The Madison School Board meets Tuesday evening, June 1, 2010 to discuss the 2010-2011 budget. A few proposed budget amendments were posted recently:
- Lucy Mathiak: Task Force Funding Moratorium [57K PDF]:
I recommend that we place a moratorium on all funding for implementation of task force recommendations, with two exceptions:
1) Funding for middle school teachers to take UW-Madison courses designed to provide algebraic concepts, reasoning, and other content for middle school math teachers who are not proficient in upper level mathematics content. (up to $67,000) [Math Task Force]
2) Funding for fine arts teachers to work over the summer to develop a curriculum guide that is aligned to the recommendations of the Fine Arts Task Force and with state standards. (up to $20,000)
…..
This is just one example. The recent correspondence from teachers and community members regarding the difficulties in producing a quality fine arts curriculum guide point to similar issues in that curricular area. It is impossible to produce change in an organization that is not willing to change. As such, it is hard to rationalize continued funding for initiatives with little or no relationship to the task forces’ findings and recommendations at a time when resources are scarce. - Superintendent Dan Nerad: Reinstate recruiter travel budget: $30,000
- Superintendent Dan Nerad: Reinstate the Administrative Professional Development funds to $112,351.
The board decreased Administrative Professional Development (Conference Travel) to a total of $25,000 ($10,000 Elementary, $10,000 Secondary and $5,000 Doyle-based staff). This amendment would increase this dollar amount by $87,350 to a total of $112,351.. - Superintendent Dan Nerad: Reinstate $75,000 to consultant budget.
Much more on the 2010-2011 Madison School District budget here.
My doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2006 was on the topic of professional development (PD) decision-making. My findings suggested that while PD in one form or another is nearly universally practiced among American K-12 educators, nearly all of it is unconnected to increasing student learning outcomes. This means that while most of the PD in this country does not really work, we insist on continuing to do it just the same.
The theoretical underpinning of my decision-making research was based upon something called “Prospect theory.” Briefly, the Noble Prize winning theory holds that we usually prefer to preserve, protect, or otherwise perpetuate known and tolerable status quos regardless of whether what we are currently doing is having any actual benefit. In other words, we irrationally choose to live with the devil we know rather than risk meeting a greater devil that might come with any meaningful change.
I would challenge Madison Superintendent Nerad to quantify the value of his past PD experiences. He should be required to prove that the status quo of his district’s past PD programs have actually worked. If he can demonstrate that any of what he and his fellow administrators have done in the past have had a measurable effect on the learning outcomes of his students, his request for additional funding should be enthusiastically approved by his school board. If he is unable to do this, however,…
Patrick F. Gould, Ph.D.
Author of “Prudent Decision Making In An Imprudent World (ABC-Clio, 2009).”