“Standardize Education”

Paul Hoss:

The Times is to be congratulated for its tough-love posture on No Child Left Behind legislation (editorial, April 9). Too many states shortchange too many students with “loophole” diplomas by lowering their standards on their way to the deadline of 2014 for all students being “proficient” in math and English. This inevitable fiasco could be avoided if the U.S. went to a national curriculum, with corresponding assessments and standards to be met by all students nationwide. Talk about equity and equal access for all.
Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan — the top five performers on math exams — all benefit from this standardization of what’s expected in their schools. So could the United States.

Union Wants Early Say on School Reform

Joel Rubin:

A coalition led by the L.A. teachers group will reveal its own plan for revamping the district a day before the mayor outlines his proposal.
Intent on being a player in the ongoing scrum over the future of Los Angeles schools, the powerful teachers union and a coalition of community organizations will outline Monday their own plan to overhaul the city’s public school system.

Math Rebellion Up North: Ashland Students Favor New Algebra Course, Fewer Enroll in Core Plus

Kevin O’Brien:

An overwhelming majority of Ashland students who were given the choice between traditional math and the Core Plus curriculum decided to take algebra I courses next school year, according to a report given Monday by Ashland High School Principal Steve Gromala.
In a report to the Ashland School Board, it was noted that 83 percent of students signed up for algebra I, which was offered for the first time in several years after parents and board members demanded an alternative to the Core Plus curriculum.
A total of 170 students, including 115 incoming freshmen and 55 of next year’s sophomores, enrolled in the newly offered algebra I course for the 2006-07 school year. By comparison, 34 students enrolled in Core Plus 1.
The addition of algebra I next school year is the first step toward offering a dual-track math curriculum that will allow incoming freshmen to choose between algebra classes and Core Plus. Additional classes such as geometry, algebra II and pre-calculus will be added in future years as students advance.

Continue reading Math Rebellion Up North: Ashland Students Favor New Algebra Course, Fewer Enroll in Core Plus

Computers May Not Boost Student Achievement

Greg Toppo:

Give a kid a laptop and it might not make any difference.
That’s the message from research presented here Monday, which suggests that spending millions of dollars to bring technology into kids’ homes and schools has decidedly mixed results.
Taxpayer-supported school computer and Internet giveaways are political gold, but studies have questioned whether they actually help student achievement. This research, presented at the American Educational Research Association’s annual meeting, confirms skeptics’ doubts.
In one study, researchers from Syracuse and Michigan State universities examined a program that gave laptop computers to middle-school students in Ohio in 2003. Preliminary findings are mixed.
“Overall, we don’t know if it is a worthwhile investment,” says Syracuse researcher Jing Lei.

We should not spend money on these things unless and until we get the basics right (Math, reading/writing and science).

Fairfax Success Masks Gaps for Black Students

Maria Glod:

Black students in Fairfax County are consistently scoring lower on state standardized tests than African American children in Richmond, Norfolk and other comparatively poor Virginia districts, surprising Fairfax educators and forcing one of the nation’s wealthiest school systems to acknowledge shortcomings that have been masked by its overall success.
Even within Fairfax schools, black elementary school students are outperformed on reading and math tests by whites and some other students, including Hispanics, poor children and immigrants learning English.

Well worth reading.

Omaha Schools Split Along Ethnic Lines

AP:

In a move decried by some as state-sponsored segregation, the legislature voted Thursday to divide the Omaha school system into three districts — one mostly black, one predominantly white and one largely Hispanic.
tate Sen. Pat Bourne of Omaha decried the bill, saying, “We will go down in history as one of the first states in 20 years to set race relations back.”
“History will not, and should not, judge us kindly,” said state Sen. Gwen Howard of Omaha.
There is no intent to create segregation,” said state Sen. Ernie Chambers (Omaha), the legislature’s only black senator and a longtime critic of the school system.
He argued that the district is already segregated, because it no longer buses students for integration and instead requires them to attend their neighborhood school.
Chambers said the schools attended largely by minorities lack the resources and well-qualified teachers provided others in the district. He said the black students he represents in north Omaha would receive a better education if they had more control over their district.

“Keep Option To Recount Ballots By Hand”

Paul Malischke:

Because of Madison’s close School Board election, you may be witnessing the last manual recount of election results in Wisconsin for some time to come. A bill in the Legislature, poised to become law, will outlaw manual recounts for municipalities that use machine-readable ballots.
Under current law, the board of canvassers may use automatic voting machines for recounts, but the board may also perform a manual count of the ballots.
Senate Bill 612 would change that. Buried on page 18 of this 120-page bill is a requirement that all recounts be done by machine for machine-readable ballots, unless a petition for a manual recount is approved by a circuit court. The bill passed the Senate unanimously and is under consideration by a committee in the Assembly.
This bill should be changed. We need to preserve the ability to conduct a manual recount.
In September 2005, the non-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office summarized the flaws in the computerized voting machines now being sold. The conclusion of the GAO was that “key activities need to be completed” before we have secure and reliable electronic voting systems.
In the Madison School Board race there was a large number of undervotes (ballots that were not counted by the machine). Seven wards had an undervote of more than 20, and three more were more than 10 percent.

I observed the recount of Ward 52 this week. Interestingly, hand recounts (by two different people) confirmed Maya’s 231 votes while the same people counted Arlene’s votes and ended up with 300, twice. The machine, however, counted 301 on election night and during the recount. I agree with Malischke.
Greg Borowski and Tom Kertscher looked at another unusual election issue (from the November, 2004 election) last spring, voting gaps:

In Madison, the city counts of the number of ballots cast, but doesn’t routinely try to reconcile that figure with the number of people recorded as having voted in an election. The firm found in Madison 133,598 people were recorded as having voted but 138,204 ballots were cast, a difference of more than 4,600. The actual number of ballots cast overall was 138,452, but the city doesn’t have a figure for the number of people recorded as having voted, Deputy City Clerk Sharon Christensen said.”

Continue reading “Keep Option To Recount Ballots By Hand”

San Diego School District Overhauls Physics Curriculum

Robert Tomsho:

When San Diego’s school district began overhauling its science-education curriculum five years ago, it wanted to raise the performance of minority, low-income and immigrant students.
But parents in middle- and upper-income areas, where many students were already doing well, rebelled against the new curriculum, and a course called Active Physics in particular. They called it watered-down science, too skimpy on math.
A resistance movement took hold. Some teachers refused to use the new textbooks, which are peppered with cartoons. They gathered up phased-out texts to use on the sly. As controversy over the issue escalated, it played a part in an election in which the majority of the school board was replaced. Now, further curriculum changes are under consideration.
The skirmishes in the nation’s eighth-largest urban school district reflect a wider battle over how to make science classes accessible to a broader array of students while maintaining their rigor.
Amid mediocre U.S. scores on international science tests and predictions of future shortages of scientists and engineers, policy makers have begun requiring more science in schools. By 2011, 27 states will require high-school students to take at least three science courses to graduate. In 1992, only six had such requirements.

Parents Weigh in on Middle Schools

Aruna Jain:

Last year, Joan Blair’s daughter enrolled at A. Mario Loiederman Middle School, the new creative and performing arts school in Silver Spring. She is learning high-school-level Spanish, ranks above grade level in math, and takes theater and arts courses that she loves. But her science and social studies classes, where students of different academic levels are grouped together, are not rigorous enough, Blair said.
“As a teacher, how are you going to meet the needs of all students if they are all mixed together?” Blair asked.
She was among the more than 100 parents, teachers and educators who filed into Francis Scott Key Middle School in Silver Spring on a recent Monday night to offer concerns and suggestions at a community outreach session aimed at helping the Montgomery County school system improve its middle schools. The event was the last of three such sessions that drew crowds of county residents and educators eager to participate in a middle school reform initiative launched last fall.
The initiative was partially prompted by a middle school audit released last year that showed a lag in achievement, particularly among African American and Hispanic students, students learning English, students with disabilities and those living in poverty. The independent audit found that county middle schools are not consistent in the application of curriculum standards, the quality of school improvement programs, teacher training opportunities and discipline procedures.

A Parent’s Questions About the Elimination of Honors Courses

Jay Matthews:

Like many journalists, I love to read other people’s mail. West Potomac High School parent John Dickert kindly sent me an exchange of messages with Ann Monday, assistant superintendent for instructional services for the Fairfax County public schools. Their dialogue shows why Fairfax County educators disagree with many parents over the new policy of eliminating honors courses in 11th grade and leaving students a choice of a regular class or an Advanced Placement course in humanities subjects such as history.

Waukesha Charter Schools

Amy Hetzner:

The Waukesha School District already operates four charter schools. In addition to the two proposed schools discussed at Wednesday’s meeting, La Casa de Esperanza has expressed interest in opening a charter school as well.
Under Wisconsin law, however, charter schools outside Milwaukee and Racine have to get the approval of their local school boards before they can open.
South’s proposed charter school would build on Project Lead the Way, a leading pre-engineering curriculum among American high schools that is now in its second year at South.
In addition to continuing that four-year curriculum, the charter school could offer special math and science courses geared to support students’ engineering coursework. School planners also say they would like it to involve work experience for students, who would be provided mentors in the engineering field.

Stanford: First virtual high school for the gifted

Becky Bartindale:

Stanford University’s Education Program for Gifted Youth is taking the next logical step: launching what is believed to be the nation’s first online high school for gifted students.
The virtual high school will offer a full standard curriculum — and more — for students in 10th through 12th grades, leading to a high school diploma.
The only restrictions? Students will have to prove their intellectual prowess — and come up with the tuition of about $12,000 a year. Applications are being accepted later this month, classes will begin in the fall.
Gifted students around the world already flock to the program at Stanford, in part because many schools are unable to offer everything that advanced students need.
“The gifted are among those left behind,” said Patrick Suppes, a philosophy professor emeritus from Stanford who directs the Stanford program. “For reasons that aren’t bad policy, No Child Left Behind worries most about students who are underperforming.

Stanford’s Educational Program for Gifted Youth website.

The Internet & Higher Education: From Fad to Worse?

Terry Heaton:

He offers an extensive list of innovations in education to which he’s been exposed over the years, one of which is the internet. Each, he notes, promised to transform education.
Some of those much-heralded innovations are long forgotten. Others remain housed somewhere on the campus, but I think it is fair to say that higher education hasn’t changed all that much, that none of these ideas proved to be as transformative as their advocates predicted. Compared to their advance billing, they all turned out to be short-term enthusiasms or — more bluntly — educational fads.
So the internet is a fad that has failed to transform higher education. This, I believe, may be the most ignorant statement I’ve ever heard from an academic. The internet has already altered all education forever, because a great deal of knowledge is now accessible without memorization, contemplation, research or study. That higher education “hasn’t changed all that much” may be more a reflection of the self-serving nature of the institution than what he sees as the false promises of “fads.” Moreover, I think it’s a little early to proclaim that the internet isn’t transformative.

Why the GMCC Opposes the Taxpayers Protection Amendment

Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce [pdf]

The Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce (GMCC) Board of Directors opposes the Wisconsin Taxpayer Protection Amendment and has urged legislators to vote against SJR 63 and AJR 77.
What the Wisconsin Taxpayer Protection Amendment (WTPA) proposes and what the likely outcome will be are two different things. While we believe that limiting or reducing taxes is a laudable goal, we disagree that this proposed amendment is the best way to achieve that. The GMCC’s intent is to bring balance to the discussion.
It is our position that the state constitution is not a place to implement permanent limitations that are sure to have major long term consequences. There are many unresolved questions and arguments raised by others related to WTPA which are outlined below. GMCC shares many of these questions and concerns.

via an email from Jennifer Alexander.

Continue reading Why the GMCC Opposes the Taxpayers Protection Amendment

San Francisco Schools: Student Funding Follows Kids

Lisa Snell:

San Francisco is one of a handful of public school districts across the nation that mimic an education market. In these districts, the money follows the children, parents have the right to choose their children’s public schools and leave underperforming schools, and school principals and communities have the right to spend their school budgets in ways that make their schools more desirable to parents.
Thanks to weighted funding, schools get more money for harder-to-educate students. Principals decide how to allocate funds.
In San Francisco the weighted student formula gives each school a foundation allocation that covers the cost of a principal’s salary and a clerk’s salary. The rest of each school’s budget is allocated on a per student basis. There is a base amount for the “average student,” with additional money assigned based on individual student characteristics: grade level, English language skills, socioeconomic status, and special education needs.
. . . The more students a school attracts, the bigger the school’s budget. So public schools in San Francisco now have an incentive to differentiate themselves from one another. Every parent can look through an online catalog of niche schools that include Chinese, Spanish, and Tagalog language immersion schools, college preparatory schools, performing arts schools that collaborate with an urban ballet and symphony, schools specializing in math and technology, traditional neighborhood schools, and a year-round school based on multiple-intelligence theory. Each San Francisco public school is unique. The number of students, the school hours, the teaching style, and the program choices vary from site to site

Via Joanne Jacobs

Advanced Placement’s Growth Places it Under Scrutiny

Ms Cornelius:

Today’s New York Times has an interesting article about whether the Advanced Placement program is actually worthy of its reputation.
The Advanced Placement program, administered by the College Board, began 50 years ago as a way to give a select few high school students a jump-start on college work. But in recent decades, it has morphed into something quite different – a mass program that reaches more than a million students each year and is used almost as much to impress college admissions officers and raise a school’s reputation as to get college credit. As the admissions race has hit warp speed, Advanced Placement has taken on new importance, and government officials, educators and the College Board itself have united behind a push to broaden access to A.P. courses as a matter of equity in education.

Reorganizing the Reorganization

Diane Ravitch:

But what is obvious is that once again a major decision—one might even say a revolutionary decision—affecting the most important public institution in the city and the lives of 1.1 students has been taken without any public consultation. Once again, the leaders at Tweed met behind closed doors with their management consultants and their experts in corporate governance, along with chosen staff members, and reached decisions that will have sweeping implications for the public school system.
Something is terribly wrong with this scenario. Public agencies in a democracy are not free to make major policy changes without public consultation, public feedback, public review, and other efforts to forge a consensus. That is the way democratic governance is supposed to work. What we have now seems to be the behavior and actions of a monarchy or a privately held corporation that has no stockholders; its leaders can do whatever they wish without seeking public input or public assent.

Leopold Additions Included in 2006 MMSD Operating Budget

Channel3000:

The Madison school board voted 4–3 Monday night to include additions to Leopold Elementary School in next year’s operating budget.
A final vote will come at a later meeting, but this essentially means that construction can start with our without a referendum.

Background on Leopold here. Johnny Winston, Jr., Juan Jose Lopez, Bill Keys and Shwaw Vang voted for the motion while Carol Carstensen, Lawrie Kobza and Ruth Robarts voted against it, preferring, I’m told, to consider this question with the entire 2006/2007 budget, which the board has not yet seen.
Student rep Connor Gants pointed out (he also voted for it) that the motion does not really matter as it could be changed when the 2006/2007 budget is actually approved. More on the budget, here.
Channel3000 has an update here.

Irvine Co. To Donate $20M to Schools

David Haldane:

The Irvine Co. said Monday it would provide $20 million over the next 10 years to fund fine arts, music and science programs for fourth- through sixth-graders in the Irvine Unified School District.
The money will be in addition to the $25 million pledged by the Newport Beach developer to Irvine schools in 2000, officials said.
“We think it’s an important investment to acknowledge the importance of these programs in providing a comprehensive quality education in the school district,” said Michael LeBlanc, a company senior vice president.
Dean Waldfogel, the school district’s superintendent, expressed delight.”We’re very excited,” he said. “This will allow us to maintain the program at its current level.”

Schools Struggle with Requiring PE

Lucas Johnson II:

At Moore Elementary School, fourth-grader Michael Turri looks forward to 30 minutes of jump-rope at the start of the day.
“It really gets my brain going,” said the 10-year-old. “You need to do this stuff to get through life.”
That’s one of the approaches this suburban Nashville school takes to thwart a growing childhood obesity problem. Students at Moore are required to take PE every day.
Now, some state lawmakers are pointing to Moore as a model for the state in a plan to set tougher phys ed standards for all schools

LA Charters & Public School Transformation

Eduwonk:

Steve Barr is winning. Also, note the LA Times descriptor of charters, long at 22 words but not too shabby though it doesn’t get at the open admissions issue. Incidentally, per the posts below and the need to change public schools, this is the equation that ought to scare the teachers’ unions into moving on the issue: Steve Barr, strong union proponent, Teamster, along with a very big coalition of almost entirely minority parents is at odds with the teachers’ union and the school district in LA. You don’t need to be an ace political consultant to see the problem there…And if Barr doesn’t succeed, these guys (Clint Bolick, Ken Starr, and company) are more than willing to help out..

Students’ lawsuit threats kept secret

Katherine Goodloe of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Reports:
Federal agency decides in Cedarburg case that releasing documents violated privacy rights.
Cedarburg – The next time a student threatens to sue a public school district, taxpayers probably won’t know anything about it.
That’s because the entire process can be kept secret unless the dispute enters a courtroom, after the U.S. Department of Education found that releasing notices of claim filed by two students in the Cedarburg School District violated federal student privacy rights. The finding directly conflicts with the state’s long-standing practice that such notices – which serve as precursors to lawsuits – are considered public documents.
more….

Affordable Health Care: Four Wisconsin Proposals

A forum hosted by Progressive Dane and The Edgewood College Human Issues Program.
Thursday, April 6th 6:30 to 8:30 at Edgewood College’s Anderson Auditorium, in the Predolin Humanities Center.
Access to health insurance has become a national crisis, but there are bold, creative proposals to fix it. Please join us to hear four great proposals to make affordable health care widely available locally and statewide. Representatives from each plan will briefly describe their proposal, followed by ample time for audience questions and open discussion.
Co-Sponsors include: The League of Women Voters, The Democratic Party of Dane County, The South Central Federation of Labor, The Four Lakes Green Party, and The Center for Patient Partnerships at the UW-Madison.
The presenters and four major health care plan proposals are:

Continue reading Affordable Health Care: Four Wisconsin Proposals

Skills tests for teachers miss mark, studies find

Greg Toppo:

The skills tests that most public school teachers must pass to get a job are poor predictors of whether they’ll actually be good teachers — and in some cases may even keep good ones from entering the classroom, new research suggests.
A pair of long-term studies presented here at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association challenge longstanding policies in 48 states that require teachers to pass standardized exams to get jobs.
In one, Marc Claude-Charles Colitti of Michigan State University examined data going back to 1960 and found teachers’ scores had almost no correlation to principals’ evaluations of their classroom performance.
“How smart a teacher is doesn’t necessarily tell us that they’re a good teacher,” he says. Teachers’ SAT or ACT college entrance exam scores, or even their own scores on fifth-grade skills tests when they were children, would be as accurate at telling whether they’ll be good teachers, he says.

Lawmakers Try to Expel Junk Food From Schools

AP:

Trying to shrink the growing waistlines of children, lawmakers want to expel soda, candy bars, chips and other junk food from the nation’s schools.
Dangerous weight is on the rise in kids. This week, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the rate of obese and overweight kids has climbed to 18 percent of boys and 16 percent of girls. Four years ago, the number was 14 percent.
Lawmakers blame high-fat, high-sugar snacks that compete with nutritious meals in schools.
“Junk food sales in schools are out of control,” Senator Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, senior Democrat on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, said Thursday. “It undercuts our investment in school meal programs and steers kids toward a future of obesity and diet-related disease.”

What’s Wrong with America’s High Schools?

Time.com:

Shawn’s friends are not alone in their exodus. Of the 315 Shelbyville students who showed up for the first day of high school four years ago, only 215 are expected to graduate.
In today’s data-happy era of accountability, testing and No Child Left Behind, here is the most astonishing statistic in the whole field of education: an increasing number of researchers are saying that nearly one out of three public high school students won’t graduate, not just in Shelbyville but around the nation.
For Latinos and African-Americans, the rate approaches an alarming 50 percent. Virtually no community, small or large, rural or urban, has escaped the problem.
There is a small but hardy band of researchers who insist the dropout rates don’t quite approach those levels. They point to their pet surveys that suggest a rate of only 15 percent to 20 percent.

Priorities for upcoming budget

In the upcoming budget deliberations, I urge the board to direct as many available funds as possible to proven in-school programs which support the board’s three stated goals:

* All students complete 3rd grade able to read at grade level or beyond.
* All students complete Algebra by the end of 9th grade and Geometry by the end of 10th grade.
* All students, regardless of racial, ethnic, socioeconomic or linguistic subgroup, attend school at a 94 percent attendance rate at each grade level.


On the flip side, I urge the board to avoid cuts in proven in-school programs that support these goals.
To go a step further, I urge the board to initiate new in-school programs and expand those MMSD programs already proven to succeed.

Schools Need Our Help in Preventing Medication Errors

Valerie Ulene:

Schools are under an incredible strain to simply educate children — let alone medicate them — so it’s hardly surprising that dispensing drugs at school leads to an alarming number of errors. The surprise is that parents and doctors don’t work harder to prevent them.
The laws requiring schools to dispense drugs were designed to protect children with medical problems, such as asthma and diabetes. Such kids wouldn’t be safe at school if their medications weren’t available.
ut a large, and growing, number of children are taking a wide variety of medications, including psychoactive drugs, that frequently have little to do with safety. Instead, the drugs are often prescribed — at least in part — to improve attentiveness and concentration and to enhance academic performance.
The resulting burden for schools is enormous. About 5% of children receive medication during a typical school day. Each year, the Los Angeles Unified School District dispenses about 450,000 doses of medications.

New York City Tries More Ways to Fix Schools

David Herszenhorn:

The New York City schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, is once again rethinking the nation’s largest school system.
He has hired Chris Cerf, former president of Edison Schools, the commercial manager of public schools in 25 states. He has retained Alvarez & Marsal, a consulting firm that revamped the school system in St. Louis and is rebuilding the system in New Orleans. And he has enlisted Sir Michael Barber, a former adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair of England who is now at McKinsey & Company in London.
They are evaluating everything from how textbooks and paper are bought, to how teacher training programs are chosen, to how students, teachers, principals and schools are judged. They are running focus groups of dozens of principals, and they are studying districts in England, Canada and California.
Their primary goal is to find ways to relax much of the very centralization put in place by the Bloomberg administration and give principals a far freer hand, provided the schools can meet goals for attendance, test scores, promotion rates and other criteria.

Teaching the Unreachable

Joanne Jacobs:

Stuart Buck recounts a conversation with a friend, a black man teaching high school English at a mostly black school in Georgia, about the challenge of teaching students who’ve made it to 10th grade without learning how to read. The friend says:

“It’s just impossible for me to spend one or two semesters and get someone caught up on 9 or 10 years of schooling. And then there are always some kids that just don’t care, and no matter what I try, they just won’t do the work. So the government is going to tell me that because of a handful of students that are unreachable, therefore I’m a bad teacher? No way.”

The teacher also talks about confronting a boy, who says, “You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not my dad.”

“Then I said, ‘No, I am your dad. I’m the only grown male who is willing to stand out here, before God and before anyone else who is listening, and to tell you that I love you and that I’m here for you. Now you tell me, if that’s not a dad, then what is?’

“That’s when the kid just started sobbing.”

The boy’s behavior improved. But he’s still going to flunk the class. He hasn’t done most of the work and has no chance of passing the test.

Update: On Right Wing Nation, the prof writes about trying to teach a bright, hard-working student who’d made it to college without understanding how to compute a mean or median or how to abstract an idea from an example. The professor wonders why nobody taught him math in high school.

Cole asks for recount

Maya Cole released the following to the media this afternoon:

Feeling obligated to her supporters, Maya Cole filed a petition for a recount in her election loss for a school board seat on April 4.
“As a public candidate, I feel compelled to respond to the dozens of people who asked me to seek a recount,” Cole said in a press statement.
“This election truly illustrates that every vote counts. I don’t want any voter who made an effort to go to the polls to feel as if there was any question about the accuracy of the result,” she said. “This race was just so close.”
Cole lost the contest for Madison School Board Seat 1 to Arlene Silveira by 86 votes, 17,933 to 17,847, a margin of .24 percent.
“I called Arlene to let her know about the recount. I have no hard feelings toward her. I wished her the best of luck on the board, because only a fluke would change the result,” Cole added.
Cole filed a petition for a recount on Friday afternoon with the Madison city clerk’s office.

The State Journal has more.

Virtual Schools, Real Innovation

Andrew Rotherham:

A WISCONSIN court rejected a high-profile lawsuit by the state’s largest teachers’ union last month seeking to close a public charter school that offers all its courses online on the ground that it violated state law by depending on parents rather than on certified teachers to educate children. The case is part of a national trend that goes well beyond virtual schooling: teachers’ unions are turning to the courts to fight virtually any deviation from uniformity in public schools.
Unfortunately, this stance not only hinders efforts to provide more customized schooling for needy students, it is also relegating teachers to the sidelines of the national debate about expanding choice in public education.
Virtual charter schools grab headlines, but they are actually relatively minor players. The Center for Education Reform reports that there are 147 online-only charter schools in 18 states, with 65,354 students. In other words, virtual schools make up just 4 percent of the entire public charter school sector. And a third of them can be found in just one state, Ohio.
Still, they are valuable for many students. For example, a student in a rural community with few schooling options who finds the curriculum in her school too limiting might be better served through an online program that allows her to learn at her own pace. So, too, might a ninth grader who finds unbearable the jock-and-popularity culture that still largely prevails in our high schools. And some parents may want to be more involved in their child’s education than is possible in traditional public schools but don’t have the time or resources to do fully independent home schooling.

Andy Smarick has much more on this issue:

The article’s launching point is virtual schools, but there are three basic arguments here. First, the future of public education is more diversity and greater parental choice. Many of us hope this is the case and some of us actually believe it, but for it to be written so matter-of-factly and published on the pages of the old gray lady nearly gave me the vapors.

Legality of teacher bargaining unit questioned

Sandy Cullen:

A behind-the-scenes dispute over whether Madison School Board member Lawrie Kobza should be allowed to vote on the district’s next teachers contract has led to her questioning the legality of the teachers bargaining unit.
That, in turn, has brought charges from Madison Teachers Inc. that Kobza is trying to break up the teachers bargaining unit.
The issue of whether Kobza – whose husband is employed as a high school soccer coach under the MTI teachers contract -should recuse herself from negotiating and voting on the 2007-2009 contract was raised last fall by School Board member and former MTI president Bill Keys.

Owen Robinson has more.

MMSD decides to comply with ethics policy

I sent the following letter to board president Carol Carstensen a few days ago:

In correspondence with MMSD Attorney Clarence Sherrod, I learned that the district and board have not complied with Board Policy 9000A 4, which reads:

Board members, the Superintendent, the Assistant Superintendent for Business Services, and all employees with District purchasing authority shall (1) file a Statement of Economic Interests with the Legal Counsel of the Board prior to April 30th of each year and (2) file a disclosure form with the Assistant Superintendent for Business Services or her/his designee within 30 days after entering into an employment or independent contractor agreement contemplating annual compensation of $1,000.00 or more.

When I requested copies of the Statements of Economic Interests filed in compliance with 9000A 4, Attorney Sherrod provided . . . copies. I summarized the filings by individual and year in the attached table. As you can see, very few board members or employees filed annually.
Board Policy 9000A provides the following sanctions for failure to comply:

Employees violating this policy or procedure are subject to discipline, up to and including dismissal. Board members who fail to file the required Statement of Economic Interest shall not be paid until such filing is effected.

I request that you, as Board president, direct the MMSD to comply with Board Policy 9000A 4 by April 30th, 2006, and annually thereafter, so that a formal complaint or other action will not be necessary.

Continue reading MMSD decides to comply with ethics policy

IBM Helping Employees Move into Classrooms

Natalie Gott:

After more than three decades at IBM, Larry Leise and Susan Luerich could be planning a leisurely retirement. Instead, the married couple are headed back to college, with plans to start new careers in retirement as high school science teachers.
“Seeing the proverbial light bulb come on (in a student), there is no better feeling,” said Luerich, 54. “It’s a way to give back.”
And their bosses at IBM Corp. are only too happy to help.
Luerich and Leise, 58, are among the first batch of IBM employees taking the company up on its offer to pay for the college classes needed to leave Big Blue behind for a math or science classroom, where a shortage of qualified teachers concerns a company that thrives on high-tech innovation.

Should Schools Be Included in Taxpayer Amendment

Mike Ellis:

Unfortunately, it appears the controls proposed for school districts under the constitutional amendment could undo all that. Just as troubling, it also appears the amendment could seriously disequalize taxes and spending across school districts in Wisconsin – something that itself would appear to violate an existing constitutional mandate that requires school districts to be “as nearly uniform as practical.”
When the proposed amendment was introduced last month, I asked the Legislative Fiscal Bureau to analyze its effect on school levies compared to the statutory revenue controls in current law. Because the proposed constitutional limits would not be in effect until the 2009-10 fiscal year, the bureau analysis estimated the effect of the amendment if it had been in effect for the current school year rather than the current statutory controls.
According to the Fiscal Bureau analysis, “In the absence of the statutory revenue limits, the total allowable levy under the joint resolutions would have been $3.71 billion, which would have been an increase of $117.8 million compared to the actual 2005-06 levy.”
That begs the question, why would we amend the constitution to increase property taxes more than $100 million? How can that be labeled taxpayer protection?

Bill Strikes at Low-Nutrition Foods in School

Marian Burros:

Under the bill, an amendment to the National School Lunch Act, high nutritional standards would be required of all food sold on school premises. That means not just in cafeterias but in vending machines, school stores and snack bars as well, even at fund-raising events.
The measure, which has strong bipartisan support in both houses, would do on a national level what many school districts have been trying to do for years: require that the schools set an example by providing only healthful food and so perhaps reduce the incidence of childhood obesity.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, has watched what goes on in the school her two teenage sons attend.

The Elephant in the School Board Meeting

Scott Niederjohn [PDF File]:

These requests were overwhelmingly rejected by the voters with more than 70% of ballots cast as “no” on each of the measures. Perhaps voters recognize that many school districts are ignoring the elephant sitting right in their meetings.
Data from the Wisconsin Association of School Boards (WASB) database show that teacher health insurance costs have grown much faster than teacher salaries in recent years.i In fact, the average annual Wisconsin teacher health benefit costs in 2002-2003 were over 46% of the average annual base teacher salary. In 1984-1985, health benefit costs averaged just 14% of average annual teacher salaries. 2001-2002 data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that Wisconsin provides the second most generous fringe benefits in the nation, in terms of per-pupil costs, for teachers. Only New York teachers enjoy more lucrative benefit packages than educators in Wisconsin. In 2001-2002, Wisconsin taxpayers spent an average of $1,397 per pupil on public school teacher benefits while the national average was $884 per pupil.

Cole on fence over recount

Cole on fence over recount

Madison School Board candidate Maya Cole said today that she is still trying to decide whether to ask for a recount of the vote in her race.
Cole lost Tuesday’s election to Arlene Silveira by 86 votes, less than one quarter of 1 percent of the almost 36,000 votes cast.
“My opinion is that I don’t think a recount is going to bring about a change” in the outcome, Cole said in a telephone interview, adding that she doesn’t want to waste time or money.
But Cole also said she has had some 20 people contact her since the election to urge her to ask for a recount.
It is hard to get people to vote at a time when national voting scandals have eroded confidence in the political process, she said, adding that she wants her next move, whatever it is, to still encourage her supporters to stay engaged. “I don’t want people to feel like their vote didn’t count.”
Cole said she hopes she and her top advisers will have a consensus by later today or Friday.
Published: April 6, 2006
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/index.php?ntid=79201&ntpid=2

New Vision for School Board

A Capital Times Editorial:

But assuming that Mathiak and Silveira will be joining the board, we think that this marks a major transition point.
Mathiak and Silveira are both smart and independent. They got to know each other well during the many forums that were held during the long campaign that preceded Tuesday’s voting.
If they are as smart and committed as we think they are, Mathiak and Silveira will link up with Kobza, a relative board newcomer elected in something of an upset last year, and try to work together across the lines of division on the board.
It this trio does commit to work together for a set of smart and necessary goals budget transparency, administration accountability, and better analysis of minority achievement and curriculum initiatives they will become the dynamic core of a board that will be able to function far more smoothly as a whole. We believe that, for all the infighting that has caused concern in recent years, members as distinct as current board President Carol Carstensen and Robarts can be brought into that whole if the newer members of the board demand it.

Struggling Students Want Vocational Education, Poll Shows

Mitchell Landsberg:

The poll of California 9th- and 10th-graders, conducted for the James Irvine Foundation, found that six in 10 students didn’t particularly like school and weren’t motivated to succeed. But of those disaffected students, more than 90% said they would be more motivated if their school offered classes relevant to their future careers.
The poll was conducted to coincide with the launch of an Irvine Foundation center dedicated to encouraging the growth of career-oriented education in California. The foundation is spending $6 million on a new San Francisco-based center called ConnectEd: The California Center for College and Career.

Program on Vouchers Draws Minority Support

Diana Jean Schemo:

Washington’s African-American mayor, Anthony A. Williams, joined Republicans in supporting the program, prompted in part by a concession from Congress that pumped more money into public and charter schools. In doing so, Mr. Williams ignored the ire of fellow Democrats, labor unions and advocates of public schools.
“As mayor, if I can’t get the city together, people move out,” said Mr. Williams, who attended Catholic schools as a child. “If I can’t get the schools together, why should there be a barrier programmatically to people exercising their choice and moving their children out?”
School-choice programs have fervent opponents, and here, public school officials worry that the voucher program will diminish the importance of the neighborhood school, though the program serves only a relative few of the district’s 58,000 students. National critics of school choice like Reg Weaver, president of the country’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association, accused voucher supporters of “exploiting the frustration of these minority parents to push for a political agenda” intended to undermine public schools.

Wellness Initiatives

Jamaal Abdul-Alim:

Black pedometer in hand, Greendale Middle School Spanish teacher Barb Rampolla hits the track behind her school to do three or four laps a few times a week.

Last summer, she joined an area fitness center. Over Christmas vacation, she abstained from her favorite holiday treats – and won a contest for not gaining any weight over winter break.

Fruits and vegetables are now a regular part of her diet. She’s feeling better, too.

“And I have to say that my clothes fit better,” said Rampolla, 58. “And for a woman, that’s really good.”

Election Link Roundup

  • Susan Troller: New Blood for Schools:

    Madison voters want tighter fiscal control from their School Board, said one longtime schools observer in the wake of Tuesday night’s vote.
    Newcomer Lucy Mathiak unseated four-term incumbent Juan Jose Lopez in one race while Arlene Silveira squeaked past Maya Cole by just 86 votes to win the seat being vacated by Bill Keys’ decision not to seek re-election. Cole said this morning that she is still thinking about asking for a recount.

  • Channel3000
  • NBC 15
  • Sandy Cullen and Danya Hooker
  • New Blood Bodes Well for Madison Schools – WiSJ Editorial

“Autism epidemic doubted”

Susanne Rust:

Indeed, special education figures that are being used to suggest an autism explosion are faulty and confounded, said Paul Shattuck, a researcher at the university’s Waisman Center and author of the study, which appears in today’s issue of the journal Pediatrics.

From 1993 to 2003, statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Education showed a 657% increase in autism across the country – an explosive jump that signaled an epidemic to many.

But Shattuck discovered that, at least in most cases, the numbers are not only misleading, they’re likely inaccurate. On one hand, they don’t support a dramatic increase in autism prevalence, but on the other, the figures could be underestimating the absolute number of children with the condition.

A Study of Core Plus Mathematics Students Attending Michigan State University

Richard O. Hill and Thomas H. Parker: Department of Mathematics – Michigan State University [Complete Study: PDF]:

One measure of the effectiveness of a high school mathematics program is the success students have in subsequent university mathematics courses. As part of a large-scale study of Michigan students, we analyzed the records of students arriving at Michigan State University from four high schools which adopted the Core-Plus Mathematics program. Those students placed into, and enrolled in, increasingly lower level courses as the implementation progressed; the downward trend is statistically very robust (p < .0005). The grades these students earned in their university mathematics courses were also below average (p < .01). ACT scores suggested the existence but not the severity of these trends. Over the past two decades there has been a growing awareness of the inadequacy of the mathematical skills of American high school graduates. That was the assessment of the 1983 report A Nation at Risk [9]. Many subsequent studies point to the same conclusion. The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Report [2] concluded that only 17 percent of US twelfth graders were proficient at mathematics (1). International comparisons also indicate a relatively low level of mathematics achievement by US high schoolstudents. The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) assessed the ‘Mathematics Literacy’ of end-of -secondary students in 22 countries and found that US students statistically outperformed only two countries, Cyprus and South Africa [13]. Related studies suggest that the mathematics courses taken by American high school students are often at a lower level than those taken by their international peers, and that US high schools are offering a wide assortment of courses which lack the focus and coherence found in many foreign curricula [14]. This situation has been of particular concern on college and university campuses, where large numbers of students require remedial courses to bring their mathematical knowledge and skills up to what is required for college-level mathematics and science courses.

Election & SIS Commentary

I would like to thank the four candidates for their hard work and unflagging good cheer. Congrats, Arlene and Lucy. I direct special heartfelt warm thanks to you, Jim, for all the time, effort and good will that you put into providing this site and also to all its regular contributors. This forum is such a useful public service. For me it has been a lifeline. You have successfully brought many important issues into public view for a much-needed airing. Judging from yesterday’s results, people are starting to pay attention. Please let’s keep it up. Much more work ahead.

Voting

I just voted. We like to bring our children to vote, so we waited till after preschool. My parents did the same thing.
I love voting. I love being part of a democracy. Usually, even when I think my candidates will lose, I leave the polling place with a little spring in my step. I especially love school board election, in part because I study school board elections. Today was different.
This was the first time I have decided who to vote for while in the booth. It is a strange election. On one hand I could rejoice that I can see good things about more than one candidate, but that’s not what I’m feeling. There has been too much bitterness and nastiness and the lines have been drawn boldly, but strangely. Some have called it the status quo vs. change, but I think even the status quo candidates think that MMSD can do better in a multitude of areas.
What has been called the “transparency” issue has loomed large. I prefer to think of this as being about how much deference should be given to the administration and how active a role should the board take. The3 budget and MTI negotiations are part of this, but it is bigger. This issue also presents problems. If you support expanded roles for the board (as I do), then the question of who fills these roles becomes very important. It isn’t enough to just support those who agree with you about the roles of the board, you have to look closely at what they (and their opponents) would do with that power.
An example of the strange ways the lines have been drawn is the ability grouping issue. Both ability grouping and mixed ability grouping are the status quo in MMSD. Neither has a whole lot to do with the deference issues that seemed so central to the races a few weeks ago, but the lines have been drawn and some of us are uncomfortable with the choices we now face.
Lastly there is the issue of supporters. It is a strange time when self-proclaimed conservatives actively support self-proclaimed progressives. I don’t even know what this means, except that perhaps true conservatives see no chance of electing one of their own (and whatever you think of Mathiak and Cole, they are not movement conservatives).
I also love the secret ballot, so I’m going to leave it at this. I’d love to hear from others who also struggled with these choices.
TJM

MATHIAK AND COLE WILL PROTECT PROGRAMS

I believe there has been enough ineffective communication on the school board and I am ready for decisions based on solid data and careful discussion. I believe that Maya Cole and Lucy Mathiak will both bring that to the board.
I am also certain that if we do not vote for them, we will endanger the strings programs, the TAG program and others that current board members deem unnecessary, even though they serve a diverse population of students.
We are a family looking for other educational options for our kids because we are tired of fighting to get our children’s needs met in the Madison Schools. We are tired of “being patient,” as one teacher told us. We are ready for our children to have access to challenges. Cole and Mathiak will serve the board well in examining the current school district agenda and exposing the truth.
– Elizabeth A. Dohrn, Madison
March 30, 2006 – WI State Journal

The Power of Blogs

Marisue, Your comments are closed so I have to open a new post. Curiously, you as one of the regular posters here complain about the influence of blogs and talk radio. I saw lots of your candidates’ supporters at the 92.1 radio forum and many of your associates, especially from the special ed bloc, post here regularly.
So what’s the beef exactly–that folks can speak their minds freely and reference materials and sources not otherwise available in the echo chamber that has until recently been our political scene here in Madison?
I am happy to have this place to debate ideas. I welcome the disagreement so long as it isn’t personal. I think that’s something alot of folks have gotten sick of with the way the current board majority functions–if you don’t fall in step, you’re attacked personally.
So let’s keep talking, posting new data, pushing for answers together–here, and hopefully before a school board dedicated to those same principles.

VOTE

Arguably every school board election is important, but this one is critical—this is a race for control of the majority. Maya Cole and Lucy Mathiak, two admirable, excellent candidates on their own, if elected today will shift the majority, in combination with Ruth Robarts and Lawrie Kobza. The result will be a new day in district politics. This new era will be marked by civility, public accessibility, accountability and cooperation, a far cry from the way the current board majority has run things. But BOTH Lucy and Maya must be elected for this to happen.
Arlene Silveira, Maya Cole’s worthy opponent, is firmly in the Carstensen, Keys, Lopez, Vang and Winston camp. Arlene has their support along with the endorsement of MTI. I have been impressed with her easy, professional manner. However, I disagree strongly not only with her blanket commitment to heterogeneity but also as to what her election would represent–business as usual,
If nothing else, this race has shaken up Madison politics. So-called progressives smear a graduate of Camp Wellstone/social justice activist as conservative. The liberal newspaper endorses what would in any other year have been described as the “pro-business” candidate while the conservative paper endorses her opponent, the stay-at-home mom. Local “progressives” spread rumors about PAC money from conservatives despite the strenous protests of an incredibly independent candidate who has always disavowed PAC money.
The only way I can really make sense out of it is that it’s outcome-based –do you want the board to continue on the current path, or is it time for a change? Thus, the CapTimes can endorse Mathiak and Silveira because this will keep the status quo in charge. The WSJ wants to see a change so endorses Cole and Mathiak.
Today is a perfect early spring day in our fair city. My neighborhood will echo with the happy shouts and laughter from the Randall playground when I leave the house this morning. Please take the time to stop by your ward and vote. This is for them.
One last thought: thank you to the candidates and all the members of the school board. While I may disagree profoundly with some of you, I have the greatest respect for your commitment to our schools and dedication to public service.

NEW IDEAS NEEDED TO KEEP QUALITY SCHOOLS – Mathiak and Cole

Madison public schools have been ranked among the best in the country. That is one of the reasons we moved here 16 years ago. Unfortunately, financial pressures from state-imposed caps, coupled with bad curriculum decisions, have our district moving in the wrong direction.
We need strong leadership from the school board, board members who will connect with the public and find solutions that meet the needs of all of our students, new ideas and fresh perspectives. That’s why I am voting for Maya Cole and Lucy Mathiak. We can do better for our children and our community. We must.
– Jane Doughty, Madison
March 30, 2006 WI State Journal

CURRENT BOARD FAILS OUR MINORITY STUDENTS

Dear Editor,
For the past five years I’ve been a volunteer tutor at a Madison elementary school with high minority enrollment, and I’ve seen firsthand how the district has failed to respond adequately to its changing demographics.
Minority students remain underserved and under-educated by a rigid, one-size- fits-all curriculum that promotes politically correct symbolism more than solid academic progress by all its students.
The district desperately needs new leadership that will focus on matters of substance instead of better public relations, as advocated by Arlene Silveira. I urge readers to vote for Maya Cole and Lucy Mathiak. If elected, they, along with Lawrie Kobza and Ruth Robarts, could form a new board majority that would improve public education in Madison.
– Carl Silverman, Madison
March 30, 2006 WI State Journal

Mathiak and Cole Support Increased Educational Opportunities for All Students

Dear Editor,
I was glad to see the Capital Times’ endorsement of Lucy Mathiak for the Madison School Board. Mathiak will tackle the problems facing our school district with vigor and clarity, and she will demand accountability from administrators. Mathiak’s advocacy in our schools represents a wide range of needs and interests; she wants to ensure the best academic opportunities for all students.
Unfortunately, parents from Madison Partners for Inclusive Schools have mischaracterized Mathiak, as well as candidate Maya Cole, as wanting to limit students’ access to educational opportunity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mathiak and Cole are skeptical of the District’s push toward compulsory heterogeneous classrooms precisely because this practice hobbles many students’ opportunities to learn. Administrators of our middle and high schools have eliminated course options in core subjects, reduced the choice of instructional levels, and prohibited motivated students from advancing with appropriate curriculum and learning peers.
Administrators have argued that advanced academic programs segregate students unfairly, since the advanced classes have been populated mainly by white, middle-class children. They think to address this injustice by doing away with the programs. This tactic reveals a prejudice of low expectations on their part: they apparently do not expect that low-income, minority students will ever qualify for advanced placement.
In fact, depriving gifted children of support and opportunity at school most hurts those gifted students from low-income families and traditionally marginalized groups. Families with money and connections can get educational enrichment for their children outside of school; families struggling to make ends meet cannot. The District’s own report on high school dropouts identifies 27% of them as having shown high ability as younger children; a large portion of these were minority students. Nurturing these students by identifying them early on, grouping them with learning peers, and pulling them into advanced, accelerated classes might have kept them engaged in school and fostered their potential.
Proponents of “equalizing” educational opportunity believe that filling classrooms with children of widely ranging abilities will help motivate students at risk. But, they have not evaluated the data to see if this is actually so. Administrators are moving ahead to expand the standard course/heterogeneous classroom initiative without studying whether or not it has helped struggling students to succeed. In contrast, supporters of Mathiak in the Madison TAG Parents group have compiled a long list of studies on the issue of heterogeneous classrooms vs. ability grouping. Jeff Henriques, a leader of the TAG Parents group, provided not only a summary of this research with citations and abstracts from some 60 articles, but also hard copies of approximately 40 papers to the School Board earlier this year. I myself have sent similar information, in smaller doses, to various school officials. Anyone looking for these sources can easily find them on the TAG Parents’ website.
Lucy Mathiak and Maya Cole will not endorse curriculum policy without taking a hard look at the data and carefully considering the complex issues involved. Our diverse student body has diverse learning needs. We need equal opportunity for every child, not the same education for all.
Sincerely,
Lorie Raihala
Madison

KEEP DIVERSITY IN THE CLASSROOM

The school board race has exposed beliefs among some citizens that I thought I had escaped by moving to a progressive city.
The people of Madison should be proud of the school board’s efforts to create a real world environment for our kids in the classroom, a real world made up of all types of learners of all economic backgrounds. To say that a teacher cannot teach a variety of students in the same classroom is an insult to Madison’s teachers.
Creating homogeneous classrooms would harm all students because it would deprive them of learning the skill and art of “getting along” with those who are different. The attitude that students should be segregated is outdated and prejudicial. It is also against the law. Students learn and absorb so much more in school than the content of a lesson.
I will vote for Arlene Silveira and Juan Jose Lopez because they are committed to maintaining an inclusive environment in our classrooms.
– Beth Moss, Madison
Letter to the Editor
Wisconsin State Journal, March 30, 2006

Mathiak, Cole Will Restore Leadership

Now is the time for independent voices with fresh perspectives on the Madison School Board. Lucy Mathiak and Maya Cole offer both.
These two talented, qualified, progressive candidates will put children’s education and classroom support first, work hard to grow Madison’s schools of excellence and build community support for public education.
During March, the Madison School Board has had no discussions about next year’s $320 million-plus budget that will include more than $8 million in educational cuts. They won’t do this until late April. Meanwhile, administrators will mail staff cuts and levels to school principals on April 3.
Where is the public discussion about the budget? Where are the school board discussions on important issues of budget and curriculum policy, especially important during tight financial times?
Mathiak and Cole will bring leadership and governance of our schools back to the school board and back to the public.
Letter to Editor
Thursday, March 30, 2006 WI State Journal

Wisconsin State Journal Endorses Maya Cole and Lucy Mathiak

The Madison School Board can no longer afford to do business as usual.
More to the point, families in the Madison School District can no longer afford a school board unwilling to take bolder action.
For that reason, voters should elect to the board on Tuesday two candidates promoting change: Maya Cole and Lucy Mathiak.
From Wisconsin State Journal, April 2, 2006
At stake is the School Board’s ability to pull the district’s budget out of quicksand, address shifting demographics, narrow the achievement gap between minority and white students and restore the public’s trust.
Cole, 43, is a stay-at-home mom with three sons from 6 to 9 years of age. She has been involved in a variety of school and political organizations, from the Franklin/Randall Parent Teacher Organization to Mothers Acting Up, a group encouraging mothers to be politically active on behalf of children.
Mathiak, 50, is an assistant dean at the University of Wisconsin’s College of Letters and Science. She has two teen-age sons, and her husband has two older daughters. She has been involved in several East High School organizations.
Cole and Mathiak come to the school board race from different backgrounds. But both believe that challenges closing in on the Madison schools demand action that the current majority on the School Board is failing to take.
They are right.
Their opponents, in contrast, are far too comfortable with the status quo. Running against Cole for Seat No. 1 on the board, being vacated by Bill Keys, is Arlene Silveira, 47, a marketing director for Promega Corp. of Fitchburg, and president of the Cherokee Middle School Parent-Teacher Organization. While Silveira would bring a welcome business perspective to the board, she lacks Cole’s drive to change the board approach.
Mathiak’s opponent for Seat No. 2 is incumbent Juan Lopez, a board member for 12 years who is too wedded to the way things have been done.
The Madison School Board is in an unenviable position. Outdated and unproductive state school financing rules have put school districts like Madison in a perpetual financial squeeze.
Meanwhile, the makeup of the district’s population has been shifting. Minorities compose a greater proportion of the student population, and the population is shifting from where the schools are to where they aren’t. In addition, the achievement gap between minority and white students continues to suggest that Madison’s schools are failing to deliver for too many students.
The board has cut, combined and conserved to hold costs down, and it has made some encouraging progress on closing the achievement gap. However, the board’s majority continues to shrink from new approaches, preferring to blame the state for a lack of money.
Yes, the Legislature should address school funding. But waiting for a magic solution from the Capitol only compounds the problem. Rather than looking to the state for answers, the board should look to itself.
The times require bold action. Between the two of them, Cole and Mathiak have some enlightened ideas, including plans to make the school budget process simpler, improve oversight of the budget and curriculums, reach minority students with more effective teaching and fairer discipline, challenge students with higher standards and consider the consolidation of administrative staff in the district’s central office.
A year ago the State Journal endorsed incumbents in two school board races on the belief that the board would continue to set priorities and address challenges. But since then, a lack of public trust in the board contributed to the failure of two out of three questions on a school referendum, and the board’s majority appeared to stick its head in the sand during the budget process.
It is obvious now that change is required.
Cole and Mathiak can supply new direction.

The real race and the real story

Lets face it. We all take sides whether in the school yard, the Board room or the School Board Race.
Already, we see the lines of division. The Mathiak/Cole group on one side, the Lopez/ Silveira group on the other. What is ultimately at stake is the best interests of our children.
What do we do? In the case of the School Board race, I believe it all comes down to Who gets to run the show. And blame is at the root of it all.
As I look over all the candidates, skills, commitment, ability to articulate, ability to form solid opinions and positions I know who I will vote for. But when I lift the covers and look underneath something smells very fishy to me, it looks like one of the factions in the School Board race wants to change Superintendents. The BLAME game. We hear statements like, “We got here because he is in bed with the Teachers Union”; or “He doesn’t make good fiscal decisions”; or “He is responsible for cutting this or that, that “I” want for my child!”
An opinion piece in the April 1 Wall Street Journal by the School Board President of the Glen Ridge Board of Education in Glen Ridge, NJ states the case very well. She says “…Anyone with even a passing familiarity with New Jersey’s property tax woes knows that the real problem is not superintendents’ contracts, but legislators’ unwillingness to fix a school funding system that is irretrievably broken…” She went on, “Superintendents are responsible to local boards and taxpayers and on call 24/7. They build budgets, negotiate contracts, meet with parents, serve as the ‘public face’ of their districts, deal with facilities and construction projects, hire, evaluate and mentor administrators, observe teachers, and much more.”
On April 4 we have decision to make. Do we start over, as Ms. Cole says, and tear down what we have? Or, as Ms. Silveira says, do we build from a strong foundation? Do we bring in new talent as urged by Ms. Mathiak who has no public service record, or go with a proven child advocate, namely Juan Jose Lopez, who has a solid track record in the district?
These are the questions we must ask ourselves. We need to remember; when challengers to the current system say that we are spending more than we take in, keep in mind who made that misleading claim since our own legislature has mandated spending caps and rules that FORCE us to spend more annually than we take in. Some $8 million more.
This is not the fault of the Board or the Superintendent. And, although candidates for “change” Cole and Mathiak — state that they want to review the budget for more effective ways to use existing funds, I doubt that the current School Board hasn’t already examined all the options. Ms. Cole wants some type of 5 year plan to deal with the $40 million budget. That still leaves $8 million less per year to run the public schools. Ms. Mathiak, who wants to sell the Doyle building, is essentially saying, ?OK, here are a few bucks for this year and a de-centralized administration for the future. This makes no sense at all. It is hard enough to find the right person in one building let alone the communication nightmares we will would encounter as the school staff tries to work together from disparate locations.
The only plan that will help the budget crisis that our schools are in is for us citizens to elect public officials, local and statewide, who will give us more realistic budgets for our schools!
What to do. I am biased. I want stability, I want representatives that know change comes not from wholesale “slaughter” of our current system during an ongoing fiscal crisis, but from within. I want representatives for MY CHILDREN and ALL THE CHILDREN of Madison. I will vote for stability and sanity. Please join me in voting for the best interests of our children and vote on April 4 for Juan Lopez and Arlene Silveira.
David Wandel,
Past PTO President, Midvale/Lincoln,
Commissioner, Community Services Commission and Community Activist

4 Candidates Vie For Madison School Board

NBC15:

Vying for Seat 1 on the board are Maya Cole and Arlene Silveira. On the matter of budget cuts, Silveira says keeping as many cuts as possible away from the classroom is her first priority, along with finding a better way to fund public schools.
“The state funding is broken and that’s going to continually strain all districts in the state of Wisconsin. That’s something we have to focus on lobbying the legislature to try and fix.”
Cole agrees that state funding is not working, but says the district needs to get organized first.
“I don’t see that we have the political capitol yet. Does that mean I’m not going to work on it? Of course not, but we need to be organized as a district and get the trust of our constituents before we can say it’s all the legislators fault.”
Cole also says the board needs to simplify the budget process, so the public knows exactly what it’s voting on if it comes down to a referendum.

Endorsements come in many colors

In campaigning for the Madison School Board, I learned something that may be useful for voters. There are two very different kinds of political endorsements.
Endorsements that candidates seek. Some candidates seek the endorsement of organizations. In these situations, the organizations endorse the candidate only if the candidate passes its litmus tests. Madison Teachers Inc. (MTI) has this kind of process. Candidates are invited to complete a very long and detailed questionnaire and must appear before the Political Action Committee (PAC) to explain their answers. Endorsed candidates receive direct financial assistance from the PAC and help with the campaign (leafleting neighborhoods and get-out-the-vote phone banks). The PAC also buys “independent” radio and newspaper ads supporting the endorsed candidate.
Endorsements that candidates do not seek.. There is, however, a second kind of endorsement. Candidates who run as “independents” do not seek organizational endorsements and PAC funds. They do not make promises to move the organization’s agenda forward. They make clear that they are not seeking PAC funds. Nonetheless, the organization decides independently to support the candidate. The organization decides without consulting the candidate. It exercises its independent right to buy ads in support of a candidate. In the April election, ads from the “Get Real” organization are an example of the second kind of endorsement.
Big picture? Independent candidates–as in the April 4 school board race—offer value choices to voters. They stand as individuals. They ask for support for their goals. The only promises that they make are the promises to the voters. If elected, they are free to work for the values that the voters shared. They are not in the position of the candidates who owe their election, at least in part, to organizations that have their own interests.

For The Record

Sunday 10 a.m., Channel 3’s For the Record will feature a debate among the four candidates for school board.
Here is my email to Neil Heinen regarding the station’s coverage including a discussion of some of the issues at stake in the race: To: Neil Heinen Subject: Sunday show
Dear Neil,
A new post up on SIS (http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/) discusses a debate at East yesterday covered by your station. Thank you for this and for dedicating Sunday’s show to the race.
One point that I’m not sure was reported correctly however, is the assertion in your coverage that the current board has not said who they support. The five-member majority has clearly stated their support for Silveira and Lopez (who is of course part of that majority and a candidate) while Robarts and Kobza have stated their support for Mathiak and Cole.
This race truly is for control of the majority and will dictate how we go forward on matters of heterogeneous classrooms (the dismantling of honors and possibly AP at West is part of that), school boundary changes, the construction of new and closure of existing schools, budget concerns, how to responsibly provide teachers health insurance, etc.
The Silveira/Lopez line is that Mathiak and Cole are focused merely on “process”. This significantly minimizes what’s at stake. The board is currently divided and removed from community input. For instance, when a school board member can’t get an item on the agenda because she’s in the minority, or she can’t get information she has requested from the superintendent, we’ve got closed, dysfunctional governance. Mathiak and Cole may not always vote the same with each other or Kobza or Robarts, but the four of them are dedicated to transparency and public participation. With that, I believe the community will be better informed and more likely to support the hard decisions facing our district as we go forward into a land of $40 million more in budget cuts over the next five years.
But there’s an even bigger topic that might be coming up soon. I’d appreciate if you could ask the candidates what they’d look for in a new superintendent. Rainwater has made no secret of his plan to retire in the not too distant future and it’s no stretch to believe that the next board majority will determine whether we hire someone like Art or someone who is less, shall we say, autocratic/didactic, someone who takes his direction FROM the board on policy matters rather than dictating it TO them?
Let me close by focusing on hetergeneous classes. The trend everywhere else is to have more not less AP and honors classes. I met a woman recently who is an education professor at Marquette. She was shocked to learn of MMSD’s policy changes, pointing out that in Milwaukee even the most impoverished schools have AP, with the focus being how to increase participation by more students, especially minority students. Extending the K-8 model into high school is irresponsible. The data clearly indicate that this model is failing our students. Indeed, even at West, the internal data show that the one-size-fits-all English 9 and now English 10 doesn’t work as advertised. Our children attend Stanford and Macalester. Almost all their classmates have had the full range of AP courses in their high schools, even those coming from small towns. Especially in science and math, this is critical. Success after MMSD is a measure that doesn’t get much play, but it really should be the ultimate measure of our students’ success, not just those who go on to college and post-graduate careers, but all our students. Are they prepared to participate meaningfully in society. Do they have the skills they need to be good critical thinkers, to make informed decisions.
As our district grows increasingly more diverse ethnically, and as the disparity socieconomically widens, we have to ask whether we can meet all students’ needs with the little red school house approach, if that model ever worked in a town our size. More important, perhaps, will be how the community will perceive this—a posting a few months back on SIS looked at the district’s demographic data and demonstrated that brain flight has already happened out of the West HS district. Folks will be voting with their feet if they feel those setting policy don’t care about all the children.
How we see ourselves and whether Madison continues to draw new folks to our community depends heavily on the strength of our schools. Obviously I believe we need a fresh start, but however you come down on it, the stakes are high.
Best,
Joan

Northside Candidate Forum of 30-Mar-2006

The Northside Coalition sponsored a Candidate Forum on March 30, 2006 at the Warner Park Community Center.
The video of the forum QT Video is 170MB and 1 hour 50 minutes long. Click on the image at left to watch the video. The video will begin to play almost immediately so you can watch the forum as it continues to download; at DSL speeds, you should not experience any disruptions. The video contains chapter headings which allow quick navigation to each section and question asked (after that portion of the video has been downloaded), so you will be able to quickly view those portions of interest to you.
The candidates are, from left to right, Maya Cole and Arlene Silveira, vying for Seat 1, and Juan Lopez and Lucy Mathiak, vying for Seat 2.
One caveat. I was unsuccessful in my attempt to have the forum preceedings paused to allow me to change video tapes. Therefore, there is a 30 second gap in the video during the public questions portion, wherein a question was asked concerning the Reading Recovery program. The question itself was not recorded, and only a portion of Arlene Silveira’s response is present. The responses by Maya Cole, Juan Lopez, and Lucy Mathiak are complete.
If anyone recalls the missing question, please include it in a comment to this entry.

Get Real PAC Money

This past Monday, I learned that the PAC Get Real planned to take out independent ads urging people to vote for Maya Cole and me for school board.
I have spoken with Get Real members and have been clear with Get Real and its leadership from the start: I do not accept PAC money or group endorsements. Its members need to read my responses to MTI and other campaign statements to see if they agree with my positions before offering support, because there are issues on which I do NOT agree with Get Real or its individual members. I am talking to all groups who invite me because I want all voters to understand what I believe and stand for.
After learning about the planned ads, I called Nancy Harper, as did several other people including Maya Cole, Ruth Robarts, and Lawrie Kobza. Some of us also called current Get Real president, Sam Johnson. Our message was clear and simple: you do not have permission to use our names, and we do not want you to run an ad in our behalf. They didn’t listen.
I, and other people, then consulted the editors of the two dailies and Isthmus to ask what recourse we had under the circumstances. It turns out that we have no recourse, legal or otherwise, if an independent political group wishes to post an ad using our names. That information was confirmed by my consultation with a lawyer.
While I support freedom of speech, I am deeply disappointed that Get Real chose to insert itself into my campaign at this time and in this way. And troubled that there is no way to prevent the false impression that I sought and accepted their endorsement.

School Board Election is Pivotal

Sandy Cullen:

Who wins the two seats up for grabs on the Madison School Board could have a major impact on how the seven-member board deals with challenges ranging from budgets to curriculum.
The outcome of Tuesday’s pivotal election could shift the board majority from members some perceive as being too accepting of a course set by the administration to those clamoring for new ways of doing business.
If candidates Maya Cole and Lucy Mathiak win, they will join the two board members who support them – Lawrie Kobza and Ruth Robarts – in calling for new ways of approaching the district’s budget and other growing challenges. But incumbent Juan Jose Lopez – who faces Mathiak in his bid for a fifth three-year term – and Arlene Silveira – who is running against Cole – said they are anything but status quo.