Stephen Jay Gould:

My life has recently intersected, in a most personal way, two of Mark Twain’s famous quips. One I shall defer to the end of this essay. The other (sometimes attributed to Disraeli), identifies three species of mendacity, each worse than the one before – lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Consider the standard example of stretching the truth with numbers – a case quite relevant to my story. Statistics recognizes different measures of an “average,” or central tendency. The mean is our usual concept of an overall average – add up the items and divide them by the number of sharers (100 candy bars collected for five kids next Halloween will yield 20 for each in a just world). The median, a different measure of central tendency, is the half-way point. If I line up five kids by height, the median child is shorter than two and taller than the other two (who might have trouble getting their mean share of the candy). A politician in power might say with pride, “The mean income of our citizens is $15,000 per year.” The leader of the opposition might retort, “But half our citizens make less than $10,000 per year.” Both are right, but neither cites a statistic with impassive objectivity. The first invokes a mean, the second a median. (Means are higher than medians in such cases because one millionaire may outweigh hundreds of poor people in setting a mean; but he can balance only one mendicant in calculating a median).

Sarah Carr:

Enrollment in the main roster of Milwaukee Public Schools is expected to take its sharpest dip in years this fall, dropping by more than 3,300 students.
Less than 10 years ago, enrollment in traditional MPS schools was at about 97,000, and this September officials predict it will be only about 81,600.
The projections were released Friday night by MPS officials as part of a budget forecast for next school year. Superintendent William Andrekopoulos attributed the accelerated slide to growth in the private school voucher program, decreasing population in the city and crime and poverty rates scaring off potential newcomers.
“There are not as many families migrating to Milwaukee as in the ’90s,” he said.

Diane Ravitch:

They Protect Teachers’ Rights, Support Teacher Professionalism, and Check Administrative Power.
We live in an era when leaders in business and the media demand that schools function like businesses in a free market economy, competing for students and staff. Many such voices say that such corporate-style school reform is stymied by the teacher unions, which stand in the way of leaders who want unchecked power to assign, reward, punish, or remove their employees. Some academics blame the unions when student achievement remains stagnant. If scores are low, the critics say it must be because of the teachers’ contract, not because the district has a weak curriculum or lacks resources or has mediocre leadership. If some teachers are incompetent, it must be because of the contract, not because the district has a flawed, bureaucratic hiring process or has failed to evaluate new teachers before awarding them tenure. These critics want to scrap the contract, throw away teachers’ legal protections, and bring teacher unions to their collective knees.
It is worth recalling why teachers joined unions and why unions remain important today. Take tenure, for example. The teacher unions didn’t invent tenure, despite widespread beliefs to the contrary. Tenure evolved in the 19th century as one of the few perks available to people who were paid low wages, had classes of 70 or 80 or more, and endured terrible working conditions. In late 19th century New York City, for example, there were no teacher unions, but there was already ironclad, de facto teacher tenure. Local school boards controlled the hiring of teachers, and the only way to get a job was to know someone on the local school board, preferably a relative. Once a teacher was hired, she had lifetime tenure in that school, but only in that school. In fact, she could teach in the same school until she retired—without a pension or health benefits—or died.

More on Diane Ravitch. Joanne adds notes and links to Diane’s words.

Leo Casey:

Edwize has obtained a copy of the RFP [Request for Proposal] for “Partnership School Support” that the New York City Department of Education has hidden from the general public in a remote precinct of its website accessible only to private vendors with passwords. In it one finds the details of one of the central components of the latest structural reorganization Chancellor Klein want to impose on New York City public schools.
What is remarkable about the RFP is the general plan to outsource to these private ‘partnership’ entities virtually all of the educational support functions traditionally fulfilled, for better or for worse, by the DOE. Instructional program, professional development, special education: all of these and more will now be organized and supported by the Partnerships. And in contrast to the current intermediaries such as New Visions and Urban Assembly, this RFP invites ‘for profit’ EMOs [Educational Maintenance Organizations, modeled after Health Maintenance Organizations or HMOs] like Edison Schools and Victory Schools to become Partnerships.

Bill Baumgart:

When I was first contacted about writing a guest opinion, I thought, “What a great opportunity to share my strong feelings about public education.” Then I realized I need to be aware that everyone will not feel the same as me nor for the same reasons and I must be cautious lest I alienate them. But I was asked for my views, so I will give them.
I believe education of our youth is the most valuable thing we as adults can provide to them. Similarly it is a great responsibility we hold. For the youth it gives them the future. They, of course, must decide how to use it. Often overlooked is the value that is returned to us as providers. If we have done well, we will have real contributors to our society in our future: our doctors, nurses, community leaders, engineers, lawyers, writers, ethical politicians and journalists. And we will provide the teachers for that next generation so this responsibility can go on.
None of this comes free. There is a cost and I agree it is substantial. But if you look at it as an investment, you will find a return on your money. There is the development of the future as shown in the preceding paragraph. There is also the concrete value of your community and the property you hold. It is accepted that the quality of life and property values are directly related to the education provided in that community. We all can think of areas where we would rather not live and raise our children, but you would also find that in many of those you could afford to buy a house. There is a direct correlation between the quality of local education and property value. Why else is an evaluation of the schools always a prime part of buying a house?

Continue reading Making our schools a top priority: Investment in education will always pay off in society →

Bill:

My wife is a teacher, she teaches in Middle School. To be polite, a lot of her kids appear to be uninterested in the learning experience. Instead of wasting their time and the time of kids who actually wanted to learn, I’ve suggested that the school remodel a few classrooms to give these uninterested kids a leg up in their future careers. This special classroom would be equipped with a cash register, a cooking surface, a deep fryer, a soda fountain, and a system that offers orders for the students to fill correctly. The kids would be graded on their ability to operate the equipment, and tests would include simulated customer orders. Additional equipment would include mops and brooms, which they would use to clean up the room at the end of the class. Extra credit could be offered for asking “would you like fries with that, ma’am?” or “Biggie size, sir?”

Jay Matthews:

My favorite at the moment is time. Are our students getting enough hours of teaching and learning to reach the achievement goals we have set? Should the school day, or the school year, be longer?
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There is plenty in the news on this. Massachusetts has launched a $6.5 million public-private partnership to lengthen the school day in 10 schools in five districts. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, one of the cleverest of the pack of presidential candidates descending upon us, has proposed both a longer school day and a longer school year for low-performing schools in his state. Policy makers in Minnesota, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Illinois are all considering adding time for learning.

Elena Silva has more.

Mark Hicks:

The reorganization is part of the district’s controversial plan to shutter 47 schools this summer and five more during summer 2008 in a bid to save $19 million.
The struggling district lost nearly 12,600 students last fall after a teachers strike, and more than 50,000 have left in the last eight years. The district lists an enrollment of 116,800 students.
At Monday’s forum, representatives from the district’s consolidation team cited declining birth rates, competition from charter schools and the city’s population loss as factors.
The decreases represent a natural phenomenon, said DPS’s Jeffery Jones. “This is not unique to Detroit.”

Elissa Gootman:

The two schools, in disparate corners of the nation’s largest school system, are part of a national effort to rethink middle school, driven by increasingly well-documented slumps in learning among early adolescents as well as middle school crime rates and stubborn high school dropout rates.
The schools share the premise that the way to reverse years of abysmal middle school performance is to get rid of middle schools entirely. But they represent opposite poles in the sharp debate over whether 11- through 13-year-olds are better off pushed toward adulthood or coddled a little longer.
Should the nurturing cocoon of elementary school be extended for another three years, shielding 11-year-olds from the abrupt transition to a new school, with new students and teachers, at one of the most volatile times in their lives?

Michael Alison Chandler:

Although some wonder how much the program raises student achievement, there is a growing movement toward national certification. The number of board-certified teachers has tripled in the past five years to more than 55,000 nationwide. Increasingly, school systems are seeking to raise teacher quality.
Prince George’s County School Superintendent John E. Deasy said board certification helps teachers reflect on their profession in a way that often leads to faculty-room discussions about sharing lesson ideas. “Education is one of the most isolated professions,” he said. “This is a very public process.”
Deasy said he aims to get 10 percent of the county’s teachers board-certified, up from less than 1 percent now. To accomplish this goal, Prince George’s has increased its annual stipend for board-certified teachers to $5,000 from $3,000, according to the school system. That’s on top of a $2,000 stipend from Maryland.
The states with the highest financial incentives tend to have the most board-certified teachers. In North Carolina, where teachers can receive a 12 percent pay increase each year they have a valid certificate, an estimated 13 percent of teachers are board-certified; in South Carolina, where teachers earn a $7,500 bump each year, about 11 percent are board-certified.

Danya Hooker:

A proposal to open a third charter school in Madison is too costly and lacks educational research support, the Madison School District administration said, even as it announced a projected $10.5 million shortfall in next year’s budget.
“We (the administration) believe the proposal is not complete enough and does not contain enough detail about how the school would operate this fall,” Superintendent Art Rainwater said.
Organizers for the Studio School, which would have an arts and technology focus, asked for funding for 2 full-time teachers. Nancy Donahue, lead organizer for the school, estimated first-year costs to be about $35,000 if the school shared a principal and administrative costs with a host school such as the under- capacity Emerson Elementary School.
Rainwater said the administration believes shared principals are far from ideal. He said paying for another principal and administrative staff could cost the district nearly $5 million over five years.

More on the Madison Studio School.

Madison Metropolitan School District:

The Madison Metropolitan School District is seeking suggestions for the name of the new school in the Linden Park area. Anyone can submit a name for consideration by completing a form that’s available from the district, and submitting it by 4 p.m. on February 23rd, 2007.
“We encourage community members and organizations to submit name suggestions,” said Superintendent Art Rainwater. “A wide variety of suggestions from the community will help us as we make this decision.”
The form that needs to be submitted can be obtained from the district website at www.mmsd.org or by calling 663.1879, or stopping by Room 100 of the school administration building, 545 West Dayton Street. The form is available in Spanish, as well as English.

Duke Helfand & Joel Rubin:

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa unveiled a sweeping reform strategy for Los Angeles public schools Wednesday, calling for top-to-bottom changes that would include ending the practice of promoting failing students, requiring school uniforms and bringing in outsiders to help transform schools.
The education blueprint — drawing heavily from reform ideas already underway in Los Angeles and elsewhere — amounts to Villaraigosa’s fall-back position if the courts rule against his efforts to gain a measure of control over the Los Angeles Unified School District.
In releasing the “Schoolhouse” policy framework [400K PDF] at a town hall meeting Wednesday evening, and supporting candidates in the March 6 school board elections, Villaraigosa is hedging his bets: He is seeking a prominent role in the school district through a friendly board majority that could promote his vision of more decentralized schools.

Related LA Times Editorial:

MAYOR ANTONIO Villaraigosa’s blueprint for the Los Angeles schools, unveiled Wednesday evening, contains a little something for everyone. There are some fine-but-small ideas (school uniforms), some big-but-redundant ones (more schools and family centers) and a few that are simply pie-in-the-sky (better-paid teachers, smaller class sizes and longer school hours). The problem with the mayor’s “schoolhouse” plan isn’t his vision — it’s his inability to carry it out.
The feel-good plan offers no thoughts on how the mayor, who currently has no authority over the schools, would bring its proposals to fruition. It provides only vague notions about how such proposals would be paid for, and it doesn’t refer to his legal battle to win partial control of the schools.
That battle isn’t going so well, with the mayor having suffered two losses in state court. So the blueprint is a kind of fall-back plan: If he can’t beat the school district, Villaraigosa will join it. After all, he can wield his considerable charisma to influence Schools Supt. David L. Brewer, and his equally considerable political power to support a sympathetic slate of school board candidates.

Naush Boghossian has more.

Alan Borsuk:

Even before Milwaukee Public Schools as a whole launched a new effort to bar cell phones from schools this week, Bradley Tech High School officials were trying to do that.
“If it’s visible and it’s being used, we confiscate it,” Principal Ed Kovochich said Wednesday, the day MPS leaders, District Attorney John Chisholm and others came to the school to announce steps aimed at reducing violence, with a cell phone ban getting the most attention.
So how many students at that moment were carrying cell phones inside Bradley Tech?
Of 1,600 students in the school, Kovochich estimated, 1,500 had cell phones on them.
“But I’ll give you a buck for every one you see,” he added.
He didn’t need to pay up.

Diane Cardwell:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg laid out ambitious new plans yesterday to overhaul the school system by giving principals more power and autonomy, requiring teachers to undergo rigorous review in order to gain tenure and revising the school financing system that has allowed more-experienced teachers to cluster in affluent areas.
The plan, which would also increase the role of private groups, represents the most dramatic changes to the system since the mayor reorganized it after gaining control of the schools in 2002. Although the mayor has chosen to spend some of the city’s current surplus on tax cuts, he said he could invest more in schools with money promised by Gov. Eliot Spitzer to equalize state education aid across New York.
The administration can undertake most of the education reforms unilaterally, without City Council or union acquiescence.

While New York City appears to de-centralize, Milwaukee is evidently moving in the opposite direction. WNYC has more.
David Herszenhorn has more:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg yesterday effectively doubled his bet that the nation’s largest school system is capable of unprecedented improvement, wagering the education of the city’s nearly 1.1 million students and his own legacy on a far-reaching decentralization plan that puts enormous pressure on principals to raise student achievement.
The mayor’s announcement, in his State of the City address, made clear that by the end of his second term he hopes to leave behind a school system irreversibly changed and virtually unrecognizable from the bureaucracy that existed before he took office.
It will have new rating systems for schools, principals and teachers, a new finance system designed to break the lock that many schools in middle-class neighborhoods have had on highly paid veteran teachers, and a sharply increased role for private groups in helping to run schools. It will also make it harder for teachers to get tenure.
But Mr. Bloomberg’s plan, while cementing his place at the forefront of urban education reform in America, also carries huge risks, raising questions about whether yet another reorganization will bring such swift and noticeable improvement in test scores and graduation rates that it can mute critics who say the administration is using constant change to mask mediocre results.

Megan Twohey:

The English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee used to gather his students in a classroom twice a week. He would stand in the front lecturing for an hour and a half.
Now he limits his face-to-face instruction to once a week. His students spend the rest of class online, posting comments about assigned reading, engaging in online discussions and, in some cases, grading each other’s work.
It is part of hybrid learning, a combination of in-person and online instruction that is on the rise in colleges and universities across the country.
UWM, a pioneer of the method, has offered a smattering of hybrid courses for years. With half a million dollars from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the university plans to launch soon a variety of hybrid degrees, from a bachelor’s in criminal justice to a master’s in occupational therapy.

Jay Matthews:

Rafe Esquith is the most interesting and influential classroom teacher in the country, but he is not getting nearly as much glory as he deserves. He won’t SAY that, of course. Modesty is one of the big lessons taught to his fifth graders in room 56 at the Hobart Boulevard Elementary School in Los Angeles, and Esquith believes that role modeling is one of the most important things that teachers do.
But on the cover of his terrific new book, “Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56,” Esquith hints at what he is feeling when he, a film addict, sees the latest movie based on some other teacher’s life. Underneath his name on the cover are these words: “An Actual Classroom Teacher.”

Joann Gonchar:

On a 10-acre parcel at the southern edge of the master-planned community that is emerging on the site of Denver’s former Stapleton International Airport, educators at an unusual high school are working to provide its diverse student body with a rigorous science, math, and technology focused liberal arts education.
The Denver School of Science & Technology (DSST) is not a neighborhood school, however. Few of its 400 students are Stapleton residents. DSST is a public charter school that admits students from the entire metropolitan area by lottery only. Low-income students make up at least 40 percent of each class, and at least 45 percent are girls. All are expected to attend four-year colleges, despite varying degrees of academic preparation before high school.
To house the ambitious program, officials imagined a building “where kids could feel good about coming to school and about being involved in the sciences,” says David Ethan Greenberg, DSST founder and member of its board of directors. The school’s architect, klipp, responded with a colorful building made up of a pleasing collection of different sized volumes clad in brick, stucco, and metal. The facility opened in January 2005, after DSST spent is first semester of operation in temporary quarters at a parochial school.

Vivian Roe:

No matter what side of these specific issues you fall on, one thing is undeniable: The Milwaukee Public Schools system is failing. We’ve got such horrible statistics when it comes to the dropout rate, illiteracy, proficiency in math and science, discipline in the schools, etc., that even friends from out of state know of our educational crisis.
We’ve got a nasty reputation, but it’s well-deserved.
So when I read that single-sex schools are “controversial” while teachers in essence “deserve more,” I conclude that in reality it’s exactly the opposite.
To disclose, I am a “St. Mary’s Girl” – all-girls St. Mary’s Academy class of 1987. I got an excellent education there, and I was very disappointed when the school closed in 1991.
With none of the distractions of flirting with boys, dressing up to impress boys, not wanting to be “too smart” in front of the boys, we learned. Which is all teenagers are supposed to do in school anyway.
What I remember the most is that being in a relaxed atmosphere, where the learning style and interests of girls was catered to, made each day bring with it lessons in maturity, responsibility and life discipline.
Mind you, we were hardly cloistered and had a good deal of opportunity to mingle with boys (particularly from all-boys Thomas More and Marquette University High School). And it was clear that our counterparts were experiencing the same on their side of the spectrum.

Michael Mathias adds another perspective.

“Green Charter Schools” in Wisconsin Trails Magazine
2007 Wisconsin Charter Schools Conference Co-Sponsored by WCSA & DPI.

• Overview
• Speakers
• Register

Why Public Charter Schools [PDF]?
Links to 34 “green” charter schools

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Editorial:

“Desegregation in Racine and throughout the nation has failed based upon the mechanism used, which is busing,” said County Supervisor Ken Lumpkin, who publishes a black community newspaper. Lumpkin’s partner in a debate held last week, board member Randy Bangs, argued that ending long bus rides would give students more time for other activities, such as studying, and may help close the achievement gap.
Mattie Booker, who taught in the district before desegregation, argued that busing students was necessary.
“I watched black and brown kids play jacks in classes because their teachers did not have what it took to teach them,” she told the crowd at the debate. Her partner in the debate, Sister Michelle Olley of the Racine Dominicans, was School Board president when the board adopted the desegregation policy in 1977. She said it worked throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Michael Alison Chandler:

To overhaul public education, the No Child Left Behind law required a massive expansion of student testing. But it also called for states to ensure that all teachers in core academic subjects are “highly qualified” to help students succeed — an unprecedented mandate that has delivered less than promised.
The law, which turned five years old this week, has held schools to increasingly higher standards for student achievement. For teachers, however, standards meant to guarantee that they know their subjects are often vague and open to broad interpretation.
Legal loopholes and uneven implementation by states and the U.S. Department of Education have diluted the law’s impact on the teaching workforce, some education experts say. They say that meeting the standards of quality is more about shuffling paper than achieving two vital goals: ensuring that teachers are prepared to help students succeed and reducing the teacher talent gap between rich and poor schools.

WKOW-TV notes that Madison Schools Superintendent Art Rainwater has banked quite a bit of unused sick leave time (and therefore money upon his retirement).
WKOW-TV raises some useful policy questions. However, I do think Art is to be commended for the extraordinary amount of time he spends in the community. I’ve been amazed at how frequently I see his name appear around town.
I certainly have had some disagreements with certain policies that he has pushed such as one size fits all mandatory classroom groupings, but Art is to be commended for his extensive time in the schools and community.

Ruth’s recent post on the Madison School District’s Student Discipline Code generated some email. There are a number of related posts available here, including the Fall, 2005 Gangs & School Violence Forum Audio / Video. Post your comments here.