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Seeking an equal say in schools’ future
By the end of the day one thing was clear: Parents, teachers and community organizations want an equal say in determining how the district will be remade.
illaraigosa acknowledged as much in his opening remarks to the group of 100 or so people, who represented church groups, businesses, human services agencies, city and county departments, law enforcement, city councils and numerous schools.
“This issue of ‘mayor control’ is a misnomer,” he told the meeting — billed as an education retreat — at the Doheny campus of Mount St. Mary’s College near downtown. “This is the perfect example of a partnership. I don’t need to bring 200 people together if I was just going to do it alone.”
A close observer of the Madison public education scene for a number of years, I’ve seen this tension grow, something reflected in recent referenda results and board elections.
On the one hand, we have statements from top Administrators like “we have the children” to teachers, on the other; staff and parents very unhappy with a top down, one size fits all approach to many issues (see the most recent example of substantive changes without public discussion). Parental interest and influence (the use of the term influence does not reflect today’s current reality) ranges from those who are extremely active with respect to systemic issues and those active for individual children to various stages of participation and indifference.
In 2006, I believe that parents and citizens continue to have a much smaller role in our K-12 public system governance than they should, given our children’s interests and the District’s source of funds such as property taxes, fees, sales and income taxes recycled through state and federal spending. Madison’s school climate is certainly not unique (Nielsen’s Participation Inequality is a good read in this context).
Peter Gascoyne asked some useful questions in response to Gene Hickok’s recent Washington Post piece. I “think” that Hickok was driving in the direction of a much more substantive parental role in education.
Milwaukee Property Taxes Increase 7.7%
The “tax freeze” continues. Alan Borsuk:
At the heart of a decision by Milwaukee Public Schools officials to increase property taxes for schools by 7.7% was a choice not discussed in public:
Millions of dollars that had been freed up within the $1.15 billion budget for the 2006-’07 school year could be used to hold down the tax increase. Or they could be used to increase spending by $78.90 per student across the MPS system – totaling almost $6.7 million.
Administrators and a split School Board on Tuesday went with the increased spending.
Labeled a “one-time rebate” in MPS budget documents, the payments will go to all the schools in the traditional MPS system and to charter schools staffed by MPS employees.
That will help ease a financial squeeze that is harming education in the city, MPS officials say. The money will allow schools to do such things as restore teaching or safety aide positions that were cut going into this year, MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos said Wednesday.
The Madison School District’s property taxes will rise 5.8% with the arrival of December’s tax bills. Local school property taxes had been relatively flat the past few years due to redistribution of income, sales taxes and fees via state aids and to some extent flat enrollment and the revenue caps.
Vang won’t run for re-election
Now, six years later, we were alone as we discussed Vang’s reasons for not seeking reelection to the school board in April 2007. While I had heard rumors of his decision, our discussion made it public and official. Vang’s life had changed in six years. His job at Kajsiab House as the resource development director was taking up more and more of his time. And his children were growing older and needing more and more of his time, whether they realized it or not. His oldest son was now in high school.
Continued at The Capital City Hues.
Facts & Questions about the 2006 Madison School District Referendum
Questions:
What is the anticipated cost of equipping the Leopold addition and the elementary school at Linden Park? Are those projected costs included in the referendum authorization or not?
What is the anticipated cost of operating the Leopold addition and the elementary school at Linden Park? How will those costs be appropriated/budgeted (and in what years?) given that the Board expects to have to cut $6-8 million per year?
What are the “shared revenue” total costs for each of three parts of the referendum question? Are these costs included in the $29.20 estimated cost for a median assessed home-owner? Please provide the ‘working papers’ or calculations arriving at these costs. How can a home-owner figure the annual cost of this referendum for the assessed value of their home?
What information about the Ridgewood complex and projected enrollment was used to calculate the need for the Leopold addition?
Construction has already begun for the Leopold addition without voter/taxpayer approval. What is the current impact on the operations budget? What would be the future impact on the operations budget if the referendum fails?
If Chartering is the Answer, What was the Question?
Ted Kolderie and Joe Graba, charter school leaders at Education/Evolving urge legislators to expand Wisconsin’s charter school law:
“The Importance of Innovation in Chartering”
Remarks to the Legislative Study Committee on Charter Schools
By Ted Kolderie and Joe Graba, Education/Evolving
October 17, 2006
TED KOLDERIE
Let me try to set the context for the Legislature’s use of the chartering strategy. The ‘Why?’ of anything is important to legislators. It is fair to ask: “If ‘chartering’ is the answer, what was the question?”
The question is: How do we make schooling different enough to motivate the kids who have never learned well in conventional school?
Paul Houston, the head of AASA, has been pointing out how dramatically the signals have been switched for public education. Forever, their charge was access and equity: take everybody; give everybody the opportunity to participate and to learn. Now suddenly the charge is proficiency: The districts are required to see that all children learn.
This is a huge change. The current model of schooling was not built for this. The districts were not built for this. Success with this very different assignment requires major readjustment in the institution.
“Far too Fuzzy Math Curriculum is to Blame for Declining NYC Test Scores”
Here’s a math problem for you: Count the excuses people are trotting out for why schoolkids in New York City and State did poorly in the latest round of math scores. The results showed just 57% of the city’s and 66% of the state’s students performing at grade level – and a steady decline in achievement as kids got older.
It’s about family income, said an article in The New York Times. “The share of students at grade level in affluent districts was more than twice as big as in impoverished urban districts.”
It’s about unfair funding levels, said state education Secretary Richard Mills.
It’s about class size, said activist Leonie Haimson.
Wrong again, claimed other observers. The real culprit was a new test.
If, like me, you’re running out of fingers – and patience – there’s a reason. Nobody spinning the test scores is zeroing in on the single biggest reason math achievement in New York City and state lags and will continue to lag: Our schools use a far-too-fuzzy curriculum that fails to give kids rigorous instruction in the basics.
In New York City, the program required in the vast majority of schools is called Everyday Mathematics. Chancellor Joel Klein swears by it. If you ask administrators to explain it, they’ll use just enough jargon to make it sound decent.
But the truth is, Everyday Math systematically downplays addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, which everyone knows are the foundations for all higher math. Instead of learning those basic four operations like the backs of their hands, students are asked to choose from an array of alternative methods, such as an ancient Egyptian method for multiplication. Long division is especially frowned upon.
Everyday Math is used in the Madison School District. Much more on Math curriculum and politics here. Via Joanne.
Carson is Co-Founder and Executive Director of NYC Hold:
The performance of American students in mathematics is mediocre at best. In many cases, mathematics instruction is not serving our children’s best interests. In order to help all students achieve success in school mathematics courses, have access to adequate preparation for the broadest options in high school math and science courses, and the opportunity to advance into mathematics based college courses and careers, it is important to examine the direction of recent attempts at mathematics education reform.
More on Everyday math.
More concern about technology in MMSD: another teacher explains the problem
Recently, I posted a letter from a middle school teacher in Madison regarding inadequate computers at one of our middle schools. Fancy programs on aging computers:an MMSD teacher tries to make things work
Today the Madison school board received another letter from a teacher explaining how the current state of computers and software makes teaching harder and more stressful. While this is a typical complaint from the schools, I don’t see the same problems with central administration computers.
Dear Board Members and Mr. Rainwater,
I have been a teacher for MMSD for fifteen years. I am committed to and love this district and its students. I work at …. This is a wonderful building in which to work. The staff is solid, caring, and professional.
….
A second concern in our building is technology. I love the new attendance system and am currently using the grading program on infinite campus which I also enjoy. Unfortunately, our computers are slow and often freeze up. Quite often, I have to call my attendance into the office because it takes 10-15 minutes for the computer to load. We have little access to adequate computers as a staff. It makes it difficult to be able to keep grades in a timely manner. Six of us in 8th grade have to share one antiquated computer for our planning area. My guess is that most other professionals in this city would not even think of working with such inadequate technology.
A New School on Madison’s Far West Side: A Long Term Perspective
On November 7, Madison area residents will be asked to vote on a referendum concerning our local schools. While the referendum has three parts, this paper will focus on the first part – the construction of a new school on the far west side, representing over 75% of the total cost of the referendum.
This report will argue that the most important determinant of whether or not a new school should be built on the far west side (or anywhere else in the district), is whether the long-term outlook clearly indicates it is appropriate. Otherwise, the problem should be considered temporary, with temporary measures pursued to address it. However, the situation here suggests strongly that the problem is a more permanent one, requiring a “permanent solution”, the building of a new school.
This report will not attempt to forecast specific enrollment figures for the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) – such an effort would take several months to do properly. Instead, it will focus on the TRENDS that support the conclusion a new school is warranted.
The Cost of an “Adequate” Education
The nation is watching to see what happens with New York City school finance. After a dozen years in the courts, the case of Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) v. New York is now back at the Court of Appeals for a final judgment about the added appropriations that the legislature must send to the city. This judgment is, however, unlikely to be the final statement. If the legislature must come up with an incredible sum of money close to the more than $5 billion currently on the table, it may well balk, precipitating a true constitutional crisis.
New York’s school-finance case may be the most visible in the nation, but it is certainly not unique. Almost half of the states today have an “adequacy” case in their courts. Only five states have never faced a school-finance case during the past three decades. New York, however, is on center stage this week. Because of the size of the judgment, the New York decision could send shock waves through state legislatures across the country.
Earlier this year New York’s intermediate court called for an added appropriation of $4.7 to $5.6 billion per year to go to New York City schools. The state, with Attorney General Eliot Spitzer helming the defense, appealed this decision. Final oral arguments will be given tomorrow, marking at least a culmination in the legal battle, though likely not the last word in the fight.
New Yorkers tend to view this case with righteous indignation: The legislature simply failed to provide the city schools with adequate resources. After all, they argue, the trial court, after listening to seven months of testimony, found this to be a clear violation of the state constitution and slapped a precise dollar value on what it saw to be the magnitude of that violation.
Unfortunately, in determining the cost of an “adequate” education, the court relied heavily on the questionable analysis of consultants hired by the plaintiffs. Their analysis, labeled a “professional judgment model,” was advertised as a scientific determination of the amount of spending necessary to secure an “adequate” education for every New York City student. Yet, this analysis violates virtually every principle of science and, as a result, has produced a politically saleable but scientifically unsupportable answer to the problem.
Background on the “Campaign for Fiscal Equity”.
Mr. Hanushek is a member of the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education and editor of “Courting Failure” (Education Next Books, 2006).
A Profile of the UW’s William Reese
When publications like the New York Times want an expert to comment on the big issues facing public schools like testing or immigration, it’s a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor they’re likely to call.
Relatively unknown in his adopted hometown, history and educational policy studies professor William Reese is able offer a long view on these kinds of perennial hot-button issues that resonate across the country, and provoke local debate, too.
In one recent New York Times story about schools cutting back on other subjects to concentrate on math and reading so their students will perform better on nationally mandated testing, Reese explained that President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act has leveraged one of the most abrupt instructional shifts in education history.
…….
But when asked to apply his knowledge to how our Madison schools work, and how the public responds to them, he shrugs off the questions, saying he is only an outside observer. He and his wife, Carol, do not have children; he says any knowledge he has about local school affairs comes only from living in the city and having friends who are teachers in the Madison Metropolitan School District.
“I suspect Madison can be seen as a microcosm of what is going on throughout the rest of the country,” Reese said in a recent interview in his book-lined Bascom Hill office. “There are many extraordinarily well educated people here, and they have very high expectations of what kind of education their children are receiving.”
Reese’s website.
Deal is a Lesson in Education Politics
Six weeks ago, Deshawn Hill and I walked into Pacific Dining Car and caught a glimpse of democracy in action: A.J. Duffy and Robin Kramer having a late evening chat.
Duffy’s the charmingly cocky boss of Southern California’s biggest teachers union. Kramer is the mayor’s charmingly clever chief of staff. I’ll remind you who Hill is later. For now, let’s stick to the boss and the chief.
Kramer tells me the meeting was a coincidental bump-into-each-other thing. But seeing those two together at the city’s power-broker steak palace resonated with a hunch I’d been harboring: All those months of teachers union squawking about Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s plans to take over the Los Angeles Unified School District were mainly for show.
Because he’s a teacher, though, his motives conflict.
Like you, I think good teachers are heroes who deserve more money and respect and smaller classes and more control over what they teach. I understand why many people have a hard time accepting that their kids’ teachers’ interests don’t always overlap with students’ interests. In protecting a teacher’s interests, a union often adds to the bureaucratic bloat.
Since I began reporting this column in January (and in the 17 years I’ve followed my children through L.A. Unified schools) the most righteously frustrated people I’ve met have tended to lash out at two villains: the district bureaucracy and the union to whom so many board members and bureaucrats are beholden.
Even many teachers say privately that they’re disgusted that unions erect barricades against merit pay, charter schools and administrators’ ability to move experienced teachers to the schools at which they’re most needed. Hear enough stories about just how hard it is to fire an utterly incompetent teacher, and you begin to wonder why the public tolerates unelected union power brokers in their children’s lives at all.
Mike Antonucci has much more, including notes from Racine here.
NYC Considers Plan to Let Outsiders Run Schools
In what would be the biggest change yet to the way New York City’s school system is administered, officials are considering plans to hire private groups at taxpayer expense to manage scores of public schools.
The money paid to the private groups would replace millions of dollars in grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which supported dozens of these groups in opening more than 180 small schools in the city since 2003.
The four-year grants, typically worth $100,000 a year per school, will run out for more than 50 schools in June.
The move would further Chancellor Joel I. Klein’s earlier efforts to tear apart the traditional bureaucracy of the nation’s largest school system, giving principals greater autonomy and increasing the role of the private sector. It could put private entities like the College Board, the Urban Assembly and Expeditionary Learning-Outward Bound on contract to manage networks of schools as soon as the 2007-8 school year.
11/7/2006 Referendum Notes & Links
We’re closing in on the 11/7/2006 election, including the Madison School District’s Referendum. Kristian Knutsen notes that a petition was circulated at Tuesday evening’s Madison City Council meeting regarding the referendum. Johnny Winston, Jr. posted a few words on the referendum over at the daily page forum.
This will be an interesting election. Nancy and I support the referendum question (and hope that we see progress on some curriculum issues such as math and West’s one size fits all English 10, among others). However, as Phil M points out, there are a number of good questions that taxpayers will ask as they prepare to vote. I previously outlined what might be on voter’s minds this November.
Art Rainwater’s Memo on School Violence
Madison School District Superintendent Art Rainwater:
By now, I’m sure you know that last Friday a 15 year old boy entered Weston School in Cazenovia (Sauk County) and allegedly shot and killed the principal. This incident has stirred in all of us the uneasy realization that this can happen anywhere, at anytime. We mourn the loss of the principal and empathize with the staff, students, families and community members of that school district. We also feel tremendous responsibility for our own students and staff. Last week, our entire staff spent a day talking about the crucial nature that relationships play in our schools. While the primary focus was on issues of race and equity, we also know that we were talking about any student who doesn’t feel connected to the school and valued by an adult. Last Friday after we heard about what happened at Weston High School, we sent to our staff the following reminders:
Notes & Links:
- Channel3000
- Clusty News | Google News | Microsoft Live | Yahoo News
- Rafael Gomez organized a Gangs & School Violence Forum last September [Audio / video / Notes], attended by all Madison High School Principals and local law enforcement representatives. East High grad Luis Yudice also participated. Yudice is the Madison School District’s coordinator of safety and security.
- Many more links
- Johnny Winston, Jr.:
Message from Johnny Winston, Jr., President of the Madison Board of Education
On behalf of the Madison Board of Education, we send our heartfelt condolences to the Klang family, Weston School district and Cazenovia community.
In response to this tragedy as well as recent incidents in Green Bay and Colorado, Superintendent Art Rainwater has sent a message to all employees of the Madison Metropolitan School District outlining strategies and effective communication tools between students and adults. He wrote, “The most effective tool we have for preventing violent behaviors at school is building and maintaining a climate of trusting relationships and communication between and among students and adults.” He has also indicated that the Madison Police will increase their presence at our schools for the next week.
We know that the Madison community joins our school board in support of the Klang family, Weston School district and Cazenovia community. Our thoughts and prayers are with them during this difficult period.
Kudos To Harris For Taking School Back
As a former East High School student who lived through four years of closed campus for lunch, and a parent of current East High students — one a freshman, the other a junior — I applaud East High Principal Alan Harris.
I think next year he should be brazen and close campus for lunch for all students, unless they are involved in an off-site program. Ease the hectic lunch schedule of the upperclassmen and set an example for the rest of the city.
Talk about taking back the school! This principal is the best one we have seen since Milt McPike. We are cheering for him in our home.
Montessori students outperform traditionally taught students academically and socially
A study of Milwaukee schoolchildren published today in the journal Science underscores what proponents of Montessori education have believed for decades: that Montessori students might be better prepared academically and socially than students in traditional classrooms.
Among the findings: 5-year-old Montessori students had better reading, math and social skills than 5-year-old non-Montessori children, and 12-year-old Montessori students wrote essays that were more creative and sophisticated than those by 12-year-old non-Montessori students. The study tested two groups of Milwaukee Public Schools students: those who by luck of a lottery got into Craig Montessori on the city’s northwest side, and those who didn’t.
It reaffirms the benefits of a system started by Maria Montessori 100 years ago, local administrators said, while also boosting the reputation of a city that has increasingly made public school Montessori options available to a poor, urban population.
Seattle’s School “Choice” & Transportation Costs
The district’s current “open choice” enrollment policy allows students to attend virtually any public school in the city. Students who live near their school are expected to get there on their own, while free busing is provided for all other middle and high school students, and for elementary school students who attend a school within the large geographic “cluster” in which they live.
It’s a popular plan with many parents, but it’s more complex than those of neighboring districts, and more expensive: The district annually spends an average of $560.86 per student, far more than other large districts in the state. About half the district’s roughly $25 million annual student transportation cost is paid by the state; local property-tax money covers most of the rest.
With Seattle schools facing a multimillion-dollar structural deficit, officials have said they can’t afford to maintain the status quo for much longer. By scaling back the system and offering parents fewer choices of where to send their child to school, the district could see major financial savings — as much as a couple of million dollars a year.
No Teacher Left Behind
Schools of education have gotten bad grades before. Yet there are some truly shocking statistics about teacher training in this week’s report from the Education Schools Project. According to “Educating School Teachers,” three-quarters of the country’s 1,206 university-level schools of education don’t have the capacity to produce excellent teachers. More than half of teachers are educated in programs with the lowest admission standards (often accepting 100% of applicants) and with “the least accomplished professors.” When school principals were asked to rate the skills and preparedness of new teachers, only 40% on average thought education schools were doing even a moderately good job.
The Education Schools Project was begun in 2001, with foundation funding, to analyze how America trains its educators and to offer constructive criticism. Its report card this week is significant for two reasons. First, it is based on four years of broad and methodical research, including surveys of school principals and of the deans, faculty members and graduates of education schools. In addition, researchers studied programs and practices at 28 institutions. No matter how many establishment feathers get ruffled by the results of these inquiries, miffed educators can’t easily brush off the basic findings: There are glaring flaws and gaps in our teacher-training system.
The report’s most stunning revelation–to outsiders at least–is that nobody knows what makes a good teacher today. Mr. Levine compares the training universe to “Dodge City.” There is an “unruly” mix of approaches, chiefly because there is no consensus on how long teachers should study, for instance, or whether they should concentrate on teaching theory or mastering subject matter. Wide variations in curricula, and fads–like the one that produced the now-discredited “fuzzy math”–make things worse. Compare such chaos with the training for professions such as law or medicine, where, Mr. Levine reminds us, nobody is unleashed on the public without meeting a universally acknowledged requisite body of knowledge and set of skills.
Artists Working in Education
Artists Working in Education (AWE) presents “A Celebration of Children’s Art,” a collection of work created this summer by kids who participated in AWE’s Truck Studio Program.
“A Celebration of Children’s Art” hangs in the Milwaukee City Hall Rotunda, Sept. 19 through Oct. 6. There is an opening reception on Tuesday, Sept. 19 from 5 to 7 p.m. at City Hall, 200 E. Wells St.
The exhibit features paintings, collages, plaster casts and fiber arts pieces made by four to 14-year-olds who were instructed by professional artists, art teachers and college-level art students through the Truck Studio Program.
“All of the work is created by children in Milwaukee’s most challenged neighborhoods,” says Sally Salkowski Witte, AWE executive director. “To me, it’s entirely appropriate that their artwork is positioned, at least for a short time, where those who have a great deal of power to make a difference will pass by every day.”
Artists Working in Education website.
“Like Lambs to the Slaughter…”
Like the teacher on the show, I was greeted by a dysfunctional buzzer upon arrival at my school. A fitting symbol of the system’s disarray, they were desperately in need of teachers and couldn’t let me in once I got there. Many of my peers in the program were “surplussed,” bouncing around from school to school until the district administrators decided where our services could be put to best use. Upon arrival at my school, I was placed in a classroom that had not been cleaned by the previous year’s teacher, who I later learned was a first-year teacher that had quit in February. It is common in Baltimore for rookie teachers to quit during the school year. In fact, in my first year in Baltimore, only two out of the six first-years who started the year at my school actually finished. The result of this trend was a staff crunch, and my classroom role swelled at times to above forty students (ranging in age form 3rd to 6th grade, with up to 16 IEP students). It is criminal.
Speaking of criminal, how much of the City’s budget is spent on pointless professional development programs like the one shown on The Wire’s season premiere? Educational consultants with six-figure salaries rattle off clever acronyms like IALAC (I Am Loved And Competent) in steamy August auditoriums and cafeterias. I mean really, how many teachers actually use that stuff? I know I never did. As the frustration of the teachers builds to a crescendo, the professional development meeting devolves into a gripe session about the student population and the hopelessness of their situation. This in itself is destructive, perpetuating negative stereotypes of students and lending to the apathy of teachers. So in the end, the good intentions of administrative policies turn into a completely destructive activity. Welcome to education in Baltimore.
But what would it mean — what could it mean — to close the achievement gap between high- and low-SES students in American schools? For a whole variety of reasons, this just doesn’t seem like it’s going to be possible. At the outer limit, more prosperous parents are always going to be able to re-open the gap by investing even more resources in their kids’ education. An education and child development arms race to the top might not be a bad thing, but it wouldn’t close any socioeconomic gaps. To do that, you actually need to tackle inequality itself. In the context of a reasonably egalitarian society, a well-functioning school system shouldn’t exhibit massive achievement gaps, but in the context of a wildly inegalitarian one there’s no way the school system can singlehandedly set everything back to zero.
Private School Parents Control Board
Destroying Public Schools
New York Times
September 16, 2006
At Odds Over Schools
By BRUCE LAMBERT
LAWRENCE, N.Y.
[This] school district has been changing, house by house, as Orthodox Jewish families have flocked here over the last two decades, gradually at first and then in growing numbers.
While not yet a majority, the Orthodox have nonetheless emerged as the dominant force in a clash of cultures. And the front line in this battle is Lawrence’s once highly regarded public school system.
In each of the last four years, Orthodox voters mobilized to defeat the school budget — one of the longest losing streaks on Long Island. Then in July, they took charge of the school board, though few of the Orthodox send their children to public schools. Out of seven seats, the new majority consists of four Orthodox members and one ally.
[M]any of this district’s Orthodox residents object to paying school taxes that average about $6,000 per home for a system they do not use. Their leaders also complain that more public money should be channeled to the Orthodox day schools, which by law are limited to tax-financed busing, books and special education services.
“We feel invaded,” said an Atlantic Beach delicatessen customer, a self-described non-Orthodox Jew and activist parent who declined to give her name. “We don’t mind them being here, but taking over and shutting down the school system is not the right thing.” (Atlantic Beach is part of the Lawrence school district.)
Experts who track expanding Orthodox neighborhoods around the nation say the conflict in Lawrence has far-reaching implications.
“Other communities are watching Lawrence very closely, for fear they may be next,” said Prof. William B. Helmreich, the director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Queens College. Orthodox adherents “are cohesive, they marshal forces and vote as a bloc,” he said. “It could happen anywhere.”
It has already happened in Rockland County, where Orthodox residents control the East Ramapo school board. Similar strains have arisen over the schools and other services in Lakewood, N.J., home to a large Orthodox population.
“It’s ominous,” said Steven Sanders, a former New York City assemblyman who was chairman of the State Assembly’s Education Committee. “This is not going to be an isolated situation. This is a worrisome trend. The common thread is not religion. The common thread is people who don’t feel invested in educating other people’s children. What do you do when a community is significantly comprised of individuals who don’t have a stake in public schools when they’re already spending for private schools? It’s a fracturing of the social compact.”
Enrollment projection errors create school turmoil
But because the projected enrollment numbers don’t match the actual numbers of students at Stephens this year, one grades 2-3 classroom is being dropped, with students assigned to other classrooms and Bazan’s job at Stephens eliminated.
The same scenario is playing out at five other elementary schools where teachers and sections are being eliminated due to smaller than expected student populations, district spokesman Ken Syke said. Meanwhile, nine elementary schools are over projected enrollments and will be adding sections to address bursting-at-the-seams populations.
The district will add 10 classes at these schools to add capacity. Four teachers will be hired, in addition to shifting teachers from the under-enrolled schools.
Schools where classes are being eliminated include Crestwood, Falk, Kennedy, Randall, Schenk and Stephens. Schools that are adding teachers include Glendale, Hawthorne, Lake View, Mendota, Marquette, Muir, Sandburg, Thoreau and Leopold. Two teachers will be added at Leopold, which had a particularly large increase in students.
The Not-So-Public Part of the Public Schools: Lack of Accountability
WHEN Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel I. Klein gained unprecedented power over the vast archipelago of public education in New York more than four years ago, they were the beneficiaries of three beliefs widely held in the city.
The first was that the system of decentralized control, ended after 35 years by the State Legislature in June 2002, had been a misadventure of bureaucratic inefficiency, academic inconsistency and persistent corruption.
The second was that the education program advocated by Mr. Bloomberg’s predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, with its emphasis on steering public money into vouchers for private schools, was too radical for New York.
The final factor was that Mr. Bloomberg, astride a personal fortune, and Mr. Klein, an anti-trust lawyer in the Clinton administration, were so independent and incorruptible they could be trusted to run a system with more than a million students and a budget well into the billions with few, if any, of the traditional forms of government or community oversight.
Per Pupil Spending Parity
The city spends the equivalent of about $11,000 per child in its regular public schools.
Charter schools in the city receive $5,859 per child in cash and the rest in services that the school system provides, such as special education and food.
Two city charter schools, City Neighbors and Patterson Park Public, appealed that formula to the state school board in 2005, saying it limited their ability to choose how to provide services.
The state school board ruled in the charter schools’ favor, and the city school system appealed that decision in court.
“All we’re asking for is parity,” said Bobbi Macdonald, president of the City Neighbors board. “We’re not asking for anyone to spend more money on charter school kids.”
Via Joanne.
How Lowering the Bar Helps Colleges Prosper
Twice a year, after reviewing applicants to Duke University, Jean Scott lugged a cardboard box to the office of President Terry Sanford. Together, Ms. Scott, director of undergraduate admissions from 1980 to 1986, and Mr. Sanford pored over its contents: applications from candidates she wanted to reject but who were on his list for consideration because their parents might bolster the university’s endowment. Ms. Scott won some battles, lost others and occasionally they compromised; an applicant might be required to go elsewhere before being taken as a transfer.
“There was more of this input at Duke than at any other institution I ever worked for,” says Ms. Scott, now president of Marietta College in Ohio. “I would have been very pleased to have the best class as determined by the admissions office, but the world isn’t like that.”
Over more than 20 years, Duke transformed itself from a Southern school to a premier national institution with the help of a winning strategy: targeting rich students whose families could help build up its endowment. At the same time, and in a similar way, Brown University, eager to shed its label as one of the weakest schools in the Ivy League, bolstered its reputation by recruiting kids with famous parents. While celebrities don’t often contribute financially, they generate invaluable publicity.
Children from low-income families often suffer exclusion at school
Children from low-income families often suffer exclusion at school
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
BY JOAN MADELEINE DOUGHTY
©2006 Ann Arbor News
Imagine this: You live in Ann Arbor. Your first-grade student comes home from school and tells you the teacher handed out cupcakes today – to every child except yours and two others. Why? “Teacher said I wasn’t on the list of kids who were paid for.”
You call the teacher and are told you never sent in money for daily snacks. The reason you didn’t pay was because you couldn’t. With four mouths to feed, living on disability, you struggle to pay your rent, utilities and food bills. There is no money for extras. And now your child watches, while almost everyone in the class enjoys snacks every day.
Does this really happen in Ann Arbor? It does not. If it did, we would collectively rise in protest. We can’t imagine a teacher who would skip a student when distributing treats just because his or her parent is too poor to pay. In fact, when research showed hungry children had trouble focusing on academics, policy makers universally embraced the concept of free and reduced school breakfast and lunch programs.
Now ask yourself this: Which would a child rather have – a cupcake or school pictures? A bag of chips or a yearbook? Every year in most of our children’s classrooms, teachers hand out school picture packets to some kids, but not others. They give certain children yearbooks, but skip their peers. Why? Because their parents didn’t pay. Sometimes by choice, but more often the reason is financial.
The Ed School Disease, Part Two
I read Stanford University educational historian David F. Labaree’s new book, “The Trouble With Ed Schools,” shortly after last week’s column scorching those same education schools. You would think his wonderfully insightful book, which is even harder on ed schools than I was, would make me feel good. Here is a distinguished education school professor who knows that world so well, and he is validating my opinions.
Instead, the book made me ashamed of myself. It was similar to the feeling of loathsome guilt I had when I was eight years old and beat up a five-year-old with a lisp next door who had annoyed me for reasons I no longer recall. Labaree succeeds in making American education schools such objects of pity, suffering from decades of low status and professional abuse, that you want to give the next ed school professor you meet a big hug and promise to bake her a plate of cookies.
That is not the worst part. In last week’s online column, and in a column in The Washington Post Magazine Aug. 6, I fussed over the failure of education schools to pass on tips from the real world of expert teachers working in inner city schools. I cited several methods used by famous teachers who have raised student achievement significantly. I decried the response from many ed school people: We can’t teach that until we subject it to thorough research.
But Labaree has gone a long way toward convincing me that ed schools are doing no such thing. He concludes, after an exhaustive examination of the birth and evolution of teacher training in the United States, that education schools have about as much impact on what happens in U.S. classrooms as my beloved but woeful Washington Nationals are having this season on the pennant race.
Teachers in training, he shows, are far more influenced by their memories of how their own school teachers behaved, and by orders and advice they get from supervisors and colleagues in the schools that eventually employ them. Rookie teachers are happy for the credential they get from ed schools that allow them to start earning a paycheck, but they don’t use very much of what they learn there, Labaree says.
At the heart of the book is a Frankie and Johnnie romance between two losers, ed schools and child-centered progressive education. Labaree notes several books that have decried the effect on public schools of progressive education, including the thoughts of theorist John Dewey. Then he asks a simple question: What evidence is there that many classroom teachers are actually doing anything that Dewey would want them to do? As the faculty lounge saying goes, Dewey advocates are supposed to act like a guide on the side, letting each student follow his or her natural instincts and curiosity, rather than a sage on the stage, dispensing wisdom which everyone must write down and memorize.
Spellings on “Tweaking NCLB”
Saying that the federal government has “done about as much” as it can in many ways, Spellings noted that states need to do much of the remaining work on NCLB in order to meet the goal of reading proficiency by 2014.
“They have made a lot of progress on standards, measurement, data and focusing on teachers’ credentials,” she said, adding that there is still work to be done involving school structure. Among areas for focus, she cited how courses are allocated, the use of personnel and academic rigor.
“There are a lot of issues that relate to the grown-ups and that is the next big thing. I mean, how is Joel Klein going to do school restructuring in low-performing schools?” she said, referring to the chancellor of New York City schools.
Fall Referendum: Madison School District Boundary Changes
Regardless how people in Madison vote this November the school board will make boundary changes, forcing some students into new schools. Two options were chosen Monday night to deal with overcrowding. The first option reflects what the district would look like if the referendum passes. The second option on the table is in case it doesn’t pass
bout 510 students will move if the new school, located west of County M in a rapidly developing area of new homes, is approved and built. If the referendum fails, over 225 students will move and program changes, including converting art and music rooms to classrooms and increasing class size, will be necessary to gain capacity, said Mary Gulbrandsen, the district’s chief of staff.
School Board members also voted unanimously on Monday to return over $291,000 to the School District’s contingency fund if the referendum passes. That amount represents money already approved to construct the addition at Leopold, which came out of the district’s operating budget.
Board member Lawrie Kobza said she felt the public was asking good questions about the referendum, and that it was the board’s responsibility to work hard to develop good answers.
An area of concern for Kobza is that the proposed new school does little to change the substantial discrepancy between schools with high and low concentrations of low-income students.
In Elite NY Schools, a Dip in Blacks and Hispanics, Plus Letters
More than a decade after the city created a special institute to prepare black and Hispanic students for the mind-bendingly difficult test that determines who gets into New York’s three most elite specialized high schools, the percentage of such students has not only failed to rise, it has declined.
The drop at Stuyvesant High School, the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School mirrors a trend recently reported at three of the City University of New York’s five most prestigious colleges, where the proportion of black students has dropped significantly in the six years since rigorous admissions policies were adopted.
The changes indicate that even as New York City has started to bridge the racial achievement gap in the earlier grades, it has not been able to make similar headway at top public high schools and colleges. Asian enrollment at all three high schools has soared over the decade, while white enrollment has declined at two of the three schools.
“Banish the Bling”
With 50 percent of Hispanic children and nearly 70 percent of black children born to single women today these young people too often come from fractured families where there is little time for parenting. Their search for identity and a sense of direction is undermined by a twisted popular culture that focuses on the “bling-bling” of fast money associated with famous basketball players, rap artists, drug dealers and the idea that women are at their best when flaunting their sexuality and having babies.
In Washington, where a crime wave is tied to these troubled young souls, the city reacts with a curfew. It is a band-aid. The real question is how one does battle with the culture of failure that is poisoning young people — and do so without incurring the wrath of critics who say we are closing our eyes to existing racial injustice and are “blaming the victim.”
Two-year schools add four-year option
ndiana University’s 90 30 program is just one model. It allows students to take 90 semester units at a community college and the final 30 units through correspondence or online courses at the equivalent of Indiana in-state tuition rates. In addition to Gavilan, the Indiana program is being offered at 16 other community colleges in California, including De Anza in Cupertino, Hartnell College in Salinas, Santa Rosa Junior College and City College of San Francisco.
Other area schools also are developing collaborative relationships that let students earn bachelor’s degrees without leaving the community college campus.
This fall, the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology in Palo Alto will offer courses leading to a bachelor’s degree in psychology at De Anza College in Cupertino. The new program, which emphasizes the importance of social justice, is the first bachelor’s degree offered by a professional school known for its doctoral programs. Tuition this year will be about $27,500.
College Board Pushes Further into K-12
To generations of students and their teachers, the College Board has been synonymous with the SAT test. But these days it has broader ambitions and wants to reach deeply into high school and even middle school classrooms nationwide.
The board is marketing new products, like English and math curriculums for grades 6 through 12. It has worked with New York City to start five College Board Schools, with plans to open 13 more in New York and other cities by 2007. It is also trying to improve existing schools, starting this fall with 11 public high schools outside New York State and adding 19 next year. In November, it will open an institute for principals.
The board says it is eager to bring new rigor to education. But these efforts are also being driven by the fact that the board, a nonprofit organization based in New York City, is no longer an unrivaled force. It faces strong competition from the ACT in college admissions testing, and some colleges are making the SAT optional. Recent gaffes in SAT scoring raised questions of confidence in the test and the organization.
“We should not say that one size fits all,” said George H. Wood, the principal of Federal Hocking High School in rural Ohio. His school does not offer A.P. courses other than calculus, Mr. Wood said, because they are “too restrictive in terms of content.”
Kati Haycock, director of Education Trust, an advocacy group that supports testing, said she was concerned about adding even more testing, as some of the board’s products do. “It’s a little bit of a problem, with testing, testing, testing,” she said. “School officials are getting sick of it all.”
Still, Ms. Haycock said her group had reviewed the board’s SpringBoard program, which helps shape what is taught in English and math in grades 6 through 12, and found it “fabulous.”
Good, Bad News on the Math Front
When results are broken down by race, just 10 percent of black and Latino sophomores in Colorado schools are proficient in math; 90 percent are not.
Those scores are “scary,” said Jenna Fleur Lin, a math teacher who tutors high school students in the Cherry Creek School District and runs a free week-long math and science camp at an inner-city Denver church.
“What it means is you have a huge population that’s not going to function properly,” Lin said.
Moloney said one problem is that, unlike elementary and middle school students, high schoolers have the freedom to choose many of their own courses.
“Are minority youngsters being channelled into challenging programs or are you being (steered) to diminished programs?” he said.
Lin said she believes many students don’t have a solid foundation in math in elementary school.
They are just learning to do calculations but they don’t understand how to
High School Rigor: Iowa AP Index and a Michigan School Board Member
Every May a large number of high school students across America take AP exams. In May 2005 over 1.2 million high school students took over 2.1 million AP exams. AP allows students to pursue college-level studies while still in high school. Over 3000 colleges accept AP exam scores for either college credit or placement in higher level courses. AP was developed by The College Board and is one of the most successful and respected academic programs in the nation.
There have been numerous studies and articles proclaiming the advantages of AP. AP test scores have been found to be very good predictors of college grades and college graduation. A National Center for Educational Accountability study (2005) indicated that passing AP exams shows a strong and consistent relationship to college graduation rates. Recently, there has been considerable reporting on the benefits of AP courses and exams for minority students and students from poverty backgrounds. Such students exceed their educators’ expectations on AP (when given the opportunity). AP tests and minority students were made famous with the movie “Stand and Deliver” portraying the high success of inner-city Latino students on the AP Calculus exam.
While there is some controversy over AP (e.g., too much material covered in a short time; more breadth than depth) there is strong agreement (backed by research) by educators that AP courses and exams are a rigorous and meaningful indicator of academic preparation for college. Also, AP exams provide a uniform standard of academic accomplishment across geography, economic status, ethnicity and school size. AP exams cover 34 subject areas and exams are scored on a scale of 1-5, with 5 considered top level work (a grade equivalent of an “A”) in a corresponding college course. A score of 3 or better is often accepted for either college credit or placement.
Pittsburgh Outsources Curriculum
Pittsburgh has hired a private company to write a coherent curriculum for city schools, reports the Post-Gazette.
Because course content is uneven and out of sync with state standards, the Pittsburgh Public School district is paying New York-based Kaplan K12 Learning Services $8.4 million to write standardized curricula for grades six through 12.
. . . Teachers in other districts have complained that Kaplan’s detailed curriculum turned them into automatons and deprived them of time to cover material in adequate detail or help students with individual needs.
. . . Pittsburgh school officials cite an urgent need to bring coherence and rigor to what’s taught and tested in the district’s classrooms.
Interesting. Perhaps an RFP looking for different ideas might be useful. Public and private organizations could respond. One only has to look at the “Cathedral and the Bazaar” to see the power of a community vs a top down approach. Leadership, particularly that which embraces the community is critical – as Lucy Mathiak recently pointed out:
Later, she added: “I think one of the fundamental questions facing our district is whether we treat parents as resources or problems. Any parent who is concerned about safety, discipline or academic issues needs to feel confident that their concerns are going to be heard. We have to court the parents. The future of our schools depends on their confidence that we are working as partners with them.”
Here’s a parent’s perspective on curriculum and school climate. Another. A vast majority of the UW Math Department’s perspective (35 of the 37 signed this letter). Marc Eisen offers still another perspective.
Revenue Caps Affect Middleton
Budget Hangs On Enrollment Middleton Watching Numbers
The Capital Times Tuesday, July 11, 2006
By Christopher Michaels
Increased enrollment in the weeks preceding the start of the school year could mean more state aid for the Middleton-Cross Plains School District. It also could mean an easing of planned staff reductions of special concern to one of the district’s elementary schools.
Teachers and parents from Park Elementary School in Cross Plains are asking the School Board to do what it can to avoid staff cuts at their school, which has a number of special needs students.
In a preliminary 2006-07 district budget approved by the School Board Monday, the tax rate remains unchanged from the 2005-06 school year. However, state revenue limits mean the district has had to reduce its budget by about $1.4 million compared to last year.
That reduction is taking its toll on programs and staffing with about 15 positions districtwide being eliminated, said Superintendent Bill Reis. Some of those positions, including two teachers and available hours for educational assistants, are at Park.
Madison School Board “Progress Report” Week of July 3rd
Via a Johnny Winston, Jr. email:
Welcome to the week of July 3rd edition of the Madison school boards Progress Report. I hope everyone is enjoying the summer
First, upcoming business…On Monday July 10th several committees of the board are meeting: Partnerships at 5 p.m.; Finance & Operations at 6 p.m.; Communications at 7 p.m. and Long Range Planning at 8 p.m
The general meeting on July 17th will include a drama performance from youth involved in MSCR arts program
Next, a few notes on what was accomplished last month
On June 19th the board held a brainstorming session to discuss future district directions. This included developing agenda items for the board and committees. For the 06-07 school year, the entire board will focus on: 1) Attendance, Dropouts, Truancy and Expulsions; 2) Budget Process; 3) Math & Literacy; and 4) Equity. Many items were discussed for committee agendas and the committees themselves will prioritize them
On June 22nd the board approved a one year total package increase of 3.98% for MMSD administrators with 2.18% of that increase going to base salary. The district will investigate whether the current level of health insurance benefits can be provided at a lower cost, which would result in cost savings
Upcoming agenda items include: Food/Wellness; Animals in the Classroom; and Advertising & Sponsorship policies; and the Superintendents Evaluation.
More Discussion on Spending & Education Quality
From time to time I’ve mentioned the disastrous Kansas City experiment, which tends to be a rallying point for those who dare to contradict the Kozol doctrine that increased spending will cure all that ails American education. Looks like somebody didn’t get the memo, because we have a Kansas City for the new millennium:
Boots references George Stratigos, President of the Marin city School District – blog.
In the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the Black Power movement in the United States, there is no clearer indication of black power’s failure than in urban school systems like Baltimore’s that are run by Democrats. Washington, D. C. schools are some of the worst in the country. Democrats run D.C.
In the Manhattan Institute study, Baltimore’s graduation rate was 91st of the country’s 100 largest school systems. But Detroit’s — another city run by Democrats — was 98th. In both Baltimore and Detroit, most of those Democrats are black who are supposed to be exercising black power to improve conditions for black folks.
– via Rotherham.
For School Equality, Try Mobility
DUMB liberal ideas in education are a dime a dozen, and during my time as superintendent of Houston’s schools and as the United States secretary of education I battled against all sorts of progressivist lunacy, from whole-language reading to fuzzy math to lifetime teacher tenure. Today, however, one of the worst ideas in education is coming from conservatives: the so-called 65 percent solution.
This movement, bankrolled largely by Patrick Byrne, the founder of Overstock.com, wants states to mandate that 65 percent of school dollars be spent “in the classroom.” Budget items like teacher salaries would count; librarians, transportation costs and upkeep of buildings would not.
Proponents argue that this will counter wasteful spending and runaway school “overhead,” and they have convinced many voters — a Harris poll last fall put national support at more than 70 percent. Four states — Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana and Texas — have adopted 65 percent mandates and at least six more are seriously considering them.
The only drawback is that such laws won’t actually make schools any better, and could make them worse. Yes, it’s true that education financing is a mess and that billions are wasted every year. But the 65 percent solution won’t help. The most likely outcome is that school officials will learn the art of creative accounting in order to increase the percentage of money that can be deemed “classroom” expenses.
An op-ed by Rod Paige in today’s NYT kicks off a new round of debate about student finance. Paige makes some good points, criticizes the 65 percent solution, and touts a new ecumenical manifesto about school finance organized by the Fordham Foundation and signed by a wide range of people including former Clinton WH Chief of Staff John Podesta and former NC Governor Jim Hunt. But, because the manifesto is bipartisan, or really non-partisan, it’s a shame Paige’s op-ed doesn’t have a dual byline to better frame the issue. Incidentally, hard to miss that while a few years ago few on the left wanted much to do with Fordham, that’s really changed. Sign of the changing edupolitics. (Disc. I signed.) It’s also hard to miss the enormous impact Commodore Marguerite Roza is having on this debate.
The Schools Scam
I realize that some of the legal frameworks differ but think that this serves as a good remider that TIFs have an impact on school funding everywhere.
From the Chicago Reader See also: Epoch TimesTJM
By Ben Joravsky
The Schools Scam
Under the TIF system millions of dollars in property taxes are being diverted from education to development.
By Ben Joravsky June 23, 2006
On June 15 Mayor Daley brought public school officials and aldermen to a south-side grammar school for a revival meeting of sorts. The ostensible purpose of the press conference was to announce the mayor’s plans to spend $1 billion over the next six years to build 24 new schools in neighborhoods across Chicago. But Daley and the other officials made a point of reminding people of the economic development plan that makes this possible: the tax increment financing program.
“This is a creative use of existing dollars which have accrued from our successful TIF program and will not require any property tax increase by the city of Chicago to fund,” Daley said in his remarks.
Even as public pronouncements go, this was a whopper. Of course building new schools requires an increase in property taxes. It’s just that in this case the deed’s been done: TIFs have been jacking up property tax bills for almost 23 years. Rest assured they’ll continue to—the city shows no sign of abandoning them. On the contrary, City Hall insiders tell me that the mayor’s press conference was part of a move to win public approval for the extension of the Central Loop TIF, the city’s oldest and largest, which is set to expire next year.
But as a public relations maneuver the announcement was brilliant. In one fell swoop, Daley managed to tweak the state for not paying more in education funds and look like the heroic protector of the city’s schoolchildren, using the promise of new schools to camouflage the diversion by TIFs of millions from public education coffers.
According to the city, as much as $600 million, or 60 percent, of the new construction costs will come from various TIFs, districts created by the City Council that put a rough cap on the amount of property taxes that go to the schools, the parks, and the county for a period of 23 years. Additional property taxes generated in these districts through rising assessments and new development flow into TIF accounts, which function as virtually unmonitored slush funds.
Originally TIFs weren’t intended to build tax-exempt properties like schools: they were supposed to subsidize economic development in blighted communities with the goal of even-tually increasing property tax revenue. But as the TIF program has expanded and evolved—the city’s created more than 100 districts in the last ten years—Mayor Daley and the City Council have drawn on them to subsidize projects from upscale condos in trendy neighborhoods to Millennium Park to a rehab of of the lake-shore campus of tax-exempt Loyola University.
Daley says he’s repaying the public. “Our taxpayers have been generous beyond words,” he said at the press conference. “Today we’re giving back to those taxpayers something real and meaningful—something they will see and touch and feel and know that their dollars are being invested carefully and appropriately.”
That’s a noble aspiration, and Lord knows there are neighborhoods that desperately need new classrooms. But even with the new construction, the Chicago Public Schools won’t come close to retrieving the property tax revenue it’s lost to TIFs. According to CPS officials, the city has already spent about $280 million in TIF funds building or rehabbing schools. By 2012, when the proposed construction program is completed, that amount will have gone up to about $880 million. Since TIFs operate without budgets, the other side of the ledger is more difficult to calculate. But based on the annual statements provided by the county clerk’s office, TIFs have diverted about $621 million in property taxes over the last two years. Since roughly half of this would have gone to the schools, the money diverted from the schools to TIFs amounts to about $310 million in the last two years alone. As TIFs continually grow, this means that by a conservative estimate they will have diverted well over $1 billion from the schools by 2012, when the new construction is completed—a shortfall of $120 million or so.
Special ed teachers in short supply
When it scales back in size next year, Milwaukee’s Madison High School will lose nearly 15 teaching positions: a guidance counselor, a health teacher, a physical education teacher, two social studies teachers, one art teacher and five positions in science and math, among others.
At the same time, however, Madison will gain an additional special education teacher.
The same trend is playing out in many of the city’s schools. The overall student population keeps shrinking. The administrative staff at the central office keeps shrinking. The teaching corps keeps shrinking – down 14% in four years.
Edwize on the Poor Track Record of Small Learning Communities
Maisie adds notes and links to the recent Business Week interview with Bill and Melinda Gates on their Small Learning Community High School initiative (now underway at Madison’s West High chool – leading to mandatory grouping initiatives like English 10):
Business Week has a cover story this week about Bill and Melinda Gates’ small schools efforts. The story starts in Denver, where the Gates folks made a mess of breaking up that city’s lowest-performing school, “a complete failure,” in the Denver superintendent’s words. Summarizing reporters’ visits to 22 Gates-funded schools around the country, the article finds that “while the Microsoft couple indisputably merit praise for calling national attention to the dropout crisis and funding the creation of some promising schools, they deserve no better than a C when it comes to improving academic performance…Creating small schools may work sometimes, but it’s no panacea.”
The article points to some real successes. Some are in New York City, and the article says part of the reason for the success is Gates’ partnership with New Visions for Public Schools, which has been in the small-schools business a lot longer than Bill and Melinda. Mott Haven Village Prep HS [pdf] is one example. But of all the Gates schools in NYC, the report says one-third had ineffective partnerships, many have rising “social tensions,” and suspensions have triped in the new schools over the last three years to reach the system average.
We are never snippy but we told you so. The UFT’s 2005 Small Schools Task Force found too many of the Gates-funded small schools have been started with little planning, inexperienced leadership, minimal input from staff or stakeholders and no coherent vision. Some are little more than shells behind a lofty–sometimes ridiculously lofty–name.
Curdled Cheese: Carey on Wisconsin’s Statistical Manipulation of No Child Left Behind Standards
Wisconsin Superintendant of Public Instruction Elizabeth Burmaster was on the agenda to speak at the meeting, so I was looking forward to hearing her elaborate on Wisconsin’s super-efficient approach to tackling the difficult, contentious issue of what do with under-performing schools and districts: pretend that virtually none of your schools and districts are under-performing.
Instead, she offered a “spirited defense” of the state’s policies, insisting that “We have in no way tried to game the system.” She also promised that the new list of schools missing AYP, due out this week, would be longer.
She was right, the new list is longer, upping the number of schools identified from 49 to 92. But before any congratulations are offered, it’s important to keep in mind that this mostly just represents an extension of the state’s general attitude/approach to public education, which is “Everything here is just fine, in fact fact better than fine, except for Milwaukee, which doesn’t really count, in that Milwaukee is (A) A city, and (B) Populated with people who aren’t…like the rest of us.”
Of the 92 schools identified, the majority (58) are in Milwaukee. And the number of districts identified statewide changed from 1 out 426 to…(drum roll)…1 out 426. Still just Milwaukee.
More on Carey’s analysis “of Wisconsin’s manipulations”.
2006 / 2007 Madison School Board & Committee Goals
The Madison School Board meets June 19, 2006 @ 5:00p.m. to discuss their 2006 / 2007 goals for our $332M+ schools. A friend wondered what goals readers have in mind.
I thought it might be useful to consider the Board’s goals in light of the District’s strategic plan [450K pdf]:
- Instructional Excellence
Improving student achievement
Offering challenging, diverse and contemporary curriculum and instruction. - Student Support
Assuring a safe, respectful and welcoming learning environment. - Staff Effectiveness
Recruiting, developing and retaining a highly competent workforce that reflects the diversity of our students. - Home and Community Partnerships
Strengthening community and family partnerships, and communication. - Fiscal Responsibility
Using resources efficiently and strategically.
My thoughts are below:
Transforming High School Teaching & Learning: A District Wide Design
Judy Wurtzel, Senior Fellow, the Aspen Institute: Full report:
250K PDF
Significant improvements in student learn ing require real change at the heart of instruction: the interaction of students and teachers around the content to be learned. This paper suggests a set of design specifications for strengthening this interaction of student, teacher and content and increasing student performance across a school district.
These designs have six components. The first two focus on what the job of effective high school teaching looks like and on getting and keeping teachers who can do this job. They offer a new teacher “job description” that places accountability for results and the use and refinement of effective practices at the core of teaching and also suggest approaches for recruiting and retaining high school teachers who have the will and capacity to embrace this job description and increase student learning. The next four components describe an infrastructure for improving high school instruction that is consistent with this new job description, that provides the concrete supports needed to help new and veteran teachers know what and how to teach effectively, that enablesteachers to elicit higher performance from their students,
and that rests on a teacher-based system for continuously improving results.
These six components are:
- A new vision of teacher professionalism that supports instructional improvement
- A comprehensive strategy to attract and retain highly effective high school teachers
- Clear expectations for high school instructional practices
- Anchor standards and aligned assessments that support effective instruction
- Core curriculum, common lessons and tools based on the anchor standards and assessments
- A system to build teacher capacity
Getting Mad About Schools
To get such results, do teachers and parents and administrators have to be insufferable? Maybe not. Both Patterson and Winston say their favorite clients — Feinberg and Levin — are more mature and less irritating now. Feinberg in particular, by most accounts the more troublesome of the two, is now “quite the diplomat,” Patterson said.
We have examples of some big city school systems that have made significant progress under persistent but polite pressure from above. The impressive record of Boston school superintendent Tom Payzant, retiring after 10 years, is one example. Patterson said she thinks she and Feinberg only managed to make headway in Houston for KIPP because that city had a far-sighted and intelligent school board, and an accomplished superintendent, future U.S. education secretary Rod Paige. Paige saw the value of Feinberg’s efforts even when the KIPP principal waited beside Paige’s car in the school district parking lot all day so that he could ambush him with a request for help in another space crisis.
Public school students take up a tougher course
But the experience — eight-hour school days, tiny classes with demanding teachers, and Saturday sessions — was more trying than any of them expected. The students, who delayed high school a year to attend Beacon, have emerged with a sense of how satisfying a tough school can be, but also of how unchallenging their public school experiences had been.
“In the beginning, I felt like it was way too much work times two,” said Dennishia Bell, 14, a former honor roll student at the Umana Barnes Middle School in East Boston. “I didn’t realize that I wasn’t really being challenged in school until I came to Beacon Academy. If I stuck to the Boston Public Schools, I almost feel like they were cheating me out of my education.”
A group of educators and entrepreneurs, including former prep school teachers and administrators, established Beacon last summer because of the concern that too few bright, motivated urban public school students could pass the entrance exams and meet the academic standards required for competitive prep schools and the city’s exam schools, said Marsha Feinberg, one of the founders. The goal was to prepare students for the academic rigors, as well as the social environment, of prep schools, often filled with children of the rich and famous.
Notes on SAT Scores
Colleges across the country are reporting a drop in SAT scores this year. I’ve been tutoring students in New York City for the SAT since 1989, and I have watched the numbers rise and fall. This year, though, the scores of my best students dropped about 50 points total in the math and verbal portions of the test (each on a scale of 200 to 800). Colleges and parents are wondering: Is there something wrong with the new test? Or are our children not being taught what they should know?
Before 1994, the verbal section of the SAT was about 65% vocabulary (55 out of 85 questions) and 35% reading comprehension. Then the Educational Testing Service shortened and reworked the test, devoting half of the 78 questions to each area. Last year ETS changed the test again, and now it is heavily skewed toward reading: 49 of the 68 items require students to read, synthesize and answer questions.
In such a way, ETS has increased the penalty for not reading throughout one’s school years. Studying vocabulary lists before the test–a long-favored shortcut to lifting scores–just won’t cut it anymore. Students who read widely and often throughout their elementary and high-school years develop the kinds of reading skills measured by the new SAT. Students who avoid reading don’t–and can’t develop them in a cram course.
Unlikely Allies (“against” NCLB)
Let the Dialogue Begin
Bridging Differences A Dialogue Between Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch
May 24, 2006
By Deborah Meier & Diane Ravitch
In the course of the last 30 years, the two of us have been at odds on any number of issues – on our judgments about progressive education, on the relative importance of curriculum content (what students are taught) vs. habits of mind (how students come to know what they are taught), and most recently in our views of the risks involved in nationalizing aspects of education policy.
Meeting recently to prepare for a debate on the federal No Child Left Behind Act, however, we found ourselves agreeing about the mess that has been generated by local and state testing. Both of us agreed that the public needs far better information about both inputs and outcomes, without which the public is woefully uninformed and too easily manipulated. As we discussed what the next policy steps should be, Diane preferred a national response, and Deborah preferred a local one.
As we talked further, we were surprised to discover that we shared a similar reaction to many of the things that are happening in education today, especially in our nation’s urban school districts. Recent trends and events seem to be confirming our mutual fears and jeopardizing our common hopes about what schooling might accomplish for the nation’s children. We might, we agreed, be getting the worst of both our perspectives.
Unlike Deborah, Diane has long supported an explicit, prescribed curriculum, one that would consume about half the school day, on which national examinations would be based. Diane believes in the value of a common, knowledge-based curriculum, such as the Core Knowledge curriculum, that ensures that all children study history, literature, mathematics, science, art, music, and foreign language; such a curriculum, she thinks, would support rather than undermine teachers’ work. Deborah, while strongly agreeing on the need for a broad liberal arts curriculum, doubts that anyone can ensure what children will really understand and usefully make sense of, even through the best imposed curriculum, especially if it is designed by people who are far from the actual school communities and classrooms.
Yet both of us are appalled by the relentless “test prep” activities that have displaced good instruction in far too many urban classrooms, and that narrow the curriculum to nothing but math and reading. We are furthermore distressed by unwarranted claims from many cities and states about “historic gains” that are based on dumbed-down tests, even occasionally on downright dishonest scoring by purposeful exclusion of low-scoring students.What unites us above all is our conviction that low-income children who live in urban centers are getting the worst of both of our approaches.
Lighting and Daylighting in School Buildings, Workshop, June 23
With the MMSD considering an addition to Leopold Elementary and a new west side high school, the fabulous Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Fair in Custer, Wisconsin (just 7 miles east of Stevens Point) offers a relevant presentation titled Lighting and Daylighting in School Buildings. The Fair program describes the presentation:
Learn to evaluate the light needed for the activity at hand. Plus, gain some tips on daylighting — using a bit of the most abundant, accessible and predictable renewable resource available to us.
The presentation will be offered on Friday, June 23, at 12:00 noon. The presenter Bob Drevlow works with the Focus on Energy Schools Program.
Daylighting saves electricity without adding cost to a school, as demonstrated by Clackamas High School in Clackamas, Oregon.
Hang it Up
YOU’RE a teacher in the New York City public school system. It’s September, and you’re lecturing the class on the structure of an essay. Your students need to know this information to pass your class and the Regents exam, and you, of course, hope that one day your talented students will dazzle and amaze English professors all over the country.
You turn your back to write the definition of “thesis” on the chalk board. It takes about 15 seconds. You turn around to the class expecting to see 25 students scribbling the concept in their notebook. Instead, you see a group of students who have sprung appendages of technology.
Jose has grown an earphone. Maria’s thumbs have sprouted a two-way. Man Keung, recently arrived from China, is texting away on a cellphone connected to his wrist. And Christina appears to be playing Mine Sweeper on a Pocket PC on her lap.
2006 / 2007 MMSD Food Service Budget Discussion
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28 minute video excerpt of this evening’s discussion of the MMSD’s food service budget (the food service budget is evidently supposed to break even, but the operating budget has apparently been subsidizing it by several hundred thousand dollars annually). |
This sort of excellent citizen oversite is essential to any publicly financed organization, particularly one that plans to spend $332M in taxpayer funds next year and hopes to pass referenda in the near future.
Former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin made a similar case today when he discussed our fair city’s water problems:
It’s funny how progressives forget their history and the reason for doing things. The idea is to have a citizen board, not a board with public employees. That is part of the checks and balances. In fact the progressive left in Madison went though considerable time over the years gradually removing city staff from committees so they would not dominate and squelch the citizens who are more likely to be ‘whistleblowers.’
In the water example, a citizen spent years chasing this issue, finally getting the attention of the traditional media and the politicians.
A number of board members have been asking many questions (the video clip will give you a nice overview of who is asking the questions and what the responses are). You can check the action out here (Each “Tab” is a question to the Administration, with their response”). For example, we learn in tab 11 2 Page PDF that the district spent a net (after 200K in gate receipts and 450K in student fees) $1,433,603 on athletics in 2005/2006 and plans to spend a net $1,803,286 in 2006/2007, a 25% increase. The overall budget will grow by more than 3%.
This is quite a change from past years, and provides some hope for the future.
Let them Eat Kale
Plans to improve school meals are causing havoc
JUST over a year ago, Jamie Oliver, a camera-friendly chef, called for a revolution in school kitchens. In a television series, he chronicled the decline in school lunches and showed that junk food-addicted children could be taught to tuck into what he calls “pukka nosh”. It proved a traumatic experience for the young gourmands, some of whom demonstrated for the return of chips and burgers. Mr Oliver’s antics have also tweaked the government, upset some dinner ladies and shaken the catering market.
“Jamie’s School Dinners” galvanised parents, who demanded that schools ditch grotesque inventions such as the Turkey Twizzler and adopt wholesome fare such as shepherd’s pie and lentil soup. Worried about a looming general election, the government hastily responded to Mr Oliver’s demands. Ruth Kelly, who was then the education secretary, promised to ban junk food in schools and asked a panel of experts to suggest nutritional guidelines.
Schools in seven Wisconsin metro areas rated highly
Seven metropolitan areas of Wisconsin are in the top 25 metros for public schools in the country, according to a survey ranking U.S. school districts with 3,300 students or more. The survey was conducted by Expansion Management Magazine, a monthly business publication for executives of companies that are actively looking to expand or relocate facilities within the next three years. The seven metropolitan areas of Wisconsin—Sheboygan (5), Eau Claire (7), Madison (8), Wausau (11), Appleton(16), Oshkosh-Neenah (20), and Fond du Lac (24)—appeared in a list of the 25 Top Metros for Public Schools. Schools in these areas, plus Green Bay and La Crosse, were named to the magazine’s 5-Star Public Schools Metros list.
“I am extremely proud of Wisconsin teachers and students for their dedication to quality teaching and learning, and their hard work shows in this survey of the best metropolitan school systems in the nation,” said State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster. “Our students, overall, consistently score among the very best in the nation on the major college entrance exams and high school graduation rates. This affirmation of the quality of Wisconsin schools from an independent, unbiased study, underscores our students’ dedication to excellence in learning and academic achievement, and the support they
receive from their teachers, families, and communities.
“Public education in Wisconsin is moving forward, supported by our early learning and classsize reduction programs. This recognition tells us that we are on the right track and must continue to invest in education, pre-kindergarten through university. Our sustained efforts as students, educators,parents, community volunteers, and citizens will ensure that our students graduate with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in postsecondary education, the workplace, and as citizens of our 21st century global society,” she said.
The magazine rated the metro area schools as a way of providing a basis for executives to compare the type of work force they are likely to encounter in various communities around the country. Using the data from its 15th annual Education Quotient ratings, which compared 2,800 secondary school districts throughout the country, Expansion Management grouped school districts into Metropolitan
Statistical Areas (MPAs). Public schools in those 362 MPAs were compared according to a variety of categories, including college admission test scores, graduation rates, beginning and average teacher
salaries, per pupil expenditures, and student-teacher ratio.
Bill King, chief editor of Expansion Management Magazine, speaking to the importance of quality schools to business success, said, “Today’s workers, most of whom are high school graduates, must possess skills far beyond those needed just a generation ago. Clearly, the quality of the public schools is a pretty good indicator of the type of manufacturing work force a company is likely to encounter in a
particular community.”
NOTE: A list of the Best Overall U.S. Metros for Public Schools with 3,300 students or more, according to Expansion Management magazine, follows.
Top Metros for Public Schools
1. State College, Pa.
2. Ithaca, N.Y.
3. Lawrence, Kan.
4. Iowa City, Iowa
5. Sheboygan, Wis.
6. Charlottesville, Va.
7. Eau Claire, Wis.
8. Madison, Wis.
9. Columbia, Mo.
10. Harrisonburg, Va.
11. Wausau, Wis.
12. Ames, Iowa
13. Missoula, Mont.
14. Grand Forks, N.D.-Minn.
15. Billings, Mont.
16. Appleton, Wis.
17. Bloomington, Ind.
18. Flagstaff, Ariz.
19 Glens Falls, N.Y.
20. Oshkosh-Neenah, Wis.
21. Blacksburg-Christianburg-Radford, Va.
22. Jonesboro, Ark.
23. Burlington-South Burlington, Vt.
24. Fond du Lac, Wis.
25. Ocean City, N.J
For further information, contact Joseph Donovan, Communications Officer, DPI, 608.266.3559
Acting White
“Go into any inner-city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.”
—Barack Obama, Keynote Address, Democratic National Convention, 2004
Acting white was once a label used by scholars, writing in obscure journals, to characterize academically inclined, but allegedly snobbish, minority students who were shunned by their peers.
Now that it has entered the national consciousness—perhaps even its conscience—the term has become a slippery, contentious phrase that is used to refer to a variety of unsavory social practices and attitudes and whose meaning is open to many interpretations, especially as to who is the perpetrator, who the victim.
I cannot, in the research presented here, disentangle all the elements in the dispute, but I can sort out some of its thicker threads. I can also be precise about what I mean by acting white: a set of social interactions in which minority adolescents who get good grades in school enjoy less social popularity than white students who do well academically.
Speak Up For Fine Arts Education’s Future
I have been an outspoken advocate for elementary strings the past several years, because this course is a highly valued, high demand academic course that is part of the K-12 MMSD music curriculum but has been repeatedly put on the cut list without any meaningful curriculum planning taking place from year to year. However, I also strongly believe there has been a lack of long-term planning in all fine arts education since cuts began about 1999. Perhaps other academic areas have needed the administration’s attention, such as reading and math. That’s understandable, but the School Board missed yearly opportunities to put in place other structures to plan for the future of fine arts education in Madison – community committee is an example of one option they might have considered pursuing.
I was encouraged two weeks ago when the Performance and Achievement and Partnership Committee chairs indicated an interest in working on not only the cuts to elementary strings, but also other aspects of fine arts education. I hope a community-led fine arts education committee is formed from these two Board committees that will undertake long-term, strategic planning for fine arts education in Madison. I would like to see such planning include music, visual arts, dance, theater, etc. – all facets of the arts that bring joy and enrichment to the citizens in our community, growth to our city’s economy now and in the future and play an important academic role in the excellent education our children receive.
Again, School Board members can be emailed at: comments@madison.k12.wi.us
Local Property Tax Assessment Challenges Are Way Up This Year
Prices seemed to be falling as he was buying, he said, and he paid less for his condominium than ones that were sold a month or two earlier. He paid $259,000, including a parking stall, and his fight against City Hall is to have it assessed at $221,000 rather than $241,000, plus $18,000 for the parking stall, which is now treated as a separate property.
He said others in the building have nicer views and are higher up, but have lower assessments for the same floor space. In particular, he points to Ald. Mike Verveer’s condo two floors above him, which faces the lake instead of the courtyard, and is assessed at $231,000. Like those of all units in the building, its assessed value did not increase from 2005 to 2006.
“Obviously,” Taylor wrote in a letter submitted to the Assessor’s Office, “my second-floor unit’s value should be far less than a fourth-floor unit with a lake view.”
A close look at assessments raises many more questions. Some municipalities, such as Fitchburg reassess properties every 3 to 5 (or longer) years rather than annually as Madison does. Learn more via Access Dane (I do find it odd that some publicly financed data requires a “subscription” – we have the opportunity to pay twice).
Sensenbrenner’s article provides more grist for the consideration of a fall referendum.
“I have private preference but a public purse”
My 5-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Virginia, now attends a private school that teaches foreign language and arts and offers after-school music and dance classes. But tuition is forcing me to look at Atlanta Public Schools next year for kindergarten.
When I first started researching where to send Elizabeth next year, I was looking for private schools that offered tuition assistance. I also sent an e-mail, however, to my Atlanta Board of Education representative asking him to sell me on taking my child out of private school and placing her into public school. His energetic reply made me look at Atlanta schools.
Weekly Email Message
Carol Carstensen:
Parent Group Presidents:
MEMORIAL AND WEST AREA SCHOOLS: NOTE FORUM DESCRIBED UNDER MAY 8.
BUDGET FACTOID:
The 2006-07 proposed budget is on the district’s web site (www.mmsd.org/budget). The Executive Summary provides an overview of the budget. The list of specific staff cuts is found on pages 3 & 4 of Chapter 3, Department & Division Reports.
None of the cuts are good for the district or for the education of our children but they are required to keep the budget in compliance with the state revenue caps. Since there is likely to be considerable discussion about the cut affecting the elementary strings program, I wanted to provide a little additional information. The administration is proposing to continue the current structure (strings once a week for 45 minutes) for 5th graders only. Additionally, there is a recommendation to have a committee of district staff and UW music education specialists develop a new approach for K-5 music that will include, for all students, experience playing an instrument.
There are forums on the budget scheduled for Tuesday, May 2 at 6:30 p.m. at LaFollette and Tuesday, May 9 at 6:30 at Memorial.
The Madison Community – Students, Parents, Professionals, Citizens – Can Help Elementary Strings: Here’s How
The community CAN HELP elementary strings and fine arts education in MMSD. Please write the School Board – comments@madison.k12.wi.us – ask them a) to establish a community fine arts education advisory committee beginning with a small community working group to put together a plan for this, b) develop a multi-year strategic and education plan for fine arts education, c) work with the music professionals and community to address short-term issues facing elementary music education (other fine arts areas – dance, drama) that supports children’s learning and academic achievement. Until this is done, please write the School Board asking them not to accept (to reject) the Superintendent’s current K-5 music education proposal to eliminate elementary strings.
At this late date in the year, I feel a small community working group needs to be established that will develop a plan for moving forward with the community on fine arts education issues. I would be more than happy to volunteer my time to help coordinate this effort, which I see as a first step toward the establishment of a community fine arts education task force/advisory committee. However, what is key is the School Board’s support and the Superintendent’s leadership, and I would be honored to work with all members of the school board and with the Superintendent. I’m sure other people would be happy to help as well.
The issues with MMSD’s fine arts elementary music education is not solely a budget issue, but the administration’s lack of imagination and longer-term education planning in fine arts makes courses such as strings become budget issues because nothing is done from year to year to make it anything other than a budget issue.
Elementary strings is a high-demand course – this isn’t 50 kids across the district, it was 1,745 in September 2005. From 1969 to 2005, enrollment has tripled, increasing by 1,000 students from 1992 until 2002, at the same time that the number of low income and minority children increased in the elementary student population. Demand for the course is annually 50% of the total enrollment in 4th and 5th grade. Plus, minority and low income enrollment has increased over the years. This year there are about 550 low income children enrolled in the elementary class. More low income children enrolled to take the course, but did not because of the pull out nature, I’m assuming. There is nowhere else in the City that so many low-income children have the opportunity to study an instrument at a higher level and continuously as part of their daily education.
DC Public Schools & Charters
Normally I leave charter school issues to my colleagues Eduwonk and Sara Mead. But this morning’s front page article in the WaPo struck me as too obvious to pass up. It details how DC Public Schools is considering a novel arrangement with KIPP, one of the city’s most successful charter schools. KIPP wants to start a new middle school, but is having a hard time finding space. Meanwhile, one the regular DCPS elementary schools is losing enrollment and thus has too much space, to the point that it’s in danger of being closed. Thus, the arrrangement: co-locate in the same building, don’t overlap grades, and coordinate curricula so students from the elementary school can stay in the building and go to the KIPP middle school if that’s what they want to do.
Sounds great, right? Not to DC school board vice president Carolyn Graham, who said:
“We want to fully embrace a working relationship with KIPP, but we don’t want to do it to the detriment of our student body and financial viability,” she said, adding that the system lost about $11 million in city funding this year after more than 3,000 students departed. “We want them to come up with a way of working with our charter school partners so that all our students would benefit.”
Hmmm. You know, that’s kind of wordy, let’s tighten that up a little:
“We want to fully embrace a working relationship with KIPP, but we don’t want to do it to the detriment of our
student body andfinancial viability,” she said, adding that the system lost about $11 million in city funding this year after more than 3,000 students departed. “We want them to come up with a way of working with our charter school partners so thatall our studentsI would benefit.”There we go. Much more clear.
It’s true that more students in charter schools means less students in DCPS. But if you’re going to complain about that, you’ve got to at least make an attempt to say why that would be bad, particularly wih the test scores, parental demand, and the best judgment of the DCPS superintendant providing evidence to the country. The fact that Graham offers nothing of the kind is enormously telling
Children Before Special Interests
Oprah Winfrey recently used two days of her program to highlight the crisis in American public schools, focusing attention on our appalling dropout problem. The visuals were quite stunning.
In one segment, a group of inner-city Chicago students traded places with a group of suburban students to compare facilities and curriculums. In another, a valedictorian from a rural high school told of needing remedial classes in college. Perhaps most striking of all, CNN’s Andersen Cooper toured a high school near the White House that was in a shameful state of disrepair. Pieces of the ceiling had fallen on the ground, holes in the roof let rain pour into the school, restrooms were inoperable and unlit.
Oprah deserves a good deal of credit for putting a spotlight on these problems. Public schools face a dropout problem of stunning scale. Estimates from the Manhattan Institute put the nation’s dropout rate near 30 percent, with rates much higher among low-income and minority students. Many who do graduate do so without mastering high-school level material, as evidenced not only by the need for remediation among college students, but also in the stunningly poor literacy skills of the public.
National reading tests show that 38 percent of our fourth-graders score “below basic” in reading, meaning that they have failed to gain the basic literacy skills necessary to function academically. These students will drift into middle school, and literally be unable to make heads or tails of their textbooks.
via Andrew Rotherham:
Matthew Ladner, of steak dinner fame, weighs-in in the Philly Inquirer about what the Oprah hype all means. You can disagree with Ladner’s advocacy of vouchers but he nails the macro-problem here:
6% Success Rate: From High School to the Future: A first look at Chicago Public School graduates’ college enrollment, college preparation, and graduation from four-year colleges
Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago:
Following CPS (Chicago Public Schools) graduates from 1998, 1999, 2002 and 2003, this report uses records from Chicago high schools and data from the National Student Clearinghouse to examine the college experiences of all CPS alumni who entered college in the year after they graduated high school.
The study paints a discouraging picture of college success for CPS graduates. Despite the fact that nearly 80 percent of seniors state that they expect to graduate from a four-year college, only about 30 percent enroll in a four-year college within a year of graduating high school, and only 35 percent of those who enroll received a bachelor’s degree within six years. According to this report, CPS students’ low grades and test scores are keeping them from entering four-year colleges and more selective four-year colleges.
Complete study [14.9MB PDF]
New York offers Housing Subsidy as a Teacher Lure
New York City will offer housing subsidies of up to $14,600 to entice new math, science and special education teachers to work in the city’s most challenging schools, in one of the most aggressive housing incentive programs in the nation to address a chronic shortage of qualified educators in these specialties.
To be eligible for the subsidies, teachers must have at least two years’ experience. City officials said they hoped the program, to be announced by the city Education Department today, would immediately lead to the hiring of an extra 100 teachers for September and, with other recruitment efforts, ultimately help fill as many as 600 positions now held by teachers without the proper credentials.
Teachers Unions as Agents of Reform
Voters in Denver, Colo., in 2005 overwhelmingly approved a $25 million tax increase to fund a new, nine-year performance-based pay system for the city’s teachers. Brad Jupp taught in Denver’s public schools for 20 years, and was the lead DCTA negotiator on the team that negotiated the pilot project in 1999, and for the next 5 years he worked on the team that implemented the ProComp pilot.
ES: Why were you able to develop a pay-for-performance model in Denver when other places haven’t been?
BJ: Denver had a combination of the right opportunities and people who were willing, once they saw the opportunities, to put aside their fears of losing and work with other people to try to take advantage of those opportunities. The people included a school board president willing to say, “If the teachers accept this, we’ll figure out how to pay for it. They included the teacher building reps who said, “This is too good to refuse outright; let’s study it.” They included a local foundation that, once we negotiated the pay for performance pilot, realized we might actually be serious and offered us a million dollars to help put it in place. They included the Community Training and Assistance Center, the group that provided us with technical support and a research study of our work. They were willing to take on the enormous and risky task of measuring the impact of the pilot. And they included 16 principals in Denver who were able to see that this was going to be an opportunity for their faculties to build esprit de corps, to make a little extra money, to do some professional development around measuring results. I don’t really think there was a secret ingredient other than people being able to move past their doubts and seize an opportunity. It was a chance to create opportunities where the rewards outweighed the risks. I don’t think we do that much in public education.
………
But public schools have a harder time making changes, especially in the way people are paid, for a number of reasons. First, we don’t have a history of measuring results, and we don’t have a results-oriented attitude in our industry. Furthermore, we have configured the debate about teacher pay so that it’s a conflict between heavyweight policy contenders like unions and school boards. Finally, we do not have direct control over our revenue. It is easier to change a pay system when there is a rapid change in revenue that can be oriented to new outcomes. Most school finance systems provide nothing but routine cost of living adjustments. If that is all a district and union have to work with, they’re not going to have money to redistribute and make a new pay system.
Fascinating interview.
The School Transformation Plan
A Strategy to Create Small, High-Performing College-Preparatory Schools in Every Neighborhood of Los Angeles
Green Dot Public Schools, Bain & Company [180K PDF]:
Public school reform has become the #1 issue for the City of Los Angeles. While most acknowledge the poor state of the public education system, the discussion to date has largely focused on governance issues, such as mayoral control and district break-up. This whitepaper is intended to refocus the debate on a future vision for public schools in Los Angeles about which all stakeholders will be enthusiastic. Simply put, every child in Los Angeles should have the opportunity to attend a small, safe, college-preparatory public school. This whitepaper also provides a strategy for how the City of Los Angeles can take advantage of its historic opportunity to make this vision a reality. With $19 billion in bond funding, the Los Angeles Unified School District has unparalleled resources to execute a dramatic transformation.
via Eduwonk.
States Help Schools Hide Minority Scores
Frank Bass, Nicole Ziegler Dizon and Ben Feller:
States are helping public schools escape potential penalties by skirting the No Child Left Behind law’s requirement that students of all races must show annual academic progress.
With the federal government’s permission, schools aren’t counting the test scores of nearly 2 million students when they report progress by racial groups, an Associated Press computer analysis found.
Minorities – who historically haven’t fared as well as whites in testing – make up the vast majority of students whose scores are being excluded, AP found. And the numbers have been rising.
“I can’t believe that my child is going through testing just like the person sitting next to him or her and she’s not being counted,” said Angela Smith, a single mother. Her daughter, Shunta’ Winston, was among two dozen black students whose test scores weren’t broken out by race at her suburban Kansas City, Mo., high school.
To calculate a nationwide estimate, AP analyzed the 2003-04 enrollment figures the government collected – the latest on record – and applied the current racial category exemptions the states use.
Overall, AP found that about 1.9 million students – or about 1 in every 14 test scores – aren’t being counted under the law’s racial categories. Minorities are seven times as likely to have their scores excluded as whites, the analysis showed.
Less than 2 percent of white children’s scores aren’t being counted as a separate category. In contrast, Hispanics and blacks have roughly 10 percent of their scores excluded. More than one-third of Asian scores and nearly half of American Indian scores aren’t broken out, AP found.
Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights website.
Carrie Antifinger notes that the loophole snares 33% of Wisconsin minority students.
Andrew Rotherham:
First, a reader of some of the back and forth might end up thinking that the law requires some minimum subgroup or that the feds set the subgroup size. It doesn’t, they don’t. Here are the exact AYP regulations from the Federal Register (pdf) and here is Ed Trust’s explanatory piece. It’s left up to the states although the feds approve the state plans and consequently have approved the various sizes in effect now. Now they’re trying to figure out how to clean up (pdf) some of the mess they’ve created.
Promises Betrayed
Five years ago we moved to Madison. A big factor in this decision was the expectation that we could rely on Madison public schools to educate our children. Our eldest went through West High School. To our delight the rigorous academic environment at West High transformed him into a better student, and he got accepted at several good public universities.
Now we are finding this promise betrayed for our younger children. Our elementary school appears to be sliding into disarray. Teachers and children are threatened, bullied, assaulted, and cursed at. Curricula are dumbed down to accommodate students who are unprepared for real school work. Cuts in special education are leaving the special needs kids adrift, and adding to the already impossible burdens of classroom teachers. To our disappointment we are forced to pull one child out of public school, simply to ensure her an orderly and safe learning environment.
Unless the School Board addresses these challenges forcefully and without obfuscation, I am afraid a historic mistake will be made. Madison schools will slip into a vicious cycle of middle class flight and steady decline. The very livability of our city might be at stake, not to mention our property values.
To me the necessary step is clear. The bottom five to ten percent of students, and especially all the aggressive kids, must be removed from regular classes. They should be concentrated in separate schools where they can receive the extra attention and intensive instruction they need, with an option to join regular classes if they are ready.
Madison Schools, New Population, New Challenges
Twenty-five years ago, less than 10 percent of the district’s students were minorities and relatively few lived in poverty. Today, there are almost as many minority students as white, and nearly 40 percent of all students are considered poor – many of them minority students. And the number of students who aren’t native English speakers has more than quadrupled.
“The school district looks a lot different from 1986 when I graduated,” said Madison School Board member Johnny Winston Jr.
The implications of this shift for the district and the city of Madison are huge, city and school officials say. Academic achievement levels of minority and low-income students continue to lag behind those of their peers. Dropout, suspension and expulsion rates also are higher for minority students.
“Generally speaking, children who grow up in poverty do not come to school with the same skills and background” that enable their wealthier peers to be successful, Superintendent Art Rainwater said. “I think there are certainly societal issues that are race-related that also affect the school environment.”
While the demographics of the district’s students have changed dramatically, the makeup of the district as a whole doesn’t match.
The overall population within the school district, which includes most of Madison along with parts of some surrounding municipalities, is predominantly white and far less likely to be poor. And most taxpayers in the district do not have school-age children, statistics show, a factor some suggest makes it harder to pass referendums to increase taxes when schools are seeking more money.
Forty-four percent of Madison public school students are minorities, while more than 80 percent of residents in the city are white, according to U.S. Census figures for 2000, the most recent year available. And since 1991, the percentage of district students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches has nearly doubled to 39 percent; in 2000, only 15 percent of Madison’s residents were below the poverty level.
Although the city’s minority and low-income population has increased since the 2000 census, it’s “nowhere near what it is in the schools,” said Dan Veroff, director of the Applied Population Laboratory in UW- Madison’s department of rural sociology.
Barb Schrank asked “Where have all the Students Gone? in November, 2005: 
There’s a lot more at work in the MMSD’s flat or slightly declining enrollment than Cullen’s article discusses. These issues include:
- Parents leaving over core curriculum issues such as math, English 10, and the ongoing controversy over heterogeneous vs homogeneous class grouping
- “Why we may have to move…”
- More on CMP Math curriculum: more on math in general here
- “Families leaving West?“
Thoreau’s most recent PTO meeting, which included 50 parent and teacher participants, illustrates a few of the issues that I believe are driving some families to leave: growing math curriculum concerns and the recent imposition of mandatory playground grouping without any prior parent/PTO discussion.
Student losses, or the MMSD’s failure to capture local population growth directly affects the district’s ability to grow revenue (based on per student spending and annual budget increases under the state’s revenue caps).
The MMSD’s failure to address curriculum and govenance concerns will simply increase the brain flight and reduces the number of people supporting the necessary referendums. Jason Shepherd’s recent article is well worth reading for additional background.
Finally, Mary Kay Battaglia put together some of these numbers in December with her “This is not Your Grandchild’s Madison School District“.
“Keep Option To Recount Ballots By Hand”
Because of Madison’s close School Board election, you may be witnessing the last manual recount of election results in Wisconsin for some time to come. A bill in the Legislature, poised to become law, will outlaw manual recounts for municipalities that use machine-readable ballots.
Under current law, the board of canvassers may use automatic voting machines for recounts, but the board may also perform a manual count of the ballots.
Senate Bill 612 would change that. Buried on page 18 of this 120-page bill is a requirement that all recounts be done by machine for machine-readable ballots, unless a petition for a manual recount is approved by a circuit court. The bill passed the Senate unanimously and is under consideration by a committee in the Assembly.
This bill should be changed. We need to preserve the ability to conduct a manual recount.
In September 2005, the non-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office summarized the flaws in the computerized voting machines now being sold. The conclusion of the GAO was that “key activities need to be completed” before we have secure and reliable electronic voting systems.
In the Madison School Board race there was a large number of undervotes (ballots that were not counted by the machine). Seven wards had an undervote of more than 20, and three more were more than 10 percent.
I observed the recount of Ward 52 this week. Interestingly, hand recounts (by two different people) confirmed Maya’s 231 votes while the same people counted Arlene’s votes and ended up with 300, twice. The machine, however, counted 301 on election night and during the recount. I agree with Malischke.
Greg Borowski and Tom Kertscher looked at another unusual election issue (from the November, 2004 election) last spring, voting gaps:
“In Madison, the city counts of the number of ballots cast, but doesn’t routinely try to reconcile that figure with the number of people recorded as having voted in an election. The firm found in Madison 133,598 people were recorded as having voted but 138,204 ballots were cast, a difference of more than 4,600. The actual number of ballots cast overall was 138,452, but the city doesn’t have a figure for the number of people recorded as having voted, Deputy City Clerk Sharon Christensen said.”
Madison School Board Seat 1 Election Recount Begins
Reorganizing the Reorganization
But what is obvious is that once again a major decision—one might even say a revolutionary decision—affecting the most important public institution in the city and the lives of 1.1 students has been taken without any public consultation. Once again, the leaders at Tweed met behind closed doors with their management consultants and their experts in corporate governance, along with chosen staff members, and reached decisions that will have sweeping implications for the public school system.
Something is terribly wrong with this scenario. Public agencies in a democracy are not free to make major policy changes without public consultation, public feedback, public review, and other efforts to forge a consensus. That is the way democratic governance is supposed to work. What we have now seems to be the behavior and actions of a monarchy or a privately held corporation that has no stockholders; its leaders can do whatever they wish without seeking public input or public assent.
Program on Vouchers Draws Minority Support
Washington’s African-American mayor, Anthony A. Williams, joined Republicans in supporting the program, prompted in part by a concession from Congress that pumped more money into public and charter schools. In doing so, Mr. Williams ignored the ire of fellow Democrats, labor unions and advocates of public schools.
“As mayor, if I can’t get the city together, people move out,” said Mr. Williams, who attended Catholic schools as a child. “If I can’t get the schools together, why should there be a barrier programmatically to people exercising their choice and moving their children out?”
School-choice programs have fervent opponents, and here, public school officials worry that the voucher program will diminish the importance of the neighborhood school, though the program serves only a relative few of the district’s 58,000 students. National critics of school choice like Reg Weaver, president of the country’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association, accused voucher supporters of “exploiting the frustration of these minority parents to push for a political agenda” intended to undermine public schools.
VOTE
Arguably every school board election is important, but this one is critical—this is a race for control of the majority. Maya Cole and Lucy Mathiak, two admirable, excellent candidates on their own, if elected today will shift the majority, in combination with Ruth Robarts and Lawrie Kobza. The result will be a new day in district politics. This new era will be marked by civility, public accessibility, accountability and cooperation, a far cry from the way the current board majority has run things. But BOTH Lucy and Maya must be elected for this to happen.
Arlene Silveira, Maya Cole’s worthy opponent, is firmly in the Carstensen, Keys, Lopez, Vang and Winston camp. Arlene has their support along with the endorsement of MTI. I have been impressed with her easy, professional manner. However, I disagree strongly not only with her blanket commitment to heterogeneity but also as to what her election would represent–business as usual,
If nothing else, this race has shaken up Madison politics. So-called progressives smear a graduate of Camp Wellstone/social justice activist as conservative. The liberal newspaper endorses what would in any other year have been described as the “pro-business” candidate while the conservative paper endorses her opponent, the stay-at-home mom. Local “progressives” spread rumors about PAC money from conservatives despite the strenous protests of an incredibly independent candidate who has always disavowed PAC money.
The only way I can really make sense out of it is that it’s outcome-based –do you want the board to continue on the current path, or is it time for a change? Thus, the CapTimes can endorse Mathiak and Silveira because this will keep the status quo in charge. The WSJ wants to see a change so endorses Cole and Mathiak.
Today is a perfect early spring day in our fair city. My neighborhood will echo with the happy shouts and laughter from the Randall playground when I leave the house this morning. Please take the time to stop by your ward and vote. This is for them.
One last thought: thank you to the candidates and all the members of the school board. While I may disagree profoundly with some of you, I have the greatest respect for your commitment to our schools and dedication to public service.
Channel 3000 on the school board election
Yesterday, Juan Jose Lopez and I had the honor of debating in Mr. Borowski’s AP American Government and Politics class. The debate was open to anyone at East High School who wanted to attend. The students organized it, wrote and asked the questions, and managed one of the best debates that we’ve had since the campaign season began. Kudos to East and the class. Here is the Channel 3000 report ( Neil Heinen’s Sunday morning show will be taped dialogue with all 4 candidates)
School Board Candidates Face Off In Debate
Two Seats Are Open On Board
UPDATED: 9:25 am CST March 31, 2006
MADISON, Wis. — School board candidates up for election next Tuesday brought their debate to a Madison high school classroom on Thursday.
Incumbent board member Juan Jose Lopez and challenger Lucy Mathiak debated in a Madison East High School civics class.
During the debate, the students asked questions about some of their concerns, including curriculum questions about math and advanced placement classes.
Candidates responded by expressing their hopes and intentions for the district, WISC-TV reported.
Lopez said that he supports where the district is headed and that focusing on certain expectations have translated into the schools’ success.
“I’ve focused on student achievement. Student achievement is one of the most important things for young people in this community,” he said. “We value public education. We value excellence. We value what’s important to our young people in this community. Our public schools are No. 1 because that’s what we value.”
Mathiak said that she supports changes in district policy on things like the budget. She said that it’s important to plan for the future to keep the city’s schools ahead of the curve, WISC-TV reported.
“In Madison, we take a lot of pride in having strong schools,” she said. “We have excellent teachers, we have very strong programs, but I don’t think we can afford to be complacent. And by that, I mean we cannot afford to sit back and think that we have always had great schools so we always will”
Retiring school board member Bill Keys said that what’s at stake in this election is really an attitude toward public education.
“It’s going to have a decades-long impact to make the right kind of vote,” Keys said. “They should make an informed vote. They should read the literature.”
The two open seats for the school board have four candidates. Mathiak and Lopez are competing for one seat and Maya Cole and Arlene Silveira for the seat that Keys is vacating.
Lopez and Silveira have endorsements from Madison Teacher’s Inc., the teachers’ union. Mathiak and Silveira have been endorsed by the Capitol Times in their respective races.
The current board is split on who it will endorse, WISC-TV reported.
The fate of the schools
Will the Madison district sink or swim?
April 4th elections could prove pivotal
At the end of an especially divisive Madison school board meeting, Annette Montegomery took to the microphone and laid bare her frustrations with the seven elected citizens who govern Madison schools.
“I don’t understand why it takes so long to get anything accomplished with this board!” yelled Montgomery, a Fitchburg parent with two children in Madison’s Leopold Elementary School. She pegged board members as clueless about how they’ve compromised the trust of the district’s residents.
“You don’t think we’re already angry? What do we have to do to show you, to convince you, how angry we are? If I could, I’d impeach every single one of you and start over!”
Impeachment isn’t being seriously considered as solution to the Madison Metropolitan School District’s problems. But infighting and seemingly insurmountable budget problems have increasingly undercut the board’s ability to chart a positive course for Madison schools.
And that’s not good, given the challenges on the horizon for a district of 24,490 kids with a $319 million budget. These include declining enrollment of upper- and middle-class families; continuing increases in low-income families and racial minorities; an overall stagnant enrollment which limits state funding increases; and prolonged battles with parent groups over everything from boundary changes to curriculum choices.
By Jason Shepard, Isthmus, March 23, 2006
“Regional Tax Base Sharing”
Madison Alder Zach Brandon:
Joint Economic Development Zones
A “Capital Corridor” municipal tax base sharing model
It is imperative that the City of Madison, and the surrounding municipalities, seek out new opportunities to expand and diversify the region’s economic base. Utilizing forward-thinking business development strategies to create jobs is essential in meeting that goal. The City of Madison should be proactive in facilitating regional economic development through innovative cooperative agreements with neighboring municipalities and through the development of regional strategies for growth.
via the daily page.
Candidates agree education is at crossroads
Madison School Board candidates Juan Jose Lopez and Lucy Mathiak look at what is happening in schools here in very different ways, but on at least one issue they are in complete agreement: Public education here and throughout the Badger State is at a critical crossroads.
But the two candidates vying for School Board Seat No. 2, which Lopez has held since 1994, have quite distinct notions about the nature of the challenges facing the Madison Metropolitan School District.
By Susan Troller, The Capital Times, March 21, 2006
In Defense of Big Schools
Gotham Gazette’s Reading NYC Book Club met with author Samuel Freedman, New York Times education columnist, and Jessica Siegel, the teacher who is one of the subjects of “Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students and Their High School.”An edited transcript is below:
The problem is that you have this tail of this big grant from the Gates Foundation wagging this policy dog at the Department of Ed. Because Gates has a big priority to start small schools, the Department of Education is jumpstarting 50 a year, year after year. It’s just impossible to have quality opening up schools in that kind of frenetic way. It also means a lot of these schools get opened up with these ultra-niche academic orientations – sports careers or architecture – that I think are really preposterous for a ninth grader. I think what they tend to do is serve the interests of community organizations that are sponsors. These may be perfectly well-intended sponsoring groups, but that doesn’t mean that the high school as a whole is going to work with a curriculum that is defined that narrowly, especially when there is a good reason to put more emphasis on language, science, math and a lot of the core subjects.
Joanne Jacobs has more, including this”
Gotham Gazette: Jonathan Kozol recently wrote an article for Gotham Gazette Segregated Schools: Shame Of The City, in which he argued that one issue that is being ignored is racial segregation. He said that until that is confronted, other reforms will not accomplish much. What is your perspective on that?
Jessica Siegel: What is the percentage of the public schools students that are children or color? Eighty-five percent? It’s not even relevant. That’s who is in the public schools. To me it’s not an issue of segregation so much as what kind of education you are going to give to the kids there.
Samuel Freedman: I completely agree with Jessica. Kozol espouses a point of view you pick up in education schools. But it is a high-minded excuse for paralysis.
. . . It’s part of educational suicide to say now, however well intentioned you are, that until you solve poverty or segregation nothing can happen in the schools. Something has to be able to happen in the schools.
Some schools, including Sherman, will get fresh fruit & vegetables
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Elizabeth Burmaster issued the following press release:
Students will crunch on carrots or cauliflower, or whip up a fruit smoothie while learning the importance of eating fresh produce in 25 schools throughout the state, thanks to a federal grant that brings Wisconsin into the successful U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program.
“This grant allows us to offer more fresh produce to all students as a supplement to the school breakfast and school lunch programs,” said State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster. “Many schools will offer the fresh fruits and vegetables at times during the day when children would otherwise be hungry, or might need an energy boost to improve their attention in the classroom. We know that hungry children can’t learn, so this program supports our efforts to boost achievement for all students and close the achievement gap.”
O’Keefe Student Wins Badger Spelling Bee
When Isabel Jacobson exited last year’s state spelling bee in the fourth round, the tearful O’Keeffe Middle School student predicted she would be back for another shot at the title.
Her prophecy was right on – and then some.
The three-time Madison All-City Spelling Bee champ outdueled the La Crosse area’s three-time winner, Spring Raine Decker, in a six-minute, four-word showdown to win the 58th annual Badger Spelling Bee.
Isabel, 13, correctly spelled “picaresque” to win an all-expenses paid trip to Washington, D.C., to represent Wisconsin in the Scripps National Spelling Bee on May 31 and June 1.
“It feels really good,” said Isabel, who leaped from the Monona Grove High School stage to get hugs from her family when she won. “I think one of my mistakes last year was that I really geared up for the city bee and didn’t study enough for state.”
Kansas Study on School Performance & Spending
The way Kansas schools spend their public money may be just as important as how much they get, according to a study released Thursday.
Initiated last year by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, the study by the Standard & Poor’s School Evaluation Services is thought to be the first to analyze and compare student performance and the way schools allocate budget dollars. It was funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
The study identified 17 districts that were using their dollars most effectively in achieving high levels of student performance on assessment tests.
The surprise for lawmakers was how much these 17 spent compared with less-successful districts.
“They spent less than the state average and less than districts that didn’t perform as well,” said Jason Kingston, chief analyst on the Standard & Poor’s project.
Based on the analysis, the study concluded that it would be too costly for the state to spend its way to proficiency.
The complete report can be found here [240K PDF file]. A summary is available here.
Kalamazoo, Mich., Pegs Revitalization Plan on Tuition Plan
Last year, Greg DeHaan and his partner built 189 homes in the leafy, middle-class suburbs ringing this downtrodden industrial city, but not one in Kalamazoo itself. “There was no demand,” says Mr. DeHaan, whose company, Allen Edwin Homes, is one of the largest home builders in Michigan.
By early December, however, a market had suddenly materialized, prompting the developer to pay $7 million for three separate tracts of land. Out-of-state investors began scouring the area for opportunities, too.
Mr. DeHaan and others in town trace this new interest in Kalamazoo to an unusual, anonymously funded plan. Beginning this June, college tuition will be free for any student who enters the Kalamazoo school system by the ninth grade — regardless of income or need. The program, unveiled in November by the city’s superintendent of schools and underwritten by a group of local philanthropists, is to run for at least 13 years.
Called the “Kalamazoo Promise,” the tuition plan requires only that students live in Kalamazoo or neighboring Oshtemo township, graduate from public high school and attend a public university or community college in Michigan. Students who go from kindergarten through the 12th grade get a full ride. The program will cover 65% of tuition costs for those who spend at least their four high-school years in the city’s schools, with the percentage of aid rising for those who spend more years in the system.
Interesting relationship between education, economic development and a community.
Standards, Accountability, and School Reform
This is very long, and the link may require a password so I’ve posted the entire article on the continued page.
TJM
http://www.tcrecord.org/PrintContent.asp?ContentID=11566
Standards, Accountability, and School Reform
by Linda Darling-Hammond — 2004
The standards-based reform movement has led to increased emphasis on tests, coupled with rewards and sanctions, as the basis for “accountability” systems. These strategies have often had unintended consequences that undermine access to education for low-achieving students rather than enhancing it. This article argues that testing is information for an accountability system; it is not the system itself. More successful outcomes have been secured in states and districts, described here, that have focused on broader notions of accountability, including investments in teacher knowledge and skill, organization of schools to support teacher and student learning, and systems of assessment that drive curriculum reform and teaching improvements.
Madison Seeks Room to Grow
After decades of gobbling land like a ravenous Pac-Man, Madison is facing the reality of running out of real estate.
To share the region’s new jobs, housing and businesses, the city must push outward, which brings tension and conflict with neighbors.
Now, the city is negotiating with those neighbors on its final borders, which will decide who controls rules for private, undeveloped lands and who reaps tax money to pay for police, garbage collection, plowing streets and other services.
It will also dictate how and where growth happens.
From the Wall Street Journal‘s Opinion Journal
CROSS COUNTRY
Black Flight
The exodus to charter schools.
BY KATHERINE KERSTEN
MINNEAPOLIS–Something momentous is happening here in the home of prairie populism: black flight. African-American families from the poorest neighborhoods are rapidly abandoning the district public schools, going to charter schools, and taking advantage of open enrollment at suburban public schools.
Today, just around half of students who live in the city attend its district public schools. As a result, Minneapolis schools are losing both raw numbers of students and “market share.” In 1999-2000, district enrollment was about 48,000; this year, it’s about 38,600. Enrollment projections predict only 33,400 in 2008. A decline in the number of families moving into the district accounts for part of the loss, as does the relocation of some minority families to inner-ring suburbs. Nevertheless, enrollments are relatively stable in the leafy, well-to-do enclave of southwest Minneapolis and the city’s white ethnic northeast. But in 2003-04, black enrollment was down 7.8%, or 1,565 students. In 2004-05, black enrollment dropped another 6%.
Senators Pass Bill Regulating Indoor Air Quality In Schools
he Wisconsin Senate passed a bill on Tuesday that would monitor indoor air quality at schools around the state.
The measure, Senate bill 235, was championed by Jeanne and Dick Black, of Darlington, after their 9-year-old daughter Jade became ill from what they said that poor air quality at her school.
They said that Jade was diagnosed with severe mold-induced asthma and suffered headaches, migraines, blurred vision, rashes on her face, stomach aches and nausea while attending Darlington Elementary and Middle School. The symptoms subsided when she transferred to another school under doctor’s orders.
According to the Wisconsin Education Association Council, 80 schools in the state have air quality problems. They include Chavez and Midvale Elementary in Madison, Edgerton High School, Marshall Elementary School, Webb Middle School in Reedsburg, and Black Earth Elementary in the Wisconsin Heights District. Other districts cited without a specific school listed include Adams-Friendship, Boscobel, Columbus, Cuba City, Monticello, Palmyra-Eagle, Poynette, Rio and Wisconsin Dells, WISC-TV reported.
Cole: New schools should be green
Maya Cole posted an interesting idea on her Web site:
Energy efficiency stands out as one island of excellence in the MMSD. The Wisconsin Focus on Energy program features the Madison school district in one of its case studies on energy-efficient schools.
I’d like to take the MMSD’s excellent energy-efficiency commitment one step further by directing the district to construct any new school or other building with environmentally sensitive practices, including natural lighting, energy efficiency, water conservation, recycled products, and other green building practices.
Math Forum Audio / Video and Links
Video and audio from Wednesday’s Math Forum are now available [watch the 80 minute video] [mp3 audio file 1, file 2]. This rare event included the following participants:
- Dick Askey (UW Math Professor)
- Faye Hilgart, Madison Metropolitan School District
- Steffen Lempp (MMSD Parent and UW Math Professor)
- Linda McQuillen, Madison Metropolitan School District
- Gabriele Meyer (MMSD Parent and a UW Math Department Lecturer)
- Dr. Terry Millar of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research
The conversation, including audience questions was lively.
Carol Carstensen on “No New Ideas”
A letter to the editor
Dear Editor: As soon as I saw my words quoted in boldface in the Feb. 21 Capital Times article about the school budget, I knew that someone would make the comments in the following day's Sound Off about the need for new School Board members.
I think new ideas and fresh perspectives are invaluable. However, there are a few qualifications: The ideas must not violate any laws or contractual agreements, they should actually save money, and they must be ones we can implement.
I can come up with a new idea of how to save money on transportation: outfit the buses with pedals for every seat and have the students provide some of the energy needed to move the bus, both reducing use of gasoline and providing kids with exercise. However, the plan is not very feasible, at least in the short term. I can also buy lottery tickets, but that approach is not very reliable.
A few additional facts:
The school district has been under revenue caps, and reducing expenditures, for the last 13 years.
• The city and county were faced with significant problems as they kept their budget increases to around 4 percent.
• The school district's budget increase was 2.5 percent (and the school district's tax levy actually decreased by $2 million).
One final qualification: Claiming the problem doesn't exist isn't a new idea.
Carol Carstensen
president
Madison School Board
Published: February 24, 2006
What’s not to like about funding new community programs?
On March 6, the Madison Board of Education will vote on Johnny Winston Jr.’s proposal for the district to spend approximately $200,000 this year on four community programs. Great Opportunity Needs Your Support
Sounds good. These are all good programs run by good people with good ideas and goals.
The question before the board, however, is not whether we like the programs or think that they would use our funds for good purposes. The question is whether the district should commit these dollars from this budget to these community programs at this time.
I think that the answer is no.
Fiscal policy problem: “These dollars” are the dollars remaining in the Reserve for Contingencies in our budget for “community programs and services” budget, aka Fund 80. Three months remain in our fiscal year. It is good fiscal policy to have money in reserve for emergencies. If an organization must spend its reserve, it is good fiscal policy to use the funds for one-time costs, rather than to create new programs that will need funds again the next year. It is bad fiscal policy to spend all of the Reserve for Contingencies on new programs. We will have no capacity to deal with emergencies in the remainder of the fiscal year if we make this commitment. The same programs will add $208,000 to next year’s budget for Fund 80 (the basic allotment to each program plus 4.1% for increases in their costs).
How Safe is Your High School? Madison West
The police data on the school shows a mixed record. In the past three and a half years, Madison West ranks first among the other city schools in bomb threats, property damage and fights.
However, it also has the fewest number of drug incidents and weapons violations.
Overall, West High School has the lowest crime rate.
School principal Ed Holmes, who is in his second year, said that he wants it even lower.
He said that it’s one reason that he’s completely reshaped the school day with a revolutionary overhaul of the lunch schedule.
Safety in Madison High Schools – Memorial
News 3 examined the data from Madison Memorial High School on Wednesday night. The school outpaces the three other city schools combined.
So far this year, Memorial has 68 arrests while West High School has 11, East High School has 18, and Robert M. LaFolette has 15.
At the current rate, Memorial would end the school year with an 88 percent increase in crime. West would be up 29 percent, but East and LaFollette would each see a 54 percent decrease
Memorial is a school at a real crossroads, and one frequently in the news because of reports of violence.
Video
WKOW-TV notes a recent pellet gun shooting at the school.
UPDATE: Lisa Schuetz reports that a 17 year old girl was charged in this shooting.
Great Opportunity Needs Your Support
We have a great opportunity! On Monday March 6th, the Madison School Board will be considering four proposals for funding that have an opportunity to have a positive impact on the student achievement in our school district. These programs are community based after school and summer programming that can supplement students’ academic achievement in the Madison Metropolitan School District. These programs are not subject to the state imposed revenue limits. They are Kajsiab House and Freedom Inc., Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network-South Central Wisconsin (GLSEN), Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth (WCATY) , and The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute, Inc. (CHHI) . I am asking for your support to help fund these programs.
Full Funding Of Schools An Empty Promise
Wisconsin State Journal :: OPINION :: A6
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
KRISTINE LAMONT
We all say we want great public schools.
Yet we continue to fight amongst ourselves for an ever diminishing pot of money for our public schools.
We blame board members, parents, students, teachers, retired individuals, businesses, administrators, homeowners, renters and everyone — except those who have put us in this position.
About 13 years ago, our state senators and representatives made a promise to Wisconsin citizens. A law controlling school revenue was passed. It allowed school districts to increase revenue by a small percentage — less than inflation and certainly less than heating, gas and health care costs have increased.
The only way around this mandate was to have school districts ask and beg for money year after year in the form of referendums, which pit children against taxpayers.
School districts, large and small, took up this mandate and spent the first few years cutting the services that did the least harm to students. Those years are long gone.
Very quickly schools were forced and continue to cut and cut. Schools are now cutting the programs that make Wisconsin schools great — gifted classes, remedial classes and smaller class sizes.
Revenue controls were supposed to be temporary while our state leaders worked on an equitable way to fund schools. No one can argue the fact that if you give schools less money than inflation, you are expecting schools to get rid of programs. What has been going on for the last 13 years?
I have been keeping my promises. Have they? Bills have been introduced to remedy this travesty, but nothing has changed. Schools keep cutting. Our children receive a smaller piece of the pie while living in one of the richest countries in the world.
Thirteen years is a long time to put off work that was promised. The children graduating from high school this year started as kindergarteners 13 years ago. We have our third governor, a new president, men and women have gone to war, died, and come home. What has been done?
I have seen a lot in the news about trying to change the hunting age for children, or how to help families pay for college, but nothing to remedy public schools.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with the hunting age, properly funding our schools should be at the top of our priority list.
We all realize that our public schools are the founding blocks of our democracy. All of us benefit, whether we attended public schools, or our doctor did, or the person helping us at the store. A democracy needs superior public education. Just look at democratic countries without this.
Could it be that the promise our state leaders made was never intended to be kept? Maybe we don’t want “all” children to have good schools. Maybe we’re worried our good schools will help minority and low-income children achieve. Maybe we want rural or inner city or suburban or all public schools to close.
My taxes have been paying the salaries of our state leaders. We have waited too long for an equitable plan to fund school. I wait with voter pen in hand.
\ Lamont is the mother of a Madison middle school student.
A Formula for Failure in L.A. Schools
This is from a recent article in the Los Angeles Times. I was alerted to it by the Daily Howler blog http://www.dailyhowler.com/. I mention this because that site has had some great education coverage lately and will soon be launching an all-education companion blog.
http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-dropout30jan30,0,3211437.story?coll=la-news-learning
THE VANISHING CLASS
A Formula for Failure in L.A. Schools
Because they can’t pass algebra, thousands of students are denied diplomas. Many try again and again — but still get Fs.
By Duke Helfand
Times Staff Writer
January 30, 2006
Each morning, when Gabriela Ocampo looked up at the chalkboard in her ninth-grade algebra class, her spirits sank.
There she saw a mysterious language of polynomials and slope intercepts that looked about as familiar as hieroglyphics.
She knew she would face another day of confusion, another day of pretending to follow along. She could hardly do long division, let alone solve for x.
“I felt like, ‘Oh, my God, what am I going to do?’ ” she recalled.
Gabriela failed that first semester of freshman algebra. She failed again and again — six times in six semesters. And because students in Los Angeles Unified schools must pass algebra to graduate, her hopes for a diploma grew dimmer with each F.
Midway through 12th grade, Gabriela gathered her textbooks, dropped them at the campus book room and, without telling a soul, vanished from Birmingham High School.
Her story might be just a footnote to the Class of 2005 except that hundreds of her classmates, along with thousands of others across the district, also failed algebra.
Of all the obstacles to graduation, algebra was the most daunting.
The course that traditionally distinguished the college-bound from others has denied vast numbers of students a high school diploma.
“It triggers dropouts more than any single subject,” said Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer. “I think it is a cumulative failure of our ability to teach math adequately in the public school system.”
School board candidates Silveira and Cole face off in April
By Susan Troller
Although Madison School Board candidate Arlene Silveira’s 48 percent showing in Tuesday’s primary has established her as the front runner in the race for a Madison School Board seat, an opponent’s supporter says a primary win does not assure a general election victory, especially when the turnout is very low.
School Board member Ruth Robarts is a supporter of Maya Cole, who trailed Silveira in Tuesday’s primary with 35 percent of the vote. Robarts noted when she ran for the School Board in 1997, she finished a distant second in the primary with just 22 percent of the vote. Robarts picked up about 11,000 votes following the primary and won the general election.
“What was established (in Tuesday’s primary) is that there are now two viable candidates, each with an opportunity to pick up a significant number of votes in the general election,” Robarts said.
Silveira and Cole both have strong credentials as volunteers in the community. They held off 27-year-old doctoral student Michael J. Kelly to advance to the general election to compete for the School Board seat being vacated by incumbent Bill Keys. Under 5 percent of the district’s voters turned out for Tuesday’s election.
“Given that this was the only race, I thought the turnout was actually fairly good,” said Silveira. “And I was very happy for support across the whole district. I heard, again and again, that the needs of children are the issue.”
Silveira, who is single and has a middle school age daughter, has been an active school volunteer for nine years. A member of the West/Memorial area boundary task force, she supports that group’s recommendation to build an addition at Leopold Elementary and a new far west side elementary school to address issues of overcrowding and growth. Silveira is a marketing director for Promega Corporation.
Cole is a stay-at-home mother of three elementary school age boys, and has been an activist in opposition to concealed carry legislation.
“Obviously, I hope that there’s a bigger turnout in the general election,” Cole said today. “I’m looking forward to working really hard over the next 40 days and to getting people fired up about this School Board race.”
The former editor of a medical journal, Cole is the community/communication chair of the Franklin/Randall PTO. She takes a cautious approach toward building, and has called for what she calls a more transparent budget.
Kelly, who moved to Madison from Boston last summer and is pursuing his doctorate in medieval history at the University of Wisconsin, was a surprise late entrant into the race, which prompted the citywide primary. Given his low-key campaign, which included just a handful of appearances at forums and candidate debates, he said he was happy with his showing. And he clearly liked the process, saying he intends to continue to be involved in Madison politics.
“I have learned a lot from this campaign and look forward to taking that knowledge and experience, along with my active and progressive vision for Madison and my strong voter base, with me into future campaigns,” he said.
SCHOOL BOARD RESULTS
• Arlene Silveira: 3,191
• Maya Cole: 2,338
• Michael J. Kelly: 996
E-mail: stroller@madison.com
Published: February 22, 2006
Sable Flames 13th Annual “Second Alarm Scholarship Benefit”
On Saturday, February 25, 2006 at the Edgewater Hotel at 666 Wisconsin Avenue in Downtown Madison, The Sable Flames, Inc. will present its Thirteenth Annual “Second Alarm Scholarship Benefit” at 8:00 p.m. until 1 a.m.
Alliances Are Unconventional In School Board Primary Race
Madison school politics make for some strange bedfellows.
Take the case of the Feb. 21 primary race for the School Board, in which three candidates are vying for the seat left open by incumbent Bill Keys’ decision not to seek re-election.
The marketing manager of a Madison-based biotechnology giant has been endorsed by the powerful Madison teachers union and Progressive Dane. Meanwhile, an activist stay-at-home mom who helped put pink paper locks on legislators’ doors to protest concealed carry legislation is aligned with voices in the community that challenge the district’s status quo. As a critic of the board’s budget, she has struck a chord with some conservatives.
And then there’s the unanticipated late entrant into the race who forced the primary to be held, a UW doctoral candidate in medieval history who arrived in Madison last August.
By Susan Troller, The Capital Times, February 16, 2006
