Ingredients for successful schools

Alan Borsuk:  

Relationships. That’s the starting point in Kristi Cole’s answer. Healthy, helpful, warm, caring relationships, but ultimately ones aimed at quality, high standards and progress.
My question was: What have you learned about what works when it comes to educating kids?
I don’t know of anyone else who has seen the local education scene in the past couple decades from as many vantage points as Cole. Her father taught in Milwaukee Public Schools for 38 years. He retired in 1991, the year Cole started as a teacher. She has been a school librarian, assistant principal and principal. She held major positions in the MPS central office, overseeing programs dealing with student safety and health as well as charter and alternative schools connected to MPS.
A year ago, she took a job that splits her time, three days a week as an administrator for the high-quality Milwaukee College Prep charter schools and two days a week as a coach for leaders of other schools as part of a nonprofit organization, Schools That Can Milwaukee. At 45, Cole is also working on her PhD in education.
Since her time as principal of Humboldt Park School almost a decade ago, I’ve looked to Cole as an example of how to do urban education well. I thought I’d learn some things myself if I asked her what she had learned. Beyond the emphasis on relationships, here are some ingredients she suggested for a high performing school:

The affluence of a community and the level of arts education in N.J. schools

Laura Waters:

Last week the New Jersey Arts Education Census Project issued its “NJ Arts Education Census,” a report and database that measures the level of access to and participation in art and music programming offered to N.J. public school students in each of our 591 districts.
Most educators – in N.J. and elsewhere — agree that the study of art and music is a boon to children’s intellectual and creative development. However, in the last few years school boards and administrators hear not the melodious tones of Mozart but the siren song of testing and accountability. There are, after all, no current accountability measures in place for a student’s mastery of art history, no statewide assessments of music appreciation.
Districts are further distracted from well-rounded programming by relentless fiscal and political pressure to decrease costs, not add courses. And if you do add a course, it’s more likely to be another section of algebra rather than a survey of Abstract Expressionism.

Forget Accountability, Pursue Success in Education

Mike Ford:

There are several words and phrases that confuse the debate on education reform: Apples-to-apples, finding what works, bringing to scale, and the worst of them all, accountability. The concepts described by these words and phrases are all premised on the idea that there is a single model of delivering quality education to all students.
No such model exists.
It follows that no matter how hard we try, we will not find what works; efforts to bring specific reforms to scale will ultimately fail, and it will always be a struggle to compare the performance of different types of schools. And when it comes to holding schools accountable, who decides for what and to whom?
Presumably in Wisconsin the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is in charge of holding schools accountable. However, the granting of the state’s No Child Left Behind waiver request is reportedly at risk because of vagueness in DPI’s proposed accountability framework. The Wisconsin State Journal reports that a federal review found “Wisconsin’s proposal for holding schools accountable is short on details and lacks ambitious goals to improve student achievement.”

Seattle’s Lafayette Story

Melissa Westbrook:

Update: the district is saying that the HR investigation of the “Lafayette issues” will be completed early next week. That’s pretty fast considering how long this has dragged out. I’m hoping the district has really done a complete investigation along with an explanation of how it got to this point. I also hope that Dr. Enfield will be making some kind of statement of assurance to parents about principals and their understanding of how to handle these kinds of issues.
This is a serious subject with serious allegations. That there appears to be many witnesses and e-mail evidence to nearly everything said and done is clear.
I lay this out as clearly as I know it from extensive input I have received. I have a statement (at the end of this thread) from the district that I believe would cover any statement from either the principal, Jo Lute-Ervin or Aurora Lora, Executive Director for that region.
I have known Lafayette to be a popular and high-performing school. It is one of the many over-enrolled schools in West Seattle.
But as I have told others, this issue is much bigger than just Lafayette.
Once again, if staff had followed protocol, this issue could have been quietly resolved in a fair and satisfactory manner. If the district staff had followed protocol, it could have been resolved without any outside notice. However, it appears that did not happen either at the school or district level.

Public school choice alone isn’t enough

Ron Matus:

Over at the Gradebook (the Tampa Bay Times education blog) this morning, another example of why public school choice alone isn’t enough:
Forty-two percent of the 2,200 parents in the Pasco County School District who applied to switch schools this fall were denied, the Gradebook reports, often because there wasn’t enough room. (Florida’s voter-approved class-size restrictions contributed to the complications.) The blog post notes the appeals process is ongoing so “a few more families might win their preferred school seats.”
That still leaves a whole bunch frustrated – and unnecessarily so.

Governance: The Acquisition of Knowledge

Rory Stewart:

Today, instead of deferring to long practical experience, and deep knowledge of a particular place, managers prefer to implement ‘best practice’ from somewhere else; they impose theoretical models with less and less understanding of what does not work on the ground; and they justify decisions with abstract metrics, and obscure concepts. And as more and more positions are filled with people with this mentality, there are fewer people, with the confidence, or seniority, to expose the shallowness of this approach. Our culture is beginning to forget what deep knowledge and contact with the ground looked like, or why it mattered.

The solution must be to give power back to people with deep knowledge. But it won’t happen through running training courses. You need to force institutions to change their promotion criteria, and put those with knowledge, judgement and experience back at the very top. Some of them might not be ideal managers: they might be less popular with staff, unappealing to stake-holders, more difficult to work with. But they can offer things we have forgotten how to measure: not just long experience, but rigour, a sense of vocation, and unexpected frames of reference. They might have prevented some of our recent mistakes. They could certainly bring more flexible and inventive ways of engaging with the world. And we cannot afford to continue to ignore them.

Something to consider in light of Oconomowoc’s planned changes.

Sometimes thinking is a bad idea. Ian Leslie draws on Dylan, Djokovic and academic research to put the case for unthinking…

More Intelligent Life:

Professor Claude Steele, of Stanford, studies the effects of performance anxiety on academic tests. He set a group of students consisting of African-Americans and Caucasians a test, telling them it would measure intellectual ability. The African-Americans performed worse than the Caucasians. Steele then gave a separate group the same test, telling them it was just a preparatory drill. The gulf narrowed sharply. The “achievement gap” in us education has complex causes, but one may be that bright African-American students are more likely to feel they are representing their ethnic group, which leads them to overthink.
How do you learn to unthink? Dylan believes the creative impulse needs protecting from self-analysis: “As you get older, you get smarter, and that can hinder you…You’ve got to programme your brain not to think too much.” Flann O’Brien said we should be “calculatedly stupid” in order to write. The only reliable cure for overthinking seems to be enjoyment, something that both success and analysis can dull. Experienced athletes and artists often complain that they have lost touch with what made them love what they do in the first place. Thinking about it is a poor substitute.

Oconomowoc worth watching

Wisconsin State Journal:

Oconomowoc’s plans for next school year are undeniably bold:

  • Reduce the number of teachers but pay the many who stay a lot more money for teaching an extra period.
  • Use technology — including students’ own hand-held devices — to encourage and personalize learning.
  • Save more than $500,000 to help balance the district’s budget without reducing class sizes or cutting programs for students.

Wisconsin will be watching closely for results.

Wisconsin, Milwaukee & Madison High School Graduation Rates

The DPI released graduation rates last year using both the new and old calculation method for the state and individual school districts, and did the same again this year.
An example of the difference between the two calculations: The legacy rate for the most recent data shows Wisconsin’s students had a 90.5% graduation rate for 2011, instead of the 87% rate for that class under the new method the federal government considers more accurate.
Using the new, stricter method, the data shows Milwaukee Public Schools’ graduation rate increased for 2011 to 62.8%., up from 61.1% in 2010.
“We have much more work to do, but these numbers – along with ACT score growth and growth in 10th grade state test scores – show that we continue to move in the right direction,” MPS Superintendent Gregory Thornton said in a statement Thursday.
MPS officials on Thursday pointed out that the 1.7 percentage-point increase between the two years for the district was greater than the state four-year graduation rate increase in that time. The state’s four-year rate increased 1.3 percentage points, from 85.7% in 2009-’10.

Matthew DeFour:

The annual report from the Department of Public Instruction released Thursday also showed Madison’s four-year graduation rate dipped slightly last year to 73.7 percent.
According to the data, 50.1 percent of Madison’s black students graduated in four years, up from 48.3 percent in 2010. The white student graduation rate declined about 3.1 percentage points, to 84.1 percent.
District officials and education experts said it was unclear what accounted for the changes, and it’s difficult to draw any conclusions about Madison’s achievement gap from one or two years of data.
“You need to be looking over a period of several years that what you’re looking at is real change rather than a little blip from one to the other,” said Adam Gamoran, director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
The graduation rates of black and white students in Madison have been a major topic of discussion in the city over the past year.
Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.

Standing Firm on Grad Rates
by Chuck Edwards:

Even as the Obama administration is busy dismantling much of NCLB through waivers, it is standing firm on some Bush-era decisions.
One of them is to consider high school graduation to be exactly that — graduating with a regular diploma, even if it takes five or six years for kids with special barriers. For accountability decisions affecting high schools, the Bush administration would not allow states to give schools “graduation” credit for students who obtain a GED or certificate of completion — only a regular diploma would do.
In response to the Obama administration’s new “ESEA Flexibility” initiative, states have taken another run at that decision, which was enshrined in last-gasp Bush regulations issued in October 2008.

Selling Lesson Plans Online

Zoe Fox:

Teaching isn’t known to be a lucrative profession, but online marketplace Teachers Pay Teachers is changing that for some educators.
Deanna Jump, a kindergarten teacher from Georgia, has made $700,000 selling her lesson plans on Teachers Pay Teachers, an ecommerce startup where teachers offer their lesson plans to fellow educators.
Paul Edelman, the founder of Teachers Pay Teachers, created the platform following a four-year stint as a New York City public school teacher.
“I had an insight that the materials teachers created night after night had monetary value, so I set out to create a marketplace called Teachers Pay Teachers,” Edelman told Mashable. “Teachers are now making a pretty significant supplemental income and creating higher quality materials.”

This time, Florida education reformers hand ammo to critics

Ron Matus:

The last thing you want to give people waging a scorched-earth campaign against you is a gas can and a match.
Though well intended, the hard-charging Florida Board of Education moved too far, too fast last year when it raised the bar on academic standards. The short-term result for the state’s standardized writing test isn’t pretty. According to scores released this week, the percentage of passing fourth graders alone dropped from 81 to 27.
In an emergency session, the board tried to mitigate. It revised the passing scores downward so the percent passing will be roughly the same this year as it was last year. Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson also admitted the state should have better communicated the new scoring criteria to teachers.

College rankings: Which countries have the best education systems?

Christian Science Monitor:

A new higher education ranking focuses on evaluating quality by countries as a whole, as opposed to specific academic institutions. Universitas 21, an organization of 23 research universities across 15 countries, published its first ranking of countries “which are ‘best’ at providing higher education.” Universitas 21’s report, published by the University of Melbourne in Australia, ranked 48 countries in all. Here are some of their findings:

Florida, not kids, flunked FCAT testing

Fred Grimm:

Proficiency under pressure — that’s what we test for. Right? That’s what public education is all about in the new Florida. Standardized tests decide whether students graduate, how much teachers earn, what performance grades schools get, how much bonus money to give to schools that excel.
So much rides on test outcomes that classroom curriculums have been narrowed to a kind of perpetual test preparation. And test taking. The Fort Myers News-Press, looking at the state’s mandatory testing regime, counted 27 standardized tests that eighth-grade students were required to jam into this school year. Students, teachers, principals, administrators, superintendents, even school board members, all know they’re judged by the outcomes of tests.
Yet the state superintendent, the state board of education and NCS Pearson, the giant testing corporation with a four-year, $254 million contract to administer the state’s standardized test regime, seem to suffer no such accountability. Their competence, their proficiency under pressure has been tested this school year. They flunked and flunked spectacularly.

Statement from Commissioner Robinson on FCAT Writing

Yesterday’s vote by the State Board of Education to recalibrate the school grading scale of the FCAT Writing test was done in response to a tougher grading system that appropriately expects our students to understand proper punctuation, spelling and grammar. The Board acted after it became clear that students were posting significantly lower scores under newer, tougher writing standards.
We are asking more from our students and teachers than we ever have. I believe it is appropriate to expect that our students know how to spell and how to properly punctuate a sentence. Before this year, those basics were not given enough attention, nor did we give enough attention to communicating these basic expectations to our teachers. I support the Board’s decision to recalibrate the school grading scale while keeping the writing standards high.

Good idea: Proposal would get arts back into Milwaukee schools

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Amid a crushing budget bind, Milwaukee Public Schools has had to cut dozens of specialized teachers from its classrooms in recent years – teachers who bring arts, music and physical education to Milwaukee’s kids. That’s why we like a new idea proposed by Superintendent Gregory Thornton.
Thornton is proposing the creation of a $13.4 million fund in the district’s budget to ensure that schools have at least one arts, music or physical education instructor. The money would be allocated to all MPS schools based on size. At minimum, schools would receive enough money to pay for one of the three programs for students at least one day a week.
Studies confirm the value of such education for kids, but, unfortunately, low-income students in urban schools often get shortchanged. Thornton says that’s not fair.

IBM Marks 15 Years Since Deep Blue Defeated Garry Kasparov

Socrates:

May 11, 2012 marks the 15-year anniversary since IBM’s chess-playing supercomputer Deep Blue defeated the reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov. In the video below IBM Research scientist Dr. Murray Campbell, one of the original developers, talks about the challenges and breakthroughs of building Deep Blue.
Designed as a “brute force” high-power parallel processing super-computer, Deep Blue could analyze 200 million chess positions per second. It defeated Kasparov 3.5-2.5 after losing 4-2 the previous year. After the game Deep Blue was used to develop drug treatments, analyze risk and conduct data mining. It also paved the way for the next generation of its replacements – Blue Gene and Watson.

Grad School: Higher Degrees of Debt

Annamarie Andriotis:

Graduate school, a path to higher learning and potentially higher income, increasingly lands students in higher debt brackets.
But while Congress searches for ways to alleviate the loan burden for undergrads, experts say little attention is being paid to master’s students. In fact, lost in the debate over the nation’s student loan debt topping the $1 trillion mark is that graduate students account for a third of that sum — and that their indebtedness is likely about to grow much worse.
Beginning in July, subsidized Stafford loans will no longer be available to graduate students, a shift that experts say will force student borrowers into more expensive loans to cover tuition. These loans are the most popular type for graduate school, with more than one-third of all students signing up for them annually, because the government covers the interest payments during the years of enrollment. In contrast, other loans require students to pay the full cost.

Time for a Medicaid-Education Grand Swap

Lamar Alexander:

Staring down steep tuition hikes, students at the University of California have taken to carrying picket signs. As far as I can tell, though, none has demanded that President Barack Obama accept a Grand Swap that could protect their education while saving them money. Allow me to explain.
When I was governor of Tennessee in the early 1980s, I traveled to meet with President Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office and offer that Grand Swap: Medicaid for K-12 education. The federal government would take over 100% of Medicaid, the federal health-care program mainly for low-income Americans, and states would assume all responsibility for the nation’s 100,000 public schools. Reagan liked the idea, but it went nowhere.
If we had made that swap in 1981, states would have come out ahead, keeping $13.2 billion in Medicaid spending and giving $8.7 billion in education spending back to Washington. Today, states would have about $92 billion a year in extra funds, as they’d keep the $149 billion they’re now spending on Medicaid and give back to Washington the $57 billion that the federal government spends per year on schools.

Eliminating the Central School District Office: Philadelphia

Kristen A. Graham:

Knudsen, in a news conference, avoided references to the “Philadelphia School District.”
“We are now looking at a much broader definition of education in the city that includes not only district schools but other schools as well,” he said.
Mayor Nutter hailed the plan, which he said would push control over education down to the school level.
“If we don’t take significant action, the system will collapse,” the mayor said at a separate news conference. “If you care about kids and if you care about education, if you care about the future of this city, that’s what we need to all grow up and deal with.”
Teachers union president Jerry Jordan decried the radical restructuring as the SRC divesting itself of many of the core responsibilities of public education. He called it a “cynical, right-wing, market-driven” blueprint.
“This is totally dismantling the system,” Jordan said. “It’s a business plan crafted to privatize the services within the School District.”

Decentralization is inevitable, regardless of idealogy. We’re no longer sending most kids to work the fields and cattle before/after school or in the summer.

Mix of fates for Catholic schools: Some thrive while others struggle

Doug Erickson, via a kind reader’s email:

At St. Ambrose Academy in Madison, neither the curriculum nor the faith is watered down.
Freshmen at the Catholic high school read Homer’s “The Odyssey” and discuss it using the Socratic method. Students attend Mass three times weekly, and religion infuses most classes.
It’s an approach that has found great favor among a slice of the Catholic populace. Enrollment is projected to balloon from 68 this school year to 210 in five years.
The growth starkly contrasts the fate of St. Mary’s Catholic School in Platteville, also in the Madison Catholic Diocese. The 84-student school is scheduled to close June 1.
Diocesan officials and others say St. Mary’s is an atypical case not reflective of the health of the other 45 Catholic schools in the diocese. St. Mary’s parishioners became divided over the arrival two years ago of conservative priests. School enrollment and donations dropped.
“Platteville was very unique,” said Matthew Kussow, executive director of the Wisconsin Council of Religious & Independent Schools. “They had a specific situation that was a change from the past, and when that happens, issues can come up.”

Teen assaulted by group of girls near Madison East High School

Channel3000.com, via a kind reader:

A teenager said she was attacked and beaten by three classmates near East High School.
Two 16-year-old girls and a 15-year-old girl were arrested last week in connection with the assault.
The victim, Alana Krupp, 15, said she knows the girls involved but maintains she wasn’t talking trash about them.
The incident happened last Wednesday at the intersection of Fourth Street and Winnebago Street a block south of East High School.
Krupp arrived at the bus stop like any other day, but in a few seconds an otherwise OK freshman year at East High School was turned upside down when she was confronted by the girls.
“She said, ‘I wanted to fight you.’ And I said, ‘I’m not going to fight you, because there’s no point in it. I never did anything to you,'” Krupp said. “She hit me in the face, and I got pulled down to the ground by my hair.”

Related: Madison police calls near local high schools: 1996-2006.

Why Can’t We Talk About Differentiating Teacher Salaries?

New Jersey Left Behind:

Here’s a striking synchronicity: on May 10th (last Thursday) in a Wall St. Journal  article about the recent release of U.S. students’ “deeply disappointing”; science scores on the NAEP national assessment, NJ Ed. Comm. Chris Cerf is quoted in the context of differentiating salaries for hard-to-fill positions like science and math:

The Obama administration and some state leaders, including the Republican governors of New Jersey and Iowa, in recent years have pushed districts to alter union contracts to allow higher salaries for teachers in sciences and other hard-to-staff subjects. Christopher Cerf, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s education commissioner, said the “market” for science teachers is highly competitive so schools should “use compensation creatively to maximize outcomes for kids.” Teachers have insisted that pay changes be made only as part of broader contract negotiations, giving them more input into the process

On the same day the Journal article ran, NJ Assembly Democrats Mila Jasey, Albert Coutinho, Dan Benson, and Ralph Caputo issued a press release on the passage of a new bill intended “to address teacher shortages in math and science.”

New online tool tracks Rhode Island school progress

Darren Soens:

The Rhode Island Department of Education launched a new online tool Tuesday that allows families to track the progress and proficiency of their children’s schools.
The program is called the Rhode Island Growth Model Visualization Tool. It is essentially a high-tech report card grading local schools and districts based on results of New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) testing.
“What this tool does, is it takes each school and school district that’s in it and looks at different grade levels and groups,” explained Rhode Island Education Commissioner Deborah Gist. “You can slice and dice [the data] in all kinds of different ways.”

School Test Backlash Grows

Stephanie Banchero:

The increasing role of standardized testing in U.S. classrooms is triggering pockets of rebellion across the country from school officials, teachers and parents who say the system is stifling teaching and learning.
In Texas, some 400 local school boards–more than a third of the state’s total–have adopted a resolution this year asking lawmakers to scale back testing. In Everett, Wash., more than 500 children skipped state exams earlier this month in protest. A national coalition of parents and civil rights groups, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, signed a petition in April asking Congress to reduce federal testing mandates.
In recent weeks, the protest spread to Florida, where two school boards, including Palm Beach, signed on to a petition similar to the one in Texas. A parent in a third, Broward County, on Tuesday formally requested that school officials support the movement.

For a Nation of Whiners, Therapists Try Tough Love

Elizabeth Bernstein:

Sharon Rosenblatt was talking to her therapist fast and furiously about her dating life, when the woman suddenly interrupted her. “Haven’t we heard this before?” the therapist asked.
Was Ms. Rosenblatt offended? Not at all. The 23-year-old, who works in business development for an information technology company, says she specifically sought out a tough-love therapist after graduating from college and moving to Silver Spring, Md., two years ago.
“When there’s unconditional love from my therapist, I’m not inclined to change,” Ms. Rosenblatt says. Previous therapists, she says, would listen passively while she complained unchallenged.

How Dickensian Childhoods Leave Genetic Scars

The Wall Street Journal:

Being maltreated as a child can perhaps affect you for life. It now seems the harm might reach into your very DNA. Two recently published studies found evidence of changes to the genetic material in people with experience of maltreatment. These are the tip of an iceberg of discoveries in the still largely mysterious field of “epigenetic” epidemiology–the alteration of gene expression in ways that affect later health.

Journey for racial justice is not over

Eli Hager:

In our national conversation about race and other forms of inequality, presidential candidates and the media have fostered a consensus that the civil rights movement is finished. The February groundbreaking for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, for example, celebrated the “history” of racial injustice. Republican candidate Mitt Romney noted that month that we shouldn’t be “concerned” about economic injustice — by now, he averred, that problem has been solved. Even Martin Luther King Jr. has been widely reimagined as a genial, nonpartisan man who would be satisfied with the legalistic gains black Americans have achieved yet unconcerned about their substandard socioeconomic status. Civil rights activists who disagree are said to be stuck in the 1960s or harbor, as Romney put it, a “resentment of success.” They are accused of playing the “race card,” engaging in “class warfare” or generally disrespecting the sound-bite-consensus that this country has moved beyond the racial and economic complications of its past.

Rebekka Horlacher “What is Bildung? The Everlasting Attractiveness of a Fuzzy Concept in German Education Theory”

Center for European Studies, via a kind email:

Please join us for a lecture on “What Is Bildung? The Everlasting Attractiveness of a Fuzzy Concept in German Education Theory” Rebekka Horlacher, Senior Scientist, University of Zurich, Switzerland. Sponsored by the Center for European Studies, Center for German and European Studies and Curriculum & Instruction.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
3:00 – 4:00 pm, 220 Teacher Education Bldg., 225 N. Mills St. Madison, WI

Madison Teachers Meetings Scheduled 5/16 and 5/22

60K PDF Newsletter via a kind Jeannie Bettner email:

Members of all MTI bargaining units (MTI, EA-MTI, SEE-MTI, SSA-MTI and USO-MTI) are invited to attend an MTI meeting to discuss the impact of Governor Walker’s Act 10 on MTI members, on MTI’s various Collective Bargaining Agreements, on the Union itself, and where we can go from here. A question and answer session will follow. Do you have questions?

  • Wednesday, May 16, 4:30-6:00 p.m., LaFollette High School, Room C-17
  • Tuesday, May 22, 4:30-6:00 p.m., Madison Labor Temple, 1602 S. Park Street

MTI staff and elected leaders are also available to attend meetings at your school or work site. Speak to your MTI Faculty Representative today about scheduling a meeting.

Throwaway People: Will Teens Sent to Die in Prison Get a Second Chance?

Liliana Segura:

The youngest of twelve kids, Trina was known as a slow child. She had a very low IQ and couldn’t read or write. Kids made fun of her for sucking her fingers. Her mother died when Trina was 9, and her father was a violent alcoholic capable of unthinkable cruelty. (Sworn affidavits describe, in addition to horrific abuse against his wife and kids, how he once beat the family dog to death with a hammer as Trina watched, then made his children clean up its remains.) From the time Trina was young, she was mostly cared for by her siblings: among them, Edith (or Edy), the eldest, who took over her mother’s responsibilities, and twin sisters Lynn and Linda, just a year older than Trina. In and out of homelessness, Trina and the twins slept in cars and abandoned buildings, washing their clothes in police stations and foraging for food wherever they could, including from trash cans.
When she was 11, Trina was sent by her grandmother to Allentown State Hospital for mental treatment; she was discharged at 13 against the advice of her doctor and stopped taking her medication.
Following the fire, prison officials requested she be given a psychiatric evaluation, after which she was deemed unfit for trial and hospitalized. A second evaluation yielded a diagnosis of schizophrenia. But a third assessment, just a few weeks later, deemed her competent to stand trial. Her lawyer did not challenge the decision. Nor did he challenge the prosecutor’s successful push to try Trina as an adult. (He would later be jailed and disbarred.) Trina was tried in March 1977. Trial transcripts have been lost, but it’s clear that she took the stand as the sole witness for the defense. Frances Newsome was the key witness for the prosecution, telling the jury Trina had set the fire as revenge on Sylvia Harvey for forbidding her sons to play with her.

California’s toe in the water on school “vouchers”?

Peter Hanley:

Editor’s note: Progress in the parental school choice movement is measured not only by big gains in states like Indiana and Louisiana, but by the flurry of incremental developments in more states every year. Peter Hanley, executive director of the California-based American Center for School Choice, offers a look at encouraging developments in his home state.
California has the nation’s largest charter school program, with 982 charter schools serving 412,000 students. But with nearly a two-thirds Democratic legislature heavily influenced by the California Teachers Association, tax credit scholarships or vouchers have been entirely off the table. In fact, charter schools’ flexibility is under near constant attack. Now, though, two legislators have introduced innovative approaches that address a unique feature in California’s constitution and attempt to bring educational tax credits to the state.

Wisconsin reworking bid to exit federal education mandates

Wisconsin is reworking its application for relief from certain elements of a 10-year-old federal education law, based on feedback received from the U.S. Department of Education last month that outlined where the state’s application was light on details.
A letter from April 17 indicates the state needs a better plan for transitioning to college- and career-ready standards in its schools, and for implementing teacher and principal evaluation and support systems. Wisconsin’s plan also needs ambitious yearly objectives for schools and better criteria for recognizing progress over time in persistently low-performing schools.
State officials on Monday said that the cycle of feedback and revision is normal as states around the country propose new accountability measures for schools that would replace the punitive system under the federal law known as No Child Left Behind.
“This is very, very common,” Lynette Russell, assistant state superintendent for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, said in an interview Monday.

Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, who did not see the letter before the weekend, said it affirmed concerns were raised before the application was submitted that DPI’s proposal for a new accountability system “left not much meat on the bones.”
“Folks thought they would do a cursory, general waiver and get it, and at the end of the day it would be pretty hard to be held accountable for it,” Olsen said. “The (U.S. Education) department is not letting Wisconsin get away with that at all.”
The letter commended Wisconsin for planning for a new common set of standards aligned to college and career readiness, and also for developing a teacher evaluation system based on educator practice and student test scores.
But it criticized the application for not detailing how the state would implement those new systems

State responds to concerns over No Child Left Behind application

1 in 3 autistic young adults lack jobs, education

Associated Press:

One in 3 young adults with autism have no paid job experience, college or technical schooling nearly seven years after high school graduation, a study finds. That’s a poorer showing than those with other disabilities including those who are mentally disabled, the researchers said.
With roughly half a million autistic kids reaching adulthood in the next decade, experts say it’s an issue policymakers urgently need to address.
The study was done well before unemployment peaked from the recession. The situation today is tough even for young adults who don’t have such limitations.

Higher Education & The Data Storm

David Clemens:

Consensus has it that we are living in the Age of Big Data. When our college president was hired, he declared himself “data driven”; during interviews for vice president of academic affairs, all three finalists announced that they, too, were “data driven” (though none could articulate a clear image of what higher education might look like ten years from now). So what does “data driven” mean? Every day, our digital helpmeets dump petabytes of data into our cringing neural pathways. We are besotted with data; we’ve never had so much of the stuff. But to be data driven sounds uncomfortably like Captain Ahab (who was whale driven).
The words “data driven” are gang members; when I hear them, I can be sure the words “outcomes” and “a culture of evidence” are slouching around nearby and will shortly make an appearance. Often, data is announced (as if newly arrived from Mount Sinai) in totals, aggregates, medians, percentages, rates, multipliers–but then the data just piles up in corners and collects under the bed.
Frankly, I don’t have much confidence in data’s probative value. Even though digits and stats supply a comforting sense of measurement, certitude, and solidity, data alone is still the smallest particle of information, no matter how much of it accumulates. Data by itself is inert, like Frankenstein’s monster, patched together and waiting for a lightning bolt. Sometimes it waits a long time. It may seem irrefutable, but until data is analyzed, it just lays there. Remembering Christmas presents from his childhood in Wales, Dylan Thomas recalled receiving “books that told me everything about the wasp, except why.”

123 Page Madison School District Achievement Plan Published

The Madison School District 3.5MB PDF, via a kind reader’s email:

Dear Community Members,
The preliminary plan to eliminate achievement gaps provided a framework around which to engage members of the community in a discussion about what we need to do to address the achievement gaps. To gather input, we held community input sessions, met with community organizations, and talked with our staff. Summaries and an analysis of session feedback are listed in the plan and at mmsd.org/thefuture.
That input served as our guide in developing these recommendations. Then, we also considered educational research, the new federal mandates of the Response to Intervention (RtI) program, cost, and logistics, as well as community input. We reviewed what has worked in our school district, in our community, and in other districts across the country.
I believe that if we are going to do better by our children, we must invest. But I also believe we have a responsibility to balance the needs of our community and leverage resources for the greatest impact on student achievement. The final recommended plan is reduced from a financial perspective. This was done to ensure greater sustainability from a fiscal perspective.
The revised plan maintains the six original areas of focus. These six chapters illustrate the landscape of education today – areas that are critical to closing achievement gaps. They also represent areas where leverage exists to eliminate our achievement gaps. Any successful plan to close student achievement gaps must employ a combination of strategies. If there were one simple answer, it would have been employed a long time ago and replicated in districts across the country. Our reality calls for many solutions at many levels of the organization. Our problem is a complex one. Our solutions must be equally complex in their approach.
The good news is that research on what works has been going on for years. Although there is no one right way to teach all students, the research is solid on increasing student performance through an aligned curriculum, effective instruction, frequent monitoring of progress, research-based decision making before a child experiences failure, having interventions in place to help learners, and involving the entire community in support of children.
To address this last point, this plan also asks for a commitment from the community to join MMSD using elements of the Strive Model (Kania, John and Kramer, Mark. (2011). “Collective impact.” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2011) to develop a network which links services to schools through a collaborative district approach as well a school-based grass roots “community school model” approach based on each school’s need. This concept is elaborated where appropriate in each chapter and in the conclusion of this document.
The recommendations within this plan focus on academic rigor, expectations, accountability, response to behaviors, professional development, cultural competence,3 parents as partners, hiring for diversity, and establishing a new relationship with our community. It also is a plan that supports the federal mandates of Response to Intervention (RtI), which is the practice of providing high-quality instruction, interventions, and progress monitoring which is matched to student needs to make decisions about changes in instruction, and analyzing student response data decisions through collaboration.
These final recommendations reflect some effective work already under way that needs additional focus in order to meet student needs and RtI requirements, some promising practices, and some new ideas. These recommendations are all based on research and are a call to action to our staff, our families, and our community.
Some recommendations from the preliminary plan have been made more cost effective, and others have been elaborated upon. The following items are either new, have been eliminated, or have been revised to allow further planning during the 2012-13 school year:
New Initiative: Ensure all K-12 Students Demonstrate Proficiency in the Standards for Mathematics Practice
New Initiative: Drop-Out Recovery
New Initiative: Increase Options for Restorative Practices in the MMSD Student Conduct and Discipline Plan
Eliminated: PEOPLE Program for Elementary Students Eliminated: Youth Court Expansion to Middle School
Eliminated: Implement 21st Century Community Learning Centers in the Highest Need Elementary Schools
Eliminated: Professional Development – Technology Coach
Eliminated: Collaborate with the Community to Implement the Parent-Child Home Program
Further Planning: Extend the School Day
This final recommended plan, Building our Future, was developed to eliminate our achievement gaps. As a school district, we know we need to take new action. We also know we must work with you, members of this great community, to better address the needs of our children. We now look forward to discussing this final proposed plan with the Board of Education. Let’s work together to make a difference for our children.
Sincerely,
Daniel A. Nerad, Superintendent

Pages 117 to 123 describe the baseline metrics.
Matthew DeFour has more.

Why Is Mathalicious Raising Money on Kickstarter?

Audrey Watters:

Mathalicious is currently raising $164,000 to create a series of math videos – 52 in all as the project name suggests. That’s one math video a week, along with a teacher’s guide on how the videos can be incorporated into lessons. The videos will follow the approach of the rest of Mathalicious mission: show students how math helps you understand the world around you. I don’t mean “two trains leave the station” kind of story problems either. I mean problems that are interesting and relevant to students and that teach basic math concepts (Common Core State Standards-aligned) as well as broader problem solving and critical thinking skills. A sample lesson on probability: Does “Bankrupt” come up more often than it should on Wheel of Fortune? Is the show rigged?
$164,000 is sizable goal for a Kickstarter project; the average project seeks under $10,000. But there have been some fairly incredible success stories with Kickstarter as of late. Musician Amanda Palmer raised her goal of $100,000 for her latest record and tour in just 6 hours (she’s now raised over $600,000 with 21 days still to go). 5 projects so far this year have raised over $1 million, and when its campaign ends on May 18, the Pebble E-Paper Watch will have set the new Kickstarter record, with over $10 million raised. The original ask: $100,000.

Devaluing value-added assessments

Jay Matthews:

I don’t spend much time debunking our most powerful educational fad: value-added assessments to rate teachers. My colleague Valerie Strauss eviscerates value-added several times a week on her Answer Sheet blog with the verve of a samurai, so who needs me?
Unfortunately, value-added is still growing in every corner of our nation, including D.C. schools, despite all that torn flesh and missing pieces. It’s like those monsters lumbering through this year’s action films. We’ve got to stop them! Let me fling my small, aged body in their way with the best argument against value-added I have seen in some time.
It comes from education analyst and teacher trainer Grant Wiggins and his “Granted, but . . .” blog. He starts with the reasons many people, including him and me, like the idea of value-added. Why not rate teachers by how much their students improve over time? In theory, this allows us to judge teachers in low- and high-income schools fairly, instead of declaring, as we tend to do, that the teachers in rich neighborhoods are better than those in poor neighborhoods because their students’ test scores are higher.

Much more on “value added assessment“, here.

Obama’s education policies will wreak havoc on CA schools

Richard Rider:

In an op-ed featured in Flashreport, Lance Izumi discussed what will happen to California’s educational system now that it has agreed to replace its own rigorous state student-learning standards with the comparatively less difficult national standards supported by the Obama administration. Will courses and curriculum change? How will testing of students be affected? Will the effort to reform teacher evaluation be derailed? So far, the answers to these questions are not promising.
The Obama administration required states to adopt the national “Common Core” standards as a condition for competing for federal “Race to the Top” grants and for receiving waivers from penalties for failing to comply with the student-achievement requirements of the No Child Left Behind law.

Carnival of Mathematics 86

Brent Yorgey:

Welcome to the 86th Carnival of Mathematics! is semiprime, nontotient, and noncototient. It is also happy since and . In fact, it is the smallest happy, nontotient semiprime (the only smaller happy nontotient is 68–which is, of course, 86 in reverse–but 68 is not semiprime).
However, the most interesting mathematical fact about 86 (in my opinion) is that it is the largest known integer for which the decimal expansion of contains no zeros! In particular, . Although no one has proved it is the largest such , every up to (which is quite a lot, although still slightly less than the total number of integers) has been checked to contain at least one zero. The probability that any larger power of 2 contains no zeros is vanishingly small, given some reasonable assumptions about the distribution of digits in base-ten expansions of powers of two.

Dysfunction: A Case Study

Charlie Mas:

As we piece together the history of the recent proposal to revise the Transportation Standards, it reveals a story of deception, misinformation, abdication of responsibility, and, more than anything else, hypocrisy.
The Board will vote on Wednesday evening on a revised set of Transportation Standards for 2012-2013. We can’t say what those revised standards will be exactly – they have yet to release the final version. They will undoubtedly vote to approve – they always do. But what will they approve? Even they don’t know. This comes after the Board already adopted transportation standards for the coming school year. How did we get here? It’s an ugly, ugly story.

Teachers as Policymakers?

Scott Joftus:

Should teachers be setting educational policy? Based on the comments to my recent article for Education Next, the answer is a resounding “yes!” My response is a bit more nuanced: It might be worth a try, although scaling any successes would be challenging.
In the article, I acknowledged the tension between my role as education consultant and “policy wonk,” on the one hand, and my role as a father of two girls in (a very good) public elementary school, on the other. For example, as a consultant, I help schools implement positive behavioral interventions and supports for disruptive students, but, as a parent, I find myself wishing disruptive students would simply be removed from my daughters’ classroom. This tension is hardly unique to education: Consider the well-meaning environmentalist who lives in a large home and drives an SUV.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: California deficit has soared to $16 billion, Gov. Jerry Brown says

PolitiCal:

Gov. Jerry Brown announced on Saturday that the state’s deficit has ballooned to $16 billion, a huge increase over his $9.2-billion estimate in January.
The bigger deficit is a significant setback for California, which has struggled to turn the page on a devastating budget crisis. Brown, who announced the deficit on YouTube, is expected to outline his full budget proposal on Monday in Sacramento.
“This means we will have to go much further, and make cuts far greater, than I asked for at the beginning of the year,” Brown said in the video.

From big-city superintendent to supporter of vouchers and charters – Arlene Ackerman, podcastED

Ron Matus:

Last fall, Arlene Ackerman, the former schools superintendent in Philadelphia, made a stunning announcement for someone of her status. In a newspaper op-ed, she forcefully came out in favor of expanded school choice options, including more charter schools and yes, even vouchers. “I’ve come to a sad realization,” she wrote. “Real reform will never come from within the system.”
In this redefinED podcast, Ackerman talks more about her evolution.
For years, she pushed change from the highest perches in K-12 education. Before Philly, she headed the school districts in Washington D.C. and San Francisco. She led the latter when it became a finalist for the prestigious Broad Prize, annually awarded to the best urban school district in the country, in 2005. But the kinds of sweeping reform needed to help poor and minority kids, she said, too often met with resistance from unions, politicians, vendors and others who benefited from not budging.

Preparing Urban Students to Succeed in College – Dayton, OH

Meagan Pant:

This just in from the University of Dayton
The Dayton Early College Academy — on the University of Dayton campus — received a bronze medal from U.S. News & World Report in its annual ranking of America’s Best High Schools, released May 11.
The report analyzed academic and enrollment data from nearly 22,000 public high schools to find the best in the nation. A total of 4,850 schools received recognition in gold, silver and bronze categories.
DECA is one of four early college high schools in Ohio to receive recognition.
The University of Dayton founded DECA in 2003 in partnership with Dayton Public Schools with the singular focus of preparing urban students to succeed in college.

The Murky Ethics (and Crystal-Clear Economics) of the Unpaid Internship

Derek Thompson:

My name is Derek, and I was an unpaid intern.
I begin with a confession, because the unpaid internship has become something of a dishonor, if not a scandal. And, as New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse wrote in his blockbuster take-down of the institution in 2010, I might have helped various companies conspire to break the law — even if it’s the murkiest, most broken law in the country.
Of the 10 million students at four-year colleges in the U.S., more than 75% have at least one internship before graduating. We don’t know how many of those internships are unpaid, but Ross Perlin, the author of Intern Nation, estimates that it’s up to one-third. “It’s the only major category of work that I know of that is not tracked at all by the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” Perlin said.

Education reform action needed now

Michelle Rhee:

November is nearing, and around the country candidates are courting voters. But, if they really want to connect with the men and women they hope to represent, they should start speaking up about a topic Americans care deeply about but which is being ignored.
A recent poll by the College Board showed more than two-thirds of voters call education an issue that is “extremely important” to them in the 2012 election. Only jobs and the economy are viewed with more urgency, and large majorities of voters see education and job creation as inextricably linked.

College Credit Without College

Paul Fain:

The Internet takes college courses out of the classroom. But prior learning assessment takes college outside of college.
The practice of granting college credit for learning and knowledge gained outside the traditional academic setting goes back decades, with roots in the G.I. Bill and World War II veterans who earned credits for military training.
But prior learning assessment mostly occurs behind the scenes, partially because colleges avoid loudly advertising that they believe college-level learning can occur before a student ever interacts with faculty members.
That low profile is ending, however, as prior learning is poised to break into the mainstream in a big way. The national college completion push and the expanding adult student market are driving the growth. And ramping up to meet this demand are two of the field’s early adopters — the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning and the American Council of Education — which may soon be even bigger players in determining what counts for college credit.

(in)Flexibility for Madison’s Next Superintendent?

The Madison School District Administration (PDF).
Two year administrator contracts have been the norm for some time – matching the term and perhaps benefits of the teacher union contracts. The composition of future teacher arrangements (more) may change in Madison, or not. Should the new Superintendent have flexibility in staffing?
What are the student achievement implications of continuing this “status quo” or “same service” practice? Perhaps the District’s long standing reading problems are a place to think differently.
UPDATE, via several kind readers:
I compared Madison’s proposed Administrator contract hours (PDF) with Sun Prairie’s HR document and Waunakee’s HR guidelines. The result is the chart below:



I’ve emailed the local school board seeking additional information and will post if and when I receive a response. Perhaps summer and vacation days are different between the Districts? Or, not.

Madison West team wins championship at Team America Rocketry Challenge

Dee Hall:

A team from Madison West High School blew away its rivals Saturday, winning first place — and a free trip to London — in the Team America Rocketry Challenge.
The four-member team beat 99 others in the finals at the national competition held in The Plains, Va. The winning team gets an expenses-paid trip to London courtesy of Raytheon Company to compete in the July 15 Farnborough International Air Show.
Contestants must design, build and launch a rocket that reaches exactly 800 feet during a 43- to 47-second flight. The payload, two raw eggs, must parachute to the ground undamaged.
The West team earned a score of 12; a perfect score is zero. The next lowest score was 22. Two other West teams competed Saturday, with one placing 16th and the other 75th.

Can the Colleges Be Saved?

Anthony Grafton:

Many years ago I asked Otto Neugebauer, a pioneering historian of mathematics and astronomy in the ancient world, about his education in pre-World War I Austria. Neugebauer was known both for his comprehensive histories and for his editions and interpretations of very difficult texts–mathematical and astronomical tables and horoscopes, preserved on cuneiform tablets, in Greek papyri and Latin manuscripts, and in many other sources and traditions. (Late in life, Neugebauer mastered Ethiopic and wrote penetrating work on Ethiopian astronomy and calendrics.)
I expected him to say something warm about his teachers at gymnasium, along the lines of the memoir in which another great émigré scholar, Erwin Panofsky, described the “lovable pedant” who taught him Greek in Berlin (this gentleman reproached himself in class for failing to notice a misplaced comma in a Greek text, since he himself had written an article on that very comma long before). Instead, Neugebauer told me that he had hated his secondary school. He received his diploma, he explained, only because he volunteered for the army, which led to several years of service in the artillery on the Italian front. And he did not begin to work at a high level until he went to university after the war.

Parents understand an ‘A,’ but what about a ‘yellow’ on a school report card?

Dave Murray:

Parents might know what an A means when they see it on a report card, but what if their school was graded “blue?”
The state Education Department is backing away from its plan to grade schools using three colors — red, yellow and green — to one that would use five colors, saying it would be more helpful to parents.
But several education advocacy groups say the new plan is better than the “traffic light,” but still falls short of a report card system they said works well in other states and gives parents a clear indication of a school’s progress.
“We’re glad to hear about the five categories — a big improvement for the new public reporting system,” said Amber Arellano, executive director of the Education Trust -Midwest. “We still think parents intuitively understand an A to F system better than a color system. For example, what does “yellow” mean to a parent in terms of school quality?”

Madison adopted a “standards-based” report card for middle schools several years ago. Unfortunately, it was not, at the time, compatible with the then new “infinite campus” system. Has this changed?

Hong Kong Textbook Talks Collapse

Dennis Chong and Colleen Lee:

It is the latest development in a long-running dispute over the bundling of teaching aids – such as manuals and CD-ROMs – with textbooks, which parents and the government say is pushing up prices.
Last year, the Education Bureau imposed a ban on publishers giving schools “free” teaching materials while adding their cost to the prices students paid for the corresponding textbooks.
But on Monday, Suen said schools should get free basic manuals for teachers in an effort to “streamline” the policy, though they not accept free CDs, statistical databases or practice exam questions, which were more expensive.

Teaching Me About Teaching

Charles Blow:

Next week is National Teacher Appreciation Week, and, as far as I’m concerned, they don’t get nearly enough.
On Tuesday, the United States Department of Education is hoping that people will take to Facebook and Twitter to thank a teacher who has made a difference in their lives. I want to contribute to that effort. And I plan to thank a teacher who never taught me in a classroom but taught me what it meant to be an educator: my mother.
She worked in her local school system for 34 years before retiring. Then she volunteered at a school in her district until, at age 67, she won a seat on her local school board. Education is in her blood.
Through her I saw up close that teaching is one of those jobs you do with the whole of you — trying to break through to a young mind can break your heart. My mother cared about her students like they were her own children. I guess that’s why so many of them dispensed with “Mrs. Blow” and just called her Mama.

Teacher evaluation: What it should look like

Valerie Strauss:

A new report from Stanford University researcher Linda Darling-Hammond details what the components of a comprehensive teacher evaluation system should look like at a time when such assessments have become one of the most contentious debates in education today.
Much of the controversy swirls around the growing trend of using students’ standardized test scores over time to help assess teacher effectiveness.
This “value-added” method of assessment — which involves the use of complicated formulas that supposedly evaluate how much “value” a teacher adds to a student’s achievement — is considered unreliable and not valid by many experts, though school reformers have glommed onto it with great zeal.
Any reader of this blog will have seen numerous pieces from educators, mathematicians and others explaining why this method is unfair, as well as pieces on what does work in teacher evaluation.

DNA sequencing of sick children reinforces Wisconsin work

Mark Johnson:

Researchers at Duke University have given a powerful new demonstration of the gene sequencing technique used successfully in Wisconsin to diagnose and treat Nic Volker, the young boy from Monona who suffered from a never-before-seen intestinal disease.
The team at Duke worked for more than two years, sequencing a dozen children with different unknown diseases. By sequencing all of their genes, researchers were able to reach a likely genetic diagnosis for half of the children, according to work detailed in the Journal of Medical Genetics.
The Duke study bolsters what Nic’s doctors at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin have been saying since his landmark case in 2009: The sequencing of our genetic script can solve the riddle of some unknown illnesses, giving hope to families who have spent thousands of dollars and sought numerous medical opinions without success.
“I am absolutely convinced that in the setting of undiagnosed illnesses in children it is incumbent on the health care system to provide this kind of sequencing,” said David B. Goldstein, a professor of genetics at the Duke University School of Medicine, who worked on the new study.

Schooling, Income, and Reverse Causation

Bryan Caplan:

Economists normally measure the private return to education by estimating a “Micro-Mincer” regression:
(1) log(personal income in $s)= a + b1*(individual education in years)
Given crucial assumptions, b1 is the private return to education. I’ve discussed some of these crucial assumptions elsewhere. One that I’ve neglected, though, is the possibility of reverse causation. Maybe higher income (or the expectation of higher income) leads to more education in the same way that higher income leads to more plasma TVs: you buy not as a prudent investment, but because the money’s burning a hole in your pocket. If so, b1 overestimates education’s private rate of return.
Now you could object that personal income has little effect on educational attainment because individuals pay only a tiny fraction of the bill. If your income suddenly doubled, how many extra years of education would you get in response? An average answer of “one year” seems pretty high, suggesting an extremely small income–>education effect.*

Education needs bipartisan effort

Rep. Joe Courtney:

In the midst of the most desperate threat to our nation, President Abraham Lincoln looked beyond the dire present of the Civil War and signed a groundbreaking national commitment to higher education. On July 2, 1862, the Morrill Act created the land-grant system for state educational institutions to foster engineering and agricultural science.
From coast to coast — from the University of Florida to the University of Alaska — every state has benefited from Lincoln’s foresight and a supportive, bipartisan group of legislators. For generations, that was how Washington looked on higher education.

For Most Graduates, Grueling Job Hunt Awaits

Lauren Weber & Melissa Korn:

A survey of employers by the National Association of Colleges and Employers showed those that recruit on campuses plan to boost hiring of new grads by 10.2% from last year. However, on-campus recruiting is only a small slice of the pie–the bulk of graduates find jobs on their own.
In a study to be released Thursday, the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University found that recent graduates are taking awhile to find work. Only 49% of graduates from the classes of 2009 to 2011 had found a full-time job within a year of finishing school, compared with 73% for students who graduated in the three years prior.

Madison Memorial High School UW System Freshman Enrollment 1983-2011




From time to time, friends have pondered the path of Madison area students after graduation. I’ve begun to compile Freshman enrollment data from the UW-Madison and UW-System. These charts illustrate Madison Memorial High School graduates first year UW enrollment from 1983 to 2011. This is of course, just part of the picture. I hope to address other paths over the next few months.
Madison Memorial’s senior class enrollment in the year prior to UW System enrollment was 543(2005-2006) 496(2006-2007) 503(2007-2008) 452(2008-2009) 444(2009-2010) 435(2010-2011)

Madison LaFollette High School UW System Freshman Enrollment 1983-2011




From time to time, friends have pondered the path of Madison area students after graduation. I’ve begun to compile Freshman enrollment data from the UW-Madison and UW-System. These charts illustrate Madison LaFollette High School graduates first year UW enrollment from 1983 to 2011. This is of course, just part of the picture. I hope to address other paths over the next few months.
Madison LaFollette’s senior class enrollment in the year prior to UW System enrollment was 425(2005-2006) 366(2006-2007) 421(2007-2008) 404(2008-2009) 374(2009-2010) 389(2010-2011)

Madison Edgewood High School UW System Freshman Enrollment 1983-2011




From time to time, friends have pondered the path of Madison area students after graduation. I’ve begun to compile Freshman enrollment data from the UW-Madison and UW-System. These charts illustrate Madison Edgewood High School graduates first year UW enrollment from 1983 to 2011. This is of course, just part of the picture. I hope to address other paths over the next few months.
Madison Edgewood’s total enrollment, according to its website is currently 650 students.

How the technology works in Calculus 2

Robert Talbert:

Today we started the spring term, 6-week Calculus 2 class that I’ve been writing about for the last few days. We had a good time today, getting comfortable with each other and doing some review of the basics of the definite integral. Before we get too far into the term, I wanted to outline the technology infrastructure of the course.
For a long time, I’d used the learning management system (LMS) of my institution as the basic technology for the course, and everything else kind of fit around the LMS. At GVSU the default LMS is Blackboard. But I decided after used Blackboard this past year that we have irreconcilable differences. I don’t ask much from my LMS; I mainly use it to archive files, provide a link to a central calendar, post grades, and to make announcements. I don’t need all the dozens of other features Blackboard offers, and the profusion of features in Blackboard tends to make it a mile wide and an inch deep, with the basic functions needed for a class (email, file hosting, gradebook) kludgy and difficult. So I decided to make a break with Blackboard and strike out on my own.

Opinions differ on Watertown’s standing in Maclver report

Jen Zettel:

Of the state’s 50 largest school districts, the Watertown Unified School District ranked 48th, ahead only of Racine and Milwaukee, according to a recent report by the MacIver Institute. However, some education researchers said the report doesn’t tell the whole story.
The report took the 50 largest school districts in Wisconsin and compared them based on factors such as performance on the Wisconsin Concepts Knowledge Examination (WKCE), ACT test scores and participation, Advanced Placement scores and participation, graduation rate, students eligible for free or reduced price lunch and students enrolled in English Language Learners programs.
The top five districts were Elmbrook, Marshfield Unified, New Berlin, Verona Area and Middleton-Cross Plains Area. The bottom five were Kaukauna Area, Superior, Watertown Unified, Racine Unified and Milwaukee.
The report ranked Watertown 41st in student achievement, 46th in student attainment and 24th in student population affect on performance, for an overall grade of D- and rank of 48.

Students & Citizens

Tatiana Pina via a kind reader’s email:

The House Chamber and State House corridors filled up Monday with 150 students from Providence schools who came to pitch ideas for making their city a better place to live.
The ideas included tackling environmental safety, gang violence, prostitution, NECAP testing and teenage obesity.
The presentations were part of school partnerships with Generation Citizen, a program founded in 2008 by Scott Warren, then a Brown University senior. Education Commissioner Deborah Gist, Mayor Angel Taveras, Rep. David N. Cicilline and Warren attended the event.

Angel Taveras

While I have been mayor of Providence over the last 15 months, our city has made tough choices to position Providence for progress and improve our city’s economic, educational and political outlook.
We have taken the difficult steps to make structural reforms to our pension system that protect the system for current workers and our retirees. We have taken significant strides to improve our public schools, and have convened a Children and Youth Cabinet that has made concrete and strategic suggestions for reform.

Move to Outsource Teacher Licensing Process Draws Protest

Michael Winerip:

The idea that a handful of college instructors and student teachers in the school of education at the University of Massachusetts could slow the corporatization of public education in America is both quaint and ridiculous.
Sixty-seven of the 68 students studying to be teachers at the middle and high school levels at the Amherst campus are protesting a new national licensure procedure being developed by Stanford University with the education company Pearson.
The UMass students say that their professors and the classroom teachers who observe them for six months in real school settings can do a better job judging their skills than a corporation that has never seen them.
They have refused to send Pearson two 10-minute videos of themselves teaching, as well as a 40-page take-home test, requirements of an assessment that will soon be necessary for licensure in several states.
“This is something complex and we don’t like seeing it taken out of human hands,” said Barbara Madeloni, who runs the university’s high school teacher training program. “We are putting a stick in the gears.”

Number of Retiring California Teachers Dropped 10%

Mike Antonucci:

. The financial health of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) is much in the news these days, and that health is intertwined with the upcoming ballot initiative campaign to raise income and sales taxes in the state. So it’s worth noting that the number of California public school teachers who retired in 2011 declined for the first time in five years, and by a hefty 10 percent.
The median retirement age is also climbing, from 61.2 in 2001 to 61.9 in 2011. California teachers are vested after five years, and can retire as early as age 55. Those retiring in 2011 had fewer median years of service (25.5) than any previous group of retirees in the last 10 years.
The good news for CalSTRS and the state budget is that with fewer years of service, the average 2011 retiree received less of a payout than the 2010 retiree ($168 per month less). The bad news is that the good news only postpones the inevitable. CalSTRS currently pays benefits to some 253,000 retired teachers and surviving family members. There are more than 603,000 teachers who still work or have worked in the public schools and will be eligible for pensions when they retire.

Education reform passes Iowa House and Senate

Jason Noble:

Beginning in the 2016-17 school year, the parents of students who cannot demonstrate adequate literacy skills at the end of third grade will be given a choice: enroll their children in an intensive reading program over the summer or have them repeat the grade.
The element of parental involvement and choice was a key concession, said Sen. Herman Quirmbach, D-Ames and the Senate’s lead negotiator on the bill.
But even as lawmakers found compromise on the policy for early-grade literacy, they were unable to agree on funding for it.
Chambers and Quirmbach confirmed on Tuesday that the Legislature would not appropriate any funds for enhanced early-grade literacy efforts in next year’s budget. Under the language of the bill, then, school districts will not be required to implement the additional efforts until the state provides additional dollars to fund them.

For Prom, Don’t Worry About the Date, Think of the Ride

Sue Shellenbarger:

Eighteen-year-old Nick Wilckens and his five friends want to arrive in style at their senior prom next week. Instead of a predictable black limousine, they plan to clang to the curb in a vintage firetruck. “We’re going to be the people who are remembered,” Mr. Wilckens says.
His friend, Jared Kosmala, 18, adds, “We want to spray people with hoses. But I don’t know if that’s going to happen.”
In Racine, Wis., where Mr. Wilckens and his friends live, students have a 60-year tradition of taking oddball transportation to the city’s big prom party, from homemade parade floats to vintage hearses.
Dina Davis made history in 1987 by arriving with her date on a baby elephant named Louella. “I’m just a normal girl, but I had a crazy prom night,” says Ms. Davis of Shorewood, Wis., who works in sales for a food company. Her date borrowed the elephant from a petting zoo where he worked, Ms. Davis says. “Nobody will ever beat it.”

Getting a Bigger Financial-Aid Offer

Charles Passy:

It’s that terrifying time for seniors — high school seniors, that is: the nail-biting moment when millions of them find out whether they’ve been accepted or rejected by their college of choice. But if that in-or-out verdict appears final, there’s another one that’s anything but definitive — namely, a college’s offer of financial help to parent and child.
At a time when demand for college aid is soaring — applications for federal assistance have increased by 59 percent since 2006 — 07, according to the U.S. Department of Education and FinAid.org — appeals of award packages are also on the rise. Some colleges say requests for reconsideration are up as much as 30 percent over the past three years; this is forcing administrators to enter into sensitive financial negotiations and even renegotiations (yes, you can appeal an appeal). And the back-and-forth involves not just newly accepted students but also those at the tail end of their campus experience.

Milwaukee superintendent seeks to bring arts back into schools

Erica Breunlin:

The brightly colored walls of La Escuela Fratney Elementary School in Milwaukee used to reverberate the sounds of laughter and chatter as students painted their masterpieces and crafted pottery.
Today the art room echoes nothing but silence as it has stood nearly vacant all school year. In a year of budget cuts, La Escuela Fratney had to let go of its art teacher for the 2012-’13 school year, and with her, what MPS parent Jasmine Alindar describes as the “soul of the school.”
“She was and still is a very beloved member of the school community,” Alindar said. “So it was a really hard blow.”
Alindar, whose fifth-grade daughter, Alice, has attended La Escuela Fratney since first grade, said the elementary school also lacks specialized music and physical education teachers and has never offered courses in these subjects while her daughter has been enrolled.
La Escuela Fratney isn’t alone in Milwaukee Public Schools. Eighty-seven of 175 schools – many of them elementary schools – no longer have specialized teachers for art, music or physical education.

Related: 2012 WSMA State Festival Madison Area High School Student Event Counts

2011 NAEP: Calif. students rank 47th in science

Fermin Leal:

bout 22 percent of California’s eighth-graders tested on a national science test passed, ranking the Golden State among the worst in the nation, according to figures released Thursday.
Scores from the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, show that too few students have the skills that could lead to careers in the field, educators said.
Nationally, 31 percent of eighth-graders who were tested scored proficient or advanced. Both the national and state scores improved slightly over scores from two years ago, the last time the test was administered.

2011 NAEP Science results (3.3MB PDF).

Teachers are Heroes [Infographic]



via a kind Sarah Fudin email. More about Sarah @ 2tor.com:

Sarah joined 2tor in January 2010 as a 2tern (a term she coined to replace intern), and shortly thereafter became a Student Support Advisor for the MAT@USC program. Sarah most recently joined the marketing team in New York City where she works on a variety of projects across all of the company’s programs. Sarah is a 2009 graduate of Lehigh University where she earned her Bachelors in Business and Economics with a focus in Marketing. While at Lehigh, Sarah was a proud Mountain Hawk and captained the varsity lacrosse team. Sarah enjoys running and arts and crafts.

New Orleans Urban League College Track Graduation Event Tonight



via a kind email.
Perhaps, one day, Madison will take bold steps to address its reading (more) and math challenges. The recent rejection of the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school proposal illustrates how far our community must travel.
About College Track:

College Track is the catalyst for change for under-resourced high school students who are motivated to earn a college degree. Since its inception, College Track has grown each year, strengthening its services and expanding its program to support more and more students.

Oconomowoc High School plan brings transformation

Patricia Neudecker:

I support the teaching profession, administration, school boards and public education. Above balancing the needs of adults, however, my main responsibility is for students and the environments necessary for their learning.
Hundreds of decisions must be made daily to support that learning environment. Some decisions are easy, obvious and routine; some are difficult, painful and even courageous. All decisions are subject to both support and criticism. In a democratic environment with local control for schools, I wouldn’t want it any other way.
A transformational plan for high school staffing was presented recently to the Oconomowoc School Board. The plan reallocates resources, human and financial, and deploys them where they are needed the most. Across seven departments at Oconomowoc High School, an original staff of 60 will be reduced to a staff of 45. The 45 teachers each will be assigned an additional class section and will be compensated $14,000 each for that addition and the loss of some preparation time within the school day.
Unfortunately, 15 positions will be eliminated and teachers will be personally affected. Some teachers are eligible for retirement, some will be reassigned based on licensure and, unfortunately, nine will be laid off. The plan also generates a recurring savings of over $500,000 annually, maintains all programs and services for high school students and does not increase class sizes.

An alternate view from Rose Locander: Gut education now, pay later

When I first read of the draconian hits to public education that the Oconomowoc Area School District is proposing, I thought this might be a belated April Fools’ joke. Who in their right mind guts their high school staff in an attempt to balance their budget?
The school district wants to reduce its high school teaching staff by about 20%. It has become obvious that the “tools” given to school districts by Gov. Scott Walker have turned into sharpened arrows directed at the heart of public education.
I have questions for the residents of Oconomowoc: Are you going to accept what is going on in your district? Is this what you want for your children? Are you willing to have overworked staff members try to help your children with key curricular subjects? Are you willing to watch as your district goes knee-deep into the abyss?

Related, in Madison: Budget Cuts: We Won’t Be as Bold and Innovative as Oconomowoc, and That’s Okay. Remarkable.

Distorted Sex Ratios: Gendercide in Canada

The Economist:

“CREATE the family you want: boy or girl,” ran an advertisement for the Washington Centre for Reproductive Medicine, an American clinic located two hours’ drive south of the Canadian border. Using in vitro fertilisation to select the sex of a child is illegal in Canada, and the ad was soon withdrawn. But for a while it ran in the Indo-Canadian Voice, a newspaper for South Asian migrants.
Sex selection is overwhelmingly associated with China and India. But it may be spreading to rich countries, too. A study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) on April 16th looked at 767,000 births in Ontario province from 2002-07 and checked them against the mother’s country of origin.

Welcome news for local schools

Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

The doom-and-gloomers were wrong about our public schools.
Most Dane County districts have figured out ways to avoid teacher layoffs next year despite cuts in state aid and a tight revenue cap.
The State Journal last week surveyed Dane County’s 16 main school districts on preliminary non-renewal notices, which had to be issued by April 30. Monona Grove issued notices to one full-time and seven part-time employees, and Mount Horeb delivered one layoff notice.
That was about it.
Madison, Sun Prairie, Stoughton, McFarland, Verona, Oregon, DeForest, Waunakee and Deerfield reported no layoff notices to teachers this year. Belleville reduced hours for one position, and Cambridge cut a principal position in February.

Math stumble at renowned Jefferson High

Jay Matthews:

Several students at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County noticed their linear algebra teacher was struggling this semester. They said he made mistakes, erased his work without explanation and seemed confused.
Then it got worse. He quit in mid-March. The administration had to scramble. Retired math chair Jerry Berry, with no experience teaching linear algebra, kept an eye on student progress while a George Mason University graduate student provided the instruction. The graduate student look a leave when his wife had a baby. Another graduate student replaced him. A substitute teacher without much linear algebra experience replaced Berry as supervising teacher, telling students he would do his best.
This happens in regular schools, but Jefferson is the least regular school imaginable. It is our nation’s most selective high school, with an average SAT score of 2,218, serving a broad swath of Northern Virginia. It is known for its great faculty and splendid equipment. “Multiple teachers is not ideal, and almost unheard of at TJ,” said Myra Spoden, who teaches other linear algebra classes at the school.

Michelle Rhee’s misread on vouchers, why teachers unions aren’t to blame and more

redefined:

Michelle Rhee’s faith in regulation is odd. The public school system is super-heavily regulated with laws and policies streaming down from the federal, state and local levels. Despite all of that, much of the system performs at a tragically poor level. That of course is not to say that vouchers should have no regulation, but the right level of regulation is not “heavy.”
Rhee also places far too much weight on the results of standardized test and gives far too little deference to the judgment of parents. Parents make decisions about schools for a large variety of reasons- including things like school safety, peer groups and the availability of specialized programs. In addition to missing the whole point about school choices being multifaceted with parents best able to judge all the factors, individual test scores bounce around from year to year, they often take a temporary hit when a child transfers and adjusts to a new school.
The notion of having program administrators looking at the math and reading tests and deciding to cast children back to their ‘failing neighborhood school’ is very problematic. Pity the poor voucher program apparatchiks who have to drag children back to a public school where they had been continually bullied because they had the flu on testing day. Pity the children more. The subject of what to do about poorly performing private schools in a choice system is a complex topic and opinions vary widely. Rhee’s proposed solution however does not begin to capture this complexity. Full post here.

School-Standards Pushback

Stephanie Banchero:

The Common Core national math and reading standards, adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia two years ago, are coming under attack from some quarters as a federal intrusion into state education matters.
The voluntary academic standards, which specify what students should know in each grade, were heavily promoted by the Obama administration through its $4.35 billion Race to the Top education-grant competition. States that instituted changes such as common learning goals received bonus points in their applications.
Supporters say the Common Core standards better prepare students for college or the workforce, and are important as the U.S. falls behind other nations in areas such as math proficiency.

Madison high schools don’t make U.S. News rankings

Matthew DeFour:

U.S. News and World Report this week released its list of the top high schools in the country and in each state, but Madison’s four high schools didn’t make the cut.
That’s because under the three-step formula the magazine used to rate high schools, the combined test scores of black, Hispanic and low-income students at East, La Follette, Memorial and West were too low to qualify the schools for recognition.
It’s the fourth time the magazine, known for its annual rankings of college and graduate schools, has ranked high schools and the first time since December 2009. The magazine worked with the American Institutes for Research to develop the ranking system.
The magazine reviewed reading and math test scores for nearly 22,000 high schools in the country. Of that number, only 5,267 high schools, including the four in Madison, advanced to step two of the analysis. That means math and reading test scores exceeded expectations among other high schools in the state given the level of poverty in each school.
But Madison’s schools appear to have faltered in the second step of the analysis, which compares a weighted average of math and reading scores for each school’s “disadvantaged students” — i.e. black, Hispanic and low-income students — with the same group statewide.
In 2011-12, 53.5 percent of Wisconsin’s disadvantaged students scored proficient or advanced on the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination, compared with about 47 percent at each of the four Madison high schools.

The WKCE has long been criticized for its lack of rigor. Background: Ouch! Madison schools are ‘weak’? and College Station’s School District
Related: www.wisconsin2.org

Digital Football

Now that the College Board and the Deeper Learning Project have shown us the way to save time and money in the schools by assessing student writing by computer at the rate, as the College Board has reported, of 16,000 samples in 20 seconds, it is surely time to look for new ways to save money and time with exciting new digital technology.
School sports presently take hundreds of hours out of the academic year, not just in matches and games, but in the countless hours of practice demanded, not only out of student time, but of faculty time as well.
Finland has solved this particular problem by having no sports offered in its educational institutions. If students want to play some sport, they can join a club in the community. This saves an enormous amount of time for both students and faculty in the academic calendar year.
Of course, the Finnish approach is out of the question for high schools in the United States for many reasons, but that does not mean that exciting new 21st Century technology cannot make an exciting new contribution.
Here the United States military has shown us the way. Instead of using up oceans of jet fuel, of the sort now needed not only for aircraft but for Abrams tanks as well, much of the student/soldier/airman training time is now spent in computer simulators.
Just think what simulators could do for high school sports! It would still be necessary to put time aside for actual football, basketball, soccer, baseball and other games and matches, but the time now absorbed on the practice fields could perhaps, with the right new software and computers, be transferred to computer simulators for each activity.
The initial cost would be enormous, of course, and great news for the technology companies who now seem so interested in education, and demands on student time might not be diminished that much, but just think of the former coaching time saved for our teachers!
At last they might be able to assign those serious academic research papers they have had to avoid for so long because they simply did not have the time to devote to guide students in writing them.
The great majority of our public high school students now graduate without ever having read a complete nonfiction book or written one serious research paper, and so they continue to go off to further education greatly unprepared for the reading and writing requirements they encounter.
But with these new computer sports simulators, that can be remedied. Teachers will once again have the time, saved for them by the computer simulations, to assign and discuss actual history books and to work with students on their academic expository writing, which has been so sadly neglected because of other demands, such as coaching, that have traditionally been placed on teacher time.
It is very exciting to realize that modern 21st Century technology might be able to do as much good for academic reading and writing as it is apparently doing with the blindingly swift, superficial, and moronic “assessment” it is now employed to offer with those tens of thousands of formulaic meaningless samples of student writing!
www.tcr.org

Odyssey Project Graduation Ceremony

You are cordially invited to attend the graduation ceremony for students of the UW-Madison Odyssey Project Class of 2011-2012. Project Director Emily Auerbach and Writing Coach Marshall Cook will present certificates attesting to students’ successful completion of six introductory UW credits in English. UW-Madison Interim Chancellor David Ward will make congratulatory remarks.
From September to May, students in this rigorous humanities course have discussed great works of literature, American history, philosophy, and art history while developing skills in critical thinking and persuasive writing. The evening will include brief remarks or performances by each graduating student; recognition of supplemental teachers Jean Feraca, Gene Phillips, and Craig Werner; acknowledgment of Odyssey Project donors and supporters; and music and refreshments.
Web site: www.odyssey.wisc.edu

Madison East High School UW System Freshman Enrollment 1983-2011

From time to time, friends have pondered the path of Madison area students after graduation. I’ve begun to compile Freshman enrollment data from the UW-Madison and UW-System. These charts illustrate Madison East High School graduates first year UW enrollment from 1983 to 2011. This is of course, just part of the picture. I hope to address other paths over the next few months.
I have been unable to obtain senior class high school enrollments. The Wisconsin DPI website only mentions the total high school population.

Madison West High School UW System Freshman Enrollment 1983-2011

From time to time, friends have pondered the path of Madison area students after graduation. I’ve begun to compile Freshman enrollment data from the UW-Madison and UW-System. These charts illustrate Madison West High School graduates first year UW enrollment from 1983 to 2011. This is of course, just part of the picture. I hope to address other paths over the next few months.
I have been unable to obtain senior class high school enrollments. The Wisconsin DPI website only mentions the total high school population.

Reading instruction across countries–English is hard

Daniel Willingham:

One finding (from Seymour, Aro & Erskine, 2003) illustrated in one figure (Figure 5.3 from Stan Dehaene’s marvelous book, Reading in the Brain.). The figure shows errors in word reading at the end of first grade, by country.
Are we to conclude that the differences are due to educational practice? The vaunted Finnish system shows smashing results even at this early age, whereas the degenerate British system can’t get it right?
Countrywide differences in instruction could play a role, but Dehaene emphasize that the countries in which children make a lot of errors–Portugal, France, Denmark, and especially Britain–just happen to have deeper orthographies.
A shallow orthography means that there is a straightforward correspondence between letters and phonemes. English, in contrast, has one of the deepest (most complex) orthographies among the alphabetic languages: for example, the letter combination “gh” if pronounced differently in in “ghost,” “eight,” and “enough.”
In short, children learning to read English have a difficult task in front of them–and so too, therefore, do teachers.

Education in Quebec: Free Lunches, Please

The Economist:

IN THE past year students protesting over the cost of university education in business-friendly Chile have captured the world’s attention. In recent months their counterparts in statist Quebec have taken up the cause. Since February about a third of the province’s 450,000 university students have boycotted classes to oppose the tuition-fee increases planned by Jean Charest, the province’s Liberal premier. Some have blocked roads and vandalised government buildings. On April 25th and 26th around 115 people were arrested, following evening protests that turned into window-smashing in central Montreal.
Quebeckers have long seen cheap university education as a birthright. The decision by the centrist Liberals to double fees in 1990 was one reason why they lost control of the province. Their successor was the separatist Parti Québécois (PQ), which responded to a student strike in 1996 by freezing tuition fees for 11 years.

Student-aid offers often harbor devil in details

Janet Lorin:

When Susan Romano first read her son Zach’s financial aid letter from Drexel University, a private college in Philadelphia, her eyes immediately jumped to the line highlighted in yellow: “$13,442 expected payment” for the first year at the $63,000-a-year school.
“At first, I thought it was great,” says Romano, an insurance claims representative from Huntingdon, Pa. “The more I read it over and over, the worse it got.”
It turned out the college’s “offered financial aid” included $42,000 in loans to be taken out by the family.
“A loan to me is not financial aid,” says Romano. “It is money I have to pay.”

Should Colleges Earn Money From Prepaid Student Debit Cards?

Martha White:

Prepaid debit cards are becoming the de facto debit cards for a growing number of people these days. This is partially because issuers are promoting the heck out of them and partially because people, especially younger people, view them as preferable to a traditional bank account. As a result, a small number of colleges are experimenting with — and profiting from — hybrid student ID cards that are also prepaid debit cards. Is this a clever way for cash-strapped schools to avoid socking students with yet another tuition hike, or are colleges doing their students a disservice?
There are a couple of reasons why these cards got popular in the first place: Issuers like them because there’s no lending risk (you’re spending your own money) and because they can earn higher interchange fees from merchants. People told interviewers in a recent focus group they like prepaid cards because they like the built-in discipline, and because they really, really hate bank fees. They also griped about prepaid debit card fees, but said card companies present them in an understandable, up-front way, which banks don’t do.

Schools can’t stop wondering what students are up to on Facebook

Nate Anderson:

It’s graduation season, which means that students, teachers, and administrators alike are all thinking about one thing: Facebook.
Schools around the globe have a fascination with–indeed, sometimes a fixation on–the social networking site and what their students are getting up to online. Questions about the appropriate response to student material on social networking sites have existed for years, but they’re exploding into serious policy questions (and even laws) as such sites become almost ubiquitous teen hangouts.
For instance: can school administration use social networking to keeps tabs on what students do during the school day? What about things they do after leaving school property?
In the St. Louis suburb of Clayton, the big news this week was the resignation of Clayton High School’s principal, Louise Losos. According to local paper the Post-Dispatch, someone named Suzy Harriston had made Facebook “friends” with more than 300 people, including many high school students, despite the fact that no one knew who she was. On April 5, the school’s former quarterback claimed publicly that “Harriston” was really Losos. According to the paper:

Nevada Governor Sandoval Public Education Reform Agenda For 2013 Outlined By Top Administration Official

Sean Whaley:

Establishing school choice for parents and ending social promotion for students are two top priorities in Gov. Brian Sandoval’s education reform agenda for the 2013 legislative session, an administration official said.
Linking pay to performance and providing professional development to ensure students have the best possible classroom teachers is a third major priority, said Dale Erquiaga, senior adviser to Sandoval.
Erquiaga briefed the Nevada State Public School Charter Authority on the governor’s education reform agenda being readied for the next session.

“The number one threat facing America is its debt burden”

Edward Luce:

Beyond the naval shipyard in south-east Washington lies Fort McNair, America’s third-oldest continuous fort, which looks across the Potomac at the Ronald Reagan national airport. Sacked by the British in the war of 1812, the fort is today better known as the home of the National Defense University (NDU) – the descendant of the Army Industrial College that was set up in 1924 to prevent a recurrence of the procurement difficulties that had blighted the US military during the First World War. It was also supposed to act as a kind of internal think tank for the military.
NDU was the place where promising officers were sent to prepare their minds for leadership. Dwight Eisenhower, after whom its main redbrick building is named, graduated from here. By focusing on the resources needed to sustain the US military, these mid-career officers think differently to others: they grasp the importance of a robust economy. “Without it, we are nothing,” says Alpha, a thoughtful air force colonel, who, as is the custom, is known by his military nickname (a name I have changed to protect his identity). “People forget that America’s military strength is because of our power. It didn’t cause it.”
I got to know Alpha in peculiar circumstances. Unusually for a foreigner, particularly one whose forebears once trashed the place, I was invited by the NDU to judge the school’s annual exercise in national strategising. Along with two other “distinguished visitors” – a label that has never before, and is unlikely again, to be bestowed on me – I was invited to assess a ten-year national security plan for the US that the students had spent the previous two weeks thrashing out. The campus also conducts hi-tech war simulations in which outsiders with military or diplomatic expertise are invited to participate.

Study Damps Fears on Autism Change

Shirley Wang:

Proposed new diagnostic criteria for autism don’t appear to reduce the number of children diagnosed with that condition, according to preliminary data presented at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting on Sunday.
Those findings could damp the controversy that has surrounded suggested changes to the main psychiatric diagnostic manual in the U.S., the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, about how autism and related disorders that are characterized by social impairments and repetitive behavior are categorized.
One of the main changes, which has yet to be finished, recommends combining several disorders, including Asperger’s syndrome and “pervasive developmental delay not otherwise specified,” with autism into one broad category known as autism-spectrum disorder.

Common Core Standards – Wisconsin Guidance

Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Tony Evers via “DPI ConnectED”:

1. Common Core Standards – Wisconsin Guidance
New DPI publications help Wisconsin educators understand and implement the Common Core State Standards for English language arts and mathematics, as well as the new concept of Literacy in All Content Areas.
Wisconsin adopted the standards in 2010, but that was the easy task. Implementing them through engaging instruction coupled with rigorous learning activities and assessment is the hard work.
The first step requires that teachers know and understand the standards. The new publications provide guidance on the standards’ relationship to Wisconsin’s vision of Every Child a Graduate, supporting all students through Response to Intervention systems, and the responsibility that all teachers have for developing reading, writing, thinking, speaking, and listening skills.
A distinguishing feature of the Common Core State Standards is their emphasis on disciplinary literacy. To be career and college ready, students must know how to read and write complex informational and technical text. So, instruction in every classroom, no matter the discipline, must focus on both the content and the reading and writing skills students need to demonstrate learning.
Wisconsin educators are committed to grasping content and providing high-quality instruction. Combining helpful resources with effective practices used by quality educators leads to success for Wisconsin students.

Much more on the “Common Core” academic standards, here.

This Morning @ Madison’s Thoreau Elementary School While Voting; Latest Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter



The 2012 Wisconsin recall election primary is today. Teacher appreciation week is underway as well.
teacher-appreciation.info

Teachers – the people who educate us and give us the vital knowledge which we need to live our lives. They encourage, support, discipline and prepare us for the road ahead and now it’s time for us to show them our appreciation. Teacher Appreciation Week begins on the 7th until the 11th of May 2012, which will be the perfect opportunity for us to show teachers how thankful we are for their support. So boys and girls, it’s time for us to demonstrate how much our teachers mean to us, let’s all say a big thank you to the people who work really hard so that we can have a better future.
The 8th of May 2012 will mark Teacher Appreciation Day and students all across America will show their appreciation by rewarding their teachers with lovely gifts. These gifts can come in a variety of shapes and sizes – remember, it’s the thought that counts! Your school will also have a special schedule lined up which will provide many outlets for you to show how much you’re teacher means to you. Maybe you could write your teacher a poem or even a story about your favorite memory. You may also choose to make you’re teacher a “best teacher in the world” award, and present it to him or her during the week.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF):

If you are not among those who voted early, be sure you vote tomorrow. The terrible legislation, Act 10, which has put your economic security and your employment security at risk would not be on
the books if voter turnout in 2010 had been as great as in 2008. 812,086 fewer people voted in Wisconsin in 2010 than in 2008. Governor Walker won by only 124,638. Every MTI member doing their part will help reverse Act 10 and restore your rights and security. No matter who wins the primary, we need ALL HANDS ON DECK to rid our state of Governor Walker’s divisive approach to balancing the budget on the backs of working families, cuts to public education, women’s health and the dismantling of the safety net, in favor of continued tax breaks to out-of-state corporate interests funding his campaign and his legal defense fund. The far-right is trying to make Wisconsin the model for how to break unions. Join those standing up against Act 10 by ensuring that everyone votes on June 5!
MTI Faculty Representatives will schedule a meeting at each work site to discuss the effective ways to increase voter turnout. Make contact with friends and family, encourage them to vote, make a phone call or send a note or email the importance of this election. Personal contact makes a big difference.
MTI members will be making calls to union households from the Labor Temple and participating in door-to-door contacts. These efforts are aimed at reaching the infrequent voters, particularly those who voted in 2008 and did not vote in 2010. We need them to assure success. This election will directly impact the future of your profession, your pay and your benefits, your security and the future of public education.
Action is needed to assure success. See www.madisonteachers.org for ways to get involved.