Search Results for: Act 10

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Reason Foundation’s New Weighted Student Formula Yearbook

Lisa Snell:

Much of our education funding is wasted on bureaucracy. The money never actually makes it into the classroom in the form of books, computers, supplies, or even salaries for better teachers. Weighted student formula changes that. Using weighted student formula’s decentralized system, education funds are attached to each student and the students can take that money directly to the public school of their choice.
At least 15 major school districts have moved to this system of backpack funding. Reason Foundation’s new Weighted Student Formula Yearbook examines how the budgeting system is being implemented in each of these places and, based on the real-world data, offers a series of “best practices” that other districts and states can follow to improve the quality of their schools.
In places where parents have school choice and districts empower their principals and teachers we are seeing increased learning and better test scores. The results from districts using student-based funding are very promising. Prior to 2008, less than half of Hartford, Connecticut’s education money made it to the classroom. Now, over 70 percent makes it there. As a result, the district’s schools posted the largest gains, over three times the average increase, on the state’s Mastery Tests in 2007-08.

Budget/Financing, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Federal education money goes to all the wrong places

Dan Thomasson:

A funny thing has been happening to some of that widely heralded federal education money. It has fallen off the bus on the way to school. At least a few cash-strapped local governments upon notification of the federal input have eliminated an equal amount from their own budgets, hardly what the Obama administration had in mind for the $100 billion aimed at vastly improving the nation’s schools.
While the practice is not general and there are strict rules about the use of the federal bucks as part of the economic recovery effort, local and state officials are being forced to reduce manpower in vital services like fire and police. The temptation to relieve some of that pressure and to prevent teacher layoffs seems overwhelming and likely to grow.
For instance, the local press here recently reported that Loudon County in the nearby Virginia suburbs was a case in point. Upon hearing that the county would receive more than $11 million in new school money from Uncle Sam, the county’s supervisors slashed $7.3 million from the regular school budget. According to the reports, the board also has made it clear that schools might have to give more local money back if there were other federal contributions. Similar actions have been taken elsewhere and Arne Duncan, the new secretary of Education, has warned of strong reprisals if this abuse of the president’s intentions is not stopped.

Budget/Financing, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

School reform must have urban focus

Rochester Democrat & Chronicle Editorial:

he state Board of Regents, which oversees public schools in the state among its duties, has a lot on its plate at the moment. There is the problem of the crippled state finances and their impact on local schools. There is the arrival of a new education secretary, Arne Duncan, who not only is handing out stimulus money but is looking for national school reform.
And then there is the regents’ task of choosing a commissioner to replace Richard Mills, who is leaving the job this summer, a leader who changed the conversation about public school performance by championing consistent, measurable standards in academic fundamentals.
The value of a measuring process based almost entirely on standardized tests was often questioned, but test scores did show with great clarity the disparity between urban and suburban schools.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, School Climate, Student Support

California High school students weigh in on Prop. 1A

San Francisco Chronicle:

The nonpartisan California Budget Challenge is a free online educational tool from the public-policy group Next 10 that lets users try to balance California’s books and see how their choices would affect the state five years into the future.
Users set their own priorities and make tough decisions about what is best for the people of the state. This allows everyday people the chance to consider the effects of important policy choices. This year, Next 10 is taking the challenge on the road, visiting classrooms and diverse communities throughout the state. Staff members teach audiences about the workings of California’s finances and give them a flavor for what it takes to balance the state’s budget. Here are reactions to Proposition 1A from six Bay Area high school students:

Lifelong Learning, School Climate, Student Support

Genius: The Modern View

David Brooks:

Some people live in romantic ages. They tend to believe that genius is the product of a divine spark. They believe that there have been, throughout the ages, certain paragons of greatness — Dante, Mozart, Einstein — whose talents far exceeded normal comprehension, who had an other-worldly access to transcendent truth, and who are best approached with reverential awe.
We, of course, live in a scientific age, and modern research pierces hocus-pocus. In the view that is now dominant, even Mozart’s early abilities were not the product of some innate spiritual gift. His early compositions were nothing special. They were pastiches of other people’s work. Mozart was a good musician at an early age, but he would not stand out among today’s top child-performers.
What Mozart had, we now believe, was the same thing Tiger Woods had — the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father intent on improving his skills. Mozart played a lot of piano at a very young age, so he got his 10,000 hours of practice in early and then he built from there.

Budget/Financing, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, Lifelong Learning, School Climate

A Primer on Wisconsin School Revenue Limits

The Wisconsin Taxpayer 3.4MB PDF:

Since 1994, Wisconsin school districts have operated under state-imposed revenue limits and the associated qualified economic offer (QEO) law.

  • Revenue limits have helped reduce school property tax increases to less than 5% per year from more than 9% annually prior to the caps.
  • The limits have had \aried impacts on school districts, with growing districts experiencing the largest revenue gains. Low-spending districts prior to the caps have seen the largest per student gains.
  • The QEO law has helped school districts keep compensation costs somewhat in line with revenue limits. However, since benefits are given more weight, teacher salary increases have slowed.

Since 1994. Wisconsin school districts have operated under slate-imposed revenue limits, which arc tied to inflation and enrollments. The associated qualified economic offer (QEO) law limits staff compensation increases to about 4% annually. With declining student counts, fluctuations in stale school aid. and various concerns over teacher pay. revenue limits and the QEO have attracted increasing debate.
The governor, in his proposed 2009-11 state budget, recommends eliminating the QEO. I le has also talked about providing ways for school districts to move away from revenue limits. This report does not address these specific proposals. Rather, it seeks to help inform discussions by examining the history of revenue limits and the QEO, legislative attempts to fix various issues, and the impacts of limits on schools, educators, and taxpayers.
THE REVENUE LIMIT LAW
School districts collect revenue from a variety of sources. The two largest sources are the property tax and state general (or equalization) aid, General aid is distributed based on district property wealth and spending. Combined, these two revenue sources account for about 75% of an average district’s funding. The remainder is a combination of student fees, federal aid. and state categorical aids. such as those for special education and transportation.
The revenue limit law was implemented in 1994 (1993-94 school year) and caps the amount districts can collect from property taxes and general aid combined. It does not restrict student fees, federal aid. or state categorical aid. A district’s revenue limit is determined by its prior-year cap, an inflation factor, and enrollments. There is an exception to the limit law for districts defined as “low-revenue.” Currently, districts with per student revenues less than S9.000 are allowed to increase their revenues to that level.
Background
While Wisconsin’s revenue limit law began in 1994. its roots date back to several teacher strikes in the early 1970s, culminating with the 1974 Hortonville strike during which 86 teachers were fired. That strike gained national attention.




Related: K-12 tax & spending climate. A number of links on local school spending and tax increases before the implementation of State limits on annual expenditure growth. The Madison School District spent $180,400,000 during the 1992-1993 school year. In 2006, the District spent $331,000,000. The 2009/2010 preliminary Citizen’s Budget proposes spending $367,912,077 [Financial Summary 2.1MB pdf], slightly down from 2008/2009’s $368,012,286.

College Preparation, Curriculum, Curriculum - Math, History - Madison Schools, TAG

WKCE Scores Document Decline in the Percentage of Madison’s Advanced Students

8 Comments

For many years now, parents and community members, including members of Madison United for Academic Excellence, have expressed concerns about the decline in rigor and the lack of adequate challenge in our district’s curriculum. The release this week of WKCE scores for the November 2008 testing led me to wonder about the performance of our district’s strongest students. While most analyses of WKCE scores focus on the percentages of students scoring at the Advanced and Proficient levels, these numbers do not tell us about changes in the percent of students at each particular level of performance. We can have large increases in the percent of students scoring at the Proficient and Advanced levels because we have improved the performance of students who were previously at the Basic level on the WKCE, but yet fail to have any effect on the performance of our district’s strongest students. This is the argument that we are improving the performance of our low ability students, but failing to increase the performance of our already successful students. An examination of the numbers of students who are performing at just the Advanced level on the WKCE provides us with some insight into the academic progress of our more successful students.
I decided to examine WKCE math scores for students across the district. While it is not possible to track the performance of individual students, it is possible to follow the performance of a cohort as they advance through the system. Thus students who are now in 10th grade, took the 8th grade WKCE in 2006 and the 4th grade test in 2002. Because there have been significant changes in the demographics of the district’s students, I split the data by socio-economic status to remove the possibility of declines in WKCE performance simply being the result of increased numbers of low income students. Although the WKCE has been criticized for not being a rigorous enough assessment tool, the data on our students’ math performance are not encouraging. The figures below indicate that the percent of students scoring at the Advanced level on the WKCE decreases as students progress through the system, and this decline is seen in both our low income students and in our Not Economically Disadvantaged students. The figures suggest that while there is some growth in the percent of Advanced performing students in elementary school, there is a significant decline in performance once students begin taking math in our middle schools and this decline continues through high school. I confess that I take no pleasure in sharing this data; in fact, it makes me sick.

Because it might be more useful to examine actual numbers, I have provided tables showing the data used in the figures above. Reading across a row shows the percent of students in a class cohort scoring at the Advanced level as they have taken the WKCE test as they progressed from grades 3 – 10.

Percent of Economically Disadvantaged Students Scoring at the Advanced Level on the WKCE Math Test Between 2002 and 2008

Graduation Year 3rd Grade 4th Grade 5th Grade 6th Grade 7th Grade 8th Grade 10th Grade
2005
8
2006
8.8
2007
11
7.7
2008
5.6
8.7
2009
8.5
6.7
2010
9.2
8.4
2011
12
12.5
11.1
8
2012
9.7
10.4
9.5
8.2
2013
15.3
14.7
15.1
11.7
10.8
2014
12
13.6
16.1
13.2
2015
20.1
15
18
11.7
2016
15.4
17.1
18.4
2017
12.9
17
2018
13.8
College Preparation, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate

Some colleges checking out applicants’ social networking posts

Larry Gordon:

igh school students, beware! College admissions and financial aid officers in California and elsewhere may be peeking over your digital shoulder at the personal information you post on your Facebook or MySpace page.
And they might decide to toss out your application after reading what you wrote about that cool party last week or how you want to conduct your romantic life at college.
According to a new report by the National Assn. for College Admission Counseling, about a quarter of U.S. colleges reported doing some research about applicants on social networking sites or through Internet search engines. The study, which included 10 California colleges, did not specify which schools acknowledged the practice or how often scholarships or enrollment offers might be nixed because of online postings.
David Hawkins, director of public policy and research for the counselors group, said the moral is clear: “Don’t post anything that you don’t want your mother or father or college admission officer to see,” he said.

Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

No long-term plan, no research – fine-tuning of language policy reflects a lack of values

Jonathan Lai, principal, Lee Kau Yan Memorial School in San Po Kong:

This is an era of “NO Values” – that is confirmed! Ten years have passed since 1998 and the medium-of-instruction pendulum is swinging again. From one side to the other, or rather, back to square one, although the government refuses to admit the fact and gives the latest policy move a beautiful name: “fine-tuning”. Yet, who will feel fine? The Education Bureau? Parents? Teachers? Students?
While the community is deeply involved in the discussion about the so-called labelling effect that could be caused by the fine-tuning policy, what has made the pendulum swing back remains a complete mystery. No one will be interested in the mystery, they will be too busy getting their surfboards ready for the tide to turn again.
However, this mysterious force is pushing our community into an era without beliefs and values. The issue of teaching language should not be considered as something solely related to education, it should be viewed and discussed from a wider angle. It is, in fact, demonstrating how our government formulates and adjusts its public policies.
Let us have a look at the Education Bureau’s proposal. The officials are now suggesting that teachers hold a grade six in the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), considered appropriate to be able to conduct a lesson in English in the future.
What is IELTS? According to the official webpage www.ielts.org) , it is an internationally recognised English test measuring the ability of a student to communicate in English across all four language skills – listening, reading, writing and speaking – for people who intend to study or work where English is the language of communication.
Just like TOEFL, this is an English benchmarking test for students who wish to further their studies overseas and for people who are applying for migration to an English-speaking country.

Budget/Financing, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making

Doyle, Barrett warn Milwaukee Schools on tax increase

Alan Borsuk:

Gov. Jim Doyle and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett warned Friday that it “defies common sense” to consider a large increase in property taxes for Milwaukee Public Schools for next year and said they will hold MPS leaders accountable if there is such an increase.
They did not spell out exactly what they meant by accountable, but their sharp statement came as the two consider supporting major changes in the way MPS is run, including a possible mayoral takeover of the system. It also came shortly before they name a commission to oversee putting into action a consultant’s report that said MPS could save millions of dollars if it operated like a well-run business.
The governor and mayor were reacting to Thursday’s release of a proposed budget for MPS by Superintendent William Andrekopoulos. The proposal did not include a projection for property taxes for next year – that won’t come for months – but it did include a statement that it was likely there would be “a significant property tax increase.” Some MPS leaders have suggested it could be 10% or more.
The reaction also came the same day incoming state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers told the state Assembly’s Education Reform Committee that he intends to appoint a “federal funds trustee” to oversee how MPS spends tens of millions of dollars of federal economic stimulus money.
Doyle and Barrett jointly issued a brief statement about the MPS property tax picture:

Somewhat related: Joel McNally on the QEO.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Madison School District Strategic Planning Update



The Madison School District’s Strategic Planning Group met this past week. Several documents were handed out, including:

This recent meeting was once again facilitated by Dr. Keith Marty, Superintendent of the Menomonee Falls school district. Non-MMSD attendance was somewhat lower than the initial 2.5 day session.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Fund Raising, School Climate

Memphis school district a finalist for Gates Foundation money

Memphis Appeal:

Memphis City Schools is one of 10 districts being considered for millions of dollars over five years to improve teacher quality, including exit strategies for those who don’t make the grade.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has set aside $500 million to study what makes an effective teacher, create ways to develop more and set up meaningful rewards, which could include merit pay.
Four winners will be announced in mid-August.
A delegation from Memphis, including Supt. Kriner Cash, school board president Tomeka Hart and Stephanie Fitzgerald, president of the Memphis Education Association, is in Atlanta discussing options with foundation members through today.
“The focus is very clear. The Gates are looking for how you keep excellent teachers and new ways to begin measuring their effectiveness,” Cash said. “The work will also include an exit strategy for teachers who are not as satisfactory.”
Gates — the biggest private source of money for education reform in the nation — invited 30 districts to submit applications. Memphis made the cut after foundation officials visited several days late this winter and invited district leaders to Atlanta as a semifinalist.

Lifelong Learning, School Climate, Student Support

Do Good Looks Get High School Students Good Grades?

Science Daily:

Do personal traits predict success in school? If so, which dimension of one’s outward appearance can tell the most about academic achievement?
The answers to these questions are found in a new study by researchers from the University of Miami Health Economics Research Group. The study is the first to demonstrate that non-cognitive traits play an important role in the assignment of grades in high school.
Economists have examined the role that beauty plays on the type of employment, earnings, productivity and the likelihood of politicians being elected to office, and have wondered if “beauty premiums” and “plainness penalties” in the labor market come from an accumulation of differences in attention and rewards received from teachers throughout the school years. Findings from this peer-reviewed study tiaScience Daily:

Do personal traits predict success in school? If so, which dimension of one’s outward appearance can tell the most about academic achievement?
The answers to these questions are found in a new study by researchers from the University of Miami Health Economics Research Group. The study is the first to demonstrate that non-cognitive traits play an important role in the assignment of grades in high school.
Economists have examined the role that beauty plays on the type of employment, earnings, productivity and the likelihood of politicians being elected to office, and have wondered if “beauty premiums” and “plainness penalties” in the labor market come from an accumulation of differences in attention and rewards received from teachers throughout the school years. Findings from this peer-reviewed study titled: “Effects of Physical Attractiveness, Personality and Grooming on Academic Performance in High School” will be published in the next issue of Labour Economics.

Clusty search.tled: “Effects of Physical Attractiveness, Personality and Grooming on Academic Performance in High School” will be published in the next issue of Labour Economics.

Nutrition, Parenting, Wellness

Obese primary school students are losing out when it comes to sports

Timothy Chui:

The Audit Commission did not spare the rod when it looked over the nutrition and exercise programs of primary schools and found things amiss.
Nearly a quarter of primary school children are obese – 120 percent heavier than the median weight for peers – compared with one-sixth in 1997, government statistics show.
Found wanting were better coordination and promotion from education, health and sports authorities to tackle obesity among primary school children.
According to the audit report released yesterday, students at nearly 100 primary schools were only managing 45 to 65 minutes of physical education a week, instead of the stipulated 70 minutes.
Compiled though 426 questionnaires and six school visits, the report revealed nearly one-third of 423 primary schools did not have physical activity policies compared with 42 which had undocumented polices and 28 percent with documented policies.

Budget/Financing, Elections, School Climate

Big Milwaukee School Tax Hike Likely

Alan Borsuk:

Even though a proposed Milwaukee Public Schools budget released Thursday calls for no increase in overall core spending next year, the property tax levy increase might still reach double digits – a year after a 14.6% jump.
The new budget proposal answers two big questions about MPS, and leaves two others unanswered.
Unanswered: How much will property taxes go up? Michael Bonds, chair of the School Board’s finance committee, said this week that he won’t vote for anything over 10%. But the board may find itself debating something in that range after the state budget is set and other factors play out. Or, as the budget documents say: “Despite the district’s efforts to contain costs, the budget likely will require a significant property tax increase.”
Unanswered: What about the nearly $100 million in federal economic stimulus money coming to MPS over the coming two years, according to an announcement by Gov. Jim Doyle on Thursday? Stay tuned – a second budget proposal will be made by mid-May, Superintendent William Andrekopoulos said. It appears it won’t call for citywide use of the “year-round” school calendar and longer days for elementary students, but it is likely to make steps in those directions, along with other initiatives that would draw on stimulus money.
But that money is not expected to help with property taxes.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Curriculum, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support

A Visit to KIPP Schools in New York City

I AM in Newark, New Jersey’s largest town and long a byword for urban decay. I’ve been invited by KIPP (the “Knowledge is Power Programme”), the biggest and best known of America’s charter-school chains, which has three schools in Newark, with a fourth to open this autumn. Founded by two Teach for America alumni (how familiar that story is getting) in 1994, there are now 66 KIPP schools nationwide, mostly middle schools (ie, with students between 10 and 14 years old). Oddly, none of Newark’s KIPP schools are called that: under the state’s charter law “brand” names are banned, which reflects early fears that big chains would come in and take over. Those fears have dissipated, and Cory Booker, Newark’s mayor since 2006, is a good friend of charters, and wants to see more of them.
I’m actually a bit nervous. KIPP has a fearsome and to my mind not entirely attractive reputation in England for a zero-tolerance approach to discipline–insisting that children keep their gaze on teachers who are speaking, and nod and say “yes” in response to teachers’ requests; giving detentions for minor transgressions; and “benching”–that is, seating naughty children separately in class and forbidding other pupils to speak to them during breaks. A certain type of English politician practically drools when talking about KIPP–the ones who, like many of their compatriots, dislike and fear children, and love all talk of treating them harshly. I’m half-expecting to find dead-eyed Marine-sergeant types with crewcuts barking orders at children one-third their size. If it turns out that the only way to maintain order and calm in a tough urban school is to run it like a boot camp, it will make me very sad.

Parenting, School Climate, Wellness

A Lawyer, Some Teens and a Fight Over ‘Sexting’

Dionne Searcey:

The group of anxious parents crowded around District Attorney George Skumanick Jr. as he sat behind a table in a courtroom here and presented them with an ultimatum.
Photos of their semi-nude or scantily clad teenage daughters were stacked before him. Mr. Skumanick said the images had been discovered on cellphones confiscated at the local high school. They could either enlist their kids in an education program or have the teens face felony charges of child pornography. “We could have just arrested them but we didn’t,” said Mr. Skumanick in an interview.
View Full Image
The tactics of District Attorney George Skumanick Jr., left, in the county courthouse, prompted the family of 15-year-old Marissa Miller to sue him.
Mustafah Abdulaziz for the Wall Street Journal
The tactics of District Attorney George Skumanick Jr., left, in the county courthouse, prompted the family of 15-year-old Marissa Miller to sue him.
The tactics of District Attorney George Skumanick Jr., left, in the county courthouse, prompted the family of 15-year-old Marissa Miller to sue him.
The tactics of District Attorney George Skumanick Jr., left, in the county courthouse, prompted the family of 15-year-old Marissa Miller to sue him.
The practice of teens taking naked photos of themselves and sending them to friends via cellphones, called “sexting,” has alarmed parents, school officials and prosecutors nationwide, who fear the photos could end up on the Internet or in the hands of sexual predators. In a handful of cases, authorities have resorted to what one parent here called “the nuclear weapon of sex charges” — child pornography.
But some legal experts say that here in Wyoming County, Pa., Mr. Skumanick has expanded the definition of sexting to such an extent he could be setting a dangerous precedent. He has threatened to charge kids who appeared in photos, but who didn’t send them, as well as at least one girl who was photographed wearing a bathing suit. One of the accused is 11 years old.

College Preparation, Curriculum, Events, School Climate

Cornell ’69 And What It Did

Donald Downs:

Forty years ago this week, an armed student insurrection erupted on the Cornell campus. I was a sophomore on campus at the time and later wrote a book on the events, Cornell ’69: Liberalism and the Crisis of the American University. To some the drama represented a triumph of social justice, paving the way for a new model of the university based on the ideals of identity politics, diversity, and the university as a transformer of society. To others, it fatefully propelled Cornell, and later much of American higher education, away from the traditional principles of academic freedom, reason, and individual excellence. “Cornell,” wrote the famous constitutional scholar Walter Berns, who resigned from Cornell during the denouement of the conflict, “was the prototype of the university as we know it today, having jettisoned every vestige of academic integrity.”
In the wee hours of Friday, April 19, 1969, twenty-some members of Cornell’s Afro-American Society took over the student center, Willard Straight Hall, removing parents (sometimes forcefully) from their accommodations on the eve of Parents Weekend. The takeover was the culmination of a year-long series of confrontations, during which the AAS had deployed hardball tactics to pressure the administration of President James Perkins into making concessions to their demands. The Perkins administration and many faculty members had made claims of race-based identity politics and social justice leading priorities for the university, marginalizing the traditional missions of truth-seeking and academic freedom.
Two concerns precipitated the takeover: AAS agitation for the establishment of a radical black studies program; and demands of amnesty for some AAS students, who had just been found guilty by the university judicial board of violating university rules. These concerns were linked, for, according to the students, the university lacked the moral authority to judge minority students. They declared that Cornell was no longer a university, but rather an institution divided by racial identities.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Community Partners, Curriculum, Events, School Climate

Abolish Local School Districts?

The Economist:

Today is the conference for which I’ve travelled to New York. It’s at the Rubin Museum, a small, new venue devoted to Himalayan art, which certainly beats the usual hotel. We see the galleries at each coffee break, and at the end of the day there is a guided tour for those inspired to learn more about the art.
The conference features a stellar cast of speakers: educators, researchers and some hard-headed business types too. Lou Gerstner, an ex-CEO of IBM, enthusiastically pitches his plan for school reform: he wants the 15,000 local school districts abolished and replaced by around 70 (the states plus a couple of dozen big cities), national standards in core subjects introduced, with all children tested against them, and teachers paid much, much more.
Jim Rohr of PNC Financial Services talks about “Grow Up Great“, the bank’s $100m, 10-year investment in early-childhood education, which gives grants to non-profit school-readiness programmes, and sponsors employees to volunteer their time and services. One delegate asks about the lessons learned; Mr Rohr gets a laugh of recognition when he says that the main one is that volunteers face a hideous maze of bureaucratic regulations and permissions–and all because they wanted to help.

College Preparation, Curriculum, School Climate, Student Support

Schools May Pass High Stakes Tests, But Fail Low Performing Students

Jay Matthews:

Sarah Fine, a 25-year-old English teacher at Cesar Chavez Public Charter School on Capitol Hill, vividly recalls a conference with the mother of a 10th-grader who read at a third-grade level.
“Shawn is a real asset to our class because he’s so well behaved,” Fine told her, “but I think he might need some extra support to get him up to speed in reading.”
The mother said she had heard that before. Shawn had received help in middle school through special education. “But let me tell you, it don’t do no good, because the problem is that he’s plain lazy,” Fine quoted her as saying. “He’s failing every one of his classes. You got a solution to that?”
In an essay for Teacher Magazine last month, Fine said the mother’s response made her want to squirm. “Shawn’s problem is not that he is lazy,” she wrote. “To the contrary, when I ask him to read in class he sits quietly, moves his eyes over the words, and laboriously tries to answer whatever writing prompt follows — despite the fact that the text makes no sense to him. The real issue is that Shawn’s deficits make it impossible for him to pass the DC-CAS test given to 10th-graders in April, and so my school, consumed by the imperative to make ‘adequate yearly progress,’ has few resources to devote to him. He does not qualify for our English Academy program, which targets students whose reading scores indicate that a ‘push’ might enable them to pass the test, and we do not have a reading specialist because there is no funding for one.”

Community Partners, Discipline / Violence, Events, School Climate

Dave Cullen: The Lessons of Columbine

Lynn Neary:

Ten years ago Monday, news started trickling out of Colorado about a shooting at a high school called Columbine. It didn’t take long for the news media to descend, and reporter Dave Cullen was one of the first journalists on the story.
Cullen would go on to spend another nine years delving deeper into the massacre than perhaps any other journalist. He presents his account of the tragedy — and examines some of the myths and mistakes surrounding the shootings — in his new book, Columbine.
The book walks readers through the events of that day, laying out Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s murderous plan, which left 15 people dead (including the killers) and 23 injured.

Board Meeting Archives, Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Curriculum, Curriculum - Math, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Madison School Board Rejects Teaching & Learning Expansion; an Interesting Discussion

One of the most interesting things I’ve observed in my years of local school interaction is the extensive amount of pedagogical and content development that taxpayers fund within the Madison School District. I’ve always found this unusual, given the proximity of the University of Wisconsin, MATC and Edgewood College, among other, nearby Institutions of Higher Education.


The recent Math Task Force, a process set in motion by several school board elections, has succeeded in bringing more attention to the District’s math curriculum. Math rigor has long been a simmering issue, as evidenced by this April, 2004 letter from West High School Math Teachers to Isthmus:

Moreover, parents of future West High students should take notice: As you read this, our department is under pressure from the administration and the math coordinator’s office to phase out our “accelerated” course offerings beginning next year. Rather than addressing the problems of equity and closing the gap by identifying minority math talent earlier, and fostering minority participation in the accelerated programs, our administration wants to take the cheaper way out by forcing all kids into a one-size-fits-all curriculum.



It seems the administration and our school board have re-defined “success” as merely producing “fewer failures.” Astonishingly, excellence in student achievement is visited by some school district administrators with apathy at best, and with contempt at worst. But, while raising low achievers is a laudable goal, it is woefully short-sighted and, ironically, racist in the most insidious way. Somehow, limiting opportunities for excellence has become the definition of providing equity! Could there be a greater insult to the minority community?

The fact the Madison’s Teaching & Learning Department did not get what they want tonight is significant, perhaps the first time this has ever happened with respect to Math. I appreciate and am proud of the Madison School Board’s willingness to consider and discuss these important issues. Each Board member offered comments on this matter including: Lucy Mathiak, who pointed out that it would be far less expensive to simply take courses at the UW-Madison (about 1000 for three credits plus books) than spend $150K annually in Teaching & Learning. Marj Passman noted that the Math Task Force report emphasized content knowledge improvement and that is where the focus should be while Maya Cole noted that teacher participation is voluntary. Voluntary participation is a problem, as we’ve seen with the deployment of an online grading and scheduling system for teachers, students and parents.

Much more on math here, including a 2006 Forum (audio / video).

Several years ago, the late Ted Widerski introduced himself at an event. He mentioned that he learned something every week from this site and the weekly eNewsletter. I was (and am) surprised at Ted’s comments. I asked if the MMSD had an internal “Knowledge Network”, like www.schoolinfosystem.org, but oriented around curriculum for teachers? “No”.


It would seem that, given the tremendous local and online resources available today, Teaching & Learning’s sole reason for existence should be to organize and communicate information and opportunities for our teaching staff via the web, email, sms, videoconference, blogs, newsletters and the like. There is certainly no need to spend money on curriculum creation.

“Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.”

Listen to tonight’s nearly 50 minute Madison School Board math discussion via this 22MB mp3 audio file.

Board Meeting Archives, Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, School Climate

Tonight’s Madison School Board Meeting at O’Keefe Middle School

The meeting, which will discuss math (TJ Mertz comments), non-SAGE schools and many other topics. The meeting begins at 6:00p.m.
O’Keeffe Middle School
510 South Thornton Ave. [Map]
Madison, WI 53703
Library Media Center
The meeting agenda can be found here.

Curriculum - Science, School Climate

Android ABC’s

Miwa Suzuki:

A child robot, or CB2, has been made in a laboratory at Osaka University in Japan. A scientific team is trying to teach the robot to think and act like a baby.
A bald, child-like creature dangles its legs from a chair as its shoulders rise and fall with rhythmic breathing and its black eyes follow movements across the room.
It’s not human — but it is paying attention.
Below the soft silicon skin of one of Japan’s most sophisticated robots, processors record and evaluate information. The 130-centimetre humanoid is designed to learn just like a human infant.
The creators of the Child-robot with Biomimetic Body, or CB2, say it’s slowly developing social skills by interacting with humans and watching their facial expressions, mimicking a mother-baby relationship.
“Babies and infants have very, very limited programs. But they have room to learn more,” said Osaka University professor Minoru Asada, as his team’s 33-kilogram invention kept its eyes glued to him.

Board Meeting Archives, College Preparation, Community Partners, Curriculum, Curriculum - Math, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, School Climate, Student Support

Response to the Madison School District’s Math Task Force Recommendations

To: comment@madison.k12.wi.us
Cc: askey@math.wisc.edu
There are a number of points in the Summary of Administrative Response to MMSD Mathematics Task Force Recommendations which should be made. As a mathematician, let me just comment on comments on Recommendation 11. There are other comments which could be made, but I have a limited amount of time at present.
The first question I have is in the first paragraph. “One aspect of the balanced approach is represented in the four block approach to structuring mathematics lessons. The four blocks include Problem Solving, Number Work, Fluency and Maintenance and Inspecting Equations.” There is a missing comma, since it is not clear whether Maintenance goes with the previous word or the last two. However, in either case, “Inspecting Equations” is a strange phrase to use. I am not sure what it means, and when a mathematician who has read extensively in school mathematics does not understand a phrase, something is wrong. You might ask Brian Sniff, who seems to have written this report based on one comment he made at the Monday meeting, what he means by this.
In the next paragraph, there are the following statements about the math program used in MMSD. “The new edition [of Connected Math Project] includes a greater emphasis on practice problems similar to those in traditional middle and high school textbooks. The new edition still remains focused on problem-centered instruction that promotes deep conceptual understanding.” First, I dislike inflated language. It usually is an illustration of a lack of knowledge. We cannot hope for “deep conceptual understanding”, in school mathematics, and Connected Math falls far short of what we want students to learn and understand in many ways. There are many examples which could be given and a few are mentioned in a letter I sent to the chair of a committee which gave an award to two of the developers of Connected Mathematics Project. Much of my letter to Phil Daro is given below.
The final paragraph for Recommendation 11 deals with high school mathematics. When asked about the state standards, Brian Sniff remarked that they were being rewritten, but that the changes seem to be minimal. He is on the high school rewrite committee, and I hope he is incorrect about the changes since significant changes should be made. We now have a serious report from the National Mathematics Advisory Panel which was asked to report on algebra. In addition to comments on what is needed to prepare students for algebra, which should have an impact on both elementary and middle school mathematics, there is a good description of what algebra in high school should contain. Some of the books used in MMSD do not have the needed algebra. In addition, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has published Curriculum Focal Points for grades PK-8 which should be used for further details in these grades. Neither of these reports was mentioned in the response you were sent.

Lifelong Learning, Nutrition, Parenting, Student Support, Wellness

The Dangers Of The Drinking Age

Jeffrey Miron & Elina Tetelbaum:

For the past 20 years, the U.S. has maintained a Minimum Legal Drinking Age of 21 (MLDA21), with little public debate about the wisdom of this policy. Recently, however, more than 100 college and university presidents signed the Amethyst Initiative, a public statement calling for “an informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the 21-year-old drinking age.”
The response to the Amethyst Initiative was predictable: Advocates of restricted access and zero tolerance decried the statement for not recognizing that the MLDA21 saves lives by preventing traffic deaths among 18- to 20-year-olds. The president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, for example, accused the university heads of “not doing their homework” on the relationship between the drinking age and traffic fatalities.
In fact, the advocates of the MLDA21 are the ones who need a refresher course. In our recently completed research, we show that the MLDA21 has little or no life-saving effect.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Elections, School Climate, Student Support

US Education Chief to Spend Billions Transforming US Schools

Oliver Staley & Molly Peterson:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan plans to spend a record $5 billion to transform U.S. schools by rewarding states for innovation, providing merit pay to teachers and creating a national scorecard to identify failing schools.
The Education Department has already distributed $44 billion of its $100 billion in stimulus funds to stave off the firing of teachers, Duncan said yesterday in an interview in Washington. An additional $5 billion will be given as an incentive to states that are “fundamentally willing to challenge the status quo,” he said.
Duncan, 44, the former head of Chicago’s public schools, said the retirement of 1 million teachers in the “next couple of years” gives the U.S. an opportunity to attract and retain a new generation of educators. He said he plans to enlist President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama to help recruit teachers, and then reward the newcomers for working in struggling schools and districts.
“Talent matters tremendously,” Duncan said. “If we can bring in this next generation of extraordinary talent, we can transform education, and our ability to do that over the next couple of years will shape education in this country for the next 25 or 30 years.”

Budget/Financing, Elections, School Climate

Wisconsin law restricting teacher raises (to at least 3.8%) likely to be repealed

Amy Hetzner:

A state law used to settle contracts and restrict teacher compensation in school districts from Wauwatosa to Cedarburg to New Berlin could be repealed this year, now that Democrats control both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s mansion.


The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee took the most significant step toward eliminating the qualified economic offer (QEO) law since Gov. Jim Doyle took office simply by keeping the repeal proposal in the budget that it will begin considering Thursday. Prior attempts by Doyle to repeal the QEO as part of the biennial budget process were rejected by the committee when it was under bipartisan and Republican rule.



But now that the process is controlled by Democrats, who typically are more favorable to teacher- and labor-backed issues, state Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon) called the chances the QEO will be eliminated this year “100%.” Passing the measure with the budget is viewed as easier than proposing it as an individual bill.



“The teachers union has wanted to get rid of this for a long time,” Olsen said. “They finally got the Democrats in power to do it. The Democrats plan to get rid of the QEO. The governor will get rid of the QEO.”



In place since 1993, the QEO was implemented as part of a three-pronged approach to change how public schools are funded in the state.

Parenting, Student Support, Wellness

Why teenagers are moody, scientists find the answer

The Telegraph:

Psychologists used to blame the unpleasant characteristics of adolescence on hormones.
However, new brain imaging scans have revealed a high number of structural changes in teenagers and those in their early 20s.
Jay Giedd, at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, led the researchers who followed the progress of 400 children, scanning them every two years as they grew up.
They found that adolescence brings waves of so-called ‘brain pruning’ during which children lose about one per cent of their grey matter every year until their early 20s.

Budget/Financing, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Wisconsin Education Superintendent may use power to impose major change on MPS

Alan Borsuk:

Elizabeth Burmaster, the outgoing state superintendent of public instruction, on Tuesday emphasized the need for a united effort to make quick, major changes to MPS but for the first time hinted that she could use broad powers to make improvements unilaterally if needed.


In her first interview since the release of a consultants report last week that said Milwaukee Public Schools could save as much as $103 million a year by changes in its financial practices, Burmaster said she wants to see major changes in the way MPS teaches reading and language arts; more time in schools for students; more efforts to improve the quality of teaching; and, in general, a more consistent effort to attain quality across the 80,000-student system.


She said changes in the district’s business operations are also needed.



Burmaster said an MPS-improvement plan should be set by July and implemented by the start of the 2009-’10 school year. She leaves office July 6, but her successor, Tony Evers, is expected to pursue a similar course and some of what she called for is in line with relatively tough stands on MPS that Evers took during his campaign leading up to last week’s election.



He could not be reached Tuesday.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, Parenting, School Climate

Commentary: Charter Schools offer hope to public education

Eugene Paslov:

Charter schools offer hope for the future of our public education system. Charter schools promise options and opportunities for students and their parents that include diverse curricula — arts and humanities, career and vocational choices. They have unique delivery systems — distance learning, Montessori programs, special needs, and a mix of accelerated traditional and university courses. All meet high standards; all are accountable; all are independent and are defined as public schools, although with a new, expanded concept of public schools.
There are 25 charter schools in Nevada, two in Carson City, several in Washoe, Douglas and Lyon counties. (Nationally there are over 3,000 charter schools and the movement is fast growing.) Charter school growth has not been as robust in this state as in others, but it continues to receive support from the Legislature. In this legislative session there is a bill (AB489), that if passed will create an 18th school district for charter schools and will enable this new school district to authorize new charters.
I serve on the Silver State Charter High School Board in Carson City. This charter, a public school sponsored by the State Board of Education, is a distance learning school in which students interact with their teachers online as well as meet with them in person. The state has identified the school as “exemplary.” It is well managed and has a dedicated, licensed faculty and support staff. This charter school is a life-saver for over 500 kids and their parents.

Budget/Financing, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Many Skeptical That Milwaukee Public Schools Will Change

Erin Richards:

Several Milwaukee School Board members bristled at not receiving or being briefed in advance on a consultants’ report that claims the city’s public schools could be saving more than $100 million per year if its bureaucracy was run more efficiently.
Some said they had already pushed for reform on many of the reported problem spots: streamlining purchasing, selling unused land and curtailing large salaries.
Outside the system, many wanted to know what makes this report – another in a long line of analyses that paint a dismal picture of MPS – different from the others. What, if anything, will be done about the wasteful spending practices the report outlines? And how soon?
Tim Sheehy, president of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Association of Commerce, called the report “eye-popping, but not unexpected.”

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Providence, RI School District to End Teacher Bumping; Plans to Fill Vacancies Based on Qualifications.

AP:

Providence schools are set to phase out so-called “bumping” by filling teaching vacancies based on instructors’ qualifications instead of their senior status.
Superintendant Tom Brady said in a letter Wednesday to staff that six schools in the district will end the practice of seniority-based staffing decisions.
The change goes into effect in the next school year. The rest of the district is to use the new plan beginning in the 2010-2011 academic year.

Documents:

Events, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, Student Support

Student Strip Search Case Heads to US Supreme Court

Robert Barnes:

April Redding was waiting in the parking lot of the middle school when she heard news she could hardly understand: Her 13-year-old daughter, Savana, had been strip-searched by school officials in a futile hunt for drugs.


It’s a story that amazes and enrages her still, more than six years later, though she has relived it many times since.


Savana Redding was forced to strip to her underwear in the school nurse’s office. She was made to expose her breasts and pubic area to prove she was not hiding pills. And the drugs being sought were prescription-strength ibuprofen, equivalent to two Advils.



“I guess it’s the fact that they think they were not wrong, they’re not remorseful, never said they were sorry,” April Redding said this week, as she and Savana talked about the legal fight over that search, which has now reached the Supreme Court.

College Preparation, Curriculum, Curriculum - Math, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Nobel laureate John Nash shares with students his love of a puzzle

Albert Wong:

More than 800 students gathered yesterday to hear Nobel prize-winning mathematician, John F. Nash, Jr. (American mathematician), share stories about his early life.
Professor Nash, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in economic sciences in 1994 and whose life was dramatised in an Oscar-winning film, A Beautiful Mind, told a hall packed with students at the Polytechnic University yesterday how problem-solving fascinated him from an early age.
“From a very young age, when we would start working with addition and subtraction calculations … when the standard kids were working with two digits, I was working with three or four digits …
“I got some pleasure from that,” the professor said.
Professor Nash is in Hong Kong for a week-long speaking tour. Yesterday’s talk, organised by the university and the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups, was designed to give students an opportunity to pose questions.

Fascinating.

College Preparation, Curriculum, School Climate, Student Support

Do Study Sites Make the Grade?

Anne Marie Chaker:

At 10 p.m. on a recent night, high-school senior Scott Landers was having trouble figuring out differential calculus in order to compare rates of change.
With his professor unreachable and the exam set for the next day, he sent a shot in the dark to Cramster, an “online study community” recommended by classmates.
Within two hours, Mr. Landers was surprised to find his answer pop up in his email, followed by a few more responses the next morning, all pointing in the same direction. “I thought it was cool that there were people out there actually willing to help me,” he says.
Web sites such as Cramster aim to revolutionize the way students study, much the way that networking sites like Facebook have changed the way people socialize.
Course Hero, launched last year primarily for college students, already holds a library of more than two million course documents, including homework, class notes and graded essays, uploaded by students enrolled at 3,000 different colleges. Koofers (a nickname at Virginia Tech for old tests passed around at fraternities) allows students from about 25 state universities to submit posts about the difficulty of courses taught by different instructors at their schools. It also offers average semester grades from instructors. Enotes, geared mainly to high-school students, allows peers to form discussion groups and pose questions to experts — usually teachers — who are paid by the Web site.

Budget/Financing, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Study Finds Millions in Waste in the Milwaukee Public Schools

Alan Borsuk:

Milwaukee Public Schools could save as much as $103 million a year if it operated like a well-run business, according to a much-anticipated report that has Gov. Jim Doyle and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett taking steps that could lead to a takeover of the system.
The report, released Thursday, concludes that MPS does not have a culture aimed at achieving good results, and is in tenuous financial shape that will worsen without systemic changes.
The report mostly sidesteps the academic side of MPS, concentrating instead on business operations, from busing to lunch programs to purchasing practices to health insurance policies. It found waste in every area – inefficient payroll processing, overqualified maintenance teams, even pencil sharpeners that cost more than $100. The report also found more than five dozen central office jobs with six-figure salaries.
Spending outside the classroom is about a third of total MPS spending.
“To free up funds needed to close its worrisome academic achievement gaps, MPS must first get its financial house in order,” the report says.
Invoking powers granted the state by federal law, Doyle and Barrett said they will move within several weeks to create a council of community leaders to pursue major changes in the way MPS conducts business – and, ultimately, how well it educates children.

College Preparation, Curriculum, Parenting, Student Support

Triumphing Over Long Odds to Succeed at School

Sharon Otterman:

Before the economy collapsed and thrift became a national watchword, a high school senior named Wei Huang was already scouring New York City for bargains, determined to support herself on the $10 a month she had left after she paid her rent.
Ms. Huang, 20, one of 12 high school seniors named New York Times Scholars this year, immigrated to New York from China with her parents in 2007. But when her parents found the transition to American life too hard and returned to China last year, she decided to stay here alone, entranced by the city’s streetscapes and the thought of attending college here one day.
She found a job at a florist paying $560 a month, and a house to share in Ridgewood, Queens, for $550. That leaves $10 a month, which she spends carefully on large bags of rice, chicken leg quarters at 49 cents a pound, and whatever vegetables are cheapest. Throw in the two free meals a day at school, a student MetroCard and the unexpected kind act — her English teacher, for instance, gave her $100 — and she manages to get by.

Elections, School Climate

Serve America Lets Congress Take Another Bow

Gene Healy:

Last week, the House passed the Serve America Act (SAA), which will triple the number of federally funded “volunteer” positions, create a “Clean Energy Corps” to weatherize homes, and make September 11th a “National Day of Service.”
Like many federal assaults on the taxpayer, the SAA is a bipartisan offense: It passed by huge margins in both houses. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-MA, the primary sponsor, got a standing ovation after the vote was in, and co-sponsor Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, gushed that “the whole Kennedy family has been a service family.”
Hatch’s statement neatly captures the fallacy behind the act – the notion that service to America is principally service to the American state.
The SAA is more carrot than stick, subsidizing volunteerism rather than mandating it. But the Obama administration prefers a more coercive approach if and when they can get away with it. Obama’s campaign-trail plan would have forced schools to require 50 hours of community service a year, making charity as popular among teens as study hall and mandatory pep rallies.

Curriculum, Lifelong Learning, School Climate

Wikipedia’s Old-Fashioned Revolution

Grodon Crovitz:

In 1993, Microsoft launched an innovative multimedia encyclopedia, Encarta, delivered through CD-ROM. It nearly put the Encyclopaedia Britannica out of business. Last week, Microsoft announced that it will close Encarta down.
Encarta could not compete with Wikipedia, which plays by different rules, using the online medium to beat earlier encyclopedias at their own mission. Created and maintained by anonymous people around the world, Wikipedia is by far the biggest and most popular encyclopedia ever. Despite being created by amateurs, it has the potential to become the most professional.
This may be a startling claim. There are infamous inaccuracies, such as the mischief-maker who edited the profile of a well-known journalist to say he’d been accused of assassinating the Kennedys. There have been drawn-out battles about whether the city is Gdansk or Danzig. (And whoever created the entry about me incorrectly listed my ex-wife as my current wife. My actual wife was not amused.)
But Wikipedia is quietly transforming itself into a hybrid of amateurs and professionals. Anyone can create entries — it has 10 million articles in 253 languages — but the ultimate editing is increasingly done by well-trained researchers. This trend is important because by some measures Wikipedia is in the top five Web sites, it is often the top result on Google searches, and it gets 97% of traffic to online encyclopedias.

Curriculum, Curriculum - Languages, School Climate

Cynicism We Can Believe In

Simon Critchley:

SOME 2,300 years after his death, Diogenes the Cynic dramatically interrupted a recent New York State Senate committee meeting. Wearing a long, white beard and carrying his trademark lamp in broad daylight, the ancient philosopher — who once described himself as “a Socrates gone mad” — claimed to be looking for an honest man in politics. Considering the never-ending allegations of financial corruption that flow from the sump of Albany, it’s no surprise that he was unsuccessful.
This resurrected Diogenes was, in fact, Randy Credico, a comedian who says he is considering challenging Senator Charles Schumer in the 2010 Democratic primary. Whatever boost Mr. Credico’s prank provides his campaign, it might also cause us to reflect a little on the meaning of cynicism — and how greatly we still need Diogenes.
Cynicism is actually not at all cynical in the modern sense of the word. It bears no real resemblance to that attitude of negativity and jaded scornfulness that sees the worst of intentions behind the apparent good motives of others.

Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support

Milwaukee’s Howard Fuller & School Vouchers

Bruce Murphy:

c Schools, he was seen by some liberal critics as a right wing-toady who had betrayed his old ideology by getting in bed with conservative school choice supporters. That view was always simplistic, as his bold call for reform of school choice, announced last week, proved once again. His new position – which could greatly alter the politics of school choice – raises many questions.

For starters, why the seeming flip-flop by Fuller? The answer is that he’s never been an ideologue. The old Fuller, after all, was a Democrat. He worked to get Democrat Tony Earl elected in 1982 and was rewarded with a position running the state’s Department of Employment Relations. And his commitment to public schools was personified by his work as MPS superintendent from 1991-1995, which included championing an über-liberal referendum to spend some $400 million to construct new schools, which was defeated by the taxpayers.

But Fuller was more often a critic of MPS, among other things proposing (in the late 1980s) to create an all-black school district that would be carved out of MPS. (That idea, too, went down in flames.) Fuller was always a supporter of alternative schools – or any schools, really – that would provide a good education for minority and low-income students. And he was always willing to work with business leaders and politicians of either party to accomplish his ends. For at least the last 10 years, that has meant mostly Republicans, as he embraced school choice as the solution to urban education in Milwaukee.

But the latest results of the five-year study on school choice, reported last week in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, showed there is no statistically significant difference in achievement between MPS and voucher schools. The schools are cheaper, but because of the partisan legislation battles over voucher funding, the program’s complicated funding formula awards most of the savings (some $82 million a year) to every place in the state but Milwaukee. This city’s property taxpayers are paying $45 million more annually for a program that appears to be having little positive impact on education.

Budget/Financing, Elections, School Climate

Lower property values hurt schools

Greg Toppo & Jack Gillum:

Way back when times were good — last April — builders showed up one day at Forest Grove Middle School and gutted a little-used classroom off the gym.
Four months and a half-million dollars later, they had transformed the space into a bubbling mini-marine biology laboratory, with five huge, blue plastic tanks for local marine life and a refrigerated tank that replicates the cold-water ecosystem off Maine.
For the first time, teacher Kevin Stinnette said, his students could do hands-on lessons with cold-water species such as frilled anemones and Acadia hermit crabs.
Then the mortgage meltdown hit central Florida, and the crabs and anemones weren’t the only ones hit with cold water. Here as elsewhere across America, hard times have forced schools to trim budgets, freeze hiring and, in a few cases, make substantial job cuts, raising doubts about the future of a range of programs, including the new marine lab.
Already, St. Lucie schools have lost $22 million in tax revenue from lower property values, and the district is staring at a 25% budget cut in the fall. It has frozen salaries and put central office employees on a four-day workweek. Enrollment is down only slightly but if things get much worse, schools in St. Lucie may cut athletics, after-school activities and summer school to the bone — or even consider a four-day week for students.

School Climate, Staff Support, Teacher Support

Other countries’ efforts to develop and support teachers

Stacy Teicher Khadaroo:

A recent study of the professional development of teachers identified four key areas in which nations with high student achievement tend to have an advantage over the United States:
Support for new teachers
•Many countries mandate mentoring or other support for beginning teachers. In New Zealand, new teachers spend 20 percent of their time being coached. In Norway, each new teacher is paired with a teacher trained as a mentor. In Switzerland, novices meet with practice groups from other schools for peer evaluation.
• The US has made progress in this area. In the early 1990s, about half of new teachers participated in support programs. A decade later, that had grown to two-thirds, and 7 out of 10 had a mentor.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Community Partners, Curriculum, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate

Design Under Constraint: How Limits Boost Creativity

Scott Dadich:

..A 16-by 10.875-inch rectangle containing precisely 174 square inches of possibility, made from two sheets of paper glued and bound together. Legendary magazine art director and Pentagram partner D. J. Stout calls the science of filling this box with artful compositions of type and images “variations on a rectangle.” That is, in any given issue of a magazine–this one, for example–subjects and stories will change, but as a designer, you’re still dealing with the same ol’ blank white box.
At Wired, our design team sees this constraint as our daily bread. On every editorial page, we use words and pictures to overcome the particular restrictions of paper and ink: We can’t animate the infographics (yet). We can’t embed video or voice-over (yet). We can’t add sound effects or music (yet). But for all that we can’t do in this static medium, we find enlightenment and wonder in its possibilities. This is a belief most designers share. In fact, the worst thing a designer can hear is an offhand “Just do whatever you want.” That’s because designers understand the power of limits. Constraint offers an unparalleled opportunity for growth and innovation.
Think of a young tree, a sapling. With water and sunshine, it can grow tall and strong. But include some careful pruning early in its development–removing low-hanging branches–and the tree will grow taller, stronger, faster. It won’t waste precious resources on growth that doesn’t serve its ultimate purpose. The same principle applies to design. Given fewer resources, you have to make better decisions.

Athletics, Parenting, School Climate, Sports, Student Support

Allonzo Trier Is in the Game

Michael Sokolove:

After school on a recent afternoon, Allonzo Trier, a sixth grader in Federal Way, outside Seattle, came home and quickly changed into his workout gear — Nike high-tops, baggy basketball shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt that hung loosely on his 5-foot-5, 110-pound frame. Inside a small gymnasium near the entrance of his apartment complex, he got right to his practice routine, one he has maintained for the last four years, seven days a week. He began by dribbling a basketball around the perimeter of the court, weaving it around his back and through his legs. After a few minutes, he took a second basketball out of a mesh bag and dribbled both balls, crisscrossing them through his legs. It looked like showboating, Harlem Globetrotters kind of stuff, but the drills, which Trier discovered on the Internet, were based on the childhood workouts of Pete Maravich and have helped nurture his exquisite control of the ball in game settings — and, by extension, his burgeoning national reputation.
One of the Web sites that tracks young basketball prospects reports that Trier plays with “style and punch” and “handles the pill” — the ball — “like a yo-yo.” He is a darling of the so-called grass-roots basketball scene and a star on the A.A.U. circuit — which stands for Amateur Athletic Union but whose practices mock traditional definitions of amateurism.

College Preparation, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support

College Prestige Lies

1 Comment

Robin Hanson:

Over the next two weeks my eldest son will be rejected by some colleges, accepted by others. And then we’ll likely have to make a hard choice, between cheap state schools and expensive prestigious ones. A colleague told me the best econ paper on this found it doesn’t matter. From its 1999 abstract:
We matched students who applied to, and were accepted by, similar colleges to try to eliminate this bias. Using the … High School Class of 1972, we find that students who attended more selective colleges earned about the same [20 years later] as students of seemingly comparable ability who attended less selective schools. Children from low-income families, however, earned more if they attended selective colleges.
A 2006 NYT article confirms this:
Higher education experts have this message … Pay less attention to prestige and more to “fit” — the marriage of interests and comfort level with factors like campus size, access to professors, instruction philosophy. … A 1999 study by Alan B. Krueger … and Stacy Dale … found that students who were admitted to both selective and moderately selective colleges earned the same no matter which they attended.

School Climate, Student Support

Detroit prep school helps students get back on track

Chastity Pratt Dawsey:

The silence is striking at Barsamian Preparatory Center. And so are the violence prevention therapy sessions, where a homework assignment is to tell a caregiver, “I love you.”
Then there’s the low teacher turnover and the one bored and unarmed security guard who keeps watch over 90 teenagers who are judged to be the most violent in Detroit Public Schools.
Barsamian is one of the few places where high school students expelled for violence, drugs, aggression toward school staff or other serious actions can continue their education. Some were kicked out of other schools in the district; others are serving out expulsions from districts around the state.
The expulsions range from a few months to a year. Most of the kids are on probation in the juvenile justice system. Students leave the school after their expulsion period is over.
Students, staff and parents said Barsamian’s small setting and strict rules have worked well. Some wish the students could stay longer.

Parenting, Student Support, Wellness

RE: ’07 U.S. Births Break Baby Boom Record

Douglas M. Newman:

It’s irresponsible that Erick Ekholm doesn’t mention well publicized research citing teen pregnancy being tied to racy TV in his article (‘07 U.S. Births Break Baby Boom Record, Mar. 18, 2009).
In the widely published Nov. 3, 2008 Associate Press news release by Lindsy Tanner, Rand Corp. published a study in the November 2008 issue of Pediatrics, linking TV viewing habits and teen pregnancy.
Paraphrasing the AP’s press release and Anita Chandra, lead author of Rand’s study, “teens who watched the raciest shows were twice as likely to become pregnant as those who didn’t. Previous research found that watching lots of sex on TV can influence teens to have sex at earlier ages. Shows highlighting only the positive aspects of sexual behavior without the risks can lead teens to have unprotected sex.”
Perhaps 2007 birth rates just might have been influenced by racy television shows teens are viewing – with parental consent and produced by adults in the name of corporate profits I might add.
Douglas M. Newman
Guilford, Connecticut
Cell: (203) 516-1006
Word count: 148 (after the hyphen in the last sentence, the word count is 166).

Lindsay Tanner:

Groundbreaking research suggests that pregnancy rates are much higher among teens who watch a lot of TV with sexual dialogue and behavior, compared with those who have tamer viewing tastes.
“Sex in the City,” anyone? That was one of the shows used in the research.
The new study is the first to link those viewing habits with teen pregnancy, said lead author Anita Chandra, a Rand Corp. behavioral scientist. Teens who watched the raciest shows were twice as likely to become pregnant over the next three years as those who watched few such programs.
Previous research by some of the same scientists had already found that watching lots of sex on TV can influence teens to have sex at earlier ages.
Shows that only highlight the positive aspects of sexual behavior without the risks can lead teens to have unprotected sex “before they’re ready to make responsible and informed decisions,” Miss Chandra said.

ABC-TV:

The more sexual content in television and magazines that teens are exposed to, the more likely they are to have sexual intercourse at an early age, a new study says.
The University of North Carolina study, published in today’s issue of the journal Pediatrics, concludes that white adolescents who view more sexual content than their peers are 2.2 times more likely to have sexual intercourse by the time they are 14 to 16 years old.
“Some, especially those who have fewer alternative sources of sexual norms, such as parents or friends, may use the media as a kind of sexual superpeer that encourages them to be sexually active,” the study authors state.
And, as similar past studies have noted, “one of the strongest protective factors against early sexual behavior was clear parental communication about sex.”

Parenting, Student Support, Wellness

Reports surface that teens are taking cow drugs for abortions

Erin Richards:

Veterinary and medical professionals in Wisconsin said Friday that they have been warned about a potentially alarming practice among the state’s rural youth: teenage girls ingesting livestock drugs to cheaply and discreetly end their unwanted pregnancies.
So far, the professionals in animal and human health and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction are treating the reports of girls inducing their own abortions with prostaglandins – drugs commonly used by cow breeders to regulate animals’ heat cycles – as rumors, because no cases have been officially confirmed by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
But Anna Anderson, the executive director of Care Net Pregnancy Center of Green County in Monroe, maintains that she has identified at least 10 girls ages 14 to 18 in a three-county area who admitted to taking some form of cow abortifacient in the past year.
Anderson said the girls told her they took it because they found it to be a cheap and easy way to end their pregnancies without their parents finding out.
At the American Veterinary Medical Association, Assistant Director Kimberly May said Friday that her organization first heard the rumor about the teenagers in mid-February from the Wisconsin Veterinary Medical Association. Since then, the American Animal Hospital Association has also posted an advisory about the issue on its Web site.
Injected properly in livestock, prostaglandins shorten a heat cycle so a female animal can be bred again, May said.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Study: Charter school students may be more likely to graduate, go to college

Martha Woodall:

Charter schools generally cannot take credit for boosting test scores, but there is intriguing evidence that students at charter high schools may be more likely to graduate and attend college, a national study concludes.
The Rand Corp. study, which was released Wednesday, examined charters in eight states. Rand, a nonprofit research organization in Santa Monica, Calif., also examined charters in Chicago, San Diego, Denver, Milwaukee, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas and Florida.
A year ago, a Rand report on charter schools in Philadelphia found that their students performed about the same as students in district-run schools.
Charter school research has become politically charged, with dueling views. Some reports have concluded that students at the nation’s 4,100 charter schools outperform their counterparts in traditional public schools. Other investigators have said charter students do no better than public school students and often do worse.
Researchers involved with the Rand report said they had used performance data of individual students over time to try to evaluate charter schools more accurately. Their work received financial support from several nonprofit foundations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the William Penn Foundation. Bill Gates supports charter schools, and the Gates Foundation has provided millions of dollars to help successful ones expand.

Ron Zimmer, Brian Gill, Kevin Booker, Stephane Lavertu, Tim R. Sass, John Witte:

The first U.S. charter school opened in 1992, and the scale of the charter movement has since grown to 4,000 schools and more than a million students in 40 states plus the District of Columbia. With this growth has also come a contentious debate about the effects of the schools on their own students and on students in nearby traditional public schools (TPSs). In recent years, research has begun to inform this debate, but many of the key outcomes have not been adequately examined, or have been examined in only a few states. Do the conflicting conclusions of different studies reflect real differences in effects driven by variation in charter laws and policies? Or do they reflect differences in research approaches — some of which may be biased? This book examines four primary research questions: (1) What are the characteristics of students transferring to charter schools? (2) What effect do charter schools have on test-score gains for students who transfer between TPSs and charter schools? (3) What is the effect of attending a charter high school on the probability of graduating and of entering college? (4) What effect does the introduction of charter schools have on test scores of students in nearby TPSs?

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, School Climate, Teacher Support

D.C. Schools Chief Turns To Rookie Teacher Corps

Claudio Sanchez:

Michele Rhee, the District of Columbia’s public schools chancellor, has done a lot to shake up schools in the nation’s capital.
But for some, change can’t come soon enough.
So Rhee is intent on attracting young teachers who aren’t vested in the old contractual arrangements with the teachers’ union, which Rhee thinks is getting in the way of her reform efforts.
In other words, Rhee is looking for a “new breed” of teachers, mostly 20-somethings fresh out of college, who may not have majored in education but are drawn to teaching; like 22-year-old Meredith Leonard, a sixth-grade English teacher at Shaw-Garnet-Patterson Middle School.
Like many first-year teachers who’ve poured into Washington, D.C., in the past few years, Leonard is receptive to the changes that Rhee is proposing, such as merit pay and doing away with tenure.

Health Care, Parenting, School Climate, Special Education, Student Support

An Outbreak of Autism, or a Statistical Fluke?

Donald McNeil, Jr.:

Ayub Abdi is a cute 5-year-old with a smile that might be called shy if not for the empty look in his eyes. He does not speak. When he was 2, he could say “Dad,” “Mom,” “give me” and “need water,” but he has lost all that.
He does scream and spit, and he moans a loud “Unnnnh! Unnnnh!” when he is unhappy. At night he pounds the walls for hours, which led to his family’s eviction from their last apartment.
As he is strapped into his seat in the bus that takes him to special education class, it is hard not to notice that there is only one other child inside, and he too is a son of Somali immigrants.
“I know 10 guys whose kids have autism,” said Ayub’s father, Abdirisak Jama, a 39-year-old security guard. “They are all looking for help.”
Autism is terrifying the community of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis, and some pediatricians and educators have joined parents in raising the alarm. But public health experts say it is hard to tell whether the apparent surge of cases is an actual outbreak, with a cause that can be addressed, or just a statistical fluke.

College Preparation, Curriculum, School Climate

“Dumbing Down” UK University Standards

BBC:

wo senior academics at a Manchester university have accused it of “dumbing down” higher education.
Sue Evans and Walter Cairns, both lecturers at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), said the marks of failing students had been “bumped up”.
They also claim the university will not take action against students who fail to turn up for lectures.
Deputy vice chancellor Kevin Bonnett said the comments were an “insult” to the university and its students.

The Daily Mail:

A group of university lecturers have painted a bleak picture of the falling standards of British higher education in a 500-page dossier presented to an MPs’ inquiry.
The academics warn of an across-the-board dumbing down with degrees becoming increasingly easy, widespread plagiarism and institutional pressure from university bosses to award students higher grades than they deserve.
The lecturers come from a wide range of universities including Oxford, Birmingham, Cardiff, Sussex and Manchester Metropolitan, reported The Sunday Times.
Graduates throwing mortarboards in the air
The aim of the dossier, which blames the problems on university expansion without adequate funding, is to force Universities Secretary John Denham to take action to safeguard standards of higher education.
One academic to give evidence is Stuart Derbyshire, a senior lecturer in psychology at Birmingham University.

More from Greame Paton and Yojana Sharma.

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Staff Support, Teacher Support

Teachers to Face Individual, School Evaluations of Student Success

Bill Turque:

District teachers will be evaluated on their individual effectiveness and their school’s overall success in improving student performance under an assessment system to be unveiled this fall, Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee said yesterday.
In her most detailed public comments to date on planned changes to the evaluation system, Rhee said at a D.C. Council hearing that the approach would combine standardized test scores where practical, intensive classroom observation and “value added” measurements of students’ growth during the year.
Teachers would also be allowed to set buildingwide goals for achievement that would be used in evaluating their performance.
Rhee said the Professional Performance Evaluation Program, which the District has used in recent years, is inadequate and does not reflect a teacher’s worth or how much he or she has helped students grow. She said the federal No Child Left Behind law, as written, is too narrowly focused on test results and not student progress from year to year.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Curriculum, School Climate

Ending the “Race to the Bottom”

New York Times Editorial:

There was an impressive breadth of knowledge and a welcome dose of candor in President Obama’s first big speech on education, in which he served up an informed analysis of the educational system from top to bottom. What really mattered was that Mr. Obama did not wring his hands or speak in abstract about states that have failed to raise their educational standards. Instead, he made it clear that he was not afraid to embarrass the laggards — by naming them — and that he would use a $100 billion education stimulus fund to create the changes the country so desperately needs.
Mr. Obama signaled that he would take the case for reform directly to the voters, instead of limiting the discussion to mandarins, lobbyists and specialists huddled in Washington. Unlike his predecessor, who promised to leave no child behind but did not deliver, this president is clearly ready to use his political clout on education.

Parenting, School Climate, Student Support

Life Stories: Children Find Meaning in Old Family Tales

Sue Shellenbarger:

When C. Stephen Guyer’s three children were growing up, he told them stories about how his grandfather, a banker, lost all in the 1930s, but didn’t lose sight of what he valued most. In one of the darkest times, Mr. Guyer says, when his grandfather was nearly broke, he loaded his family into the car and took them to see family members in Canada. The message: “There are more important things in life than money,” says Mr. Guyer, of Littleton, Colo.
The tale took on new relevance recently, when Mr. Guyer downsized to a small house from a more luxurious one. He was worried that his children, a daughter, 15, and twins, 22, would be upset. To his surprise, they weren’t. Instead, their reaction echoed their great-grandfather’s. “What they care about,” Mr. Guyer says his children told him, “is how warm are the people in the house, how much of their heart is accessible.”
As parents cut budgets, many are finding family stories have surprising power to help children through hard times. Storytelling experts say the phenomenon reflects a growing national interest in telling tales, evidenced by a rise in storytelling events and festivals. New research bears out the value of family stories, linking teens’ knowledge of them to better behavior and mental health.
An Emory University study of 65 families with children ages 14 to 16 found kids’ ability to retell parents’ stories was linked to a lower rate of depression and anxiety and less acting-out of frustration or anger, says Robyn Fivush, a psychology professor. Knowing family stories “helps children put their own experience in perspective,” Dr. Fivush says.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Teacher Support

As LAUSD layoffs loom, debate over teacher seniority resurfaces

Jason Song & Seema Mehta:

Richard Rivera joined the Algebra Project at exactly the wrong time.
After three years at charter schools, Rivera returned to the Los Angeles Unified School District last year as a math coach — a kind of roving instructor and supervisor — at Luther Burbank Middle School in Highland Park. He also agreed to work on the Algebra Project, a new program designed to keep low-achieving students involved in math.
But even though Rivera spent a decade teaching in the district, he lost his seniority with L.A. Unified because of his foray into the charter world. Because the district lays off teachers based on the amount of time they’ve worked for the school system, Rivera is now in danger of losing his job, and the Algebra Project might stall before it even begins.
If Rivera and other younger teachers involved in the program leave, the school goes “right back to square one,” said John Samaniego, the principal at Burbank, where test scores have slowly been rising.
Samaniego’s dilemma is common throughout the state as districts prepare to issue preliminary layoff notices to teachers by Friday and principals try to determine their plans for next year. The Los Angeles Board of Education is scheduled to vote today on whether to issue these notices to about 9,000 employees, including 5,500 teachers, because of an expected $700-million budget shortfall.

Athletics, Budget/Financing, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Sports

Sun Prairie sells naming rights to baseball field

Gena Kittner:

With the announcement of the new Summit Credit Union Baseball Field, Sun Prairie has likely become the first Dane County school district to sell the naming rights for a specific school facility.
And the high school’s varsity baseball field could be just the beginning: District officials want to sell naming rights to everything from the classrooms and the cafeteria to trophy cases and field lights at the new high school slated to open in the fall of 2010.
“Our goal is to have as many of the big items named before the school opens,” said Jim McCourt, Sun Prairie School Board treasurer and member of the Naming Rights Subcommittee.
The subcommittee has a tentative goal of selling more than $3 million in naming rights. However, district officials say business or individual monikers would be presented tactfully, such as a plaque bearing a person’s name on the back of an auditorium seat or above a classroom doorway.
“It’s not like we’re going to have banners all over the school,” McCourt said.
On Tuesday the district announced Summit Credit Union as the first company to be granted naming rights for a district facility, under the new policy to allow for names of businesses attached to facilities, in exchange for donations.
The School Board approved the naming rights agreement with Summit on Monday night, which will be in effect for 20 years. The credit union donated $99,537, which pays for about a third of the cost of the field that will have artificial turf on the infield.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

On Obama’s Education Speech

Jay Matthews:

President Obama’s education speech this morning was, in my memory, the largest assemblage of smart ideas about schools ever issued by one president at one time. Everyone will have a different favorite part — performance pay models for teachers, better student data tracking systems, longer school days and years, eliminating weak state testing standards, more money for schools that improve, more grants for fresh ideas, better teacher training, more charter school growth, faster closing of bad charters and many more.
The speech puts Obama without any further doubt in the long line of Democratic party leaders who have embraced accountability in schools through testing, even at the risk of seeming to be in league with the Republican Party. His explicit endorsement of the tough Massachusetts testing system — a favorite of GOP conservatives — will irritate many teachers and education activists in his own party, but that group of Democrats has not had a champion who has ever gotten closer to the presidency than former Vermont governor Howard Dean, and we know how his candidacy turned out.
The problem, which the president did not mention, is that he has limited power to make any of these things happen. His speech was full of encouraging words to state and school district officials, who will be the true deciders. True, he has some money to spread around for new ideas. But the vast bulk of the budget stimulus dough will go, as he said, to saving jobs in school systems.

Scott Wilson has more.

Budget/Financing, School Climate

Parochial schools weather the economic storm

Gayle Worland:

On Tuesday the kindergartners and first-graders at Madison Jewish Community Day School will celebrate the traditional holiday of Purim, and the public is invited — not just because Purim is a festive, joyous event, but because the school wants people to know it’s here.
“We’re very tiny but we’re very strong,” said Meisha Leibson, the school’s Jewish studies teacher, who seamlessly interweaves Hebrew and English during lessons for the school’s nine students. “We have very supportive parents.”
Across the Madison area, families who send their children to religiously affiliated schools are proving faithful in more ways than one: Enrollments are mostly on track for the 2009-10 school year. Still, the current economic crisis is likely prompting parents to make some extra calculations before putting down a deposit on next year’s private-school tuition, said Dave Retzlaff, the principal and seventh-eighth-grade teacher at Our Redeemer Lutheran School.
“For us (the economy) hasn’t had a huge impact,” Retzlaff said. “You’d probably see it more in families who are having to think it through a little bit more than they would have in the past. It might have been a little more automatic before.”
Current students already have re-enrolled, and applications for any remaining spots at Our Redeemer usually peak in the summer, said Retzlaff, “so that’s probably when we’ll see if there’s a bigger impact or not.” Still, in a less jittery economic climate, “for us our goal would be to grow.”

Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Student Support

Immersion from an early age is the best way to teach English

Lyle Kleusch:

The Hong Kong education system has become far too complex and exam-oriented with regard to teaching English. For example, the Education Bureau’s websites are so difficult to understand and navigate that many public schools are hiring native-English-speaking consultants to break down new senior secondary curriculum guides and assessment modules.
This is all being done in the name of the HKCEE, an acronym that strikes fear into many a secondary student. This is a dysfunctional system. English needs to be taught as a means to communicate, not as an end product used to pass exams. The bureau is neglecting the core, instinctive method of learning a language.
The driving forces behind learning a language remain the same whether it is the mother tongue or a secondary one. They include: the need to understand others and to communicate effectively, and the desire to express ones ideas and opinions. It is hard-wired into our brains from birth to strive to master communication, in any form or language. There is what we call “intrinsic motivation”. Our children are born with an innate desire to hear and be heard. They seek to mimic, emulate and ultimately understand others. This is not theory, it is fact.
There is a language explosion between the ages of two and six. The average child’s vocabulary expands from about 50 words at the age of 18 months to an average of more than 10,000 words by the age of six. Children are not concerned at this age with what language it is, as long as it allows them to communicate their thoughts, emotions and ideas.
If fluent English is the goal for local students, then the whole language and education system in Hong Kong needs to be overhauled and simplified to allow for this crucial period in children’s linguistic development. Teaching children in one language and then switching to another simply to prepare for exams ignores the underlying principles of why and how children learn a language. It favours only those who have been immersed in that second language from an early age.

College Preparation, Curriculum, Curriculum - Languages, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Degree of Difficulty

Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
7 March 2009
In gymnastics, performances are judged not just on execution but also on the degree of difficulty. The same system is used in diving and in ice skating. An athlete is of course judged on how well they do something, but their score also includes how hard it was to do that particular exercise.
One of the reasons, in my view, that more than a million of our high school graduates each year are in remedial courses after they have been accepted at colleges is that the degree of difficulty set for them in their high school courses has been too low, by college standards.
Surveys comparing the standards of high school teachers and college professors routinely discover that students who their teachers judge to be very well prepared, for instance in reading, research and writing, are seen as not very well prepared by college professors.
According to the Diploma to Nowhere report issued last summer by the Strong American Schools project, tens of thousands of students are surprised, embarrassed and depressed to find that, after getting As and Bs in their high school courses, even in the “hard” ones, they are judged to be not ready for college work and must take non-credit remedial courses to make up for the academic deficiencies that they naturally assumed they did not have.
If we could imagine a ten point degree-of-difficulty scale for high school courses, surely arithmetic would rank near the bottom, say at a one, and calculus would rank at the top, near a ten. Courses in Chinese and Physics, and perhaps AP European History, would be near the top of the scale as well.
When it comes to academic writing, however, and the English departments only ask their students for personal and creative writing, and the five-paragraph essay, they are setting the degree of difficulty at or near the bottom of the academic writing scale. The standard kind of writing might be the equivalent of having math students being blocked from moving beyond fractions and decimals.

College Preparation, Curriculum, School Climate

PISA & Hong Kong Schools

Mima Lau:

Pisa tests 15-year-old students in reading, maths and science. More than 400,000 students from 57 countries and regions took part in 2006 when Hong Kong students came second in science and third in maths and reading. This year, 72 countries and regions will participate. The test takes place from next month until May.
On Monday, the HKCISA appealed to schools to take part after not enough signed up for the test, saying they were too busy dealing with education reforms. The bureau brushed aside the centre’s concern the next day, calling it a “false alarm” and saying there was “no question of Hong Kong not participating”.
But Professor Ho said the message was wrong. The government failed to “understand the actual situation” and sent out “a wrong message” to the public by misjudging the sampling requirement.
“It was very irresponsible to make such a comment,” she said.
Professor Ho also expressed a concern that schools might be pressured by the administration to take part in the test.
“If Hong Kong is lacking students and falls out of Pisa’s international rankings, the government will have to take up the responsibility,” Professor Ho warned.
She said she had been working on Pisa for 10 years and did not want to see the hard work jeopardised. This year’s test was particularly significant because it was the first time Macau, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore would be compared internationally at the same time.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Milwaukee Seeks to Close Charter Schools

Erin Richards:

In what might be the largest number of school closing proposals presented at once, Milwaukee Public Schools officials announced plans Friday to end contracts with six charter schools in the district, including almost all the fledgling small high schools within the North Division complex.
MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos said he supported a proposal from School Board Director Michael Bonds, who wants to return North to its original incarnation – a large, comprehensive city high school at 1011 W. Center St.
While Bonds cited the desire from alumni to return North to a large-scale institution, Andrekopoulos said a review of the small schools in the complex revealed failures in test scores and poor student progress.
“We can do better for our kids; the status quo is not acceptable,” Andrekopoulos said, though he stopped short of calling the small-schools-within-a-big-school experiment a failure.
“We’ve created successful small schools,” he said. “But we’re willing to stand up (and change) something not working.”
The high schools in North that could lose their charter contracts include the Truth Institute for Leadership and Service with 171 students, the Genesis School of Business Technology/Trade, Health and Human Services with 233 students, and Metropolitan High School, with 250 students.
The proposal will be discussed at two meetings next week.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support, Wellness

Student Beaten in Toki Middle School Bathroom

12 Comments

WKOW-TV via a kind reader’s email:

Parents of students at a Madison middle school worry about safety after a child was beat up in one the school’s bathroom.
The incident happened last week Thursday.
According to a letter sent home to parents Monday, a group of students followed a male student into the boy’s bathroom where another student assaulted him.
The group blocked entrance to the bathroom.
Surveillance cameras show the beating along with a group of witnesses cheering on the violence.
Toki [Map] Principal Nicole Schaefer says the school sent the letter to alert parents that the proper actions were taken and assure them the school is safe.
Schaefer would not tell 27 News if any students were suspended or if the victim is back in school.

Toki Middle School Restorative Justice Plan [82K PDF]:

Judicious discipline is a three pillared process set on a solid educational foundation. The first pillar is prevention through education and positive behavior supports; the second pillar is equity through fair and consistent consequences, and the third pillar is restoration through empathy, forgiveness and conflict resolution. The educational foundation that these pillars stand on is curriculum, instruction and assessment practices that are engaging, rigorous, culturally responsive, and individualized. In summary, kids who are engaged in learning are less likely to engage in misconduct.
The backbone of our discipline policy is that all staff and students must be treated with dignity and respect, including those who harm others. We want everyone to know that misconduct is never acceptable, but always fixable. We will be warm but strict, and follow through with clear, fair and consistent consequences, but also encourage students to repair the harm they caused, earn forgiveness, and restore their reputations.
When a student engages in misconduct, we must care for two interests:

  1. The student who misbehaves – We teach the student how to repair the harm, earn forgiveness, and restore his or her reputation
  2. All other students – We protect their health, safety, property, and opportunity to learn in an environment free from distractions

Therefore, when a student engages in misconduct, he or she has two options:

  1. Fix the harm (ex: Apology, Mediation, Repair or Replace, Community service, Extended learning)
  2. Accept a consequence (ex: Lunch detention, After school detention, In school suspension, Out of school suspension, Suspension alternatives)

The consequences for misconduct will vary, depending on how the behavior harms the health, safety, property and learning opportunities of other students. Although choosing to “fix the harm” may reduce or replace consequences for less harmful misconduct, behaviors that significantly or severely harm others will result in mandatory suspension days, up to a recommendation for expulsion.

40 students ( 2008/2009 student population is 538) open enrolled out of Toki Middle school for the 2009/2010 term according to this Madison School District document. Much more on Toki here.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, School Climate, Student Support

Californian and Texan universities struggle with admissions policies

The Economist:

CALIFORNIA and Texas are both large states that are home to a growing population of minorities. They also share another trait. In a blow to the policy of affirmative action, public universities in the two states were forbidden, a decade ago, from using race as a factor in college admission decisions–by a federal court, in Texas’s case, and by state law in California’s.
Texas stalled, guaranteeing admission at the state university of his or her choice to any student graduating in the top 10% of their high-school class. This helped students from predominantly minority high schools who excelled relative to their peers. The University of California (UC), on the other hand, altered its admissions standards in 2002 to require a “comprehensive” review of applications. Under that system, students win points not just for academic criteria such as grades and test scores, but also for overcoming “life challenges”. Affirmative action by the back door, some critics say.
Both policies have had modest success in maintaining diversity. But now policymakers in both states are about to shake the kaleidoscope again. William Powers, the president of the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, has sounded an alarm. The number of students in the top tenth of fast-growing Texas’s high-school classes will have climbed from some 20,000 in 1998 to over 30,000 by 2015. Last year more than 80% of Texas freshmen at UT Austin came from this group. By 2013 it will be 100%.

School Climate

Warning to UK schools over admissions code breaches

The Guardian:

The new chief adjudicator for schools, Ian Craig,has warned schools that are breaking rules by selecting pupils covertly that they will be found out.
Craig, who takes up the post responsible for policing admissions in April, told the Guardian: “If they [schools] are still breaking the code they will be found out quite quickly… we will be sampling schools and reporting to the secretary of state.”
Research published today by researchers at the London School of Economics suggested that a minority of schools – mostly faith schools – are still breaking the two-year-old code of admissions which forbids the interviewing of applicants or discriminatory questions about parents’ marital status or occupations.
Craig said: “I can guarantee the system is fairer now than in the past. The secretary of state is emphasising the fact that he will do his best to make sure it’s fairer. Whether it’s 100% fair or not – I’m sure it isn’t. But it’s up to the legislators to improve it and make it fairer and we will monitor the system.”

Budget/Financing, School Climate, Staff Support, Teacher Support

An Update on Washington DC’s Teacher Compensation Plan

Bill Turque:

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee has said a financial consultant’s report shows that her plan to pay teachers as much as $135,000 a year in salaries and bonuses can be sustained with District dollars after a promised five-year, $100 million contribution by private foundations is spent.
The District’s long-term ability to pay for such an unprecedented compensation package is one of several important questions surrounding Rhee’s proposal. Leaders of the Washington Teachers’ Union have expressed concern about the risks of signing a contract with the District based in part on private funding, given the troubled economic climate.
“What we want is funding that is sustainable,” said WTU President George Parker.
Appearing recently on WAMU’s “Kojo Nnamdi Show,” Rhee said an outside consultant, whom she did not identify, had vetted her compensation proposal.

Lifelong Learning, Parenting, Student Support

Rapid Thinking Makes People Happy

Siri Carpenter:

Lousy day? Don’t try to think happy thoughts–just think fast. A new study shows that accelerated thinking can improve your mood. In six experiments, researchers at Princeton and Harvard universities made research participants think quickly by having them generate as many problem-solving ideas (even bad ones) as possible in 10 minutes, read a series of ideas on a computer screen at a brisk pace or watch an I Love Lucy video clip on fast-forward. Other participants performed similar tasks at a relaxed speed.
Results suggested that thinking fast made participants feel more elated, creative and, to a lesser degree, energetic and powerful. Activities that promote fast thinking, then, such as whip­ping through an easy crossword puzzle or brain-storming quickly about an idea, can boost energy and mood, says psychologist Emily Pronin, the study’s lead author.
Pronin notes that rapid-fire thinking can sometimes have negative consequences. For people with bipolar disorder, thoughts can race so quickly that the manic feeling becomes aversive. And based on their own and others’ research, Pronin and a colleague propose in another recent article that although fast and varied thinking causes elation, fast but repetitive thoughts can instead trigger anxiety. (They further suggest that slow, varied thinking leads to the kind of calm, peaceful happiness associated with mindfulness meditation, whereas slow, repetitive thinking tends to sap energy and spur depressive thoughts.)

Parenting, School Climate

On Public vs. Private School

Jan Hoffman:

An annual rite is well under way, as families around the country receive their private-school renewal contracts or acceptance letters. In conventional years, grumbling over tuition aside, their outgoing mail would include signed forms and a registration fee.
This year’s hand-wringing over tuition might be dismissed as the latest hardship for the patrician class, which, like everyone else, can simply educate its young in the public system. But of the more than three million families with at least one child in private school, according to the 2005 census, almost two million of them have a household income of less than $100,000. According to a Department of Education survey, in 2003-4, the median annual tuition of nonsectarian schools was $8,200; for Catholic schools, $3,000.
So for every family that pays $30,000 and up to attend elite schools in Manhattan, thousands more will pay tuitions closer to $2,700 — next year’s cost for St. Agnes Catholic School in Roeland Park, Kan.
To many parents who step outside the public system, an independent or parochial school is not a luxury but a near necessity, the school itself a marker of educational values, religious identity, social standing or class aspirations. Whether tuition payments to the country’s 29,000 private schools are made easily or with sacrifice, many parents see the writing of those checks as a bedrock definition of doing the best by their children.

Community Partners, Curriculum - Fine Arts, Events, Fund Raising, Lifelong Learning, Student Support

West High School presents Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods”

An ambivalent Cinderella? A blood-thirsty Little Red Riding Hood? Prince Charming with a roving eye? A Witch… who raps? They’re all among the cockeyed characters in James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s fractured fairy tale “Into the Woods.” When the Baker and his Wife learn they’re cursed with childlessness, they embark on a quest for the … Continue reading West High School presents Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” →

College Preparation, Curriculum, School Climate

Rendering Knowledge

Dave Snowden:

I may have finally broken a writing block. Aside from two book chapters in the last couple of months I more or less completed a paper length opinion piece for a report ARK are producing on KM in the Legal Profession. The title includes one of those words which has multiple and different meanings namely render which is allowing me to play games between the poetic meaning and that of rendering something down to fat. As a part of that paper I updated my original three rules of knowledge management to seven principles which I share below.
Knowledge can only be volunteered it cannot be conscripted. You can’t make someone share their knowledge, because you can never measure if they have. You can measure information transfer or process compliance, but you can’t determine if a senior partner has truly passed on all their experience or knowledge of a case.
We only know what we know when we need to know it. Human knowledge is deeply contextual and requires stimulus for recall. Unlike computers we do not have a list-all function. Small verbal or nonverbal clues can provide those ah-ha moments when a memory or series of memories are suddenly recalled, in context to enable us to act. When we sleep on things we are engaged in a complex organic form of knowledge recall and creation; in contrast a computer would need to be rebooted.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Events, School Climate, Student Support

In Md. and Va., Signs Of the Tough Times: A 2.8% Reduction in Spending

Nelson Hernandez & Theresa Vargas:

The Prince George’s County Board of Education last night approved a $1.6 billion budget that eliminates almost 800 jobs, while Arlington County’s schools chief unveiled the first budget of his 12-year tenure with a reduction in total spending.
The actions showed anew how the economic recession is hitting home for Washington area school systems.
The Prince George’s board unanimously endorsed a spending plan for the 128,000-student system that omits cost-of-living raises and some seniority-based salary increases for employees. The budget also rolls back several programs begun during the 2 1/2 year tenure of superintendent John E. Deasy, who left in December for another job.
Among other cuts, the budget developed by Interim Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. eliminates 144 positions for parent liaisons, who act as a bridge between parents and school staff. Two programs to bolster academic performance will be reduced. An initiative to split school administration into nine zones will be modified to five zones, and a program to train 10 resident principals will be eliminated.

Arlington does a nice job of keeping their current and historical budgets on one easy to use page. Madison’s budget information page.

College Preparation, Curriculum, Parenting, School Climate

Lessons in laughter and how to bend the rules at school

Jenny Quinton:

My schooldays were totally great. I went to an all-girls convent and I just remember us all being extremely silly and laughing a lot at the completely stupid things we did.
There were lots of rules so we became extremely creative and were masters at creating totally believable excuses to manoeuvre our way through the system.
Actually, thinking about it I’ve never laughed like we did at school. But it was nice laughter and we never hurt anyone.
My happiest memory was winning a dancing competition.
I’d never won anything in my life before.
My worst memory was sewing the same apron for two years. I had to keep unpicking it and doing it again because it was always so bad. Even today just trying to thread a needle can reduce me to tears.
I went to Lacey Green Primary School in Wilmslow, near Manchester in England.
Well-off children and very poor children were mixed together and I felt very sad for some of them but sometimes made up nasty songs about them with the others.

School Climate, Sports, Wellness

Kung fu school hopes to boom in tough times

Celine Sun:

A local kung fu school hopes to cash in on the financial crisis, with more people expected to attend courses to tone up their bodies and get rid of negative emotions.
The Hong Kong Shaolin Wushu Culture Centre in Tai O, Lantau Island, has seen a rise in visitor numbers over the past few months, its low season, and has already received bookings for the summer holidays.
Lee Kok-keung, director of the Hong Kong Culture Association, which established the centre in 2006, said the increased interest could have something to do with the economic downturn.
“When the economy is good, people are so busy trading stocks and making money,” he said. “But when the economy is going down, people tend to pay more attention to their health.
“Practising kung fu is not only good for the body, but also an ideal way to cheer you up.”

Legal Rights, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support, Wellness

Parents can fight ‘sexting’ stupidity

Laurel Walker:


Is there a difference between a stupid teen trick – passing around a girl’s naked picture she’d earlier provided her now-ex-boyfriend – and child molestation?
Without a doubt.
Is there a difference even between that stupid teen behavior and being a teenager who threatens to use naked pictures obtained under a ruse as ammo for extorting sex?
Of course.
But under state law, all of them could become convicted felons who land on the state’s registry of sex offenders, leaving little distance between them. They would, most likely, be vilified and haunted by the label for decades, if not life, and increasingly told by communities where they can and cannot live.
Dangerous, devious sex offenders who are a risk to public safety deserve it.
Teens with unbelievably cavalier attitudes about sexual limits, to the point of stupidity, do not.
Parents, educators, communities and – we can only hope – kids have had their eyes opened by recent, revolting revelations.
The earlier case, as described in criminal charges, involved since-expelled New Berlin Eisenhower student Anthony Stancl, 18, who, pretending to be a girl on Facebook, got at least 31 boys to send him pictures of themselves naked. Threatening to circulate the pictures to schoolmates, he coerced at least seven of them into sex acts.

College Preparation, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support

Banging on the PK-16 Pipeline

Jay Matthews:

Why am I so ill-tempered when I read a sensible report like “Bridging the Gap: How to Strengthen the Pk-16 Pipeline to Improve College Readiness”?
The authors, Ulrich Boser and Stephen Burd, know their stuff. The sponsoring organization, New America Foundation, has a great reputation. (Bias alert: It also employs one of my sons as a senior fellow, but he does California politics and direct democracy, not national education policy.)
My problem is that smart and industrious experts like Boser and Burd often unearth startling facts but don’t follow through. “Bridging the Gap,” available at Newamerica.net, details the large percentage of first-year college students in remedial courses and the duplication in federal college preparation programs. This is interesting information of which few people are aware.
But their recommendations follow the standard line: Let’s have more meetings and spend more money. Example: “We recommend that the federal government provide states with incentives to come together and adopt national college and work-readiness standards in math, science and the language arts.”
Or: “The federal government should work directly with states to foster partnerships between high schools and postsecondary institutions to smooth the transition between high school and college.”
You might think that sounds reasonable. I think it misses an opportunity. Why not harness the energy and ambition of a new president to shake things up?
The Obama administration doesn’t have much money to spend getting more students ready for college. The Education Department’s $100 billion in stimulus funds will mostly go to less sophisticated projects that create jobs fast.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

On Changes in the Washington DC School District’s Governance

Bill Turque:

Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee says the District is no longer exploring the idea of seeking federal legislation declaring the school system in a “state of emergency,” a move that would have freed it from the obligation to bargain with the Washington Teachers’ Union.
In a recent radio interview, Rhee said that the initiative, patterned after a state takeover of schools in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, was never seriously considered.
The proposal appeared in a statement drafted for a Sept. 22 news conference at which Rhee and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty were scheduled to present a series of steps to rid the District of teachers deemed ineffective. The steps, dubbed “Plan B,” were based on existing powers the chancellor possessed and fell outside the legal scope of contract negotiations.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum

Judy Kujoth: Dual-language middle school needs flexibility of a charter

3 Comments

Judy Kujoth, via a kind reader’s email:

In the spring of 2010, nearly 50 children will comprise the first graduating class of the Nuestro Mundo Community School on Madison’s East Side.
I am the proud parent of a daughter who will be among them.
My husband and I have spent the past five years marveling as she has acquired a second language, conquered challenging curricula and embraced friends from a variety of races and ethnicities. We eagerly anticipate the years to come as her love for languages and diversity continue to blossom.
But like many other parents, we are very worried about what the next stage of her academic journey will look like.
Nuestro Mundo is a charter school that has applied innovative teaching practices within a dual-language immersion framework. It is in its fifth year of offering elementary school students a dual-immersion curriculum in Spanish and English.
Kindergartners enter Nuestro Mundo as either native Spanish or native English speakers. By fifth grade, the goal is for all students to be proficient in both languages and at least on par, academically, with their peers at other schools. The skills they have cultivated need to continue being nurtured.

Unfortunately, charter schools and the Madison School District have mostly been “oil & water”. A few years ago, a group of parents & citizens tried to start an arts oriented charter – The Studio School. Read more here.
Every organization has its challenges and charters are certainly not perfect. However, it is more likely that Madison will see K-12 innovation with a diffused governance model, than if we continue the current very top down approach and move toward one size fits all curriculum. It will be interesting to see what the recent open enrollment numbers look like for Madison. Finally, a Chicago teacher on “magnet schools“.

Lifelong Learning, Parenting, Student Support, Wellness

6,473 Texts a Month, But at What Cost? Constant Cellphone Messaging Keeps Kids Connected, Parents Concerned

Donna St. George:

Julie Zingeser texts at home, at school, in the car while her mother is driving. She texts during homework, after pompon practice and as she walks the family dog. She takes her cellphone with her to bed.
Every so often, the hum of a new message rouses the Rockville teen from sleep. “I would die without it,” Julie, 15, says of her text life.
This does not surprise her mother, Pam, who on one recent afternoon scans the phone bill for the eye-popping number that puts an exclamation point on how growing up has changed in the digital age. In one busy month, Pam finds, her youngest daughter sent and received 6,473 text messages.
For Pam Zingeser, the big issue is not cost — it’s $30 a month for the family’s unlimited texting plan — but the effects of so much messaging. Pam wonders: What will this generation learn and what will they lose in the relentless stream of sentence fragments, abbreviations and emoticons? “Life’s issues are not always settled in sound bites,” Pam says.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

A New Day for School Reform

New York Times Editorial:

Congress took a potentially transformative step when it devoted $100 billion in the stimulus package to education. Carefully targeted, this money could revive the reform efforts that began promisingly with President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 — but later languished when his administration buckled under to political pressures from state officials.
Arne Duncan, the new education secretary, will need to resist those pressures. The Bush administration allowed states to phony-up statistics on everything from graduation rates to student achievement to teacher training and state education standards. As a result, the country has yet to reach not only the goals that were clearly laid out in the law but also farsighted education reforms dating to the mid-1990s.
The stimulus package, including a $54 billion “stabilization” fund to protect schools against layoffs and budget cuts, is rightly framed to encourage compliance. States will need to create data collection systems that should ideally show how children perform year to year as well as how teachers affect student performance over time. States will also be required to improve academic standards as well as the notoriously weak tests now used to measure achievement — replacing, for instance, the pervasive fill-in-the-bubble tests with advanced assessments that better measure writing and thinking.

College Preparation, Curriculum, School Climate

Frist launches K-12 education initiative

Lucas Johnson II:

Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist today launched a grassroots initiative aimed at reforming K-12 education in Tennessee, saying he hopes to ensure that “every child graduates from high school prepared for college or a career.”
Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, was among those who joined the Tennessee Republican in announcing the Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education at Fall Hamilton Elementary School in Nashville.
Frist said the “citizen-led” initiative will have three main components, including a steering committee that will hold 10 public meetings and ultimately produce a strategic plan for state education reform.
Frist, who announced last month that he won’t be running for governor in 2010, said the committee will be composed of education, community, political and business leaders from across the state. He said the idea is to find what education practices are effective and build upon them.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Events, What Can I Do?

Dane County Transition School Pay it Forward Campaign 2/23/2009

via a Judy Reed email:

On behalf of all of us at Dane County Transition School (DCTS), I would like to take this opportunity to personally invite you to attend the launch of the DCTS Pay It Forward campaign on February 23, 2009 at 10am at the Villager Mall, 2234C South Park Street. Steve Goldberg from CUNA Mutual Group, students from DCTS, VISTA’s Dustin Young and Dean Veneman from the Alexander Foundation will each speak at the Pay If Forward launch.
The Pay It Forward Initiative is a national movement with a very simple concept: do one kind deed for three people and ask each of those people to Pay It Forward by doing another kind deed for three other individuals. Simple. DCTS believes we can make the world a better place one kind deed at a time and the more people who believe, the larger difference we can make.
DCTS would like to celebrate with all of the Partners who believe in the concept of Pay It Forward and in promoting this altruistic effort. (See attached banner for detail listing of over 80 Partners) Imagine all those kind acts and smiles that will begin right here in the Villager Mall.
DCTS has always been a school that believes in the promise of each individual and in the power of good deeds, which is why DCTS is formally launching this Pay It Forward campaign. We truly hope that you can join us for this unique event!
Sincerely,
Judy Reed, Principal
Dane County Transition School – 2326 South Park Street – Madison, WI
(608) 698-6321 – www.dcths.org

Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, Parenting, School Climate

Translating eduspeak

1 Comment

The Economist:

IF YOU know what deep learning and functional skills are, then you are already on the way to understanding eduspeak. But there are other terms that must be grasped to attain an A* in the subject.
Satisfactory. One of the four possible judgments of the schools inspectorate (the other three are inadequate, good and outstanding). It means “unsatisfactory”. (“Inadequate” for its part means “dire”.) This explains the chief schools inspector’s pronouncement that satisfactory schools are “not good enough”.
Excellence and enjoyment are mutually exclusive. The first is used for what matters (literacy and numeracy), the second for what does not (everything else). “Enjoying reading” and “excelling in music” are howlers in eduspeak.
Non-statutory depends on context. It can mean “optional”, but in the National Primary Strategy, a set of “guidelines” on teaching literacy and numeracy, it means “obligatory”–unless a school wants to risk being deemed “satisfactory”.
Gifted and talented refer to the top 5-10% in academic and non-academic pursuits respectively, who are to be encouraged in their gifts and talents. The terms are necessary as a sop to middle-class parents concerned that their children are not being stretched enough. To deflect the charge of elitism, levelled by many teachers, the categories have proliferated to include the capacity to “make sound judgments”, to show “great sensitivity or empathy” or to be “fascinated by a particular subject”.

Student Support, Wellness

A Fitness Gap in Austin Schools?

Molly Bloom:

Austin students from poor families tend to be less physically fit than students from wealthier families, an American-Statesman analysis of school district data shows. And Hispanic students tend to be less physically fit than students of other races.
A 2007 state law required all school districts to give students standardized fitness evaluations measuring height-weight proportionality, cardiovascular capacity, strength and flexibility. The first evaluations were given to students in the 2007-08 school year.
Austin’s trend mirrors statewide results and national studies that show higher rates of physical inactivity and obesity among Hispanic and poor adults and children put them at higher risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, joint and bone disease, and other health problems.
Regardless of fitness trends among various demographic groups in Austin, “what’s really striking is the absolute level of poor fitness across the board in general,” said Dr. Aliya Hussaini , a health program grant officer at the Dell Family Foundation, which has invested $85 million in childhood health issues in Texas, including support for health and fitness programs at 97 Travis County public elementary schools.

College Preparation, Curriculum, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes

Max Roosevelt:

Prof. Marshall Grossman has come to expect complaints whenever he returns graded papers in his English classes at the University of Maryland.
Prof. Ellen Greenberger studied what she found to be an increased sense of entitlement among college students.
“Many students come in with the conviction that they’ve worked hard and deserve a higher mark,” Professor Grossman said. “Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before.”
He attributes those complaints to his students’ sense of entitlement.
“I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”
A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.
“I noticed an increased sense of entitlement in my students and wanted to discover what was causing it,” said Ellen Greenberger, the lead author of the study, called “Self-Entitled College Students: Contributions of Personality, Parenting, and Motivational Factors,” which appeared last year in The Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
Professor Greenberger said that the sense of entitlement could be related to increased parental pressure, competition among peers and family members and a heightened sense of achievement anxiety.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, What Can I Do?

Wisconsin DPI Superintendent: It looks like an interesting race

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Despite being outspent $96,129 to $10,500 (WisPolitics) by Tony Evers, Rose Fernandez obtained 31% of yesterday’s vote. Tony Evers received 35%. Here’s a roundup of the election and candidates:

  • WisPolitics
  • Amy Hetzner:

    On Tuesday, he finished just ahead of Rose Fernandez, a former pediatric trauma nurse and parent advocate, in a five-person field.
    Although she finished the night in second place, Fernandez, 51, characterized her performance as “a victory for real people over the special interests.”
    In addition to being first to declare his candidacy, Evers also captured endorsements – and contributions – from the Wisconsin Education Association Council as well as other labor and education-based groups. WEAC PAC, the political arm of the state’s largest teachers union, contributed $8,625 to Evers’ campaign, in addition to spending nearly $180,000 on media buys for the candidate, according to campaign filings earlier this month.
    By contrast, the Fernandez campaign spent $20,000. She said that her message of calling for merit pay for teachers and choices for parents had resonated with voters.
    “Tonight, we have all the momentum,” she said. “This is going to be a real choice. It’s going to be a choice between special interests and the status quo, the bureaucracy that is entrenched at the Department of Public Instruction, vs. a focus on the results we are looking for in our investment in education, a push for higher standards instead of higher taxes.”
    Evers, 57, has distanced himself somewhat from the current schools superintendent, Elizabeth Burmaster, saying it’s time to be more aggressive about reforming Milwaukee Public Schools and calling for an increase in the state’s graduation rate.
    On Tuesday, he denied Fernandez’s charge of favoring special interests

  • Google News
  • John Nichols on the history of the DPI Superintendent.
Budget/Financing, Elections, School Climate

Wisconsin Governor Doyle Proposes 7.4% Spending Increase & $426M More for K-12

Jason Stein:

Boosted by federal stimulus dollars, Doyle’s budget calls for a 7.4 percent increase in total state and federal spending. But the proposed spending from the state’s main account actually drops by 1.7 percent to $27.9 billion over 2010 and 2011. It would leave the state with $270 million in reserves.
The budget includes a host of major proposed changes:
• Cutting $900 million from existing agency budgets, including a 1 percent across-the-board cut, and rejecting $1.8 billion from the amount those agencies sought in new spending. The cuts include closing three dozen Division of Motor Vehicle offices, two state trooper stations and 25 Department of Natural Resources offices and cutting state staff at welcome centers for tourists.
State employees would avoid large layoffs and furloughs but the amount of state jobs would shrink by 209 to 69,038 by June 2011.
• Levying $1.4 billion in new taxes and fees, including a tax on oil companies of $544 million. That includes increasing the income tax rate on spring 2010 returns by 1 percentage point to 7.75 percent for single filers earning more than $225,000 a year and married filers earning more than $300,000. The proposal would also lower the state’s exemption for capital gains taxes from 60 percent to 40 percent, raising up to $95 million.
• Providing $426 million more in mostly federal money for K-12 schools over two years, a move Doyle said was essential to holding down property taxes. The budget would hold funding for the University of Wisconsin System essentially flat, leaving universities to manage rising costs through tuition increases, new efficiencies or service cuts.

Steven Walters, Patrick Marley & Stacy Forster:

For what may be the first time in state government history, general-fund spending will actually drop for the fiscal year that begins July 1, by about 5%. Total state spending – including tuition, fees, licenses and federal aid – will rise, however.
But, Doyle said, he had no choice but to ask the Legislature to approve $1.4 billion in tax increases – the largest reworking of the tax codes in decades.
The tax increases include: $540 million paid from oil company profits; $318 million by creating a new 7.75% tax rate for the richest 1% of taxpayers; $290 million in higher taxes on cigarette smokers; $215 million in higher corporate income taxes; and $85 million paid on capital gains investments.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

A Chicago Teacher on Magnet Schools

Victor Harbison:

Given the recent economic news, it seems everyone wants to talk about the long-term impact of short-term thinking. Why not do the same with education and magnet schools? Think of the issues educators faced 30 or 40 years ago: Smart kids not being challenged? Academically under-prepared kids, most of them ethnic minorities, moving in and test scores going down? It’s completely logical that they chose a path to create magnet schools. But it was a short-term solution that has had long-term negative consequences.
I take my students to lots of outside events where they are required to interact with students who come from magnet or high-performing suburban schools. What I see time after time is how my kids rise to the occasion, performing as well (or at least trying to) as those students whose test scores or geographic location landed them in much more demanding academic environments.
On a daily basis, I see the same kids who do amazing things when surrounded by their brightest counterparts from other schools slip into every negative stereotype you can imagine, and worse, when surrounded by their under-performing peers at our “neighborhood” school.
When educational leaders decided to create magnet schools, they didn’t just get it wrong, they got it backwards. They pulled out the best and brightest from our communities and sent them away. The students who are part of the “great middle” now find themselves in an environment where the peers who have the greatest influence in their school are the least positive role models.
Schools adapted, and quickly. We tightened security, installed metal detectors, and adopted ideas like zero-tolerance. And neighborhood schools, without restrictive admission policies based on test scores, quickly spiraled downward — somewhat like an economy. Except in education, we can’t lay off students who have a negative impact on the school culture. That is why adopting such a business model for the educational system has been and always will be a recipe for failure.
What should have been done was to pull out the bottom ten percent. Educational leaders could have greatly expanded the alternative school model and sent struggling students to a place that had been designed to meet their educational needs.

Clusty search: Victor Harbison.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, Parenting

Boosting Schools’ Value Without Spending a Dime

1 Comment

Jay Matthews:

As happens in every recession, Washington area school systems are cutting back. It’s depressing. Here’s an antidote: Harness the creativity of educators, parents and students to improve our schools without more spending. Some teachers I trust helped me come up with these seven ideas.
1. Replace elementary school homework with free reading. Throw away the expensive take-home textbooks, the boring worksheets and the fiendish make-a-log-cabin-out-of-Tootsie-Rolls projects. One of the clearest (and most ignored) findings of educational research is that elementary students who do lots of homework don’t learn more than students who do none. Eliminating traditional homework for this age group will save paper, reduce textbook losses and sweeten home life. Students should be asked instead to read something, maybe with their parents — at least 10 minutes a night for first-graders, 20 minutes for second-graders and so on. Teachers can ask a few kids each day what they learned from their reading to discourage shirkers.
2. Unleash charter schools. I know, I know. Many good people find this suggestion as welcome as a call from a collection agency. They think charter schools, public schools that make their own rules, are draining money from school systems, but the opposite seems to be true. In most states, charters receive fewer tax dollars per child than regular public schools. Yet they often attract creative principals and teachers who do more with less. School finance experts don’t all agree, but I am convinced that charters are a bargain. So let’s have more. That won’t save money in the District, one of the few places that pay as much for charters as regular schools, but Maryland and Virginia would find more charters a boon if they dropped their suburban, aren’t-we-great notions and listened to what imaginative educators in a few little charter schools could teach them.
3. Have teachers call or e-mail parents — once a day would be fine — with praise for their children. Some great classroom teachers make a habit of contacting parents when kids do something well. Jason Kamras, 2005 national teacher of the year and now a leading D.C. schools executive, used to punch up the parent’s number on his cellphone while standing next to a student’s desk. It doesn’t take long. It doesn’t cost much. But it nurtures bonds among teachers, students and parents that can lead to wonderful things.

Curriculum, Events, School Climate

Math teacher awaits verdict in fraud trial

Alica Lozano:

Sipping a cup of coffee in the Los Angeles courthouse where he is on trial for fraud, math teacher Matthias Vheru said all he wanted to do was write the best algebra book possible to help his students and those of his colleagues.
“I spent my life trying to help underachieving kids,” said Vheru, wearing a tie with a mathematical equation that read: 2 teach is 2 touch life 4 ever. “I’m just trying to make the language of math easy to understand.”
Prosecutors, however, say Vheru is a crafty entrepreneur who illegally reaped nearly $1 million by conning the Los Angeles Unified School District into ordering 45,000 copies of his textbook without revealing his financial interest in the transaction.
A federal court jury is deliberating whether Vheru, a 20-year L.A. Unified veteran, is guilty of crimes that could send him to prison for up to 10 years.
According to prosecutors, Vheru, 53, saw a chance to make some extra cash by defrauding L.A. Unified in 2004 while he served as interim director of mathematics.
“He’s not charged with being a bad teacher,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Paul Rochmes told jurors in his closing arguments last week. “This is a case about deception.”
Prosecutors allege that Vheru misappropriated $3.7 million of the district’s money to purchase his books. He did so, they allege, by circumventing L.A. Unified’s guidelines and using federal funds earmarked to assist non-English-speaking students. Prosecution experts testified that although Vheru’s book is appropriate for English speakers, it could be difficult to understand for those without a strong command of the language.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Student Support

Jeb Bush on School Choice

Fred Barnes:

What comes through when Mr. Bush is asked about education is how radical his views are. He would toss out the traditional K-to-12 scheme in favor of a credit system, like colleges have.
“It’s not based on seat time,” he says. “It’s whether you accomplished the task. Now we’re like GM in its heyday of mass production. We don’t have a flourishing education system that’s customized. There’s a whole world out there that didn’t exist 10 years ago, which is online learning. We have the ability today to customize learning so we don’t cast young people aside.”
This is where Sweden comes in. “The idea that somehow Sweden would be the land of innovation, where private involvement in what was considered a government activity, is quite shocking to us Americans,” Mr. Bush says. “But they’re way ahead of us. They have a totally voucherized system. The kids come from Baghdad, Somalia — this is in the tougher part of Stockholm — and they’re learning three languages by the time they finish. . . . there’s no reason we can’t have that except we’re stuck in the old way.”

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

More Loudoun Schools Using ‘Flex Periods’

Ian Shapira:

They sound like workout sessions at a gym, but “flex periods” are fast becoming a scheduling strategy among Northern Virginia high schools that want to offer students remediation or enrichment during the school day rather than before or after classes.
High schools in Loudoun, Fairfax and Prince William counties have been inserting these chunks of time — from 40 to 90 minutes, depending on the school — for several years, often to reduce after-school tutoring costs but also to raise achievement in the era of the federal No Child Left Behind law.
The program varies among schools, but the premise is similar: Between regular courses, students are assigned to a flex classroom to review material or work independently. Flex time can also be used for attending schoolwide events. And if a student needs help from a teacher in another part of the building, he or she can get a pass and visit the teacher during flex time.
Students at Stonewall Jackson High School near Manassas are in the second year of a flex program. Reactions have been mixed: Some students interviewed said the periods help them catch up on homework or review tough lessons with teachers, but others said the time is often exploited by students prone to goofing off or leaving school property. Schools are trying to crack down on the latter.

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Student Support

Rhee Says Economy Forces D.C. to Cut Wage Proposal

Bill Turque:

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee said yesterday that the deteriorating economy will force the District to cut the wage proposal in its contract offer to the Washington Teachers’ Union. At the same time, Rhee spoke in upbeat and conciliatory terms about negotiations with the union, now in their 15th month.
The financial package Rhee offered in July called for a minimum increase of 28 percent over five years, depending on which salary “tier” teachers selected. But with the District expected to collect at least $456 million less in tax revenue during the 2010 fiscal year, she said the situation has changed. Rhee said she would soon submit a revised final offer.
“Obviously, we’re in a much different situation financially,” Rhee said at a mid-morning news conference, called to highlight improved rates of graduation, attendance and service to special education students.
The chancellor said the financial downturn has not weakened what she has described as commitments from private foundations to fund an unprecedented five-year program of “reform stipends” and performance bonuses for teachers. An information packet given to the union this summer said senior teachers could make as much as $135,000 annually in salary and bonuses. Rhee has declined to name the organizations but has mentioned four to private audiences: Gates, Broad, Dell and Robertson.

Community Partners, Discipline / Violence, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Some schools are finding rehabilitation for playground bullies can save otherwise decent students from lives of despair

Lau Kit-wai:

Ah Ho’s story is more common than many realise. Lee Tak-wai, an outreach worker with the Hong Kong Playground Association, says bullying has become a pervasive problem in schools.
“In the past, things were black and white: we had the bad youngsters and the good ones. But the line has become blurred and problematic behaviour is more common among teenagers,” Lee says. “Bullying has spread like an epidemic.”
A survey of 1,552 lower secondary students last year found that aggressive physical action – including shoving and kicking – had increased by 31 per cent compared with a similar study in 2001. Conducted jointly by the Playground Association and City University, the survey found that threatening behaviour such as taking others’ belongings and forcing victims to pay for snacks had risen by 42 per cent.
Educators and social workers view most bullies as products of circumstance. “School bullies are usually low achievers,” Lee says. “They often don’t receive sufficient attention from their parents and their relationships with teachers are strained. Since they can’t get a sense of achievement in school, they resort to improper behaviour to draw people’s attention and build their self-image. It’s a vicious cycle.”

Budget/Financing, Elections, School Climate

Projections of State Budget Deficits on K-12 Public Education Spending and Job Loss

Marguerite Roza:

Nearly all state budgets are in the red, suggesting looming cuts and possible job loss in K-12 education. New estimates of shortfalls in state revenues and K-12 staffing data enable early projections of the magnitude of both the impact on K-12 public education spending and corresponding job loss. These projections can help policymakers at all levels understand the size and scope of the problem as they work to craft next steps.
Assuming the absence of intervention via increased taxes or federal stimulus spending, this analysis projects an 18.5 percent drop in state funds for K-12 education from 2009 budgeted figures to FY 2011, creating an 8.7 percent drop in total public education spending over the same period. The implication is that states will spend a total of $54 billion less on public K-12 education during the 2009 and 2010 calendar years than if spending had been held at budgeted FY 2009 levels. That number jumps to $80 billion for state spending on K-16 education, if higher education spending projections are included.