Baby Vinick: Wisconsin schools that had a longer period of virtual or hybrid learning during the pandemic saw graduation rates rise among wealthier students and fall among those at an economic disadvantage, a new study found. The study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, published in the journal Educational Researcher, analyzed data from 429 public high schools in […]
Jeff Eiden: But there’s a major problem undercutting our progress. We don’t have nearly enough skilled workers to get this job done at the speed required. It’s estimated that we’re going to need 1 million more electricians and 400 thousand new HVAC technicians in the next ten years. Tradespeople are the true lifeblood of the clean energy transition — they do […]
Mitchell Schmidt: The parent, only identified in the ruling as Jane Doe 4, was the last of 14 parents who initially sued the district in 2020 over a policy that’s part of a guidance document on student gender identity. The policy covered topics that include communication with the families of transgender and nonbinary students about […]
Carey Wright: Former State Superintendent of Education Dr. Carey Wright rebuts a recent column in the L.A. Times claiming Mississippi “gamed its national reading test scores.” Like educators in Mississippi and across the nation, I was shocked by the deeply cynical column in the Los Angeles Times about Mississippi’s well documented achievements in education over the past […]
Dan Lennington and Will Flanders Encouraging high-school graduation is a policy that garners broad support, as it paves the way for higher wages and a better quality of life. In 2015, bipartisan majorities passed the Every Student Succeeds Act, a law aimed at reducing dropout rates. Since then, dropout rates have declined about 13%. But now a […]
Abbey Machtig This rural patch on Madison’s West Side is one of more than 35 school gardens around the Madison School District, including Lapham, Midvale and Crestwood Elementary schools, Badger Rock Middle School and East and West High Schools. Although school is out for the summer, the gardens are far from empty. A network of volunteers and […]
Olivia Herken: Madison had some of the worst reading gaps in Dane County. Only 10% of Black students in grades 3 through 8 scored proficient or higher in ELA, and only 21% of Hispanic students, compared to 45% of their white counterparts. Other Dane County schools had similar disparities. In Middleton, 20% of Black children […]
Christina Gomez-Schmidt: An essential duty of any school board is to help plan and approve the annual district budget. Like most budgets, household or business, the goal of a school district budget is to match revenue with expenses to produce a balanced budget. This goal ensures that school districts are managing local, state and federal […]
Scott Girard: A bill headed to Gov. Tony Evers’ desk, approved by the state Senate on Wednesday and the Assembly a week earlier, features a variety of new requirements for the state and local school districts on phonics-based reading instruction for 4-year-old kindergarten through third grade. Third grade is widely considered a key turning point […]
Education Policy Innovation Collaborative In this report, we combine data about students in Michigan’s K-12 public schools and public universities with educator certification testing, credentialing, and employment records to examine how the pool of prospective Michigan teachers changes as candidates progress through the pipeline and into the workforce. KEY FINDINGS: Commentary. “Well, it’s kind of […]
Wispolitics: The Senate today approved a bill to turn Wisconsin’s approach to literacy into a phonics-based program in an attempt to improve reading. Senators 25-7 approved the bill, sending AB 321 to Gov. Tony Evers’ desk. The bill would establish an Office of Literacy to contract 64 full-time literacy coaches who would help teachers implement […]
George Will: Ian Rowe, a charter school advocate, notes thatsince the “nation’s report card” was first issued in 1992, in no year “has a majority of whitestudents been reading at grade level. The sad irony is that closing the black-white achievement gap would guarantee only educational mediocrity for all students.” Mysteriously (or perhaps not), California’s most recent […]
Joanne Jacob’s: Mississippi students used to rank dead last in learning, writes Phil Bryant, the former governor of the state, on Real Clear Education. Not any more. “Mississippi fourth-graders, when adjusted for demographics, are ranked as the nation’s top performers in reading and second in math,” according to the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Bryant […]
Scott Girard In total, the 2023-24 preliminary budget spends $581 million. The board will vote on a final budget in October after enrollment is finalized. The budget includes a deficit of $15 million for this year, but $11.5 million in ongoing costs are covered by one-time federal COVID-19 relief money that won’t be available next fall […]
Wall Street Journal: These changes bring the scholarships to 73% of per-pupil union school funding from about 61%, according to the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL). It’s the biggest school-choice advance in the state in years. Charter schools also get a per-pupil boost of $1,727 to $10,991. A voucher program for special needs […]
Abby Machtig; How do you plan to address the achievement gaps between students in Madison schools, specifically around literacy? We put brand new, high-quality standards-aligned materials in every single teacher’s classroom. We also had to support teachers to actually use those because that is a lift. … Do we always get it right the first […]
Tyler Katzenberger: The new version of the bill, passed Wednesday afternoon by the Assembly in 67-27 vote, would prescribe an “intensive” personal literacy plan, including summer classes, for incoming fourth graders who failed to meet third-grade reading benchmarks. Students would exit the plan after they pass a grade-level reading test and their parents agree the […]
Kiera Butlers Ten years ago, Marilyn Muller began to suspect that her kindergarten daughter, Lauryn, was struggling with reading. Lauryn, a bright child, seemed mystified by the process of sounding out simple words. Still, the teachers at the top-rated Massachusetts public school reassured Muller that nothing was wrong, and Lauryn would pick up the skill—eventually. Surely […]
Kevin Mahnken: COVID-19’s cataclysmic impact on K–12 education, coming on the heels of a decade of stagnation in schools, has yielded a lost generation of growth for adolescents, new federal data reveal. Wednesday’s publication of scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — America’s most prominent benchmark of learning, typically referred to as […]
Corrinne Hess In the 2021-22 school year, Wisconsin’s public schools received a total of $16,859 per student, which came from a combination of local property taxes, federal sources and the state. Of that, about $7,728 came from the state, according to the Department of Public Instruction. “In fact, some of the federal funding factored into […]
School Choice Under Attack: Minocqua Brewing Company’s $1 million Super PAC just announced plans to file a new lawsuit to eliminate school choice in Wisconsin – citing the new liberal Supreme Court majority. Permalink here: https://t.co/9BTEyAv7da pic.twitter.com/AC4pJVaT3s — Dan Lennington (@DanLennington) June 20, 2023 Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators (2010) “Well, it’s […]
Elizabeth Wadas: The Madison Metropolitan School District’s head of communications, Tim LeMonds, is on leave amidst an ongoing investigation. NBC15 Investigates confirmed LeMonds’ employment status with the district’s human resources team Thursday afternoon. Earlier this month, MMSD broke its silence after a complaint alleging harassment and bullying against its head of communications was made public […]
Scott Girard But the board also took a big leap of faith, one that will likely require the help of the Madison community, once again, with another operating referendum in fall 2024. It could be the third straight presidential election in which the Madison Metropolitan School District asks voters for more spending authority above state […]
There was a lot of good news for #SchoolChoice in WI yesterday, but it was disconcerting to see that some remain either grossly misinformed on the issue or are intentionally misleading. One of the worst offenders was @RepKristina, who made claimed the program is racist (1/x). pic.twitter.com/OrrC3sEHxx — Will Flanders (@WillFlandersWI) June 15, 2023 School […]
MD Kittle: The Baraboo School District held focus groups as part of a “Racism as a Public Health Issue” initiative that was exclusively for black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) middle schoolers, offering the minority students in attendance a $100 gift card plus a pizza party. According to records obtained by The Wisconsin Daily […]
Alexander Shur: The Legislature’s GOP-controlled finance committee on Tuesday approved increasing K-12 education spending by $1 billion, $1.6 billion less than what Democratic Gov. Tony Evers requested in his budget. The increase will go toward funding both public schools, which Evers prioritized, and the state’s voucher programs, which Evers had originally sought to limit in his […]
NCTQ All children deserve to learn to read, and all teachers deserve the preparation and support that will allow them to help their students achieve this goal. Yet more than one-third of fourth graders—1.3 million children1 in the U.S.—cannot read at a basic level.2 Not learning how to read has lifelong consequences. Students who are not […]
Scott Girard: A report last month showed that students in Madison schools’ full-day and half-day 4-year-old kindergarten programs had similar academic gains over the 2021-22 school year. The results of the study, which covers the first year of the Madison Metropolitan School District’s full-day 4K program, weren’t a surprise to Director of Early Learning Culleen Witthuhn, […]
Jeff Zymeri: School choice programs in Wisconsin have not significantly affected outcomes for public school students or led to a decline in their test scores, according to a study released on Monday. Will Flanders, research director at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which commissioned the study alongside School Choice Wisconsin, told National Review that this finding goes […]
Center for Research on Education Outcomes: Our third installment: This study examines the academic progress of students enrolled in charter schools compared with the progress of students enrolled in traditional public schools (TPS). How charter school students learned over time Fifteen years of student performance can provide insights into how schools, school operators, K–12 academic […]
Tom Loveless: In February, 2023 Bari Weiss produced a podcast, “Why 65% of Fourth Graders Can’t Really Read” and Nicholas Kristof, New York Times columnist, wrote “Two-Thirds of Kids Struggle to Read, and We Know How to Fix It.” Both headlines are misleading. The 65% and two-thirds figures are referring to the percentage of 4th graders who scored […]
Attack on “Balanced Literacy” Is Attack on Professional Teachers, Research https://t.co/O4h4E0ZIxo via @plthomasEdD — Paul Thomas (@plthomasEdD) June 11, 2023 Madison, long tolerating disastrous reading results, embraced “balanced literacy”. “Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to […]
Corrinne Hess: A bipartisan bill is expected to be released this month that would change the way most public schools in Wisconsin teach reading. State Rep. Joel Kitchens, R-Sturgeon Bay, who chairs the Assembly Committee on Education, has been working with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction on the plan that would move more schools […]
Scott Girard: School Board President Nichelle Nichols said in the release that “the state must increase its support for schools” in the upcoming biennial budget. “Without additional revenue, the district will have to make difficult decisions to realign the impact of this budget over the next several years, including the possibility of pursuing additional sources […]
Jason Bedrick and Corey DeAngelis That $900 million is barely 2% of total Arizona state spending of $80.5 billion in 2022. Arizona public schools spend about $14,000 per pupil, or $1.4 billion for 100,000 students. If the department’s enrollment projection is reached, school choice would serve roughly 8% of Arizona’s students for 6% of the […]
Wisconsin State Journal: It’s not just LeMonds’ staff that has struggled to work with him. LeMonds physically blocked a WMTV-TV (Ch. 15) news reporter from posing a question to Superintendent Carlton Jenkins at a public event — even grabbing and pushing down her hand and microphone, as video of the incident shows. He allegedly called […]
Troy Closson: As New York embarks on an ambitious plan to overhaul how children in the nation’s largest school system are taught to read, schools leaders face a significant obstacle: educators’ skepticism. Dozens of cities and states have sought to transform reading instruction in recent years, driven by decades of research known as the “science of reading.” But […]
Harold Robertson: The core issue is that changing political mores have established the systematic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent. This has continually weakened our society’s ability to manage modern systems. At its inception, it represented a break from the trend of the 1920s to the 1960s, when the direct meritocratic evaluation […]
I’ve long found these posts rather curious in light of I Madison’s “more than most” k-12 tax & spending practices: now > $25k per student, amidst declining enrollment. In 2007, we Madisonians spent 333,101,865 for K-12. Inflation adjusted $486,328,722, today. Yet our current budget is $557,015,538 (it is higher every time I look). Readers interested […]
Scott Girard: The Madison Metropolitan School District is “committed to doing the hard work and restoring the integrity” of its communications team following the release of an employee complaint against spokesperson Tim LeMonds last Friday. In an unsigned statement posted to its website Thursday and sent via email to reporters by Communications Manager Ian Folger, the district said it […]
Nicholas Kristof visits flyover country: Mississippi’s success has no single origin moment, but one turning point was arguably when Jim Barksdale decided to retire in the state. A former C.E.O. of Netscape, he had grown up in Mississippi but was humiliated by its history of racism and underperformance. “My home state was always held in […]
Phoebe Petrovic: Wisconsin Watch reviewed public materials for about one-third of the state’s 373 voucher schools and found that four out of 10 had policies or statements that appeared to target LGBTQ+ students for disparate treatment. Some had explicitly discriminatory policies, such as expelling students for being gay or transgender. All 50 of the voucher […]
Alan Borsuk: Year after year, MPS reading scores are abysmal, strong signs of the problems with educational success that lie ahead for many students. There are bright spots; some MPS schools consistently have better results. But overall, in spring 2022 — the most recent results available — more than half (54.1%) of MPS third- through […]
Scott Girard: “I’d been looking forward to high school and it was so hyped up,” said West High School senior Alex Vakar. “It felt like this necessary period for growth because people always talk about them being the best days of their lives, and we missed out on half of that.” Dances, sports, time with […]
James Vaznis: Boston Public Schools spends more per student than any other large school district in the country, according to the latest figures from the US Census Bureau, a new distinction that reflects how BPS’s budget keeps growing even as student enrollment continues to decline. The city’s highest-in-the-nation cost, of $31,397 per student during the 2020-21 school year, represented […]
Peter Jamison: Across the country, interest in home schooling has never been greater. The Bealls could see the surge in Virginia, where nearly 57,000 children were being home-schooled in the fall of 2022 — a 28 percent jump from three years earlier. The rise of home education, initially unleashed by parents’ frustrations with pandemic-related campus […]
Scott Girard: The complaint against Madison Metropolitan School District spokesperson Tim LeMonds that he fought to keep private alleges he bullied and harassed numerous employees under his management as well as members of the local media. Filed in October 2022 by three employees, one of whom has since left the district, the complaint includes a timeline of […]
Scott Girard: The Madison Metropolitan School District can release an employee complaint filed against its spokesperson as part of a response to an open records request, a Dane County judge ruled Thursday. Circuit Court Judge Rhonda Lanford ruled against MMSD’s executive director for communications, Tim LeMonds, who filed a lawsuit against MMSD on March 24 […]
Christopher Peak: For decades, schools all over the country taught reading based on a theory cognitive scientists had debunked by the 1990s. Despite research showing it made it harder for some kids to learn, the concept was widely accepted by most educators — until recent reporting by APM Reports. Now, state legislators and other policymakers are trying to change […]
Troy Closson: As New York embarks on an ambitious plan to overhaul how children in the nation’s largest school system are taught to read, schools leaders face a significant obstacle: educators’ skepticism. Dozens of cities and states have sought to transform reading instruction in recent years, driven by decades of research known as the “science of reading.” But […]
Alexander Shur: Wisconsin technical colleges would receive an additional $9.4 million in state aid over the next two years under a GOP plan the Legislature’s budget committee approved Tuesday, lower than the nearly $66 million increase Democratic Gov. Tony Evers called for in his two-year spending proposal. Democrats derided the Republicans’ plan, but GOP lawmakers […]
Long-Term Impacts of Reading Recovery through 3rd and 4th Grade: A Regression Discontinuity Study https://t.co/Ci34QiBvl9 “the long-term impact of Reading Recovery on students’ reading/ELA test scores in 3rd and 4th grades is statistically significant & substantially negative” — Paul Bruno (@Paul__Bruno) May 24, 2023 the report. Let's make a list of Reading Recovery-based product/program names […]
Wisconsin coalition for education freedom: Wisconsin Watch has released its third article in a series attempting to discredit the great work choice programs do in Wisconsin. Their latest article misrepresents admission policies of choice schools while ignoring the fact that public schools often engage in admission practices that would be illegal for schools participating in […]
Alexander Shur: One of them was a bipartisan measure, 2013 Assembly Bill 387, which proposed giving juvenile court jurisdiction over 17-year-olds alleged to have committed nonviolent offenses. The bill received approval in a Senate and Assembly committee then stalled, never receiving a floor vote in either chamber. As it stalled, Thompson, who was no longer in […]
Emily Hanford notes the “surge in legislative activity” amidst our long term, disastrous reading results [link]. via NAEP 4th grade results 1992-2022. Longtime SIS readers may recall a few of these articles, bookmarking our times, so to speak: 2004: [Link] “In 2003, 80% of Wisconsin fourth graders scored proficient or advanced on the WCKE in […]
Sharon Luyre: It’s a cliché that Kymyona Burk heard a little too often: “Thank God for Mississippi.” As the state’s literacy director, she knew politicians in other states would say it when their reading test scores were down — because at least they weren’t ranked as low as Mississippi. Or Louisiana. Or Alabama. Lately, the […]
Scott Girard: Madison School board members indicated interest in the longer of two search timelines presented to them Monday by consultant Alma Advisory Group. Alma CEO Monica Santana Rosen spoke to the board at a meeting for the first time since board members chose the firmfrom a field of three finalists to lead the search process, paying $95,000 for […]
Corrinne Hess: Since the pandemic, fewer Wisconsin students have reliably made it to school. The state’s attendance rate reached a new low of 91 percent last year and chronic absenteeism continues to be an issue, with more than 22 percent of students missing at least a month of school. The picture is even more grim for […]
Scott Girard: This year, the two sides are about $11.7 million apart, with MMSD offering a 3.5% increase in its draft budget and MTI, the teachers union, asking for the maximum 8%. MTI, as it did last year, has rallied and spoken out publicly about its concerns should the district remains at 3.5%, including intensifying the district’s ongoing staff […]
Will Flanders and Matt Levene: Forward Exam scores show that Wisconsin students are struggling in reading. Currently statewide, only about 36.8% of students scored proficient or higher on the Forward Exam, meaning the majority of students are falling behind. Reading problems cut across all socioeconomic and racial lines. Much attention has been focused on the […]
I think this is broadly correct, but there are strong teacher unions across Europe too. They were overruled by a political consensus in favor of kids. The US lacked this consensus. We don’t put kids first. https://t.co/OqW1XfnWa6 pic.twitter.com/H0jn2VFHUl — Anya Kamenetz (@anya1anya) May 12, 2023 Pre-pandemic test score results (blue bubbles) show enormous district-level inequality. […]
I wonder if your average Wisconsinite knows how much better Mississippi’s students are doing than Wisconsin’s. READING White: 0.5 years ahead Black: 2.0 ahead Latin: 1.0 ahead MATHEMATICS White: tied Black: 2.0 ahead Latin: 1.5 ahead Not insulting him; I wouldn’t have guessed! https://t.co/TOT3CtG3WG — Quinton Klabon (@GhaleonQ) May 12, 2023 “More than 30 states […]
Will-Law Recently Wisconsin Watch released articles criticizing the Wisconsin parental choice programs and incorrectly claiming that private schools may “discriminate.” This memo provides resources and information about the false claims made in the article and talking points to refute them. The claims that private schools may “discriminate” are false. These claims are false. Wisconsin Watch claims […]
WILL Political Contributions of Wisconsin Teachers and Education Reform “Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.” The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you […]
Laurel White: Remote learning during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic was more likely to negatively affect the high school graduation rates of students from lower-income households than their higher-income peers, according to a new UW–Madison study. The study, published in Educational Researcher, found a longer time in virtual or hybrid learning environments during the […]
Scott Girard; The encouragement comes as the union and the Madison Metropolitan School District disagree over a proposed wage increase in next year’s budget, among other items. Hundreds of MTI members and supporters showed up to the April School Board meeting, where the 2023-24 budget proposal was made public, to demand an 8% increase in base wages and […]
Scott Girard: The work at La Follette, led by Findorff Project Engineer Courtney Cates, features a new gym, weight room and “athletics entry” space that includes concessions and a trophy case. That entry area will also feature pieces of the wood floor from the current spectator gym, which will be turned into classroom space, and […]
Kimberly Wethal: Higher rates of chronic absenteeism are largely driving the increase, as about 98% of the district’s 2,231 at-risk students have been deemed “habitually truant,” defined as missing more than 10% of days in an academic year. The number of students considered habitually truant during the 2021-22 school year more than tripled from the […]
Ari Kauffman: In the 23 City Schools of Baltimore, zero students are proficient in grade-level math. The Baltimore Teachers Union, unsurprisingly, is among the nation’s most influential and a top AFT ally. They partner in hurting children. Weingarten and her totalitarians love to talk about supposed “racism,”; but if her union cared about black Americans’ […]
📖HUGE Wisconsin reading update📖 A bill’s coming that will do bold, Mississippi-style reforms to save Wisconsin’s kids! But some pieces aren’t funded, colleges have no compliance consequences, and low-scoring 3rd graders can pass. Do you think that it’ll work? Videos below! pic.twitter.com/gmJtmNsoHK — Quinton Klabon (@GhaleonQ) April 25, 2023 “Well, it’s kind of too bad […]
👎🏼why Wisconsin’s kids can’t read👎🏼 I’m incredibly disappointed to see Kenosha @kusd, Wisconsin’s 3rd-largest district, explicitly push back against @ehanford‘s SOLD A STORY podcast and mainstream news’ attention to PHONICS. (Kenosha ranks 403rd on 2022 Wisconsin report cards.) pic.twitter.com/Ln52kLcsrV — Quinton Klabon (@GhaleonQ) April 24, 2023 Reading proficiency of Wisconsin students has been generally stagnant for […]
DRAKE BENTLEY: In her letter, Underly stated, “Whether you realize it or not, you are, under the guise of protection, causing undue harm to students and staff. However, this damage is reversible. It is paramount that you change course now.” Underly requested that the administration reverse the policy to “foster inclusive environments,” saying the controversial […]
Dave Zweifel: Although you might never know it by last week’s meeting of the Madison School Board, school districts are very much included in the law that requires government — which belongs to and is paid for by the public after all — needs to be transparent in all that it does. There is no room for […]
Sarah Mervosh: About one in three children in the United States cannot read at a basic level of comprehension, according to a key national exam. The outcomes are particularly troubling for Black and Native American children, nearly half of whom score “below basic” by eighth grade. “The kids can’t read — nobody wants to just […]
Scott Girard: Two months after announcing his retirement, outgoing Madison Superintendent Carlton Jenkins has been named a finalist for the top job in a Tennessee school district. Chalkbeat Tennessee, an education news website, reported Saturday that Jenkins is among three finalists to be the next Memphis-Shelby County Schools superintendent. The School Board there, however, was […]
Scott Girard The public records request came from NBC15 reporter Elizabeth Wadas, who requested all emails from Dec. 19, 2021, through Dec. 19, 2022, that contained her name or references to an NBC15 reporter. The district released hundreds of records related to the request, but per open records law notified LeMonds that the complaint would be […]
Anna Nawaz: “Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.” The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic” My Question to Wisconsin […]
Jenny Peek: The hope is that the new curriculum will improve dismal reading scores across the district. According to the 2021-2022 State Report Card, prepared by the Department of Instruction, only 39.5% of K-12 students in Madison schools were proficient or advanced in reading that school year. The district’s Black students fare worse. In 2021-2022 […]
Olivia Herken: Moore said there is a growing desire among parents and students for private high schools, but not enough options in the area, specifically for Impact’s younger students on the West Side of the Madison metropolitan area. In addition to Impact Christian’s high school options, other private high schools in the area include Edgewood […]
Scott Girard: Badri Lankella wants to serve his community. Right now, the computer engineer working with the state Department of Natural Resources believes the best way he can do that is running for Seat 6 on the Madison School Board. “Every issue, I look at the details,” Lankella said. “I’m going to talk to everyone. […]
Olivia Herken: “A lot has changed since September of 2021,” Stampfli told the Madison School Board at a work group meeting Monday. The original mandate requires staff to have the primary series of the COVID-19 vaccine, which is either the first two doses of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or the single dose of the Johnson […]
Scott Girard: “The Joint Committee on Finance does not need to bring in Dr. Underly to hear more empty promises about how DPI wants to better serve our kids,” Born said. “Republicans are gathering feedback from families and local school district officials across the state and will craft a budget that supports our kids and […]
Scott Girard: Option A would use a curriculum developed by Savvas for both English language arts and Spanish and dual literacy programs at a cost of $1.17 million. Option B would use Open Up for English and Savvas for Spanish and dual literacy programs for $2.1 million. Whichever is selected, the district will use one-time […]
Mark Seidenberg: My heart sank. Why would a person need to ask this? The goal of teaching children to read is reading, not phonemic awareness. We know that learning to read does not require being able to identify 44 phonemes or demonstrate proficiency on phoneme deletion and substitution tasks because until very recently no one who learned […]
Akan Borsuk: Reading instruction, on the other hand, “is one thing we can do well. … We could do a lot better in the classroom,” Seidenberg said. The education establishment, he said, has been resistant to the notion that science around how letters on a page become understood in a child’s brain can help teachers. […]
Elizabeth Wadas: The Madison Metropolitan School District is being sued by one of its own. MMSD Head of Communications Tim LeMonds does not want two documents from an NBC15 Investigates’ open records request released – and he is taking his bosses to court to stop it. On Friday, LeMonds filed a preliminary injunction motion against […]
Rory Linnane: The political action committee of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, the union for MPS staff, first gave about $11,000 directly to candidates’ campaigns in January: $5,000 to Zombor, and nearly $1,500 each to Hart, Herndon, O’Halloran and Siemsen. In March, the group spent another $41,422 on postcards and digital ads for Zombor, $22,000 […]
Jill Barshay: A troubling post-pandemic pattern is emerging across the nation’s schools: test scores and attendance are down, yet more students are earning high school diplomas. A new report from Washington, D.C., suggests bleak futures for many of these high school graduates, given the declining rate of college attendance and completion. The numbers are stark […]
California Reading Report Card: As in the 2019 Report Card, funding and share of high-need students had very little correlation with results. There are top performing districts with over 90% high-need enrollment, and low performing districts with less than 40%. The clear message is that it is not the students themselves, or the level of […]
David Blaska: One of the candidates will help choose a new superintendent. Pray God it is not another terminally Woke clone of Jennifer Cheatham!Which it will be if Feltham is elected. She’s the one who says “Our schools are products of white supremacy.” Of course, she is endorsed by the teachers union and the Defund the Cops Capital Times. […]
Alex Zimmerman: New York City education officials plan to take a stronger hand in what curriculums educators can use in their classrooms, a move that could represent a major shift in how the nation’s largest school system approaches teaching and learning, Chalkbeat has learned. The education department recently began laying the groundwork for superintendents to […]
Lolita Baldor: Holiday is an early beneficiary of the new program, which gives lower-performing recruits up to 90 days of academic or fitness instruction to help them meet military standards. In place for only eight months, it is already making a significant difference for both the Army and those who want to serve in it. […]
David Blaska: Surveys revealed a terrifying situation throughout Madison’s school district brought on by an overly permissive environment. Students complained of “too many fights,” and feeling “unsafe in hallways, common areas, bathrooms and buses.” Bullying has become a major problem. It was mentioned 450 times in the survey responses. Students attribute these problems to an environment with “no […]
If you’re still thinking about who to vote for in the Madison School Board election, @ssfp_news had me, @oherken and @telldylan join its students to ask the candidates some questions in a forum last Thursday evening. Watch it here: https://t.co/jgbiL3X989 — Scott Girard (@sgirard9) March 27, 2023 “Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve […]
Olivia Herken: LeMonds declined to comment on the matter when reached by the Wisconsin State Journal. Releasing the complaint that staff filed would harm LeMonds and the school district because he is the district’s spokesperson, LeMonds’ complaint says, arguing that the potential harm outweighs the public benefit of the document’s release. “Releasing the subject documents […]
Scott Girard: Madison students found a soapbox Thursday and used it to share the biggest challenges their generation faces. Ninety middle and high school students attended the Project Soapbox event at the Overture Center, giving speeches that responded to the prompt, “What is the most pressing issue facing young people today and what should be […]
Tom Knighton: Take admission standards at prestigious prep schools. One such school decided they needed more black students, so rather than look at how they could help more black students meet the existing standard, they opted to just lower it. And one black parent is kind of pissed about it. A parent spoke out against school district […]
Olivia Herken A candidate for the Madison School Board on Tuesday said schools are the product of “white supremacy” and accused her opponent of favoring competition in the classroom — a characterization her opponent embraced. “Our schools are products of white supremacy,” said Blair Mosner Feltham, an equitable multi-level system of supports site coordinator at […]
Quinton Klabon: The coronavirus pandemic was a 2-year catastrophe for children. Students suffered through virtual schooling, quarantined teachers, and emotional misery. Academic results, the lowest this century, still have not recovered. After sending $860 million to help Wisconsin public schools manage through spring 2021, Congress sent a final $1.49 billion to get students back on track. The goal? Do […]
Scott Girard: The candidates on hand will include the two running for Seat 6 — former school district educator Blair Feltham and former Madison City Council candidate Badri Lankella — as well as Seat 7 incumbent Nicki Vander Meulen, who is running unopposed. The current representative for Seat 6, Christina Gomez Schmidt, is not running […]