”
Mary Bell, president of the Wisconsin Education Association, the state’s largest teacher union, said the modest increase was really just keeping overall revenue for schools flat.
“The stagnant revenue on top of the largest cuts to education funding in Wisconsin history in the last budget is another clear indication that this governor has no intention of supporting neighborhood schools,” Bell said in a statement.
“(Walker’s) real focus is privatizing public education with another infusion of resources to the unaccountable taxpayer-funded private school voucher program while leaving our neighborhood public schools on life support,” she added.

Demetria Gallegos:

I’ve been listening this month to the conversation at our house, and it is deflatingly predictable: “Have you finished your homework? Then why are you playing computer games?” “Your room is still a mess, put that down until it’s done.” “Have you gotten off the couch today?” And this recent favorite, “You are banned from playing games until the end of the school year.”
We have a bad case of digital distemper, but it has been hard to find a solution. As with going on a diet, you still have to eat. Our girls have hours of computer-based homework almost every night. We have a terrible time knowing when the work is done and when the play has begun.
On one infamous Sunday in December, we watched 14½ hours of Netflix. I knew it was bad but didn’t know how bad until I looked back at the log and spotted a dozen episodes of “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.” I immediately canceled Netflix. But that’s like cutting the head off the hydra.

Andrea Michalowsky:

The students in Professor Peter Froehlich’s “Intermediate Programming” and “Introduction to Programming for Scientists and Engineers” (a Python language class) classes, boycotted their finals last December. The former initially organized the boycott and the latter followed suit.
To avoid the stress of taking their exam, the students decided to capitalize on a loophole in Froehlich’s grading system.
“In my courses, all grades are relative to the highest actually achieved score. Thus, if no one showed up and everyone got 0 percent, everyone would be marked as 100 percent,” Froehlich wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
Since Froehlich started at Hopkins in 2005, no class had taken that challenge until last semester. Both of Froelich’s classes were awarded with perfect scores on their final exams.
“Peter tends to say this in each of his classes as almost a challenge to the entire class to execute,” James Gliwa, a student in Intermediate Programming, wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
Froehlich speculated that the Occupy Wall Street movement provided students with a model, as students coined the phrase “Occupy Hackerman” to describe their effort. He also cited the use of the online forum Piazza as facilitating the boycott.

Gautam Naik:

At a former paper-printing factory in Hong Kong, a 20-year-old wunderkind named Zhao Bowen has embarked on a challenging and potentially controversial quest: uncovering the genetics of intelligence.
Mr. Zhao is a high-school dropout who has been described as China’s Bill Gates. He oversees the cognitive genomics lab at BGI, a private company that is partly funded by the Chinese government.
At the Hong Kong facility, more than 100 powerful gene-sequencing machines are deciphering about 2,200 DNA samples, reading off their 3.2 billion chemical base pairs one letter at a time. These are no ordinary DNA samples. Most come from some of America’s brightest people–extreme outliers in the intelligence sweepstakes.
The majority of the DNA samples come from people with IQs of 160 or higher. By comparison, average IQ in any population is set at 100. The average Nobel laureate registers at around 145. Only one in every 30,000 people is as smart as most of the participants in the Hong Kong project–and finding them was a quest of its own.

Richard Phelps 365K PDF, via a kind email:

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, one of the US’s largest insurers refused to honor damage claims from customers living on the US Gulf Coast who submitted hurricane insurance claims, asserting that their property had not been damaged by hurricane, but by flooding. Only a high-stakes, high-profile, class-action lawsuit ultimately pried the insurance payments loose. Currently, this large US insurance company, with its own trust issues, is running a series of television commercials poking fun at an institution that it assumes is trusted by the public even less–the Internet. “They wouldn’t put it on the Internet if it wasn’t true” says the naïve foil who purchased allegedly inferior insurance after believing the promises in an Internet advertisement, presumably eliciting off-screen laughter in millions of living rooms.
Now suppose that you are responsible for learning the “state of the art” in the research literature on an important, politically-sensitive, and hotly-contested public policy topic. You can save money by hiring master’s level public policy students or recent graduates, though none with any particular knowledge or experience in the topic at hand–a highly specialized topic with its own doctoral-level training, occupational specializations, and vocabulary. You give your public policy masters a computer with an Internet browser and ask them to complete their reports within a few months. What would you expect them to produce?
You can see for yourself at the website of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development2 (OECD). In 2009 the OECD launched the Review on Evaluation and Assessment Frameworks for Improving School Outcomes. Apparently the “Review” has not claimed an acronym. In my own interest, then, I give it one–REAFISO.3
In its own words, REAFISO was created to:
“…provide analysis and policy advice to countries on the following overarching policy question: How can assessment and evaluation policies work together more effectively to improve student outcomes in primary and secondary schools?”
To answer this question, the OECD intended to:
“…look at the various components of assessment and evaluation frameworks that countries use with the objective of improving the student outcomes produced by schools…. and
“…extend and add value to the existing body of international work on evaluation and assessment policies.”
REAFISO’s work interested me for two reasons. First, I once worked at the OECD, on fixed- length consulting contracts accumulating to sixteen months. I admired and respected their education research work and thoroughly enjoyed my time outside work hours. (The OECD is based in Paris.) I particularly appreciate the OECD’s education (statistical) indicators initiatives.
Second, I have worked myself and on my own time to address the overarching question they pose, ultimately publishing a meta-analysis and research summary of the effect of testing on student achievement. As I lacked the OECD’s considerable resources, it took me some time–a decade, as it turned out–to reach a satisfactory stage of completion. I hedge on the word “completion” because I do not believe it possible for one individual to collect all the studies in this enormous research literature.
……
Deficiencies of the OECD’s REAFISO research reviews include:
overwhelming dependence on US sources;
overwhelming dependence on inexpensive, easily-found documents;
overwhelming dependence on the work of economists and education professors;
wholesale neglect of the relevant literature in psychology, the social science that
invented cognitive assessment, and from practicing assessment and measurement
professionals; and
wholesale neglect of the majority of pertinent research.
Moreover, it seems that REAFISO has fully aligned itself with a single faction within the heterogeneous universe of education research–the radical constructivists. Has the OECD joined the US education establishment? One wouldn’t think that it had the same (self-) interests. Yet, canon by canon by canon, REAFISO’s work seems to subscribe to US education establishment dogma. For example, in her report “Assessment and Innovation in Education”, Janet Looney writes

The paper is also available here.

Lauren_Thomas:

How has school changed since you began teaching?
Physically, the school and grounds have improved markedly. Our building, parking areas, playing fields, and land lab are beautiful and much more functional than 30 years ago. A great deal of the credit for this should go to Mr. Meek and to both Mr. Meek and Mr. Weinfurtner for the land lab. In addition, the educational technology we’ve come to take for granted was barely dreamed of when I first started teaching.
Our Athens High School students are pretty much the same as they have always been. They were and are bright, often intensely interested in issues and learning, naturally naive, mostly polite and caring toward one another.
On the other hand, what happens in our classrooms hasn’t changed much either. In some senses this is good because we have a dedicated and intelligent faculty who recognize the task of preparing our students to be capable, engaged citizens as the privilege it is. At the same time, we too often fail to make the most of the insights of educational research that have demonstrated repeatedly that students learn best when they are actively engaged in discovery. We have so many new tools and access to real data and original sources that can foster such learning given a knowledgeable guide, and yet we have too seldom pushed the envelope.

Athens High School The Plains, Ohio.

Alan Borsuk:

MAP is very different from the WKCE. It is given by computer, it is given three times a year (in most schools), and results are known immediately. I’ve sat in on teacher meetings where MAP results were being used well to diagnose students’ progress and prod good discussion of what teachers could do to seek better results.
Some school districts (West Allis-West Milwaukee is one) are using MAP results as part of evaluating teachers. Milwaukee Public Schools, which began using MAP several years ago, isn’t doing that, but it is using overall MAP results as an important component of judging whether a school is meeting its goals.
MAP is an “adaptive” test – that is, the computer program modifies each test based on how a child answers each question. Get a question right and the next question is harder. Get a question wrong and the next one is easier. This allows the results to pinpoint more exactly how a child is doing and aims to have every student challenged – the best don’t breeze through, the worst don’t give up when they’re entirely lost.
MAP tests are generally given three times a year, which is one of the things supporters like and critics hate. On the one hand, you get data frequently and can make mid-course corrections. On the other hand, it means more times in the year when school life is disrupted.
A MAP spokeswoman said in December there were 287 “partners” in Wisconsin, ranging from MPS down to individual private schools. Many suburban districts use MAP, as do many Catholic and other private schools and charter schools.
At a lot of schools in southeastern Wisconsin, there is enthusiasm for using MAP and it is seen as a good way to judge how kids are doing and to determine what to focus on in helping them.

Madison recently began using “Measures of Academic Progress”.

Jack Craver:

Tension over Madison Prep, a controversial charter school proposal that the Madison School Board rejected in December 2011, appears to linger in this year’s races for School Board. Some wonder if the racial tensions that the school, which was geared toward minority students, have now provoked a backlash against African-American candidates running for office.
In one of the contests, School Board President James Howard, who was one of two board members to vote in favor of establishing Madison Prep as a “non-instrumentality” school, meaning it would operate separately from the school district and employ non-district and non-unionized staff, is facing an opponent who entered the race in large part to oppose such projects.
“We should be looking for solutions within our public schools, not giving away taxpayer dollars to unaccountable, non-instrumental charter schools,” says Greg Packnett, who works as a legislative aide to state Reps. Christine Sinicki, D-Milwaukee, and Penny Bernard-Schaber, D-Appleton, and is active in local Democratic politics.
Howard, in a recent interview with the Cap Times editorial board, suggested that Packnett was recruited to run by the Dane County Democrats (Packnett sits on the executive board and has received the group’s endorsement) and others unhappy with Howard’s vote on Madison Prep and threatened by his strong advocacy for hiring more minority teachers and staff.
“In the debates, those are the two things that always come up — Madison Prep and diversity hiring. I’m being challenged on my views on diversity hiring and I’m not retreating on that,” he said.
Howard pins much of the blame on the Democratic Party of Dane County. He says he is puzzled by the involvement by a partisan group in what is officially a nonpartisan race, as well as the involvement of a county organization, whose membership includes people from outside of Madison, in a city race.

Much more on “>the rejected Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter school, here.

Will Sentell:

Louisiana has the second-lowest public high school graduation rate in the nation for special education students, according to federal figures.
The rate in Louisiana, 29 percent, is only lower than Mississippi and Nevada, statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Education show. The graduation rate in both those states is 23 percent.
South Dakota is tops in the nation at 84 percent, federal figures show. The national average is 58 percent.
Louisiana’s dismal rate is one of the key drivers behind state Superintendent of Education John White’s push to revamp the way the state finances special education.

Ed Vogel:

The Nevada System of Higher Education’s chancellor found himself Friday inside a hornet’s nest of angry legislators who expressed disgust over the lack of state funds their local colleges and universities would receive under a new formula.
While Dan Klaich said the formula is designed to bring fairness and equity and lead to higher graduation rates, he added it might work better if higher education was funded at pre-recession levels.
Under the governor’s proposed budget, higher education would receive $946.5 million in state support over the two-year period that starts in July, a 5.9 percent increase over the current two-year budget. But state support for higher education was $1.316 billion in 2007-09.

Erin Richards:

In choosing a company to design a computer-based student-information system for all of Wisconsin’s public schools, the state put a local bidder at a disadvantage after it removed an evaluator and incorrectly calculated cost proposals, according to a protest filed Friday.
The challenge to the outcome of the Department of Administration’s procurement process for a statewide student-information system vendor comes from Stevens Point-based Skyward Inc., which provides school management software to 221 Wisconsin school districts covering 39% of the state’s students.
The company’s formal protest comes two weeks after the department announced it intended to negotiate a contract with rival bidder Infinite Campus, a school software company from Minnesota serving fewer districts in Wisconsin. The department said Infinite Campus earned the highest technical score and lowest cost bid.
The contract to build the system could be worth between $60 million and $90 million over the next decade, according to details provided by Skyward.
Department spokeswoman Stephanie Marquis defended the state’s procurement procedure, saying that it identified the best product for the best price in a transparent process free of outside influence.

The Wisconsin company that lost out on a contract to run a student information system in the state’s schools protested the awarding of the bid to Minnesota’s Infinite Campus on Friday, arguing that the process was unfair.
Skyward Inc., of Stevens Point, said in its protest filed with the state Department of Public Instruction that it should be awarded the contract or all the bids should be thrown out. Skyward said DPI, as well as the committee of five unidentified people who evaluated the bids, “failed to provide a fair, transparent, and open process.”
Skyward, which employs about 270 people statewide, threatened to leave Wisconsin if it lost the contract that’s $15 million initially but could grow to as high as $80 million over the next decade. The company has been waging a public relations battle for the past two weeks since the state announced the contract would be going to Infinite Campus of Blaine, Minn., running full-page ads in newspapers across the state urging people to contact Gov. Scott Walker.

Hillary Gavan:

School District of Beloit Director of Technology Victor Masliah said Beloit has been using Skyward Student system for 20 years. On Monday he said all districts have been asked to convert their student system side to Infinite Campus in the next five years. The latest state decision only affects the Skyward Student side, as Infinite Campus does not have a business side.
“The longer we wait, the higher our conversion costs may be as we continue to enter more types of data into our Skyward Student system daily,” he said.
Masliah said 80 percent of Wisconsin school districts use the business side of Skyward, as it’s recognized to be the best business system for schools.
The student side of Skyward costs approximately $52,000 per year, and the business side costs about $66,000 per year. Transitioning a system brings significant costs in data conversions, data migrations and trainings. For example, switching to a different Student system could potentially cost between $200,000 to $450,000.

wsaw:

The evaluation was accurate and fair. That’s what Infinite Campus says about the process used to pick them to provide student information services for most schools across the Badger State.
Over the past couple weeks we’ve heard a lot from Skyward. They’re asking Wisconsin residents to encourage the state Department of Instruction to overturn its decision to go with Infinite Campus.
Today, we examined the actual score card that lead Infinite Campus, based in Minnesota, to get the job. That scorecard was released by Infinite Campus.
It ranks 31 different categories such as grading, attendance and technical support. Infinite Campus beat out six different candidates, including Skyward in nearly every category. The process by which the scores were awarded isn’t detailed, and the Department of Public Instruction said they won’t comment on the process.

Much more on Infinite Campus, here.
The Wisconsin DPI’s scorecard (200K PDF).

Erin Richards:

Milwaukee’s private-school voucher program has swelled to nearly 25,000 students in 113 schools that largely mirror local public schools in terms of race and poverty, and rapid enrollment growth is raising new questions about how much taxpayer money the private schools should receive to adequately serve students.
Results from an annual survey of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program released Wednesday underscore what’s already well-known about the voucher program: Participating private schools spend less to educate each pupil than Milwaukee Public Schools but offer little achievement data about how those pupils are doing.
The survey also offers a new reason that the voucher schools’ per-pupil costs may be lower: About a third of the private schools report they do not have specialty teachers for subjects such as art, music and physical education.
MPS has also struggled to provide adequate numbers of specialty teachers in an era of tight budgets.
The survey results come from the Public Policy Forum, a Milwaukee policy research organization that conducted its 15th annual census of the voucher program in Milwaukee, which is in its 23rd year. The forum also now surveys the 2-year-old voucher program in Racine.
“Overall, we find that students who receive vouchers to attend these private schools look very much like students in MPS, but we are not investing much in them as a public,” said Anneliese Dickman, research director for the forum. “The results raise the question of whether these are the types of low-income students who deserve more funding.”

Michael Lomax:

(Special to The Root) — President Barack Obama was exactly right in his State of the Union speech to mention the need for college graduates as part of his prescription for more American jobs. While there are more job seekers than jobs in our struggling economy, many employers are hiring but are having a hard time finding the college graduates they need to fill today’s high-technology — and high-paying — jobs.
The trouble is, he didn’t give the need for college graduates much more than a mention. “Most young people,” he said, “will need some higher education.” Most young people? Some higher education?
He acknowledged that “skyrocketing costs price way too many young people out of a higher education or saddle them with unsustainable debt.” But he proposed no new aid, just conditioning federal aid to colleges on their affordability and introducing a college scorecard to help parents and students get value for their education dollars.

Cindy Koeppel, via a kind email:

Congress in the Classroom is a national, award-winning education program developed and sponsored by The Dirksen Congressional Center, the workshop is dedicated to the exchange of ideas and information on teaching about Congress.
Congress in the Classroom® is designed for high school or middle school teachers who teach U.S. history, government, civics, political science, or
social studies. Thirty-five teachers will be selected to take part in the
program.
Applications will be accepted through March 15. We expect to confirm selections by March 29
The workshop will feature a variety of sessions related to the U.S. Congress.
Presenters will emphasize ideas and resources that teachers can use almost

Stephanie Simon:

Getting in can be grueling.
Students may be asked to submit a 15-page typed research paper, an original short story, or a handwritten essay on the historical figure they would most like to meet. There are interviews. Exams. And pages of questions for parents to answer, including: How do you intend to help this school if we admit your son or daughter?
These aren’t college applications. They’re applications for seats at charter schools.
Charters are public schools, funded by taxpayers and widely promoted as open to all. But Reuters has found that across the United States, charters aggressively screen student applicants, assessing their academic records, parental support, disciplinary history, motivation, special needs and even their citizenship, sometimes in violation of state and federal law.
“I didn’t get the sense that was what charter schools were all about – we’ll pick the students who are the most motivated? Who are going to make our test scores look good?” said Michelle Newman, whose 8-year-old son lost his seat in an Ohio charter school last fall after he did poorly on an admissions test. “It left a bad taste in my mouth.”
Set up as alternatives to traditional public schools, charter schools typically operate under private management and often boast small class sizes, innovative teaching styles or a particular academic focus. They’re booming: There are now more than 6,000 in the United States, up from 2,500 a decade ago, educating a record 2.3 million children.

Stephanie Simon:

Charter schools pride themselves on asking a lot of their students. Many ask a great deal of parents, too.
Nearly 40 percent of charters nationwide do not participate in the federal subsidized lunch program, often because they don’t have space for a kitchen or don’t want to deal with the paperwork, according to the pro-charter Center for Education Reform.
That can leave low-income parents scrambling to find a way to feed their children. Nearly half of American school kids are eligible for subsidized meals, and more than 90 percent of traditional public schools provide them.
Most states don’t require charter schools to offer transportation, so that’s often up to parents, too.
And then there’s the forced volunteerism. Traditional public schools can and sometimes do ask parents to help out, but they can’t force the issue. Scores of charter schools, however, require parents to work up to 40 hours a year – or forfeit their child’s seat. To meet the mandate, parents might chaperone field trips, keep order at lunch or direct traffic in the parking lot.

Mike Ivey:

Wisconsin is among the top 10 states for people moving out, according to the annual survey from United Van Lines. Forbes reported the story recently and it has been widely circulated — although probably not by many chambers of commerce.
The moving company United Van Lines has been doing the survey for 36 years and analyzed some 125,000 residential moves in the continental U.S. last year. While not scientific, it does provide a nice snapshot of migration patterns, along with fodder for social media chatter.
“I think people see Wisconsin as a dead end,” says George Dreckmann, longtime city of Madison recycling coordinator. “The paper industry is near death, the auto industry is gone. Our flagship university is closed to most of the state’s kids. The government under both Walker and (former Gov. Jim) Doyle showed no initiative or imagination. If I wasn’t 62, I’d be leaving, too.”
At No. 10 with 55 percent of 2,405 United Van Lines moves considered “outbound,” Wisconsin isn’t alone as a Great Lakes state seeing residents flee. Illinois is No. 2 and Michigan is No. 6. New Jersey was No. 1 with 62 percent of moves outbound. The top 10 also includes West Virginia (No. 3), New York (No. 4); New Mexico (No. 5); Connecticut (No. 7); Maine (No. 8) and Kentucky (No. 9).

Fiona Macrae:

The belief that girls are brainier and better behaved is holding boys back at school, research suggests.
A study of British pupils found that, from a young age, children think girls are academically superior.
And, what’s more, they believe that adults think so too.
University of Kent researchers said the beliefs may be self-fulfilling and help explain why boys lag behind at so many subjects.
Simply boosting boys’ self-belief could help close the academic gap, they said.
Research showed that boys performed better in tests when told they were as good as girls.
In the first part of the study, 238 pupils aged between four and ten were given a series of statements about children’s ability and behaviour.

The Capital Times:

As Madison voters prepare to cast ballots Tuesday in important primary elections for the state Supreme Court and the Madison School Board, it is vital to recognize that the most critical challenge facing school districts across Wisconsin is the assault on public education that has been launched by out-of-state special interest groups and the politicians who do their bidding.
Supreme Court Justice Patience Roggensack is seeking re-election with heavy funding from Michigan, Texas and Arkansas donors with long histories of seeking to elect officials who will undermine public education with voucher schemes that divert taxpayer dollars to private schools. That should disqualify Roggensack in the eyes of any voter who wants to maintain the Wisconsin tradition of providing strong support for great public schools.
In the Madison School Board race, all three candidates express support for public schools, which is an indication that they know the community and surrounding Dane County. But, even in what has historically been a center of support for public education, it is important for voters to be aware of how and when outside groups will seek to influence local elections.
That’s why The Madison Institute’s Progressive Round Table forum on Saturday, Feb. 16, is so necessary.
The “Public Schools Under Attack: Vouchers, Virtual and Charter Schools” discussion will feature Julie Underwood, the UW-Madison dean of education, Madison School Board Vice President Marge Passman and state Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts, the former chair of the Assembly Education Committee.

From the West High PTSO:
Monday evening, February 18th, at 7:00PM, the West HOUSE Connection is sponsoring a Board of Education Candidate Forum. Each candidate will answer written questions submitted by community members and the audience. Please join us!
The forum will be held at the Urban League of Greater Madison (http://www.ulgm.org), 2222 South Park Street, 1st Floor Rooms A&B Located Directly Off the Lobby. There is plenty of parking adjacent to the building. The Goodman South Madison Branch Library is located in the same building, see http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/goodman-south for a map.
If you would like to submit a question for the candidates please email Paul Radspinner at Pradspinner@att.net, or call, 233-7076.
Our schools are at the heart of our community. We encourage you to attend this important informative meeting in support of your student, our schools, and our community. For more information about the Board of Education see https://boeweb.madison.k12.wi.us/
Este es un mensaje importante de la Organización de Padres y Madres, Maestros, y Estudiantes (PTSO) de la escuela West.
El grupo de West HOUSE Connection está auspiciando el Foro de Candidatos a la Junta Educativa el lunes, 18 de febrero, a las 7:00 PM. Cada candidato responderá a preguntas escritas y enviadas por miembros de la comunidad y del público. ¡Por favor, reúnase con nosotros!
El foro estará en el Urban League of Greater Madison, 2222 South Park Street, Madison, WI 53713 (Salones A y B del primer piso, ubicados cerca a la puerta del edificio.) Hay suficiente estacionamiento a lado del edificio. La Biblioteca pública de Madison: Goodman South está ubicada en el mismo edificio. Para ver un mapa, vaya a la página electrónica http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/goodman-south
Si quiere enviar una pregunta para los candidatos, por favor envíela a Paul Radspinner al Pradspinner@att.net, o llame, 233-7076.
Nuestras escuelas están al centro de nuestra comunidad. Les alentamos asistir a esta reunión importante e informativa para apoyar a sus estudiantes, nuestras escuelas, y nuestra comunidad. Para conseguir más información sobre La Junta Educativa vaya a la página electrónica https://boeweb.madison.k12.wi.us/

ahrWisconsin State Journal:

Three candidates vying to succeed Maya Cole for Seat 5 on the Madison School Board after incumbent Cole announced last year she would not seek a third term. The primary is Tuesday; the top two finishers will advance to the general election April 2.

More notes and links, here.

Chris Dixon:

I talk a lot to people who are deciding between startups and established companies. They’re usually early in their careers and have been exclusively affiliated with well-known schools and companies. As a result, they’re accustomed to praise from family and friends. Going to a startup is scary, as Jessica Livingstone, cofounder of Y Combinator, describes:

Everyone you encounter will have doubts about what you’re doing–investors, potential employees, reporters, your family and friends. What you don’t realize until you start a startup is how much external validation you’ve gotten for the conservative choices you’ve made in the past. You go to college and everyone says, “Great!” Then you graduate get a job at Google and everyone says, “Great!”

But optimizing for external validation is a dangerous trap. You’re fighting over a fixed pie against well-credentialed peers. The most likely outcome is a middle management job where you’ll have little impact and never seriously attempt to realize your ambitions. Peter Thiel’s personal experience illustrates this well:

Laurie Burkett:

Fearful of accidentally chomping down on cardboard-stuffed dumplings or toxic chicken, Chinese consumers may soon be able to run safety tests on their food before putting it in their mouths.
According to a report from the official Xinhua news agency, scientists at the Tianjin University of Science and Technology in northern China have developed an at-home testing kit to help consumers detect more than 60 varieties of chemicals in their food.
The tests, conducted with indicator paper, let consumers know within minutes if a food sample contains harmful substances, Xinhua said, predicting the product will likely be in high demand.

Mike Nichols:

Wisconsin students with disabilities and unique needs are sometimes unable to secure what, in their parents’ judgment, is an appropriate education at a public school. The courts and legislators have recognized that federal funds must be available for educating such students in private schools instead.
There is, nevertheless, a large disparity between the formally reported percentage of children in Wisconsin public schools who have disabilities (approximately 14 percent) and the percentage of children in private schools who have disabilities (less than 2 percent).1
This has led some to contend that private schools are not receptive to children with special needs.
A survey of private school administrators conducted by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute as part of the research for this paper dispels that myth. Private school administrators say both that they educate more children with disabilities (about 6 percent) than official Department of Public Instruction numbers reflect, and that would like to teach even more.
There are myriad, inter-related reasons why they can’t or don’t. Denials of funding are not uncommon, and what funding does exist is often inadequate. The system for determining which children receive assistance is not uniform. Public school officials are not always conducting the “child find” process in a timely manner. There is, in fact, at least the appearance of an inherent conflict of interest in requiring public school districts to identify and evaluate children in private schools who will receive federal funding through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) because this money is, in essence, subtracted from resources otherwise available to the school district.

Steven Greenhouse:

One of the nation’s largest nurses’ unions — the National Federation of Nurses — plans to announce on Thursday that it will affiliate with the far larger American Federation of Teachers.
Barbara Crane, the president of the nurses’ federation, said her group’s national board voted to join forces with the teachers’ union to give the nurses more political clout and money to try to unionize more nurses.
“We were not going to be able to achieve some of our goals unless we found a partner,” said Ms. Crane, whose union represents 34,000 nurses in Montana, Ohio, Oregon and Washington. “We wanted a professional union that believes in growth through organizing.”

Sarah Cain:

Jessica Lahey, author of the piece “Introverted Kids Need to Learn to Speak Up at School,” is a teacher who obviously cares deeply for her students. She’s absolutely right that reticent children need to be sensitively encouraged to push through their fears so they can make their voices heard when they have something to say, and so they can face the world with confidence and joy.
As others have pointed out in the comments, however, her article is primarily about shy children who fear social judgment, not introverts who simply prefer quieter environments and think before speaking. And grading shy kids based on class participation may not be the best way to help them.
Here are some alternative ideas for helping shy children:

Electronic Frontier Foundation:

The open access movement is a long-standing campaign in the world of research to make scholarly works freely available and reusable. One of its fundamental premises is that the progress of knowledge and culture happens scholarly works of all kinds are widely shared, not hidden in ivory towers built with paywalls and shorn by harsh legal regimes.
Scholarly journal publishers currently compile research done by professors (for free), send articles out to be peer reviewed (for free), and distribute the edited journals back to universities around the world (for costs anywhere up to $35,000 each). Subscription prices have outpaced inflation by over 250 percent in the past 30 years, and these fees go straight to the publisher. Neither the authors nor their institutions are paid a cent, and the research itself–which is largely funded by taxpayers–remains difficult to attain. Skyrocketing costs have forced university libraries–even Harvard’s, the richest American university–to pick and choose between journal subscriptions.
The result: students and citizens face barriers accessing information they need; professors have a harder time reviewing and teaching the state of the art; and cutting-edge research remains hidden behind paywalls, depriving it of the visibility it deserves.

Ruth Simon & Michael Corkery:

U.S. and state officials are intensifying efforts to hold colleges accountable for what happens after graduation, a sign of frustration with sky-high tuition costs and student-loan debt.
Sens. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) are expected to reintroduce this week legislation that would require states to make more accessible the average salaries of colleges’ graduates. The figures could help prospective students compare salaries by college and major to assess the best return on their investment.
A similar bipartisan bill died last year, but a renewed push has gained political momentum in recent weeks. “This begins to introduce some market forces into the academic arena that have not been there,” said Mr. Wyden, adding that support for the move is unusually broad given the political divide in Washington. Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.), the House majority leader, said he intends to support a similar measure in the House.
High-school seniors now trying to decide which college to attend next fall are awash with information about costs, from dorm rooms to meal plans. But there is almost no easy way to tell what graduates at specific schools earn–or how many found jobs in their chosen field. Supporters say more transparency is needed as students graduate deeper in debt and enter the rocky job market.

Tom Bartlett:

framed print of “The Garden of Earthly Delights” hangs above the moss-green, L-shaped sectional in John Bargh’s office on the third floor of Yale University’s Kirtland Hall. Hieronymus Bosch’s famous triptych imagines a natural environment that is like ours (water, flowers) yet not (enormous spiked and translucent orbs). What precisely the 15th-century Dutch master had in mind is still a mystery, though theories abound. On the left is presumably paradise, in the middle is the world, and on the right is hell, complete with knife-faced monster and human-devouring bird devil.
By Bosch’s standard, it’s too much to say the past year has been hellish for Bargh, but it hasn’t been paradise either. Along with personal upheaval, including a lengthy child-custody battle, he has coped with what amounts to an assault on his life’s work, the research that pushed him into prominence, the studies that Malcolm Gladwell called “fascinating” and Daniel Kahneman deemed “classic.” What was once widely praised is now being pilloried in some quarters as emblematic of the shoddiness and shallowness of social psychology. When Bargh responded to one such salvo with a couple of sarcastic blog posts, he was ridiculed as going on a “one-man rampage.” He took the posts down and regrets writing them, but his frustration and sadness at how he’s been treated remain.

Adam Rosenberg:

People ask me what I do for a living. It’s a fair question, one I certainly feel comfortable asking other people, and, yet, one I can’t easily answer for my own career. I tell them I’m an “industrial mathematician.”
A business operates some set of processes or activities within a set of limitations or constraints and realizes some kind of outcome, revenue or profit, from it. (How is that for a general definition of a business?) In its operation, a business makes choices or decisions that affect the outcome. The process of selecting the best decisions that stay within the business limitations is called “constrained optimization.”
My education is in a field called “Operations Research,” so named because it started as the study of ways to help the U.S. military after World War II. It is also called “Management Science” with similar fields called “Industrial Engineering” and “Engineering-Economic Systems.” In one form or another, these fields specialize in constrained optimization, finding the best solution amid a vast array of choices, maximizing a given objective within specified limitations.

Nicola Clark:

For more than a century, the lengthy school days of French children have been punctuated by a midweek day off, in recent decades for most children on Wednesdays, originally created for catechism studies.
The long hours and peculiar weekly rhythm have been criticized as counterproductive to learning and blamed for keeping women out of the full-time work force, as well as widening inequalities between rich and poor because of the demands they place on working parents. Yet the Wednesday break has remained a fulcrum of French family life.
With all that in mind, the government of President François Hollande recently issued a decree introducing a half day of school on Wednesdays for children 3 to 11 starting in September, while reducing the school day by 45 minutes the rest of the week. In a country with a broad consensus in favor of shortening a school day that typically runs from 8:30 a.m. to at least 4 p.m., and sometimes longer, Mr. Hollande’s government still did not expect the plan to be controversial. It has not worked out that way.

Phil Hill:

One of the benefits of participating in an interactive event, such as the recent ELI Webinar that Michael and I led yesterday, is that the learning goes both ways. During the webinar, one of the participants shared a link for a report from Duke University on their first MOOC, Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach, delivered through Coursera in fall 2012. And what a find that was – this is the most thorough description I have yet seen from a university about their experience selecting, development, delivering and analyzing a MOOC. Kudos to Yvonne Belanger and Jessica Thornton, the authors.
What follows are some key excerpts along with some observations, but for anyone considering participation in one of the xMOOCs – read the whole report.

Emma Brown:

It’s the latest sign that the District is on track to become a city where a majority of children are educated not in traditional public schools but in public charters: A California nonprofit group has proposed opening eight D.C. charter schools that would enroll more than 5,000 students by 2019.
The proposal has stirred excitement among those who believe that Rocketship Education, which combines online learning and face-to-face instruction, can radically raise student achievement in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
Rocketship’s charter application — which is the largest ever to come before District officials, and which might win approval this month — arrives on the heels of Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s decision to close 15 half-empty city schools, highlighting an intense debate about the future of public education in the nation’s capital.
A growing number of activists have raised concerns that the traditional school system, facing stiffer-than-ever competition from charters, is in danger of being relegated to a permanently shrunken role. And they worry that Washington has yet to confront what that could mean for taxpayers, families and neighborhoods.