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Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:

Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”

“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

2009: An emphasis on adult employment.

Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:

Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”

“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

Madison School Board needs Blaska’s voice (2019 election)

Gary L. Kriewald:

It appears we are headed toward a School Board election that promises something new: a candidate whose voice will do more than add sound and fury to the liberal echo chamber that is Madison politics.

David Blaska has the background, experience and most importantly the courage to expose the abuses and neglect of those in charge of our schools.

Having been shouted down and bullied at several meetings of the Madison School Board over the past several months, Blaska is uniquely qualified to expose the pusillanimous hand-wringing that passes for decision-making by those who shape educational policy in this city. He has seen firsthand how a small cadre of vocal extremists, called Freedom Inc., have cowed the current School Board with their unique brand of cop-hating venom.

When ordinary citizens are afraid to attend meetings for fear of being harassed by a mob of fanatical ideologues, we are witnessing a system that has shamelessly abandoned its mandate.

If elected, Blaska may be a lone voice crying in the wilderness, but at least it will be a voice unafraid of speaking truth to power.

Gary L. Kriewald, Madison

It starts with safety and discipline,” said Blaska, who on his blog has been sharply critical of the district’s deliberations over whether to continue stationing Madison police officers in the high schools.

Despite raucous protests by the activist group Freedom Inc., a committee of the board recommended on Sept. 26 that the police officers, called educational resource officers, or EROs, remain in the schools. Protests against EROs by the same group shut down a School Board meeting on Oct. 29 to approve the budget. It was approved two days later in a special meeting.

Blaska also criticized the district’s Behavior Education Plan as “too bureaucratic” and the “product of too many administrators and too many meetings.” The plan — which was rolled out in 2014 and runs to 77 pages for elementary schools and 82 pages for middle and high schools — is largely an attempt to move away from “zero tolerance” policies and reduce the disproportionately high number of students of color who are expelled or suspended. It is undergoing revisions this year.

He said he would try to get the BEP down to about eight pages while giving teachers and administrators more discretion over how they handle student behavior in their schools.

Incumbent Dean Loumos, who chaired the ERO committee, said he was “not at all” vulnerable to criticism about the way he has handled security issues.

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

Blaska has frequently criticized members of Freedom Inc., the local social justice advocacy group that has spoken out at recent School Board meetings against the use of educational resource officers in the city’s four comprehensive high schools.

Protests that broke out during the public comment period at the School Board’s October meeting led to a vote to adjourn the meeting early. Blaska has lamented that some do not feel safe attending School Board meetings because of the “far-left mob.”

Blaska in recent blog posts has called on Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne to prosecute the the protesters who shut down the October meeting.

Notes and links:

Dean Loumos

Cris Carusi

David Blaska

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

2009: An emphasis on adult employment.

Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:

Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”

“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

2019 Madison School Board Election Result Commentary

I met many people throughout the city (and reconnected with sister Jane). Gratified at the many educators, teaching support staff, and mainstream Democrats who said they voted for me. Another shout-out to liberal downtown Madison blogger Greg Humphrey. That took courage.

We started a long overdue conversation in this community. That will continue.

I am proud of the campaign we ran and many of you were a big part of that. We talked the issues, we did not disparage motives or call names. (But we sure were on the receiving end! Thought I had a tough hide but there are some bruises.) We offered real-life solutions rather than blaming nebulous, macro socio-economic conditions, Act 10 or various Koch brothers. Returning control of their classrooms to teachers was, Tuesday’s results show, a bridge too far. Who’d a-thunk it?

Jenny Peek:

Caire said he knew it would be a tight race, but said the 32,000 people who voted for him want change. “That 32,000 is a sign that there are folks that want to move in different directions. So we’re going to keep pushing,” he said. He said he is concerned that the “hardcore left” in Madison is not truly committed to change for kids of color. “You don’t see them fighting and calling people names and yelling and screaming and picketing when it’s black kids failing. And that bothers me, that bothers me. I feel like if they’re really with us, they should be with us all the time.”

Mirilli and Muldrow said they will address the issues they campaigned on.

“Now we get to work,” Muldrow said. “Now we try to make our schools into places where every single kid can be successful and … give it everything we’ve got.”

Caire said he will continue to be active in Madison’s education scene and will push for universal preschool in the city.

“I keep going; I don’t stop,” Caire said. “(The election) is not going to stop me from doing what it is that we need to do … there’s a lot going on in the schools I feel I could help with, and I’ll still try to help.”

Carusi, who has touted her many years of attending School Board meetings and being a grassroots organizer, has staunchly opposed voucher schools and independent charter schools like One City. Her opposition to independent charter and voucher schools scored her the endorsement of Madison Teachers Inc., the local teachers union.

“I’m looking forward to being able to bring all voices to the table and representing our whole community on the School Board,” Carusi said.

WORT-FM commentary mp3 audio.

Notes and links on the 2019 Madison School Board election, here.

Turnout: 26.6% statewide

2019 Madison School Board: Election Day links

Many links, forums and interviews can be found here More.

2019 Madison School Board election Commentary

Seat 3: Caire vs. Carusi
Logan Wroge:

“There’s no one in the history of Madison schools that has my professional record,” he said.

Carusi has reviewed budgets and policies during 12 years of attending School Board meetings and has actively served in parent leadership roles, which puts her in a “unique position of someone who’s not been on the board but really has been watching the board and knows what’s going on.”

The district needs to explore new teaching methods and school models, such as a school dedicated to performing arts, Caire said, along with increasing access to early childhood education and making the district attractive to retain families and draw in new ones.

“I also want (students) to have the type of education that’s going to prepare them to be problem-solvers in the future,” he said. “I don’t think any of our kids are getting that by a large measure, white kids, black kids. It’s the same old 13 years of liberal arts education that’s boring.”

Seat 4: Blaska vs. Muldrow:

Logan Wroge:

In the most ideologically divided Madison School Board race this year, David Blaska and Ali Muldrow offer stark contrasts for voters when they decide April 2 who takes over Seat 4.

Muldrow said the achievement gap is “what defines our community.” She wants to include information on “medically accurate, inclusive human growth and development” throughout the K-12 curriculum to teach children about anatomy, stages of development and how to better understand their emotions. She said a priority is having arts every day.

“More dance, more music, more theater, more planning time and smaller classrooms are things I care about,” said Muldrow, co-executive director of GSAFE, the Gay Straight Alliance for Safe Schools. “My opponent and I are really different people who have really different values and bring different priorities to the table.”

Blaska, a former Dane County supervisor and conservative blogger, argues the district is obsessed with “identity politics” and said correcting bad behaviors has become administratively burdensome. He wants teachers to be in charge of classrooms and principals in charge of schools. His priorities would be “discipline, discipline, discipline.”

“I’m very much a political realist. I’m doing this because it needs to be said, and because I know it will get a receptive audience,” Blaska said. Muldrow, he said, “is wedded to identity politics, and for her, everything is race and not behavior.”

In February, Muldrow won 56 percent of the vote in a four-way primary followed by Blaska with 23 percent.

Muldrow lost the 2017 race for Seat 6, and Blaska has not run for School Board previously.

Seat 5: Mertz vs Mirilli
Logan Wroge:

Six years ago TJ Mertz and Ananda Mirilli appeared on a primary ballot that resulted in Mirilli placing third behind another candidate (Sarah Manski) who dropped out after the primary, all-but ensuring Mertz’s victory. Now the two are finally going head-to-head April 2 for Seat 5.

Logan Wroge:

Seat 4
Ali Muldrow took in $14,144 this reporting cycle — with more than $5,500 coming from other fundraising committees — versus the $6,605 raised by David Blaska, a former Dane County Board supervisor and conservative blogger. Muldrow received $4,500 from MTI.

Muldrow, co-executive director of GSAFE, ended the reporting period with $14,241 in cash available. Blaska had a cash balance of $2,635.

Much more on the April 2, 2019 Madison School Board election, here.

2019 Madison School Board Election: Seat 5 Q&A from the WiSJ

Logan Wroge:

What is the most pressing issue facing the Madison School District and how would you address it?

Mertz: Trust and accountability. Providing our students with the education they deserve requires repairing the collapses of trust within our schools, and between our families and our schools. We need to exercise respect for one another, and work together with honesty and hope. Building trust and accountability require practicing trust.

Mirilli: Schools cannot function or achieve positive outcomes and growth working in silos. We have an opportunity through collaborative work internally and externally to create sustainable change. Promoting teachers’ leadership, striving for racial equity and implementing the Behavior Education Plan are my greatest priorities.

Roe: Top-down directives from all levels keep experienced teachers and principals from doing the job they were hired to do. The Madison School District is a district overloaded with powerful paper-pushers who have little or no experience in actually working with children. The best solution is to offer true school choice

Much more on the 2019 Madison school board election, here.

K-12 Governance Diversity: the 2019 Madison School Board Election, Parental Choice and our long term, disastrous reading results

Laurie Frost and Jeff Henriques on Madison’s disastrous reading results:

Endorsements in this month’s School Board primary from the influential Madison teachers union include one for a candidate who sends her two children to the kind of charter school strongly opposed by the union.

Madison Teachers Inc. this week endorsed Ali Muldrow over David Blaska, Laila Borokhim and Albert Bryan for Seat 4; Cris Carusi over Kaleem Caire for Seat 3; and incumbent TJ Mertz and Ananda Mirilli over Amos Roe for Seat 5.

Muldrow was among a group of parents and other advocates for Isthmus Montessori Academy when it sought to become a district-authorized charter school in 2017, after first opening as a private school in 2012.

The School Board voted down that plan 4-3, and Isthmus Montessori Academy pursued and won a charter through the University of Wisconsin System Office of Educational Opportunity. It converted to a tuition-free, state-supported independent charter in 2018. Muldrow’s children continue to attend the school.

MTI executive director Doug Keillor said the decision to endorse Muldrow “was based on numerous factors important to Madison educators and was not dependent exclusively on the school that her children attend.”

Former Madison School Board member Ed Hughes:

“The notion that parents inherently know what school is best for their kids is an example of conservative magical thinking.”; “For whatever reason, parents as a group tend to undervalue the benefits of diversity in the public schools….”

Madison School Board candidate Kaleem Caire:

If we don’t reach our benchmarks in five years, they can shut us down”. There is no public school in Madison that has closed because only 7 to 9% of black children have been reading at grade level for the last 20 to 30 years”.

Much more on the 2019 Madison school board election, here (primary February 19, general April 2)

Children who are not proficient readers by fourth grade are four times more likely to drop out of school. Additionally, two-thirds of them will end up in prison or on welfare.

Though these dismal trajectories are well known, Madison School District’s reading scores for minority students remain unconscionably low and flat. According to the most recent data from 2017-18, fewer than 9 percent of black and fewer than 20 percent of Hispanic fourth graders were reading proficiently. Year after year, we fail these students in the most basic of our responsibilities to them: teaching them how to read.

Much is known about the process of learning to read, but a huge gap is between that knowledge and what is practiced in our schools. The Madison School District needs a science-based literacy curriculum overseen by licensed reading professionals who understand the cognitive processes that underlie learning how to read.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

Routing around Madison’s non-diverse K-12 legacy governance model:

In March 2016, Cheatham said that it was her intent to make OEO “obsolete — that our schools will be serving students so well that there isn’t a need.”

Since then, the district has tried to keep tabs on any new charter proposals for Madison, going so far as to send former School Board member Ed Hughes to a September meeting of the Goodman Community Center board of directors to express the district’s opposition to another proposed charter school, Arbor Community School, which was looking to partner with the Goodman center.

Hughes gave the board a letter from Cheatham to UW System President Ray Cross that expressed the district’s dismay at allegedly being kept out of the loop on Arbor’s plans, pointed to alleged deficiencies in Arbor’s charter proposal, and asked that Arbor either be rejected or at least kept out of Madison.

Hughes also told the board that as a Goodman donor, he did not think other donors would look kindly on a Goodman partnership with Arbor.

Becky Steinhoff, Goodman executive director, later told the Wisconsin State Journal that Goodman was “experiencing a period of enormous change,” including the recent opening of a new building, and chose not to work with Arbor.

“I understand the climate and the polarizing topic of charters” in Madison, McCabe said, but he wasn’t concerned the district would attempt to thwart Milestone and he said it would “be a dream come true” if Milestone were one day folded into the district.

He said Community—Learning—Design has an application due to the state Feb. 22 for a federal planning grant.

2019 Madison school board election notes and links:

Seat 3

Kaleem Caire, 7856 Wood Reed Drive, Madison

Cristiana Carusi, 5709 Bittersweet Place

Skylar Croy, 502 N. Frances St., Madison

Seat 4

David Blaska, 5213 Loruth Terrace, Madison

Laila Borokhim, 2214 Monroe St., Madison

Albert Bryan, 4302 Hillcrest Drive, Madison

Ali Muldrow, 1966 East Main St., Madison

Seat 5

TJ Mertz, 1210 Gilson St., Madison

Ananda Mirilli, 1027 S. Sunnyvale Lane Unit A, Madison

Amos Roe, 5705 Crabapple Lane, Madison

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

2009: An emphasis on adult employment.

Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:

Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”

“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

Sarah Manski and Ed Hughes “withdrew” from their respective races in recent elections. The timing, in both cases was unfortunate for voters, and other candidates.

Much more on the election (February 19 Primary and April 2 general):

2019 Madison School Board Election: Madison Teachers Union Candidate Questions

Laurie Frost and Jeff Henriques on Madison’s disastrous reading results:

Nearly all current candidates for the Madison School Board have started to make their case to voters and potential endorsers as the primary election heats up. That included answering questions from Madison Teachers Inc., the city’s teachers’ union.

Nine candidates are running for three seats on the seven-person School Board. MTI executive director Doug Keillor said candidates had to send in answers to the questionnaire by Jan. 11. On Wednesday, School Board candidates interviewed with the political action arm of MTI, which is comprised of 13 people who guide the union’s endorsement process during each election cycle.

Candidate Amos Roe, who is running for Seat 5, was the only current candidate who did not submit a questionnaire. Keillor said they reached out to Roe multiple times but did not receive a response. Skylar Croy, who withdrew from the race but whose name will still appear on the Feb. 19 ballot, also did not submit a questionnaire or interview with MTI.

Children who are not proficient readers by fourth grade are four times more likely to drop out of school. Additionally, two-thirds of them will end up in prison or on welfare.

Though these dismal trajectories are well known, Madison School District’s reading scores for minority students remain unconscionably low and flat. According to the most recent data from 2017-18, fewer than 9 percent of black and fewer than 20 percent of Hispanic fourth graders were reading proficiently. Year after year, we fail these students in the most basic of our responsibilities to them: teaching them how to read.

Much is known about the process of learning to read, but a huge gap is between that knowledge and what is practiced in our schools. The Madison School District needs a science-based literacy curriculum overseen by licensed reading professionals who understand the cognitive processes that underlie learning how to read.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

Routing around Madison’s non-diverse K-12 legacy governance model:

In March 2016, Cheatham said that it was her intent to make OEO “obsolete — that our schools will be serving students so well that there isn’t a need.”

Since then, the district has tried to keep tabs on any new charter proposals for Madison, going so far as to send former School Board member Ed Hughes to a September meeting of the Goodman Community Center board of directors to express the district’s opposition to another proposed charter school, Arbor Community School, which was looking to partner with the Goodman center.

Hughes gave the board a letter from Cheatham to UW System President Ray Cross that expressed the district’s dismay at allegedly being kept out of the loop on Arbor’s plans, pointed to alleged deficiencies in Arbor’s charter proposal, and asked that Arbor either be rejected or at least kept out of Madison.

Hughes also told the board that as a Goodman donor, he did not think other donors would look kindly on a Goodman partnership with Arbor.

Becky Steinhoff, Goodman executive director, later told the Wisconsin State Journal that Goodman was “experiencing a period of enormous change,” including the recent opening of a new building, and chose not to work with Arbor.

“I understand the climate and the polarizing topic of charters” in Madison, McCabe said, but he wasn’t concerned the district would attempt to thwart Milestone and he said it would “be a dream come true” if Milestone were one day folded into the district.

He said Community—Learning—Design has an application due to the state Feb. 22 for a federal planning grant.

Much more on our 2019 school board election:

Seat 3

Kaleem Caire, 7856 Wood Reed Drive, Madison

Cristiana Carusi, 5709 Bittersweet Place

Skylar Croy, 502 N. Frances St., Madison

Seat 4

David Blaska, 5213 Loruth Terrace, Madison

Laila Borokhim, 2214 Monroe St., Madison

Albert Bryan, 4302 Hillcrest Drive, Madison

Ali Muldrow, 1966 East Main St., Madison

Seat 5

TJ Mertz, 1210 Gilson St., Madison

Ananda Mirilli, 1027 S. Sunnyvale Lane Unit A, Madison

Amos Roe, 5705 Crabapple Lane, Madison

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

2009: An emphasis on adult employment.

Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:

Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”

“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

2009: An emphasis on adult employment.

Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:

Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”

“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

Sarah Manski and Ed Hughes “withdrew” from their respective races in recent elections. The timing, in both cases was unfortunate for voters, and other candidates.

Madison Teachers Union and the 2019 school board election: Commentary, Spending and Academic Results

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

The questionnaire also includes several questions about teachers’ ability to have a say in their compensation and working conditions, and asks whether the candidates “support the reinstatement of collective bargaining rights for all public employees (currently prohibited by Act 10)?”

Act 10 is the controversial 2011 law passed by Republicans that stripped most collective bargaining rights from most public-sector employees. MTI mounted a failed legal challenge to the law.

“School staff experienced a reduction in take home pay after Act 10 was passed and salary increases have not kept pace with the cost-of-living,” one question states. “The District is experiencing increasing difficulties in attracting and retaining qualified employees. If elected to the Board of Education, what is your plan to increase pay for school staff?”

Much more on Act 10, here.

Madison Teachers, Inc.

2019 Madison School Board Candidates, notes and links:

Seat 3

Kaleem Caire, 7856 Wood Reed Drive, Madison

Cristiana Carusi, 5709 Bittersweet Place

Skylar Croy, 502 N. Frances St., Madison

Seat 4

David Blaska, 5213 Loruth Terrace, Madison

Laila Borokhim, 2214 Monroe St., Madison

Albert Bryan, 4302 Hillcrest Drive, Madison

Ali Muldrow, 1966 East Main St., Madison

Seat 5

TJ Mertz, 1210 Gilson St., Madison

Ananda Mirilli, 1027 S. Sunnyvale Lane Unit A, Madison

Amos Roe, 5705 Crabapple Lane, Madison

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

2009: An emphasis on adult employment.

Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:

Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”

“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

2009: An emphasis on adult employment.

Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:

Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”

“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015

Madison Wisconsin High School Graduation Rates, College Readiness, and Student Learning.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

2019 Madison Mayoral Election: Ongoing Disastrous K-12 Reading Result Indifference?

Dean Mosiman:

The candidates are focusing on racial and economic inequities and the need for more low-cost housing despite a Soglin initiative supported by the City Council that’s delivered 1,000 lower-cost units. And they are talking about education, health care, transportation, public safety and climate change, especially in the wake of severe flooding that punished the city in the late summer.

The next mayor will also guide major projects such as Judge Doyle Square, the Madison Public Market, and whatever emerges as the next big thing.

All of the ideas and positions, however, will be weighed in the context of maintaining or improving basic services, state levy limits and holding the line on property taxes.

Today, the State Journal offers an introduction to the candidates who will be on the primary ballot to lead the state’s capital city into the next decade.

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school.

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts.

School Board member James Howard not running for re-election (2019)

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

The three-term School Board member said he is most proud of helping further MMSD’s work on diversity and inclusion. Howard said he wished the School Board could have approved several more major initiatives that he said would have helped students of color.

Howard, the only black man on the School Board, is currently its longest serving member. He was first elected to Seat 4 in 2010 after defeating Tom Farley by nearly a two-to-one margin. Howard captured 76 percent of the vote when he was re-elected in 2013. He ran unopposed in 2016.

Howard, an economist for the USDA Forest Service, was widely expected to not run for re-election this spring. He said during his 2016 campaign that his next term would be his last.

Still, even as recently as earlier this month when several challengers announced School Board runs, Howard told the Cap Times he was still deciding if he would run again.

Notes and links:

Ali Muldrow

David Blaska

James Howard

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

TJ Mertz to run for re-election to Madison School Board (2019)

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

Mertz said he will look to highlight his record during the campaign, and also talk about building trust and accountability in the Madison Metropolitan School District.

“In order for us to provide our students the education they deserve, we need to work to repair the breakdowns of trust we see manifested in the divisions within our schools, within our community, and between too many of our families and our schools,” Mertz said. “We need to respect each other, assume the best intentions, and work together with honesty and hope.”

Notes and links:

Ananda Mirilli

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

Notes on uncontested school board elections

Those days dwindled in Dane County a good 30 years ago. In tandem with the teachers union and unionized labor, the Dane County Democrat(ic) Party has been muscling into office progressive candidates who, among other achievements, defunded school resource police officers and dumbed down honors classes.

In the last contested Madison school board election, the Democrat(ic) Party endorsed one Blair Mosner Feltham, who proclaimed “Our schools are products of white supremacy.” The Wisconsin State Journal also endorsed the Woke candidate, even after one of its education beat reporters proclaimed that critical race theory “isn’t taught in any of Wisconsin’s K-12 schools.” Yet, District officials acknowledgethat the NY Times’ 1619 Project is taught in Madison classrooms.

Endorsing Ms. MF over a working immigrant father, The State Journalquoted a UW-Oshkosh professorwho maintained that Issues like Covid lockdowns, critical race theory, and classroom chaos are “pretty disconnected from the reality of being a school board member.” Maybe that was the problem.

→ Inconvenient headline: “Democrats spend [$230,000] on Wisconsin school board races, overtaking Republicans” (Read & Weep!)

——

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Governance, influence and elections: Evers “mulligans” and legislation

Rick Eisenberg:

Gov. Evers thinks we need divine protection from @WILawLiberty preventing him from legislating by playing an acrostic game, restoring the separation of powers or preventing persons from being treated differently on the basis of their race. God help us, indeed.

—-

Curious. I asked Governor Eavers about his use of teacher mulligans to undermine early literacy legislation some years ago…

Liam Beran:

In an interview, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers told the Cardinal he’s “always in favor of making sure things are always transparent” but that WILL’s involvement in creating the policy proposals is part of people weighing in on legislation and “how the system works these days.”

“They’re active in every part of our lives,” Evers said. “It seems like they are the go-to people on any conservative issue, whether it’s voting or just about any walk of life.”

Legislation and Literacy: Wisconsin Early Reading Curriculum Selection

mp3 audio | transcript.

Corri Hess:

Most school districts in the state now use a balanced literacy approach called “three-cueing,” that will now be illegal in all public and private schools.

The change comes at a time when fewer than 40 percent of third graders were proficient in reading on the most recent Wisconsin Forward Exam. Wisconsin’s achievement gap between Black and white fourth grade students in reading has often been the worst in the nation.

Quinton Klabon:

Joint Finance Committee FINALIZES reading curriculum list with the highest-quality options! 🎆🎇🎇🎆

Amplify: Core Knowledge
Great Minds: Wit And Wisdom and Geodes and Really Great Reading
Open Up: Bookworms
Open Up: EL

More.

Karen Vaites:

Wisconsin’s 2024 curriculum list is final:

The ELCC recommendations carry the day, giving Wisconsin the strongest ELA curriculum list in the country! 👏

Also, the lobbyist box is empty. 👏

—

Curious local media coverage.

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Notes on Wisconsin DPI Reading Curriculum Selections

Quinton Klabon:

Whoa! Wisconsin reading curriculum update!

@WisconsinDPI @DrJillUnderly disagree: NO to Bookworms, YES to basals, bilingual. See screenshot.

Tensions come out in explanatory literacy text!

Joint Finance @repborn @SenMarklein @JFCDemocrats decide now. What will they choose?!

——-

Jenny Warner:

DPI adding ARC to the list proves they have no idea what three cueing looks like or an adequate curriculum. teachingbyscience.com/arc?fbclid=IwA…

——-

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Madison School Board incumbents will run for reelection unopposed

Kayla Huynh:

The 2024 Madison School Board election cycle will include both incumbents running for re-election unchallenged.

Candidates for the board began circulating nomination papers and gathering the required signatures in December. Incumbents Maia Pearson and Savion Castro were the only two to submit those papers by the Jan. 2 deadline, according to Ian Folger, spokesman for the Madison Metropolitan School District.

Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Notes on DIE climate and the 2024 Madison School Board election

Madison school board members Savion Castro and Maia Pearson are seeking re-election in April. They are thoroughly Woke. Get 100 signatures to get on the ballot. Nomination papers are not due until January 3. The forms candidates need can be found here even though, strangely, the city’s website has not been updated!

Blaska’s Bottom Line: DEI is the hill upon which Tony Evers and his Democrats have chosen to fight. The shame and guilt taught from UW-Parkside to UW-Superior is injected directly into our kids’ classrooms and, increasingly, into workplace sensitivity training — public and private sector. It sharpens the oppressor/victim dichotomy now weaponized against Jews and Asians. It stifles free inquiry.

—-

Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

K-12 education’s alarming decline and the 2024 election

George Will:

Ian Rowe, a charter school advocate, notes thatsince the “nation’s report card” was first issued in 1992, in no year “has a majority of whitestudents been reading at grade level. The sad irony is that closing the black-white achievement gap would guarantee only educational mediocrity for all students.”

Mysteriously (or perhaps not), California’s most recent standardized test revealed declines in math and English language arts — yet rising grades. Larry Sand, writing in City Journal, reports that 73 percent of 11th-graders received A’s, B’s and C’s in math, while the test showed that only 19 percent met grade-level standards. Among eighth-graders, the disparity was 79 percent and 23 percent. Among sixth-graders’ English scores, it was 85 percent and 40 percent. Amazingly (or perhaps not), the high school graduation rate has risen as students’ proficiencies have fallen.

Grade inflation, sometimes called “equity grading,” and “social promotions,” which combat meritocracy as a residue of white supremacy, leave a wake of wreckage. “According to World Population Review,” Sand says, “California now leads the country in illiteracy. In fact, 23.1 percent of Californians over age 15 cannot read this sentence.”

As alarming as what students are not learning is what they are being taught. Robert Pondiscio and Tracey Schirra of the American Enterprise Institute, writing in National Affairs (summer 2022), say “public education has drifted toward an oppositional relationship with its founding purpose of forming citizens, facilitating social cohesion, and transmitting our culture from one generation to the next.” The result is the emergence of what might be a dominant political issue in 2024: parental rights concerning educational content and curriculum transparency.

Remote learning during the pandemic, say Pondiscio and Schirra, “pried open the black box of America’s classrooms.” Progressives, anxious to slam it shut again, portray any public involvement in public education, other than paying for it, as an infringement of the hitherto unenunciated right of teachers to unabridged sovereignty over other peoples’ children. But as UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has said, “Someone’s got to decide what is going to be taught in K-12 schools.” Teachers, principals, legislatures, school boards — the First Amendment does not say whom.

“unlike the Establishment, with kids in private prep schools and only caring about blame-shifting”

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Merit and the 2023 Madison School Board election

Badri Lankella wants to serve his community.

Right now, the computer engineer working with the state Department of Natural Resources believes the best way he can do that is running for Seat 6 on the Madison School Board.

“Every issue, I look at the details,” Lankella said. “I’m going to talk to everyone. I’m the collaborator, I’m going to talk to teachers, I’m going to talk to the union, I’m going to talk to the administration.”

Lankella faces challenger Blair Feltham in the April 4 election to succeed Christina Gomez Schmidt, who decided not to run for reelectionafter her first term on the board. Nicki Vander Meulen is running unopposed for a third term in Seat 7.

The election comes at a key time for the Madison Metropolitan School District. Whoever wins will be part of choosing the next superintendent and making difficult budgetary decisions amid the ongoing staffing shortage.

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Following losses in the last school board election, Milwaukee’s teachers union has paid big this season to support its favored candidates, reporting spending over $88,000 since January.

Rory Linnane:

The political action committee of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, the union for MPS staff, first gave about $11,000 directly to candidates’ campaigns in January: $5,000 to Zombor, and nearly $1,500 each to Hart, Herndon, O’Halloran and Siemsen.

In March, the group spent another $41,422 on postcards and digital ads for Zombor, $22,000 for Herndon, $12,000 for Hart, $1,100 for Siemsen and $1,100 for O’Halloran.

The MTEA’s PAC is funded by MPS staff who choose to pay into it on top of their membership dues. That includes over 5,000 teachers and other staff members.

Ben Ward, MTEA executive director, said he thought the school board has been moving the district in a positive direction since the 2019 elections, when union-backed candidates swept their races. MTEA has advocated for board decisions since then to pursue a referendum for arts and music funding, increase minimum wages in the district and implement experience-based raises, Ward said.

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Madison mayor election and the taxpayer supported k-12 schools

The debate also featured discussions about how high-density developments affect Madison Metropolitan School District’s student population and whether it is time to bring police back into schools.

Reyes said there is concern among some residents that large housing developments taking place all over the city are pricing some families out of areas and diminishing school enrollments. She said that as mayor she wants the school district to be represented on Madison’s Plan Commission so that schools have a voice in development proposals.

Rhodes-Conway pointed out that there already is a slot reserved for the MMSD superintendent on the Plan Commission but that no one from that office has ever decided to serve in the position.

“We have asked repeatedly to have the school district appoint someone to the Plan Commission,” Rhodes-Conway said. “They have declined so far, which I think is really disappointing. In the meantime, we need to listen to what the district has told us, which is that we need more housing.”

Reyes, who was Madison School Board president during much of the pandemic, said she did not see collaboration between the school district and the mayor’s office during her tenure.

“This is the first time I’ve heard that there was a relationship between the school district and the mayor’s office,” Reyes said about Rhodes-Conway meeting with the superintendent. “During the pandemic we were on our own and did not have the support of the mayor.”

“It’s possible the superintendent didn’t keep my opponent informed of his calendar, but we met every week during the pandemic about how we could keep schools safe, keep kids fed and do virtual learning for kids who could not learn at home,” Rhodes-Conway replied.

On the topic of school safety, Rhodes-Conway pointed to the city’s Community Alternative Responsive Emerging Services, or CARES – a unit dedicated to deescalating tensions during a mental health crisis – as a program that could help school safety. CARES started in September 2021 during Rhodes-Conway’s first term as mayor.

Reyes said she believes it is time to consider whether to return school resource officers to school beats. Reyes, a former law enforcement officer, voted against removing police from schools prior to the pandemic during her tenure on the School Board, but then reversed course in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and voted to remove the resources officers from Madison schools.

More, here.

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

2023 Madison School Board election, Christine Gomez-Schmidt bows out

In her message to constituents, Gomez Schmidt listed a series of district accomplishments in her three years on the board, including navigating the pandemic, adopting new K-5 reading curriculums, investing in the “science of reading” and seeing the community approve a record referendum.

“I am grateful that this experience has challenged me in how I think about achievement, disparities, privilege, and opportunity,” she wrote, coming one day after a vote on standalone honors classes. “My sincere hope is that we can collectively find ways to continue to have necessary and challenging discussions with respect for one another. Our children deserve to see us model how to collaborate and build consensus to solve complex problems.”

Thanking her supporters for the opportunity to serve in the role, Gomez Schmidt also looked forward, writing that the district “must decide what we expect from, and for, our public schools,” which face “significant” challenges.

“Declining enrollment, disparities in achievement, staff recruitment and retention, needed investment in our aging facilities, and a clear, multi-year strategic plan are a few of these,” she wrote. “Yet we have a Governor dedicated to education, incredibly strong support for public schools in Madison and Fitchburg, and a developing vision for the future.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

2023 Madison Mayoral election: School governance makes a rare appearance?

As mayor, she would not have unilateral authority to put officers in schools. The school resource officer program, originally begun in the 1990s, operated on a contract between the city of Madison and the Madison Metropolitan School District.

Both sides voted to terminate it in summer 2020 amid nationwide and local protests over police brutality of Black people, specifically in response to the murder of George Floyd by officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis. Reyes said as police officers became “a focal point” of the protests, it “moved us away from officers” in schools.

“It wouldn’t have helped them to stay,” Reyes said. “They couldn’t do their job effectively if they were continuing to be criticized for their actions while in schools.”

Incumbent Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, who announced her reelection bid Sunday, supported ending the program in 2020.

Data on the SRO program repeatedly showed racial disparities in who received citations or was arrested by officers in schools.

Reyes, a former police officer, supported the program in 2019, siding with the majority in a 4 to 3 vote to renew the contract at that time. A few weeks before the 2020 vote, she announced her position had changed.

Madison’s mayors have long avoided substantive k-12 activity, despite our long term, disastrous reading results…. I’m told that years ago, Wisconsin City councils were required to pass school district budgets, in addition to the local boards.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Commentary on the 2023 Madison School Board elections (2 seats). Achievement?

Scott Girard

Vander Meulen has faced an opponent in each of her two previous campaigns. In 2017, Ed Hughes was on the ballot but dropped out of the race following a health issue in his family and in 2020, the late Wayne Strong ran against her, but suspended his campaign amid his own health issues before returning to the campaign later in the spring. Vander Meulen said she expects to have an opponent again.

“If there isn’t, I will be pleasantly surprised,” she said.

The last three years have been an especially busy time on the board. In 2019, then-superintendent Jen Cheatham announced she would leave, and the board hired Jane Belmore as interim for the 2019-20 school year.

During that year, the board hired Matthew Gutierrez from Texas to take over as permanent superintendent, but he withdrew amid the onset of the pandemic to help his district through the challenging time. The board reopened the superintendent search over the first summer of the pandemic, eventually hiring Carlton Jenkins, who started his tenure a month before the 2020-21 school year.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Civics and elections: “But Democrats need to be honest about the consequences of their actions after the 2016 election”

Lev Golinkin:

Trump’s mendacity is arguably the Second Big Lie. Four years earlier, the Hillary Clinton campaign and leading Democrats refused to acknowledge the outcome of the 2016 election, by claiming Donald Trump was not a legitimate president. These actions, while certainly not as dramatic or as immediately damaging as the events leading to Jan. 6 (and today), helped bring us to our current situation.

“He lost the election and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf,” ex-President Jimmy Carter said in 2019, continuing to deny Trump’s victory three years after the election.

“He knows he’s an illegitimate president,” said Clinton, also three years later. She repeated this sentiment in 2020, telling The Atlantic the election “was not on the level,” and again when she called Trump’s win illegitimate. She piled on to this by saying, “You can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you,” clearly referring to how she saw her 2016 campaign.

School climate: 2022 election edition

“Perhaps the gravest injustice of our time is the imprisonment of minority kids in substandard public schools… The real culprits are union collective-bargaining agreements and state laws that put teachers unions’ interests ahead of students’.”https://t.co/P2Qj2XTUA6

— Betsy DeVos (@BetsyDeVos) November 1, 2022

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Dam Hee Kim, Anjana Susarla, and Scott Shackelford

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Commentary on political class and big tech election censorship

2022 is looking like 2020

Dam Hee Kim, Assistant Professor of Communication, University of Arizona

Social media are important sources of news for most Americans in 2022, but they also could be a fertile ground for spreading misinformation. Major social media platforms announced plans for dealing with misinformation in the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, but experts noted that they are not very different from their 2020 plans.

One important consideration: Users are not constrained to using just one platform. One company’s intervention may backfire and promote cross-platform diffusion of misinformation. Major social media platforms may need to coordinate efforts to combat misinformation.

Facebook/Meta: C

Facebook was largely blamed for its failure to combat misinformation during the 2016 presidential election campaign. Although engagement – likes, shares and comments – with misinformation on Facebook peaked with 160 million per month during the 2016 presidential election, the level in July 2018, 60 million per month, was still at high levels.

More recent evidence shows that Facebook’s approach still needs work when it comes to managing accounts that spread misinformation, flagging misinformation posts and reducing the reach of those accounts and posts. In April 2020, fact-checkers notified Facebook about 59 accounts that spread misinformation about COVID-19. As of November 2021, 31 of them were still active. Also, Chinese state-run Facebook accounts have been spreading misinformation about the war in Ukraine in English to their hundreds of millions of followers.

Twitter: B

While Twitter has generally not been treated as the biggest culprit of misinformation since 2016, it is unclear if its misinformation measures are sufficient. In fact, shares of misinformation on Twitter increased from about 3 million per month during the 2016 presidential election to about 5 million per month in July 2018.

This pattern seems to have continued as over 300,000 Tweets – excluding retweets – included links that were flagged as false after fact checksbetween April 2019 and February 2021. Fewer than 3% of these tweets were presented with warning labels or pop-up boxes. Among tweets that shared the same link to misinformation, only a minority displayed these warnings, suggesting that the process of putting warnings on misinformation is not automatic, uniform or efficient. Twitter did announce that it redesigned labels to hinder further interactions and facilitate clicks for additional information.

Civics: Governance, lives and elections

Jonathan Weisman

In early 2019, as the Defense Department’s bureaucracy seemed to be slow-walking then-President Donald Trump’s order to withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria, Joe Kent, a CIA paramilitary officer, called his wife, Shannon, a Navy cryptologic technician who was still in Syria working against the Islamic State group.

“‘Make sure you’re not the last person to die in a war that everyone’s already forgotten about,’” Kent said he told his wife. “And that’s exactly what happened,” he added bitterly.

The suicide bombing that killed Kent and three other service members days later set off a chain of events — including a somber encounter with Trump — that has propelled Kent from a storied combat career to single parenthood, from comparing notes with other anti-war veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to making increasingly loud pronouncements that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters are political prisoners.

In five weeks, Kent, 42, a candidate for a House seat in Washington state that was long represented by a soft-spoken moderate Republican, may well be elected to Congress. And he is far from alone.

A new breed of veterans, many with remarkable biographies and undeniable stories of heroism, are running for the House on the far right of the Republican Party, challenging old assumptions that adding veterans to Congress — men and women who fought for the country and defended the Constitution — would foster bipartisanship and cooperation. At the same time, they are embracing anti-interventionist military and foreign policies that, since the end of World War II, have been associated more with the Democratic left than the mainline GOP.

AOC, 12/2020, on Antifa activists menacing politicians in public: Activists *should* be impolite. “The whole point of protesting is to make ppl uncomfortable.”

AOC, last night, to protesters confronting her for funding Biden’s proxy war: I won’t answer you! “You’re being ruude!” https://t.co/iuy4GYOLdY

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 13, 2022

https://t.co/NGUQPcmrSr pic.twitter.com/iIEWFglQMY
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 16, 2022

Commentary on Wisconsin K-12 Governance and the November 2022 elections

Alan Borsuk:

But the results for MPS were terrible. They were bad before the pandemic, and they’re worse now. The percentages of students proficient in reading and math were in single digits in many schools. What can be done about that? Would the plans either candidate is advocating bring real change in how thousands of Milwaukee students are doing?

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Molly Beck and Daniel Bice:

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Related: The Milwaukee County Pension Scandal that lead to Scott Walker’s election to county Executive and later the Governor’s office.

$pending on the 2022 Wisconsin Governor election: Evers and Michels; education climate

Evers entered the final two months of the race with about $5 million more in cash than Michels.

The first-term governor received $20,000 donations from 10 individuals, including Andrea Soros, daughter of liberal billionaire George Soros. Others who maxed out were Abigail Dow, an instructional coach in New York City; Joseph Kaempfer, a real estate agent in Virginia; Stephen Clearman of Valatie, New York; Eileen Stauss, a Washington attorney; and Los Angeles billionaire Lynda Resnick.

Among Michels’ supporters who gave the maximum amount were Louis Gentine, the retired CEO of Sargento Foods Inc.; Michele Gentine, Louis Gentine’s wife; Dan Ariens, CEO of the Ariens Co.; David Charles, president Cash Depot; John Dykema, president of Campbell Wrapper Corp. in De Pere; and Madison developer Terrance Wall.

Check out this article from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Group reports $55 million in TV ad buys in Wisconsin governor’s race, making it most expensive in the country.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Related: The Milwaukee County Pension Scandal that lead to Scott Walker’s election to county Executive and later the Governor’s office.

Elections, K-12 Governance and Parent Choice

Mitchell Schmidt:

A new coalition of conservatives, policy groups and advocacy organizations has begun developing a package of education goals for the coming legislative session — with expanded school choice as a top priority — that could play a considerable role in the upcoming race for governor this November.

Officials with the Wisconsin Coalition for Education Freedom say the goal is to give parents and students more options. But the proposals also stand in stark contrast to priorities laid out by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers — setting up an education policy battle in the Nov. 8 election, in which Evers, a former educator and state superintendent who has opposed expanded private school vouchers, faces businessman Tim Michels, a Republican who has pledged to expand school choice offerings across Wisconsin.

People are also reading…

“The election is critically important,” said Susan Mitchell, a longtime advocate for school vouchers and founder of School Choice Wisconsin. “Gov. Evers, both as (Department of Public Instruction) superintendent and as governor, has repeatedly opposed the expansion of these programs. Tim Michels has made public a completely opposite sort of perspective, so it matters a lot in terms of getting things done.”

The coalition, launched Thursday, includes conservative groups Americans for Prosperity, Badger Institute and law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, as well as education stakeholders such as American Federation for Children, virtual education company K12/Stride, School Choice Wisconsin and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business lobbying organization.

The group did not provide specific legislative proposals, but officials told the Wisconsin State Journal the two biggest priorities will be “school choice for all families” and legislation seeking to establish a “Parental Bill of Rights,” letting parents sue a school district or school official if they don’t allow parents to determine the names and pronouns used for the child while at school, review instructional materials and outlines used by the child’s school and access any education-related information regarding the child, among other measures.

Evers vetoed a GOP-authored bill last session that would have extended those powers to parents, stating in an April 15 veto message he opposed it “because I object to sowing division in our schools, which only hurts our kids and learning in our classrooms.”

He also vetoed a measure that would have vastly expanded private school vouchers by eliminating the income limits in the statewide, Milwaukee County and Racine County private school voucher programs, as well as create a temporary education expense reimbursement program for public school students. A fiscal report estimated the bill could raise property taxes as much as $577 million.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Elections, K-12 Governance and Parent Choice

Mitchell Schmidt:

People are also reading…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

High schooler designs new ‘I Voted’ stickers for Madison elections

Scott Girard

Katina Maclin won’t be able to vote this fall, but her ideas will be present at every polling place in the city of Madison.

The high school junior, who recently moved from Sun Prairie to Glendale, designed two new voting-themed stickers for voters to consider grabbing after filling out their ballot.

“It speaks to how everyone can have an impact,” Maclin told the Cap Times. “What young people can contribute is something that we should take into consideration.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Elections and taxpayer supported education

Will Flanders:

Obviously, these results have implications for Wisconsin’s upcoming fall elections. Both of the major candidates for governor on the Republican side, Rebecca Kleefisch and Kevin Nicholson, have expressed support for education reform — both on the public school side and in expansion of school choice. The current governor, Democrat Tony Evers, has rejected several pieces of legislation that would have given parents more of a say in the classroom, including a bill that would have required schools to post instructional materialonline for easy accessibility for parents. The dividing line between Evers and the Republican candidates on these issues is quite stark.

Perhaps most importantly, the election returns highlight a growing belief among conservative voters that they can no longer ignore the policies of their local school boards. While laments about the politicization of school board races were widely voiced, many parents would say that school boards have brought this on themselves by politicizing the classroom in ways that are often at odds with the values of the communities in which the schools are located. The pandemic revealed to parents the indoctrination that occurs in many school districts around the country via at-home education. Parents remain angered by what they discovered, and are refusing to return to complacency.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Always interesting 2022 Madison School Board Election Agitation, via SMS

David Blaska has launched a write-in campaign for this seat, supported by former Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

K-12 Governance and Election Climate: Wisconsin edition “A lack of accountability should concern us all.”

Bill Glauber:

One panelist from suburban Milwaukee was critical of the amount of time schoolchildren spend on electronic devices, including computers, claiming that it connects students to pornographic images and affects their learning.

Johnson said: “This is their testimony, this is their viewpoint … that is something that should concern parents if that is happening.”

“I think there are good parts of technology and potentially bad parts of technology,” Johnson said. “I think we should make sure that the bad doesn’t come with the good. So I am concerned.”

Johnson said he was prompted to hold the meeting because he has been listening to parents in different formats — “in a completely nonpartisan way,” he said. “It’s interesting how many people that don’t necessarily agree with me on some issues come in here and want to talk about this.”

Asked about what he heard during the session, in which panelists spoke followed by audience members, Johnson said: “I think there’s some real concern about our public school system not listening to parents, not hearing their voices, not hearing their concerns, a lack of accountability. That should concern us all.”

On schools, Johnson said he was concerned “about the influence of national groups, teachers unions, that type of thing, trying to impose their ideology on our children.”

Dylan Brogan:

Every bad change in education over the last 50 years started with university professors,” says Pesta. “And don’t underestimate those teachers unions.”

But Pesta’s evidence of how Critical Race Theory is taught in Wisconsin public schools mostly came from out-of-context examples from other states. The tenured professor did include in his presentation a February tweet from state Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton) stating that “If parents want to ‘have a say’ in their child’s education, they should home school or pay for private school tuition out of their family budget.”

Snodgrass later deleted and apologized for the tweet. Another example was from an email sent by the Ozaukee County Democrats: “Public schools have the responsibility of the parents when their children are in their care.”

A parent from Burlington cited comedian Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime, which chronicles his early life growing up in South Africa during apartheid, as evidence that Critical Race Theory is pushed on her kid.

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson held a listening session on education in Madison. It got a little weird.https://t.co/YsZSqYOZad pic.twitter.com/nxjVox7Obz

— Isthmus (@isthmus) April 1, 2022

Falcon 9’s first stage has landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship pic.twitter.com/UZ0OWJJOy5

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 1, 2022

Nice to see STEM folks making it go!

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Laura Meckler and Matt Viser:

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Might Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ education mulligans be a 2022 election liability?

Democratic governors have responded by dropping mask mandates, urging that schools remain open and emphasizing there is a light at the end of the dark covid tunnel. They also are trying to change the subject, with a focus on education investment and recovery and warnings about the consequences if Republicans are elected.

But some Democrats worry that the responses, to date, are insufficient given the hardball politics the GOP is playing on these emotional issues.

“Democrats are giving away one of their greatest assets, and that’s being associated with public education. And giving away that advantage is going to get Democrats’ clocks cleaned this fall,” said Joe DiSano, a Michigan-based Democratic consultant. “We are letting the conservative crazies run ragged on us. We have the ammo to fight back, and we don’t.”

Republicans were buoyed by their unexpected victory in November’s Virginia gubernatorial contest, where Republican Glenn Youngkin won after a campaign defined by education issues. Youngkin criticized pandemic-related school closures and a statewide mask mandate in schools, issues that analysts who studied the race found particularly effective. He also promised to ban teaching of critical race theory, an academic framework for examining the way policies and laws perpetuate systemic racism and a catchall term that many GOP politicians have embraced to describe various racial equity lessons and initiatives they find objectionable.

Youngkin also effectively seized on a gaffe by his opponent, who said parents should not tell schools what to teach.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll after that election found overwhelming support for parents having a say in what their children’s schools teach. It also found 44 percent of Americans say they trust Democrats more to handle education, barely topping the 41 percent choosing Republicans. That represented a significant weakening in Democrats’ historic advantage.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Commentary on The Education Establishment and Tuesday’s Wisconsin Primary Election

Heather Smith:

School board primary elections are next week, and there is much consternation in the education establishment about the civic engagement of parents who are stepping up to take a more active role in the education of their children.

The pandemic brought to light many things about our school system that served as an education to parents across the state. To be sure some of those things were positive – many parents developed respect and appreciation for teachers who rose to the unprecedented challenges presented by upending the normal structure of classroom learning.

But there were many troubling discoveries. While the American Society of Pediatrics was strongly recommending in-person learning as vital to education as well as student mental, physical, and emotional health, parents saw their schools rejecting these experts’ advice.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Scott Mildred and Phil Hands:

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Commentary on unopposed taxpayer supported K-12 Madison school board elections

An outdated state law requires only Madison to elect its School Board members in such an odd way. That law should be changed.

(Interestingly, I saw no inquiry on how the legislation occurred….)

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Commentary on School board elections & unopposed Madison 2022 seats

Elizabeth Beyer:

In solidly Democratic Madison there’s markedly less enthusiasm for running for School Board than in other parts of the state. Of the three seats up for election this year, only one is contested after two incumbents opted not to run again.

Madison School Board President Ali Muldrow, who is up for reelection but is running unopposed, said interest in serving on the board, or any local office, is like the swing of a pendulum based on the political climate. The district hasn’t faced much public outcry over its COVID mitigation or equity policies.

“Madison is a really progressive city. … And I do think progressives are tired,” she said. “Voter engagement is going to matter a lot, and I do think Republicans in more purple parts of the state are going to work really hard this year to establish contrast campaigns.”

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Why San Francisco’s School Board Recall May Be One Of 2022’s Most Important Elections

Helen Raleigh:

Even the Democrat-led city government of San Francisco had enough with the board. It filed a lawsuit against both the SFUSD and its board in February 2021, accusing them of ” failing to come up with a reopening plan even as numerous other schools across the U.S. have reopened.” But SFUSD reopened only elementary schools last April and didn’t return to full-time in-person learning for all K-12 until fall 2021.

Board President López claimed the long delays didn’t cause any learning loss because children were “just having different learning experiences than the ones we currently measure,” and they learned more “about their families and cultures by staying home.” Her tone-deaf comments angered many parents, who have witnessed their kids’ academic and emotional struggles at home due to the school closures.

The school district has experienced such a sharp decline in student enrollment during its long closure that it had to implement a steep cut this school year to fill a budget hole of $125 million.
Social Justice at the Expense of Education

Second, the school board focused on leftist politics rather than education. In 2019, the board voted to cover a mural depicting slavery and Native Americans at George Washington High School, a decision that would cost taxpayers between $600,000 to $1 million. Fortunately, the mural will stay after a San Francisco Superior Court judge overturned the school board’s decision last year.

In January 2021, rather than focusing on reopening schools, the board voted to rename 44 schools, including Abraham Lincoln and George Washington High Schools. Even Democrat Mayor London Breed expressed her disbelief in a statement, saying, “I can’t understand why the school board is advancing a plan to rename all these schools when there isn’t a plan to have kids back in those physical schools.”

WHY SAN FRANCISCO’S SCHOOL BOARD RECALL MAY BE ONE OF 2022’S MOST IMPORTANT ELECTIONS

Helen Raleigh:

Even the Democrat-led city government of San Francisco had enough with the board. It filed a lawsuit against both the SFUSD and its board in February 2021, accusing them of ” failing to come up with a reopening plan even as numerous other schools across the U.S. have reopened.” But SFUSD reopened only elementary schools last April and didn’t return to full-time in-person learning for all K-12 until fall 2021.

Board President López claimed the long delays didn’t cause any learning loss because children were “just having different learning experiences than the ones we currently measure,” and they learned more “about their families and cultures by staying home.” Her tone-deaf comments angered many parents, who have witnessed their kids’ academic and emotional struggles at home due to the school closures.

The school district has experienced such a sharp decline in student enrollment during its long closure that it had to implement a steep cut this school year to fill a budget hole of $125 million.
Social Justice at the Expense of Education

Second, the school board focused on leftist politics rather than education. In 2019, the board voted to cover a mural depicting slavery and Native Americans at George Washington High School, a decision that would cost taxpayers between $600,000 to $1 million. Fortunately, the mural will stay after a San Francisco Superior Court judge overturned the school board’s decision last year.

In January 2021, rather than focusing on reopening schools, the board voted to rename 44 schools, including Abraham Lincoln and George Washington High Schools. Even Democrat Mayor London Breed expressed her disbelief in a statement, saying, “I can’t understand why the school board is advancing a plan to rename all these schools when there isn’t a plan to have kids back in those physical schools.”

An update on the spring 2022 Madison School Board Election (3 seats)

Ananda Mirilli will not run for reelection to the Madison School Board next spring, meaning two of the three seats up for election will not have an incumbent among the candidates.

Cris Carusi previously announced that she would not run for reelection, while board president Ali Muldrow is running for a second term. Carusi, Mirilli and Muldrow are all in the final year of their first three-year term on the School Board.

Mirilli announced her decision in a video posted to Facebook Monday, sharing that the pandemic “took a devastating personal turn” for her, as her daughter’s father died last year and her own mother died six months ago.

Elizabeth Beyer:

Three School Board seats are up for election in April, and if any of them draw more than two candidates, a primary will be held in February. Candidates were able to begin circulating nomination papers in early December, with the number of required signatures due in January.

Janeway has said they joined the race to protect trans children, including the third- and fourth-graders they teach in two Madison schools through a UW-Madison arts program called Whoopensocker.

Janeway also hopes to focus their campaign on student safety and wellness across the district while exploring ways to get the community involved in area schools to facilitate positive change. They also hope to foster a positive and healthy relationship between the board and school staff by incorporating staff voices in policy decisions.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Commentary on the 2022 Madison School Election

Wisconsin State Journal:

But the open seat on the Madison School Board was created when the board president retired after being taunted in foul ways outside her private home. Can you blame her? A school board member in Beaver Dam similarly resigned this fall, citing safety concerns for his family.

Madison’s schools were closed most of last year to in-person instruction, which frustrated many parents and students. Most other districts found ways to safely educate their children in person despite the virus.

Since police officers were pulled from Madison’s high schools, troubling violence has occurred. Property taxes are up 9%. Achievement gaps persist.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Why education was a top voter priority this election (….)

Anya Kamenetz:

Instead, the parents she talks to are upset that their children are still struggling, socially and emotionally as well as academically. She likens extended remote schooling to a form of “solitary confinement.” Fights are breaking out at school. Bus driver shortages have parents summoned to pick their kids up unpredictably. There are substitutes covering classes.

Justice, of Moms for Liberty, agrees that school closures are probably parents’ top issue. “I think definitely COVID restrictions,” were top of mind, she says. “There were schools in Virginia that never opened or were only opened partially. Parents have watched their children stagnate.”

School closures lasted longer in the United States than in most high-income countries, and much longer in blue jurisdictions than in red ones. Virginia had the seventh-fewest days of in-person learning last year among the 50 states, according to thewebsite Burbio. New Jersey was 10th.

NPR’s recent polling with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that 69% of parents were concerned that their children had missed learning during remote schooling, and the available evidence suggests that those concerns are justified.

Rodrigues is an executive committee member of the Massachusetts Democratic Party. She points out that in New Jersey, where the Republican candidate far outperformed expectations, anti-woke school board activists haven’t been much of a factor. Nor are parents for the most part opposed to masks or vaccines. They’re just fed up. “Folks like me have been saying for the past 18 months, you are underestimating the level of anxiety, fear and, frankly, the erosion of the relationship that schools have come to rely on when it comes to parents and families right now,” she says.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Horowitz’s conclusion was particularly embarrassing for CNN, which cited “sources close to the investigation” in March of 2017 — well after the FBI had already decided there was nothing there, according to Horowitz — to report the “FBI investigation continues” into the “‘odd’ computer link.” Moreover, when the original main source for the Alfa story, a “computer expert” who went by the name “Tea Leaves,” refused CNN’s requests for an interview for that piece, the network explained in apparent seriousness that “fear has now silenced several of the computer scientists who first analyzed the data,” as if a combo squad of Russian spies and Trump goons might put bullets in their heads. We find out from this indictment that those sources were terrified, all right, only not of Russians or Trump, but of being found out. In fact, the “academics” who were the sources for Franklin Foer’s original October 31, 2016 Slate article, “Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?”, were so concerned a nonsense allegation of secret Trump-Russia communication wouldn’t pass a public smell test that one of them proposed faking the story to make them “appear to communicate,” literally using the word “faking” in an email.They ended up not going that far, but the “research” they did produce was so weak that one of them complained that they couldn’t “technically make any claims that would fly public scrutiny,” even ifreporters and others lived down to their expectations and proved “not smart enough to refute our ‘best case’ scenario.” The researcher’s email went on, in a line that summed up much of the Russiagate phenomenon:The only thing that drives us at this point is that we just do not like [Trump]… Folks, I am afraid we have tunnel vision. Time to regroup?The intrepid reporting heroes who bought this manure-sack from these people were the ones to whom Rachel Maddow said, with a straight face, “We are blessed to have journalists as talented as you… writing about this.”

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

over $300K spent by Colorado Teacher Unions in School Board elections

Sherrie Peif:

Contributors to the effort launched the campaign in a year that has seen more candidates for school board than anyone can remember.

Many of those are slates of hopefuls running together and looking to hold sway over district policy decisions, despite school board races being classified as non-partisan, both major political parties have a foothold and interest in the races.

The renewed interest in school board seats comes as parents are pushing back on issues from mask mandates to the use of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in teaching methods and curriculum choices.

School districts across the state have a total 530 candidates running for open board seats, more than anytime in at least the last 20 years, and double the number of candidates from the 2019 election.

Civics: 2016 Election, censorship and misinformation

Matt Taibbi:

A long list of press figures — from Stelter’s own CNN colleague and shameless intelligence community spokesclown Natasha Bertrand, to reporters from The New Yorker, Time, MSNBC, Fortune, the Financial Times, and especially Slate and The Atlantic — were witting or unwitting pawns in a scheme to sell the public on a transparently moronic hoax, i.e. that Donald Trump’s campaign was communicating mysterious digital treason to Russia’s Alfa Bank via a secret computer server.

The story sounded absurd from the start, and was instantly challenged by experts. Even outlets normally hostile to Donald Trump like the New York Times and the Washington Post correctly steered clear of it initially. However, plenty of other reporters fell for it and kept falling for it, including Stelter’s own CNN. We’ve known this story was false since at least December 9th, 2019, when Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz told us that “the FBI investigated whether there were cyber links between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, but had concluded by early February 2017 that there were no such links”:

Commentary on Incumbent school board member election losses (unopposed in Madison…)

Samantha West, Alec Johnson and Rory Linnane:

Tricia Zunker said she knows school board presidents sometimes have a target on their backs. It’s part of the job, she said.

But as Zunker led the Wausau School District board over the past year, she said, “People were so cruel, you’d think I personally brought the pandemic here.”

Angry citizens scrawled messages about her on sidewalks around town. A board president in a neighboring district wrote on Facebook that she was “a waste of physical space on the planet.”

Tuesday’s election brought the coup de grace: Of seven candidates seeking four seats on the board, Zunker finished sixth. Three winners, all newcomers, ran as a bloc against what they called Wausau’s “virtual and hybrid learning nightmare.”

After a year in which parents’ frustrations put schools in the spotlight more than ever, board elections were unusually contentious and partisan. Across the state, many voters opted for change.

Incumbents lost in suburban districts such as Oak Creek-Franklin, and more urban districts such as Green Bay. Those who unseated incumbents criticized reopening plans, transparency and current board members’ political leanings.

Not every district elected candidates pushing for more in-person learning, though. Christina Brey, spokesperson for the Wisconsin Education Association Council representing educators around the state, said the issue swung both ways.

In more urban areas, like Milwaukee and Green Bay, voters favored candidates who were in favor of more cautious reopenings and enjoyed the support of local teachers unions. In other districts, support from teachers was the kiss of death.

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

Molly Beck and Madeline Heim:

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

Channel3000:

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

Commentary on the 2021 Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) Superintendent election

[I have received 3 text messages and a door knock from a paid lit drop person, for one of the candidates. Guess?]

13-1 Special interest $pending for Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Candidate Jill Underly, running against Deborah Kerr.

In that same forum, Kerr outlined a plan to decentralize the Department of Public Instruction by creating offices around the state and making it a “customer service” instead of “regulatory” agency. She also questioned Underly’s support beyond unions.

“I am beholden to kids and families and educators, in that order,” she said. “My opponent is beholden to teachers’ unions.”

Kerr’s campaign has seen controversy since immediately after finishing second in the primary. The day after the primary, she deleted her Twitter account after sending a tweet in response to a post asking people generally to recall the first time they were called the N-word.

Assembly against private school forced closure

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

Madison School Board President Gloria Reyes Will Not Seek Re-election

Gloria Reyes:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 1, 2020

Madison School Board President Gloria Reyes Will Not Seek Re-election

Statement by Gloria Reyes

I am announcing today that I will not seek re-election to the Madison School Board. This has been a difficult decision. I’ve made it after much consideration, consultation with my family, and as always with the future of our Madison Schools and our students uppermost in my mind.

As a Board member, I have always felt that our MMSD community deserved every ounce of energy I have. I’ve given that. Now, I have taken on a big, important, new job. While my new employer is fully supportive of my public service, I believe my focus must turn completely to serving our Briarpatch youth and families.

It has been an honor to serve alongside my fellow board members, who have supported my leadership and who are steadfast and thoughtful public servants. We have accomplished a great deal together. Although there are challenges ahead, the District is in a strong place: a respected, effective leader as Superintendent and continued investment from our community thanks to two successful referenda this fall. This Board will lead us into a bright future.

During my three years on the Board, we have gone through significant changes, leaving us open for opportunities to make even more change happen. We have begun to build a new normal, where black excellence is not just words we say but is incorporated into all we do; where inclusion and equity brings justice to those most vulnerable in our communities; a new normal where we close achievement gaps. We must continue on this path.

I would like to thank all those who have supported me on this journey and who came together to elect the first Latina to the Madison School Board. It was your support and your commitment that kept me resilient and resolute in making decisions based on what was best for our students and school community.

Thank you for standing alongside me, holding me accountable, and pushing me as an elected leader to grow, to learn, and to have the courage to make tough decisions.

It is my firm belief that public schools are the foundation of a city’s success. Throughout this journey, I have learned that our Madison Public Schools are at the center of our City, an engine that drives excellence, that creates promise, and that highlights who we want to be as a community.

I will continue to support youth and our community in my new position, I will continue to work with the MMSD, and I will always be a champion for Madison Public Schools.

# # #

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

Estimation of US Children’s Educational Attainment and Years of Life Lost Associated With Primary School Closures During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH, Wil Van Cleve, MD, MPH2; Frederick J. Zimmerman, PhD3:

Question

Based on the current understanding of the associations between school disruption and decreased educational attainment and between decreased educational attainment and lower life expectancy, is it possible to estimate the association between school closure during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and decreased life expectancy of publicly educated primary school–aged children in the United States?

Findings This decision analytical model found that missed instruction during 2020 could be associated with an estimated 5.53 million years of life lost. This loss in life expectancy was likely to be greater than would have been observed if leaving primary schools open had led to an expansion of the first wave of the pandemic.

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

Molly Beck and Madeline Heim:

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

Channel3000:

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.

School “opening”, Election Posturing and K-12 “advocacy”

There seems to be a rhythm to the text message touch attempts.

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

Molly Beck and Madeline Heim:

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

Channel3000:

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction:

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

Years before Trump’s election the media dramatically increased coverage of racism and embraced new theories of racial consciousness that set the stage for the latest unrest

Zach Goldberg:

Starting well before Donald Trump’s rise to power, while President Obama was still in office, terms like “microaggression” and “white privilege” were picked up by liberal journalists. These terms went from being obscure fragments of academic jargon to commonplace journalistic language in only a few years—a process that I document here in detail. During this same period, while exotic new phrases were entering the discourse, universally recognizable words like “racism” were being radically redefined. Along with the new language came ideas and beliefs animating a new moral-political framework to apply to public life and American society.

Consider the graph below, which displays the usage of the terms “racist(s)” and “racism” as a percentage of all words in four of the nation’s largest newspapers from (depending on the publication) 1970 through 2019.

Nearly 200,000 Wisconsin voters did not have to show a photo ID in the April election

Patrick Marley:

Nearly 200,000 voters dubbed themselves indefinitely confined for the April election, allowing them to cast absentee ballots without providing a photo ID.

Those voters will automatically receive absentee ballots this fall.

The spring election for state Supreme Court saw an unprecedented level of absentee voting as people tried to keep away from others because of the coronavirus outbreak spreading across the globe.

Of the nearly 1 million people who voted by mail, about 195,000 labeled themselves indefinitely confined, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. That’s more than 2½ times the nearly 72,000 who called themselves indefinitely confined in 2019.

The New Haven Teachers Union Is Redoing Its Election. The Reason Involves Gift Cards, Personal Loans & Accusations of Extortion

Mike Antonucci:

The union was praised by then-U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Its president, David Cicarella, was honored by the Obama White House in 2012 as a “School Turnaround Champion of Change.”

“New Haven is a gold standard in terms of how you do things right,” said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

But in 2019, the union made headlines for a different reason.

Cicarella was challenged for the presidency by his vice president and longtime friend Tom Burns. After the votes were counted and certified, Cicarella had won his fifth term by 20 votes.

Burns challenged the election on a number of grounds, most having to do with Cicarella allegedly using his powers of incumbency to gain an unfair advantage during the campaign. The challenge was dismissed by the union’s board, so Burns went up the chain — to AFT Connecticut, AFT national and the U.S. Department of Labor’s union oversight office.

During subsequent investigations, Burns withdrew some charges, and the rest were found to be without merit. However, AFT did determine that 27 members who worked as nurses in the private sector had not been allowed to vote. The national union ordered a rerun of the election.

A competitive Wisconsin DPI superintendent election in 2021?

State Superintendent Carolyn Stanford Taylor announced her decision today not to run in the 2021 election for state superintendent of public instruction. Gov. Tony Evers appointed Stanford Taylor to the office in January 2019, and her term ends July 2021.

“I am honored to have been appointed by Governor Evers to lead the Department of Public Instruction and will always be grateful to the governor for the trust he placed in naming me as his successor,” Stanford Taylor said. “I promised Governor Evers I would commit to completing the 2 1/2 years left in his term as state superintendent and to continue the work we had started together at the DPI, and I will maintain that commitment while I serve this office.”

Stanford Taylor says she is making her decision public at this time so others interested in being the state’s chief education officer and leading the department will have sufficient time to organize their campaigns. The state superintendent says she hopes her successor will continue to maintain a focus on educational equity and ensure all of Wisconsin’s students graduate college and career ready.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, long lead by our new Governor, Tony Evers, has granted thousands of mulligans to elementary reading teachers unable to pass the Foundations of Reading content knowledge examination (based on Massachusetts MTEL).

2020 Madison school board election: Candidate “suspends campaign”

Scott Bland and Maggie Severns:

When he initially filed papers to run, Strong said he considers school safety and racial disparities in discipline and achievement to be the top issues facing MMSD.

“We have to make sure that our schools are safe and that they’re safe learning environments for our kids to learn and for our teachers to teach in,” Wayne Strong said. He stressed the importance of “tackling the achievement gap and just making sure that all of our students are given the best possible opportunity to get the quality education they deserve.”

The end of his campaign leaves Seat 6 as the only contested election, with three candidates running. Incumbent Kate Toews is not running for re-election, leaving newcomers Maia Pearson, Christina Gomez Schmidt and Karen Ball set for a Feb. 18 primary election. The top two vote-getters will move onto the April general election.

Curiously, this has occurred several times in recent years: Ed Hughes, after 3 unopposed campaigns withdrew from a competitive 2017 campaign after the primary!

2016 commentary.

Mr Hughes name resurfaces occasionally, lobbying against parent and school choice in the form of the 2019 Arbor school charter proposal and in the taxpayer supported Madison school administration’s 2020 spending increase referendum slides.

Finally, despite spending far more than most K-12 school districts, and tolerating long term, disastrous reading results, Mr. Hughes voted against the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school (2011).

Civics: “Dark Money” and elections

The “green wave” of campaign cash that boosted Democrats and liberal causes in 2018 included an unprecedented gusher of secret money, new documents obtained by POLITICO show.

The Sixteen Thirty Fund, a little-known nonprofit headquartered in Washington, spent $141 million on more than 100 left-leaning causes during the midterm election year, according to a new tax filing from the group. The money contributed to efforts ranging from fighting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and other Trump judicial nominees to boosting ballot measures raising the minimum wage and changing laws on voting and redistricting in numerous states.

Elections and Taxpayer Supported K-12 Achievement and Choice

Chris Stewart:

When you emerged as a young, talented, highly educated leader years ago public schools in this country were miseducating black children en masse.

Today, as you run for president that problem continues.

But something changed between the you back then and the you today: your relationship with truth.

In a time when too many families are redlined into carefully gerrymandered education deserts, those hope-killing places where middle-class “workers” drive in each day to collect paychecks from school systems only to leave miseducated, marginalized kids in their rear view mirrors as they leave at 4 pm, you choose to step away from school choice and reform.

To bad old Cory is gone because that guy was a master of positive triangulation capable of forging bipartisan local and national relationships to raise money and interests in closing bad schools, opening good ones, fixing teacher contracts, and working on behalf of parents so desperate they were routinely lying about their addresses to gain admission to suburban schools.

20 years ago when your entered politics only 1% of Newark’s students were in charter schools. Today the percentage of students in charters has risen to 30%. Graduation rates rose from 59% to 74% between 2010 and 2015. Poorly performing staff were replaced with high-quality educators.

You did that with the help of dedicated friends (the ones you now betray).

Russia tells Google not to advertise “illegal” events after election protests

Reuters:

Russia’s state communications watchdog has asked Google to stop advertising “illegal mass events” on its YouTube video platform, it said on Sunday.

Tens of thousands of Russians staged what observers called the country’s biggest political protest for eight years on Saturday, defying a crackdown to demand free elections to Moscow’s city legislature. Multiple YouTube channels broadcast the event live.

The watchdog, Roscomnadzor, said some entities had been buying advertising tools from YouTube, such as push notifications, in order to spread information about illegal mass protests, including those aimed at disrupting elections.

It said Russia would consider a failure by Google to respond to the request as “interference in its sovereign affairs” and “hostile influence (over) and obstruction of democratic elections in Russia”.

If the company does not take measures to prevent events from being promoted on its platforms, Russia reserves the right to respond accordingly, Roscomnadzor said, without giving details.

Over the past five years, Russia has introduced tougher laws requiring search engines to delete some search results, messaging services to share encryption keys with security services, and social networks to store Russian users’ personal data on servers within the country.

A Google spokesperson in Russia declined to comment on Sunday.

Many taxpayer supported K-12 School
districts use Google services, including Madison.

‘Voters are tired of you’: A week after parcel tax defeat, LAUSD parents rail at district leaders during 2019-20 budget hearing

Taylor Swaak:

Parents blasted L.A. Unified officials at a school board hearing this week — one even bursting into tears — offering an angry glimpse into the fractured trust between the community and the district just one week after voters overwhelmingly rejected a new parcel tax.

Many of the more than 20 speakers at Tuesday’s four-hour session expressed ongoing frustration with the ambiguity of L.A. Unified’s $7.8 billion operating budget and Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP), a three-year plan updated annually that outlines the district’s goals and actions for improving student outcomes. Tuesday’s meeting was the first since L.A. Unified’s bid for a $500 million-a-year “Measure EE” parcel tax failed at the polls, and was also the first time the finalized 2019-20 budget and the LCAP were formally presented to the public. The board will vote on both next Tuesday.

“All of the voters are tired of you,” parent Luz Maria Montoya said in Spanish. “We don’t know what work you are doing.”

Some parents said district documents don’t clearly explain changes to student programs and services for next year. Others added that there isn’t transparency or robust “monitoring” of how L.A. Unified’s expenditures, such as professional development and training for teachers and principals, yield actual results for students. Montoya, for example, called district services for English learners and special education students “an embarrassment.” A few also accused L.A. Unified officials and principals of keeping parents out of budget and policy discussions — treating them “as sheeps, as herds,” as one speaker said— rather than welcoming them to the table as a partner.

“We have a lot of barriers” to knowing what’s going on, said parent María Daisy Ortíz, who addressed the board in Spanish. “We want to work with you, not against you. But respect us. … No one returns the wasted time to our children.”

Voters rejected two out of three Madison school district referendums in 2005

2019 gaokao points to focus on hi-tech future

Wang Qi

China’s national college entrance examinations, known as the gaokao and also known for its toughness and which determines millions of young people’s destinies every year, concluded on Saturday, showing the country’s determination to nurture creative talent.

As usual, the examination questions have become a hot talking point on Chinese social media, but this time the discussion centered on their creativity by merging the arts and sciences and by their philosophical thinking, although some viewed them as adding more difficulty to the already arduous test.

For instance, in the national math test paper, examinees found a cloud-shaped curve on a coordinate axis. The “cloud” was composed of three arcs, and the question was to figure out the polar coordinates equation of a circle.

In order to ensure the fairness of talent selection, China’s Ministry of Educationhas been using three different sets of college entrance examinations to students in different provinces since 2016.

“I was confused when I saw that cloud in the national math test, it was really unexpected,” one Weibo user posted. “The ‘cloud’ was new, but not that difficult,” said another.

What to expect from the 2019 Madison School Board

Christina Gomez Schmidt:

With the spring election over, what should we as a community now expect of the Madison School Board?

Its role is to provide consistent leadership and direction that results in every student receiving the best education possible. Genuine collaboration is needed among these seven people to tackle the complex problems in our schools. They don’t have to agree on every issue, but they can provide for and model vigorous public debate of issues, a problem-solving mindset and consensus building.

We should expect the School Board to:

Insist on accurate, comprehensive and publicly accessible information to enable informed decision-making by the board and informed participation by the community.
Publicly discuss important topics including school improvement plans, enrollment trends, and the board’s evaluation of the superintendent.

Facilitate two-way communication with the community and insist on better outreach to those who feel their voices are unheard
Ensure that while addressing student needs, the district also supports our educators and staff.

Much more on the 2019 Madison School Board election, here.

Madison Partnership for Advanced Learning 2019 School Board Candidate Q & A

Christina Gomez Schmidt, via a kind email:

In March 2019 after the primary election, we asked each candidate six questions about education issues and Advanced Learning topics. We hope the answers will help voters to better understand candidate viewpoints and how they see Advanced Learning fitting into district priorities.

Below are links to their answers from March 2019. The election will be held on April 2, 2019.

Seat 3:
Kaleem Caire
Cris Carusi

Seat 4:
David Blaska
Ali Muldrow

Seat 5:
TJ Mertz (incumbent)
Ananda Mirilli

Much more on the 2019 Madison School Board Election, here.

SSFP 2019 Madison School Board Candidate Forum

Much more on the 2019 Madison School Board elections, here.

The Simpson Street Free Press.

“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”.

Election offers rare chance to change risk-averse School Board

James Howard:

In a recent Capital Times opinion piece by UW journalism professor Sue Robinson, it was stated that we find ourselves at a moment of racial reckoning, change and evolution. I couldn’t agree more. I want to add my voice to this conversation since I am currently the longest-serving African-American School Board member.

I also see the upcoming election as an opportunity. During my service over the past nine years, my largest frustration has been the board’s inability to support proposals that would directly benefit students of color. We can go back several years to Madison Prep and each initiative since that was offered as a possible solution to low academic achievement for students of color. The board has only been willing to pass initiatives to raise the achievement for students of color when they are embedded in initiatives that will benefit our white students. Our inability to take on risks and innovations that offer the possibility of increasing achievement for students of color are always voted down by the board.

Here we are 50 years later still experiencing the same low reading and math achievement for students of color.

This election offers the Madison school community an opportunity to change our historically risk-adverse board where students of color are concerned to a board that has a greater chance to vote in favor of initiatives that are specifically designed to increase the academic achievement for students of color.

Much more on the 2019 Madison School Board election, here.

School Board candidates stake out their positions at 2019 primary forum

The nine candidates in a crowded primary for three seats on the Madison School Board made their case to an audience gathered at Christ Presbyterian Church Tuesday evening.

The forum, organized by the Grandparents United for Madison Public Schools, was the first time the candidates shared the stage during the current election cycle.

The fast-paced forum moved quickly through a number of issues, ranging from how the School Board should handle new programs and initiatives started in the district and how best to evaluate them, to how they would handle hypothetical situations that might arise if elected.

Candidates also answered several yes-or-no questions on their support of Wisconsin’s private school voucher program, emergency licenses for teachers, restoring collective bargaining rights for teachers and itemizing the amount of a local property tax bill that goes to fund private schools.

Kaleem Caire, the founder and CEO of One City Schools, is running against Cris Carusi, a University of Wisconsin-Madison employee and public education advocate, for Seat 3. Both candidates will likely advance through the primary race since a third candidate, Skylar Croy, withdrew from the race last month. Croy’s name will still be on the Feb. 19 ballot.

2019 Candidate Q&A: Madison School Board, Seat 4

What is the most pressing issue facing the Madison School District and how would you address it?

Blaska: The overly bureaucratic Behavior Education Plan is both symptom and cause. After four years and $15 million, suspensions have declined 15 percent but “behavior incidents” have nearly doubled and the racial disparity remains unmoved. Worse, our district-wide Department of Public Instruction achievement score dropped to 58.2 from 60.6 in 2015-16.

Bryan: The achievement gap in the ability to read. Busing a child in the elementary school so he can sit in class with more intensively trained peers fails to close the gap, as was expected 30 years ago when the paired schools and busing kids away from their home neighborhoods were instituted.

Muldrow: We urgently must change schools into places where students enjoy learning and treat each other with humanity and respect. Currently schools are under-funded, teachers are overworked and students are less than inspired. I would bring innovation and arts every day to our schools promoting better behavior and academic performance.

Much more on the 2019 Madison School Board election, here.

Commentary on a 2019 Madison School Board Candidate Forum

Laurie Frost and Jeff Henriques on Madison’s disastrous reading results:

The occasion was a school board candidate forum. An organization named GRUMPS sponsored it. It stands for GRandparents United for Madison Public Schools. Its major domos are former school board members Nan Brien, Anne Arnesen, Barbara Arnold, Arlene Silviera, and Carol Carstensen. We also encountered former board guys Bill Keyes, Bill Clingan, and Ed Hughes Tuesday at the venue, Christ Presbyterian Church on E. Gorham St. All are good liberals and — in today’s identity politics-riven world — white as Wonder Bread.

This is the teachers union-first cabal that voted down Kaleem Caire’s proposed Madison Prep Academy charter school eight years ago. Because, you must understand, protecting the public school monopoly takes precedence over closing the academic achievement gap. Then and now. GRumps is death on school choice, death on vouchers, death on “non-instrumentality” charter schools formed within the district. Which forced Mr. Caire to go to Governor Walker to start his One City Learning Center.

Despite their hegemony over Madison’s public schools these last 20 years, they assume no responsibility for its endemic racial achievement gap. (See my website at BlaskaForSaferSchools.)

This top-down, command-and-control philosophy — so Madison! — informed GRumps questions.

Have you stopped beating your wife?

The nine active candidates were asked if they supported informing Madison residents through their tax bill of how much state money is lost to private, usually religious, voucher schools. A clever and insidious propagandizing, that. Yes or No.

No explanation accepted at this forum. No caveat that every student in Wisconsin gets a share of state dollars and that those dollars follow the student. It’s called “choice” for a reason. No exposition on the fact that the parents of 28,000 largely minority and “economically disadvantaged” students in Milwaukee have chosen hope over the failed public schools there.

Much more on the 2019 Madison school board election, here (primary February 19, general April 2)

2019 Madison School Board Candidate Events; Kaleem Caire on Accountability

I’ve added the following audio recordings to the 2019 Madison School Board Candidate page.

WORT FM Candidate discussion 2.5.2019 Cris Carusi and Kaleem Caire [mp3 audio]

Mr. Caire: “If we don’t reach our benchmarks in five years, they can shut us down”. There is no public school in Madison that has closed because only 7 to 9% of black children have been reading at grade level for the last 20 to 30 years”.

Candidate Forum: 2.5.2019 [MP3 audio]

Thank you to those who’ve helped record and share these events.

Much more on the election (February 19 Primary and April 2 general):

Children who are not proficient readers by fourth grade are four times more likely to drop out of school. Additionally, two-thirds of them will end up in prison or on welfare.

Though these dismal trajectories are well known, Madison School District’s reading scores for minority students remain unconscionably low and flat. According to the most recent data from 2017-18, fewer than 9 percent of black and fewer than 20 percent of Hispanic fourth graders were reading proficiently. Year after year, we fail these students in the most basic of our responsibilities to them: teaching them how to read.

Much is known about the process of learning to read, but a huge gap is between that knowledge and what is practiced in our schools. The Madison School District needs a science-based literacy curriculum overseen by licensed reading professionals who understand the cognitive processes that underlie learning how to read.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

Routing around Madison’s non-diverse K-12 legacy governance model:

In March 2016, Cheatham said that it was her intent to make OEO “obsolete — that our schools will be serving students so well that there isn’t a need.”

Since then, the district has tried to keep tabs on any new charter proposals for Madison, going so far as to send former School Board member Ed Hughes to a September meeting of the Goodman Community Center board of directors to express the district’s opposition to another proposed charter school, Arbor Community School, which was looking to partner with the Goodman center.

Hughes gave the board a letter from Cheatham to UW System President Ray Cross that expressed the district’s dismay at allegedly being kept out of the loop on Arbor’s plans, pointed to alleged deficiencies in Arbor’s charter proposal, and asked that Arbor either be rejected or at least kept out of Madison.

Hughes also told the board that as a Goodman donor, he did not think other donors would look kindly on a Goodman partnership with Arbor.

Becky Steinhoff, Goodman executive director, later told the Wisconsin State Journal that Goodman was “experiencing a period of enormous change,” including the recent opening of a new building, and chose not to work with Arbor.

“I understand the climate and the polarizing topic of charters” in Madison, McCabe said, but he wasn’t concerned the district would attempt to thwart Milestone and he said it would “be a dream come true” if Milestone were one day folded into the district.

He said Community—Learning—Design has an application due to the state Feb. 22 for a federal planning grant.

Much more on our 2019 school board election:

Seat 3

Kaleem Caire, 7856 Wood Reed Drive, Madison

Cristiana Carusi, 5709 Bittersweet Place

Skylar Croy, 502 N. Frances St., Madison

Seat 4

David Blaska, 5213 Loruth Terrace, Madison

Laila Borokhim, 2214 Monroe St., Madison

Albert Bryan, 4302 Hillcrest Drive, Madison

Ali Muldrow, 1966 East Main St., Madison

Seat 5

TJ Mertz, 1210 Gilson St., Madison

Ananda Mirilli, 1027 S. Sunnyvale Lane Unit A, Madison

Amos Roe, 5705 Crabapple Lane, Madison

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

2009: An emphasis on adult employment.

Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:

Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”

“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

Sarah Manski and Ed Hughes “withdrew” from their respective races in recent elections. The timing, in both cases was unfortunate for voters, and other candidates.

Commentary on Madison School Board’s Unique Election Process

Before any votes were cast last April, one of the three candidates running for two seats on the Madison School Board was a shoo-in to win even though — like the other two contenders on the ballot that day — she was running for a districtwide seat.

Over the last 20 school board elections, the same thing has happened at least four other times, and will again next month.

The reason? A school board election system that may well be unique in Wisconsin.

Madison’s current system dates to the 1980s, when state lawmakers stepped in to implement a City Council-sponsored plan to move from at-large elections to the current system. The council’s plan had been overwhelmingly rejected in 1978 by the School Board and in a citywide referendum.

Today, state law mandates that any Wisconsin school district with a city whose population is between 150,000 and 500,000 — meaning only Madison — must elect board members to at-large, numbered seats. It is likely unique among school board election systems in Wisconsin, although it appears to be in place in at least a handful of districts in Texas and perhaps elsewhere.

“Most people couldn’t wrap their heads around voting for two candidates,” said Sheryl Moore, superintendent of the Sealy (Texas) Independent School District, explaining why her board moved from at-large to numbered-seat elections.

Much more on the 2019 Madison School Board elections, here.

Substitute reading for potholes: local elections

Rod Dreher:

Stout-hearted Steve McClellan, running for supervisor of Holmes County, Miss., is my new favorite politician. “Holes in the road!” is 2019’s “the rent is too damn high!”

In this update, McClellan, who is now wearing a bandanna over his eyes, condemns the injustice of the New Orleans Saints being robbed of their victory over the Rams. “The NFL is just like these potholes: We got to get ’em fixed,” he says.

Madison, despite spending far more than most, has Long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

Commentary on the 2019 Madison School Board candidates

Laurie Frost and Jeff Henriques on Madison’s disastrous reading results:

With the Madison School Board primary election less than a month away, a crowded field of nine candidates will make their case to voters in the coming weeks, starting with a forum on Feb. 5.

Here’s a closer look at how candidates are making their case to voters.

Seat 3

Kaleem Caire, an education activist and founder of One City Schools, is calling for a focus on early childhood education. One City Schools, which he heads, is one of Wisconsin’s first 4K and kindergarten charter options authorized by the University of Wisconsin’s Office of Educational Opportunity.

Caire is running nearly eight years after the School Board rejected his proposal for another charter school, Madison Preparatory Academy.

“I would like to see stronger partnerships between MMSD and Madison’s early childhood education community that provide a sensible continuum of learning, growth and development opportunities for children from birth to age 5,” Caire wrote in a questionnaire distributed by Madison Teachers Inc.

Children who are not proficient readers by fourth grade are four times more likely to drop out of school. Additionally, two-thirds of them will end up in prison or on welfare.

Though these dismal trajectories are well known, Madison School District’s reading scores for minority students remain unconscionably low and flat. According to the most recent data from 2017-18, fewer than 9 percent of black and fewer than 20 percent of Hispanic fourth graders were reading proficiently. Year after year, we fail these students in the most basic of our responsibilities to them: teaching them how to read.

Much is known about the process of learning to read, but a huge gap is between that knowledge and what is practiced in our schools. The Madison School District needs a science-based literacy curriculum overseen by licensed reading professionals who understand the cognitive processes that underlie learning how to read.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

Routing around Madison’s non-diverse K-12 legacy governance model:

In March 2016, Cheatham said that it was her intent to make OEO “obsolete — that our schools will be serving students so well that there isn’t a need.”

Since then, the district has tried to keep tabs on any new charter proposals for Madison, going so far as to send former School Board member Ed Hughes to a September meeting of the Goodman Community Center board of directors to express the district’s opposition to another proposed charter school, Arbor Community School, which was looking to partner with the Goodman center.

Hughes gave the board a letter from Cheatham to UW System President Ray Cross that expressed the district’s dismay at allegedly being kept out of the loop on Arbor’s plans, pointed to alleged deficiencies in Arbor’s charter proposal, and asked that Arbor either be rejected or at least kept out of Madison.

Hughes also told the board that as a Goodman donor, he did not think other donors would look kindly on a Goodman partnership with Arbor.

Becky Steinhoff, Goodman executive director, later told the Wisconsin State Journal that Goodman was “experiencing a period of enormous change,” including the recent opening of a new building, and chose not to work with Arbor.

“I understand the climate and the polarizing topic of charters” in Madison, McCabe said, but he wasn’t concerned the district would attempt to thwart Milestone and he said it would “be a dream come true” if Milestone were one day folded into the district.

He said Community—Learning—Design has an application due to the state Feb. 22 for a federal planning grant.

Much more on our 2019 school board election:

Seat 3

Kaleem Caire, 7856 Wood Reed Drive, Madison

Cristiana Carusi, 5709 Bittersweet Place

Skylar Croy, 502 N. Frances St., Madison

Seat 4

David Blaska, 5213 Loruth Terrace, Madison

Laila Borokhim, 2214 Monroe St., Madison

Albert Bryan, 4302 Hillcrest Drive, Madison

Ali Muldrow, 1966 East Main St., Madison

Seat 5

TJ Mertz, 1210 Gilson St., Madison

Ananda Mirilli, 1027 S. Sunnyvale Lane Unit A, Madison

Amos Roe, 5705 Crabapple Lane, Madison

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

2009: An emphasis on adult employment.

Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:

Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”

“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

Sarah Manski and Ed Hughes “withdrew” from their respective races in recent elections. The timing, in both cases was unfortunate for voters, and other candidates.

Skylar Croy withdrawing from 2019 Madison School Board race, name will still appear on ballot

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

Madison School Board candidate Skylar Croy said in an interview with the Cap Times Friday that he would suspend his campaign and withdraw from the Seat 3 race, citing personal reasons.

Because Croy turned in his verified nomination signatures on Wednesday to the city clerk’s office, the third-year University of Wisconsin law student’s name will still appear on the ballot during the Feb. 19 primary election.

“Once you turn in signatures and they’re all proper, you’re on the ballot and can’t withdraw,” Eric Christiansen, an official at the City Clerk’s office said. He noted that even if a candidate died after their nomination signatures were turned in, their name would still appear on the ballot.

Croy serves in the Army National Guard and worked as an engineer before entering law school. Croy, 26, told the Cap Times on Wednesday that he was excited to have a chance to bring a younger voice to the seven-seat School Board.

His parents worked in schools, which Croy said helped developed his interest in education issues.

Much more on our 2019 school board election:

Seat 3

Kaleem Caire, 7856 Wood Reed Drive, Madison

Cristiana Carusi, 5709 Bittersweet Place

Skylar Croy, 502 N. Frances St., Madison

Seat 4

David Blaska, 5213 Loruth Terrace, Madison

Laila Borokhim, 2214 Monroe St., Madison

Albert Bryan, 4302 Hillcrest Drive, Madison

Ali Muldrow, 1966 East Main St., Madison

Seat 5

TJ Mertz, 1210 Gilson St., Madison

Ananda Mirilli, 1027 S. Sunnyvale Lane Unit A, Madison

Amos Roe, 5705 Crabapple Lane, Madison

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

2009: An emphasis on adult employment.

Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:

Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”

“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

2009: An emphasis on adult employment.

Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:

Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”

“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

Sarah Manski and Ed Hughes “withdrew” from their respective races in recent elections. The timing, in both cases was unfortunate for voters, and other candidates.

Who’s running for Madison School Board (so far)? 2019

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

The Madison School Board’s general election is still nearly five months away, but candidates have been jumping into the race the past few weeks at a rapid pace. Three seats on the seven-person School Board will be on the ballot this spring, and each seat will be contested. Here’s what you need to know about the race so far:

Seat 3

Seat 3, currently held by Dean Loumos, will have a new member this April. Loumos announced earlier this month that he would not seek re-election, citing medical concerns that would take him away from the campaign trail.

Cris Carusi, a district parent and volunteer, is running against education activist and One City Schools founder Kaleem Caire. Carusi ran for Seat 6 in 2017. She fell short in the three-person primary in that race.

Carusi told the Cap Times that she learned a lot from her first-ever campaign for public office.

Caire also has run for School Board. He lost the race for Seat 4 in 1998.

One City Schools, which expanded from One City Early Learning Center earlier this year, is one of the state’s first 4K and kindergarten charter options authorized by the University of Wisconsin’s Office of Educational Opportunity.

Caire went to the UW System to get One City Schools chartered after an earlier attempt to get a charter school, Madison Prep, approved by the Madison School District failed on a 5-2 vote in 2011.

He has previously said that he won’t have a conflict of interest if he serves on the School Board because One City Schools isn’t chartered through MMSD.

Notes and links:

A majority (including Mr. Hughes) of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

Kaleem Caire adds to political diversity in Madison School Board races (2019)

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

Caire, 47, is a Madison native who in 2011 mounted a contentious and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to get the School Board to approve what was initially conceived as an all-male public charter school serving those who have long struggled in Madison’s traditional public schools: poor children and children of color.

In an interview, Caire said he’s open to the School Board approving charters, but is “not a charter purist.” His preschool, One City Early Learning on the city’s South Side, was approved as a charter this year by the University of Wisconsin System’s Office of Educational Opportunity.

“I’m less concerned about what we call it,” he said. “I’m more concerned with what we get done.”

He also said he’s in favor of keeping Madison police officers, called educational resource officers, in Madison’s four main high schools and that he’d like to see a Madison public school focused on the performing arts and one focused on science, technology, engineering and math — the so-called STEM disciplines.

Madison also “needs upgraded facilities,” he said. “We’ve got to do more than just patchwork on our facilities.”

Caire’s entrance into the race for Seat 3 brings to five the number of non-incumbents seeking seats on the seven-member board. There are three seats up for a three-year term in the April 2 spring election. If more than two candidates vie for a seat, the field would be pared to two in a Feb. 19 primary.

Notes and links:

Kaleem Caire

Cris Carusi

Dean Loumos

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

Cris Carusi announces run for Madison School Board 2019

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

Carusi, who has been a district parent for more than a decade and was an active parent-teacher organization member, will seek to unseat incumbent School Board member Dean Loumos, who currently holds Seat 3.

Carusi ran in the 2017 primary for Seat 6, which opened up after current mayoral candidate Michael Flores decided not to run for re-election. Carusi received 28.9 percent of the vote, but did not advance to the general election that featured GSAFE co-executive director Ali Muldrow and the now-School Board member Kate Toews. Muldrow won the primary, while Toews won the general election.

Carusi said she gained valuable experience during her first campaign in 2017.

“As a first-time political candidate, the 2017 primary was a tremendous learning experience for me, and I emerged with better organizing and leadership skills,” Carusi said. “I’ve since worked with families, students and educators to advocate for better learning conditions in our schools.”

Notes and links:

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

Ananda Mirilli is running for Madison School Board (2019)

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

A second candidate has announced that she will run for a seat on the Madison School Board this spring. Ananda Mirilli, who first ran for School Board in 2013, filed paperwork with the city clerk’s office Wednesday announcing she will run for Seat 5, which is currently held by TJ Mertz. Mirilli finished third in the 2013 primary for Madison School Board, while Mertz and Sarah Manski advanced to the general election. Manski, however, abruptly withdrew from the race, clearing the way for Mertz. Mertz, as well as fellow School Board members James Howard, Seat 4, and Dean Loumos, Seat 3, all ran unopposed in 2016 and are up for re-election this spring. With Carusi and Mirilli now in the race, two of the incumbents will now have a challenger. 

Notes and links:

TJ Mertz

 Sarah Manski 

Ananda Mirilli

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

Ted Nordhaus and Saloni Shah:

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

Specialized program for Marquette undergraduates with autism disorders gifted $450,000, set to launch fall 2019

Jennifer Walter:

The program is one of only a few throughout the country, Van Hecke said. In-school resources for students with autism are required by law for K-12 schooling, but colleges often lack resources for those students looking to pursue higher education.

Van Hecke said many of these incoming students often have a lifetime of support in place “and then it just stops. Colleges really aren’t set up to handle that.”

Kelli Castillo said DJ was comfortable in high school, doing well in school and enjoying time in the theater group. On the side, he took social skills classes.

“We don’t ever think of him as this kid with Asperger’s. But there are many times when it just comes and hits us in the face,” Kelli Castillo said. “I was blind to think that the comfort level he had in high school would continue in college.”

The selection process for On Your Marq is something that still needs to be sorted out, and Van Hecke doesn’t want to generalize what the first group of participants will be like. A director for the program will be hired between now and next fall, and they will organize interviews for students who have already been accepted to Marquette.

FOIA, Blogshine Sunday & Madison School Board Election

Freeculture.org sponsored blogshine Sunday, a day when news organizations run stories and editorials in support of public access to government information.
The internet has substantially improved citizen’s ability to see who is funding elected officials directly and indirectly.
The Madison City Clerk conveniently posts campaign finance information on their website. I took a quick look at PAC (political action committee) spending on school board races and found this:
Madison School Related PAC’s:

Citizens for investing in Madison Schools: apparently setup to support the June, 2003 referendum. Current Board Members Bill Keys and Bill Clingan’s campaigns contributed to this PAC (1000 and 800 respectively), as did Madison Teachers, Inc. (MTI) ($1500). This PAC raised and spent more than $30K in 2002/2003.
Get Real, a PAC that supported candidates who were not endorsed by Madison Teachers. Get Real raised and spent less than $1,000. Get Real made small donations to unsuccessful candidates Sam Johnson & Melania Alvarez. This organization’s campaign finance disclosure documents are signed by former Madison School Board member Nancy Harper.
Madison Teachers’s Madison Voters raised more than $40K in 2004 and spent about $34K on direct and indirect support of endorsed candidates (Johnny Winston, Jr., Shwaw Vang and Alix Olson – who lost to incumbent Ruth Robarts). MTI Voters July 20, 2004 report [pdf] showed cash on hand of $52K
Progressive Dane raised and spent less than $2,000 last year, including small contributions to Johnny Winston, Jr. and Shwaw Vang.

Every active member of the Madison School Board was endorsed by and received direct and indirect support from Madison Teachers, Inc. The only current exception is Ruth Robarts, who, while supported in the past by MTI, was opposed by MTI in her 2004 successful re-election campaign.

(more…)

A Sri Lankan organic farming experiment is abandoned after producing only misery; NPR commentary…

Faced with a deepening economic and humanitarian crisis, Sri Lanka called off an ill-conceived national experiment in organic agriculture this winter. Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised in his 2019 election campaign to transition the country’s farmers to organic agriculture over a period of 10 years. Last April, Rajapaksa’s government made good on that promise, imposing a nationwide ban on the importation and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and ordering the country’s 2 million farmers to go organic.

The result was brutal and swift. Against claims that organic methods can produce comparable yields to conventional farming, domestic rice production fell 20 percent in just the first six months. Sri Lanka, long self-sufficient in rice production, has been forced to import $450 million worth of rice even as domestic prices for this staple of the national diet surged by around 50 percent. The ban also devastated the nation’s tea crop, its primary export and source of foreign exchange.

By November 2021, with tea production falling, the government partially lifted its fertilizer ban on key export crops, including tea, rubber, and coconut. Faced with angry protests, soaring inflation, and the collapse of Sri Lanka’s currency, the government finally suspended the policy for several key crops—including tea, rubber, and coconut—last month, although it continues for some others. The government is also offering $200 million to farmers as direct compensation and an additional $149 million in price subsidies to rice farmers who incurred losses. That hardly made up for the damage and suffering the ban produced. Farmers have widely criticized the payments for being massively insufficient and excluding many farmers, most notably tea producers, who offer one of the main sources of employment in rural Sri Lanka. The drop in tea production alone is estimated to result in economic losses of $425 million.

Human costs have been even greater. Prior to the pandemic’s outbreak, the country had proudly achieved upper-middle-income status. Today, half a million people have sunk back into poverty. Soaring inflationand a rapidly depreciating currency have forced Sri Lankans to cut down on food and fuel purchases as prices surge. The country’s economists have called on the government to default on its debt repayments to buy essential supplies for its people.

Michael Shellenberger:

Organic farm advocates said they wanted what’s best for the 22 million people of the island nation off the coast of India. What went wrong?

NPR this morning: "this is a victory for democracy in Sri Lanka" https://t.co/wqhVck7iaP
— John Robb (@johnrobb) July 13, 2022

Mind the Governance Mulligans + low expectations on Wisconsin Reading Curricula

A.J. Bayatpour

While the DPI supports a broader list of programs, joint finance Republicans want to limit the money to a shorter list of four programs recommended by the state’s early literacy council.

——

Literacy momentum stalls in Wisconsin (DPI): Why would Wisconsin’s state leaders promote the use of curriculum that meets “minimal level” criteria, instead of elevating the highest-quality

——-

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Civics: Taxpayer Funded “Course Correct” Documents

Daniel Nuccio:

A group of professors is using taxpayer dollars doled out by the federal government to develop a new misinformation fact-checking tool called “Course Correct.”

National Science Foundation funding, awarded through a pair of grants from 2021 and 2022, has amounted to more than $5.7 million for the development of this tool, which, according to the grant abstracts, is intended to aid reporters, public health organizations, election administration officials, and others to address so-called misinformation on topics such as U.S. elections and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.

This $5.7 million in grant money is on top of nearly another $200,000 awarded in 2020 through a Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act-funded NSF grant for a project focused in part on mental health that Course Correct is said to have grown out of.

According to the abstract of the 2021 grant, Course Correct’s developers, a group of five professors from various institutions nationwide, are using techniques related to machine learning and natural language processing to identify social media posts pertaining to electoral skepticism and vaccine hesitancy, identify people likely to be exposed to misinformation in the future, and flag at-risk online communities for intervention

Phase II proposal; more.

Overview: Democracy and public health in the United States are in crisis. These twin crises are exemplified by two major public problems: 1) vaccine hesitancy related to the COVID-19 pandemic, hindering vaccination and spilling over to other domains (e.g., flu vaccines) and 2) skepticism regarding American election integrity. These crises have resulted in 200,000 excess deaths after COVID-19 vaccines became available due to low uptake rates, especially among Black, Hispanic and Native American people, and concerted attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, culminating in an attack on the US Capitol. Networks of misinformation production and diffusion on social media platforms are ground zero for the creation, sharing, and uptake of content that spurs election skepticism and vaccine hesitancy. Journalists reported to us in Phase I that while they are trying to tame the misinformation tide, they are overwhelmed by what to check, how to effectively correct misinformation and target misinformation networks, and how to evaluate their interventions. To address these twin crises, we propose Course Correct, our innovative, four-step method to detect, test, verify, and field test a system to counter real- world misinformation flows. We propose to (1) extend our computational work to detect misinformation, using multimodal signal detection of linguistic and visual features surrounding vaccine hesitancy and electoral skepticism, coupled with network analytic methods to pinpoint key misinformation diffusers and consumers; (2) further develop A/B-tested correction strategies against misinformation, such as observational correction, using ad promotion infrastructure and randomized message delivery to optimize efficacy for countering misinformation; (3) disseminate and evaluate the effectiveness of evidence-based corrections using various scalable intervention techniques available through social media platforms by conducting a series of randomized control trials within affected networks, focusing on diffusers, not producers of misinformation and whether our intervention system can reduce misinformation uptake and sharing; and (4) scale Course Correct into local, national, and international newsrooms, guided by our interviews and ongoing collaborations with journalists, as well as tech developers and software engineers.

Intellectual Merit: The Intellectual Merit of our project springs from the insight that the problems of both vaccine hesitancy and electoral skepticism emerge from a common set of sources: a) declines in the trust that many citizens have in political processes, public institutions, and the news media; b) accumulation of misperceptions where the acceptance of one piece of misinformation often reliably predicts the endorsement of other misinformation; c) an active online group of merchants of doubt, often driven by ideological extremism and empowered by social media recommendation algorithms, and d) growing cadres of micro-influencers within online communities who, often unintentionally, play an outsized role in fueling the spread of misinformation. Despite the rapid development, testing, approval, and delivery of safe, reliable, and effective COVID-19 vaccines, 34.5 percent of Americans are not vaccinated. Despite a clear and transparent result, several recounts, audits, and lawsuits concerning the 2020 presidential election, 40 percent of Americans do not believe the result. Good science and good electoral administration alone are not enough to foster trust in health and political institutions, outcomes, and behaviors. Converging approaches across communication, social platforms, computer science, politics, and journalism are necessary to show which networks and actors spread falsehoods, and which strategies work best for reducing sharing and endorsement behaviors on social media that amplify misinformation.

Broader Impacts: The Broader Impacts of the project include delivering: 1) Course Correct: an interactive system that enables reporters to detect high-priority misinformation topics and the underlying networks where they flow, perform rapid-response randomized testing of fact-checks, and monitor their real-time performance, 2) the underlying code, survey instruments, and databases of labeled and curated messages to share publicly, 3) evidence-based corrective messages of immediate utility to public health and electoral professionals, 4) training of research personnel and journalists in interdisciplinary topics of global and practical significance, and 5) papers and presentations that will share our findings and conclusions with the academic and broader community.

and

Network Detection of Misinformation and its Spread: To address Aim 1, we will continue our work from Phase I, using multimodal signal detection to develop a curated dataset and machine learning classifiers to discern social media posts related to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and adoption of misinformation about election integrity, along with the spreaders and consumers of misinformation.

We have begun creating a corpus of millions of public content on our two topics: posts, images, videos, and URLs shared on popular social media and information platforms, including, but not limited to, Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube. In Phase II, we will consult with our Advisory Board member, Dr Kate Blackburn at TikTok to explore adding TikTok data collection. The data collection, which has already started, will span from January 2019 to January 2023. We focus our data collection on content about (1) election administration in the U.S. 2020 generally and a secondary focus on the 2022 midterm elections and (2) COVID-19. specifically, vaccine hesitancy. In Phase I, using the respective platforms’ Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), we have collected data about COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, including false claims that vaccines cause infertility and COVID-19 was caused by 5G*.

The data collection will continue to be done via a snowball sampling technique where we begin the collection with seed relevant keywords (identified with expert consultation) and then expand it with their co-occurring terms. With this corpus, we will continue to develop machine learning techniques to accurately detect electoral administration and COVID-19 related content that is directly related to attitudes about the veracity of the elections we target and the effectiveness and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines. Since all posts that contain a certain keyword (e g., ‘COVID-19′) may not be related to the topic (many users add popular keywords so their posts get more views), we will develop a two-tier filtering process to identify the relevant posts that support or deny a specific claim. We will take inspiration from our previous works that adopts a similar strategy to create a clean and relevant data corpust’. We will build supervised machine leaming classifiers for this task. The first tier of the classifier will weed out irrelevant posts, while the second tier will categorize posts as pro versus anti posts according to the topic. Word embedding and multi-modal models: To enable this, our team members will label a set of 2000-3000 posts on each topic and mark their relevance to the topic and their stance (pro or anti). We will use the relevance labels to train a supervised classifier (e.g., SVM, Random Forest classifier or a neural network), which uses text features as inputs and generates relevance class as output. The text features will contain syntactic, semantic, lexical and psycholinguistic categories. We will also use word embedding models (such as BERT and its variants’ , which will be fine-tuned on the supervised data) to extract tweet features? – a direction that our Advisory Board member, Dr. Koustuv Saha, has extensively used in his research. Models trained with an ensemble of all these features will be used for both tiers (relevance in the first tier and pro- or anti in the second tier). We will evaluate the performance of the trained machine learning classifiers with precision, recall, area under the ROC curve, false positive rate, and false negative rate with respect to the hand-labeled dataset. The classifier that perforns the best will be used to classify the entire corpus. As a proof of concept, in Phase I, we followed this pipeline to conduct classification for one topic of COVID-19 misinformation, specifically on ‘vaccines cause infertility’ misinformation. The classifier achieved an F-1 score of 0.9848 This shows the effectiveness of the proposed pipeline. This pipeline, however, was focused on text-based misinformation detection only.

In Phase II, we will extend the framework to detect misinformation to a multimodal setting, i.e. integrating images/videos along with the text. When both features are available (as is the case with many social media posts) the image can often disambiguate the text (for example, making it clear whether it is a post about basketball or about guns). In outline, we will develop deep multimodal fusion-based methods that leverage knowledge extraction from visual and linguistic features, as images can often complement aifically ont methad will encode the text usine_a_BERJibased fontire vector and.

Based on common forms and types of misinformation we detect, we will collaborate with our end-users at Snopes, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, and the Capital Times in Year 1, adding International Fact-Checking Network signatories in Year 2, to co-design misinformation mitigation messages for use in evidence-based correction strategies. Interventions will be tested for effectiveness while also meeting organizational needs and journalistic norms— an aspect important for the purposes of cultural validity. Then, we will take advantage of existing sponsored content mechartisms available on platforms such as Twitter and deliver the co-designed interventions through randomized n-arm A/B testing to social media users on these platforms. Based on the pilot test we conducted in Phase I, we are confident that rapid-cycle A/B testing can help demonstrate the feasibility and efficacy of various corrective interventions, some content specific and some “evergreen” (i.e., non-content specific), and better understand which messages best reduce the endorsement and sharing of misinformation.

we will implement Course Correct into local, national, and international newsrooms, guided by dozens of interviews and ongoing collaborations with journalists, as well as tech developers and entrepreneurs. Rather than focusing on platform restriction and fact-checking partisan political elites, Course Correct will help journalists, and ultimately public health and election administration officials, to see what misinformation is circulating on social platforms and to quickly test correction strategies within the online communities most in need of seeing those corrections so that they are exposed to the verifiable truth. We will begin scaling up on a case study basis with our local (Capital Times), state (WCIJ, and national (Snopes) partners in Year 1. Phase II supports the hiring of a new journalist for

“the same teacher could earn up to $68,000 in Appleton, and only between $39,000 and $43,000 in Oshkosh”

Alex Tabarrok:

In my 2011 book, Launching the Innovation Renaissance, I wrote:

At times, teacher pay in the United States seems more like something from Soviet-era Russia than 21st-century America. Wages for teachers are
low, egalitarian and not based on performance. We pay physical education teachers about the same as math teachers despite the fact that math teachers
have greater opportunities elsewhere in the economy. As a result, we have lots of excellent physical education teachers but not nearly enough excellent
math teachers. The teachers unions oppose even the most modest proposals to add measures of teacher quality to selection and pay decisions.

As I wrote, however, Wisconsin passed Act 10, a bill that discontinued collective bargaining over teachers’ salary schedules. Act 10 took power away from the labor unions and gave districts full autonomy to negotiate salaries with individual teachers. In a paper that just won the Best Paper published in AEJ: Policy in the last three years, Barbara Biasi studies the effect of Act 10 on salaries, effort and student achievement.

Compensation of most US public school teachers is rigid and solely based on seniority. This paper studies the effects of a reform that gave school districts in Wisconsin full autonomy to redesign teacher pay schemes. Following the reform some districts switched to flexible compensation. Using the expiration of preexisting collective bargaining agreements as a source of exogenous variation in the timing of changes in pay, I show that the introduction of flexible pay raised salaries of high-quality teachers, increased teacher quality (due to the arrival of high-quality teachers from other districts and increased effort), and improved student achievement.

We still have a long way to go but COVID, homeschooling and open-access voucher programs have put a huge dent in the power of the teacher’s unions. There is now a chance to bring teacher pay into the American model. Moreover, such a model is pro-teacher! Not every district in Wisconsin grasped the opportunity to reform teacher pay but those districts that did raised pay considerably. Appleton district, for example, instituted pay for performance, Oshkosh did not. Prior to the Act salaries were about the same in the two districts:

After the expiration of the CBAs, the same teacher could earn up to $68,000 in Appleton, and only between $39,000 and $43,000 in Oshkosh.

——-

Wisconsin’s Act 10, Flexible Pay, and the Impact on Teacher Labor Markets: Student test scores rise in flexible-pay districts. So does a gender gap for teacher compensation.

If not to teacher salaries, where is this money going?

More on Act 10 and the related Milwaukee pension scandal.

——-

More. “Important insights into the impact of flexibility in teacher pay schemes on student outcomes.”

——

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

“Over the last decade, just 10 of 24 races for Madison School Board have been contested”

WiSJ:

But the odd way Madison elects its School Board is a significant factor that needs fixing. State law requires candidates in cities with populations between 150,000 and 500,000 — meaning only Madison — to run citywide in seven numbered seats for three-year terms.

So every spring, candidates must choose which of two or three seats they will seek. For competitive reasons, new candidates tend to run for seats that incumbents don’t already hold. That lets incumbents avoid scrutiny.

It also can deny voters choices. For example, an incumbent ran unopposed for Seat 7 last spring, while two new candidates ran for Seat 6. But what if a voter preferred the two newbies over the incumbent? Voters can’t select those two on their ballots.

In theory, a candidate with fewer votes could even win election.

A better system would pit all candidates for Madison School Board in the same pool, with the top vote-getters earning however many seats are available. That’s how most school boards across Wisconsin conduct their elections. Or they assign seats to geographic areas.

——

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Influence and the 2024 Milwaukee K-12 Tax & $pending increase referendum

Rory Linnane:

When Milwaukee Public Schools turned to city voters for more funding in 2020, it was smooth sailing. The dynamics are different this year as the district asks voters for more funding April 2.

The 2020 referendum passed with 78% of the vote, providing the district with up to $87 million in annual funds as it committed to expand arts and music programs that were nearly extinct in many schools.

This time around, its case could be considered less exciting: it’s simply trying to maintain staff and avoid cuts as state education funding has fallen behind inflation.

Another challenge: The district is facing a deep-pocketed opponent.

The Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce has spent over $400,000 campaigning against the MPS referendum, finance reports filed this week show.

That’s more than the Vote Yes for MPS campaign, which is funded by the teachers union and other public schools supporters. That group has spent about $277,000 as of March 18. That’s less than the same campaign had spent at this time in 2020.

Civics: “Given the increase in aggressive censorship, it seems unlikely these appointments were random.”

Name Redacted on X

The timing and staffing changes within tech giants like Google and Meta after the 2016 election raise important questions. It’s hard to believe it’s just a coincidence that several CIA officers were put in charge of content moderation departments in these companies. Given the increase in aggressive censorship, it seems unlikely these appointments were random.

The number of former Intelligence Community staff hired by Google and Meta since 2018 is significant. Before then, there were only a few, but now the numbers are much higher: CIA – 36, FBI – 68, NSA – 44, DHS/CISA – 68, State Department – 86, DOD – 121.

Take Aaron Berman, for example. After spending 18 years at the CIA, he joined Meta in 2019. He played a key role in setting up Meta’s “Misinformation Department” and now heads Misinformation and Elections Content Policy. We wrote about Berman and other significant hires made by Meta in our last article:

“At least 79% of school districts surveyed by @WisconsinDPI in 2021 said they use a curriculum that is either not rated or is negatively rated by EdReports”

Danielle Duclos

With low reading proficiency scores across the state, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin is exploring the causes and consequences of low literacy. This article is part of the By the Book series, which examines reading curriculum, instructional methods and solutions in K-12 education to answer the questions: Why do so many Wisconsin kids struggle to read, and what can be done about it?

To read other stories in the series, click here.

Wisconsin’s Joint Committee on Finance approved Monday a list of four reading curricula schools can adopt to be in compliance with the state’s new reading law, Act 20. The curricula approved are those recommended by the state’s Early Literacy Curriculum Council, a nine-member council created to specifically evaluate K-3 reading curriculums for their compliance with Act 20.

The four curricula approved are:

Core Knowledge Language Arts K-3
Our EL Education Language Arts
Wit and Wisdom with Pk-3 Reading Curriculum
Bookworms Reading and Writing K-3

Act 20, signed into law last summer, requires curriculum to be backed by the “science of reading”: a decades-old body of research that explains how the brain learns to read. It includes an emphasis on phonics, which teaches students the sounds letters make and how those sounds combine in predictable patterns to form words.

The law’s changes are aimed at improving reading proficiency in the state, which has been low for years. Fewer than half of students at the state’s five largest school districts are considered proficient in reading, according to state exam scores since 2018.

Part of the law’s revamping of reading instruction requires schools to use specific instructional methods that are systemic and explicit by next school year. This instruction must include fluency, phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, oral language development, vocabulary, writing, comprehension and building background knowledge.

Earlier: Legislation and Literacy: Wisconsin Early Reading Curriculum Selection

——

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Competitive school board races in Monona (Madison are uniparty – uncontested of course)

David Wahlberg:

The Monona Grove School Board candidate forum will be from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Four candidates are running for three three-year terms. They are incumbents Eric Hartz and Philip Haven, and challengers Katie Moureau and Janice Stone.

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

The (big) void in Madison’s k-12 Governance

Years ago, a former Madison Superintendent lamented the lack of business community substantive engagement in our well funded k-12 system.

Has anything changed?

2024 brings another year of uncontested Madison School board elections.

Madison has another new Superintendent – Joe Gothard– due to start soon.

Meanwhile:

A scorecard.

More on Madison’s well funded K-12 system.

Accountability? A Milwaukee business leader says that it is time to vote no on their tax and $pending increase referendum. Madison business leaders: radio silence.

——

Politics and the taxpayer funded DPI.

Wisconsin DPI Reading Curriculum Evaluation list

——-

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Literacy momentum stalls in Wisconsin (DPI): Why would Wisconsin’s state leaders promote the use of curriculum that meets “minimal level” criteria, instead of elevating the highest-quality

Karen Vaites:

All eyes have been on Wisconsin, where politics threaten to stall promising curriculum improvement efforts.

The Badger State’s Act 20 literacy bill was one of the bright spots in a flourishing national legislative phase. The bill had a refreshing focus on all aspects of literacy, and recognized the importance of curriculum in fostering change. Act 20 called for the convening of an expert Early Literacy Curriculum Council (ELCC) to identify a set of recommended ELA curricula; only these programs would be eligible for state subsidy.

The ELCC – which includes a high-performing superintendent, practitioners immersed in reading research, and dyslexia advocates whose children suffered under previous DPI choices – has real stakes in Act 20’s success. And the stakes are high: Wisconsin has the largest gap in reading outcomes for Black vs white students of any state.

Last week, the nine-member ELCC submitted its recommendations: four curricula widely praised for their quality (Bookworms, Core Knowledge, EL Education, and Wit & Wisdom). Literacy leaders cheered the selections. Personally, I consider it the best state list we’ve seen.

Just two days later, Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) issued a statement asking the Joint Finance Committee to approve a rather different list of 11 options… the list of curricula that earn “all-green” ratings on EdReports. Conspicuously omitted from DPI’s list: Bookworms, a curriculum with the most persuasive studies showing that it improves reading outcomes – but which earned a widely-questioned yellow review on EdReports.

The average quality of the DPI list was markedly lower than the ELCC list, something that even DPI acknowledged. Laura Adams of the DPI told CESAs,“The two different lists represent two different perspectives. The Council’s list represents a judgment of quality, while DPI’s list represents a floor of those materials that meet the requirements, even at a minimal level.”

——-

Jill Underly didn’t attend the meetings, so she missed these conversations. Frankly, her absence from ELCC meetings speaks volumes. If DPI felt urgency about children’s reading success, or even about the review timelines, one would have expected Underly to make time for ELCC meetings. Underly’s late-breaking objections have not sat well with close watchers of the process.

—-

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Notes on the most recent group of taxpayer supported Madison K-12 Superintendent candidates… Achievement?

Abbey Machtig:

The candidates will be interviewed again Wednesday, but those discussions will not be livestreamed, recorded or open to the public. The interviews will involve teachers, district leaders, students and selected community members.

Eric Murphy:

Choudhury is one of three finalists for superintendent in Madison, along with Joe Gothard, the superintendent of Saint Paul Public Schools and a former Madison principal, and Yvonne Stokes, a former superintendent of Hamilton Southeastern Schools in Indiana. Stokes also resigned under pressure from conservative school board members who took issue with her diversity and inclusion efforts as superintendent. All three will be interviewed by various panels Feb. 6-7.

When asked for comment on the allegations against Choudhury by Cornelius and others, school district leaders said they were happy with their final three options for superintendent. “Our board has done exhaustive work in selecting our finalists, and we remain confident with the process and the selection of our finalists,” the district said in an unsigned email to Isthmus sent by communications staffer Ellie Herman.

The email pointed to a previous statement from school board president Nichelle Nichols: “We are extremely pleased with the pool of candidates for this position. They each reflect the diverse needs of our community and the competencies that we agreed upon in November. Our three finalists have exceeded our expectations, and we’re excited for the community to meet them….”

——-

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Legal Motion to Defend Wisconsin Act 10 on behalf of Public-School Employee

WILL:

WILL Client, Kristi Koschkee, stated, “Act 10 is pro-taxpayer and pro-freedom. This legislation provides public employees like me the freedom to not participate in unionization, or be compelled to finance or support political speech I do not agree with. It’s critical that we stand up for this law and not undo the years of positive results produced for Wisconsin.”

Our Client: WILL Client and Defendant, Kristi Koschkee, faces significant harm if Act 10 were to be somehow repealed or scaled back. Ms. Koschkee is a public-school district employee who values the benefits the Legislature provided her via Act 10.

Koschkee does not want her local union interfering with her relationship with her employer by bargaining on subjects beyond those permitted by Act 10 or entering agreements that last longer than a year. She supports requiring unions to rectify annually, does not want to have her decision to abstain from a union certification vote work in the union’s favor, and does not want to be pressured into participating in recertification elections. Ms. Koschkee also opposes allowing unions to access employee wages directly through payroll deductions.

——

Notes and links on Act 10.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

——

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

More of the Same in the taxpayer supported K-12 School District

Dave Cieslewicz:

Anyone hoping for improvement in Madison’s public schools will need to keep waiting. Incumbent school board members Savion Castro and Maia Pearson will be reelected by default in April as no challengers showed up before the filing deadline yesterday. Sincere congratulations to Castro and Pearson. They’ve stepped up. They put their names on the line. I strongly disagree with their views, but I have to respect the fact that they’ve put themselves in the arena. It’s ironic that the story of their de facto reelection appeared on the same day as a story about how MMSD is moving away from letter grades. Failing a class? Heading for a “D”? Turns out you’re not failing at all. You’re “emerging.” It wasn’t at all clear what MMSD is trying to accomplish by moving away from letter grades. They admit that it will create more work for already over-burdened teachers and they’ll need to translate “emerging” into a “D” at some point so that high school students can have a GPA for their transcripts when applying for college. I guess it spares a kid’s feelings in the short-run, maybe. Also, attendance and behavior won’t be taken into account with the new non-grading system either. In fact, this board seems to view good behavior as some sort of privileged cultural hegemony. I see it as just good behavior. It’s being respectful of your fellow students and teachers. Maybe I just don’t get it. I guess you’d have to say that when it comes to my grasp of MMSD policies my work is emerging. This is precisely the kind of stuff about this school board that drove me to encourage challengers to the incumbents. When this board, or any group of leaders, sees every issue in terms of race and gender they’re pretty much guaranteed not to solve the problem because they’ve misdefined it from the start. The problem is not a racial achievement gap. The problem is that there are some kids, of every race, who aren’t learning. To cover that up with words like “emerging” is just moving us further away from solutions rather than confronting the problem. We’ve got a school system where more than 60% of students are consistently performing below grade level in English and math, where behavioral problems are going unaddressed thanks to an ill-conceived “Behavior Education Plan,” and where parents have been voting with their feet for over a decade. And now we’re going to continue down that same road by phasing out the accountability (and yes, the pressure — it’s a good thing) that comes with real grades.

Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Looking ahead to 2024 and the taxpayer funded Madison School District

Abbey Machtig:

The Madison School Board is scheduled to hire a new superintendent by February or March. The board began interviewing candidates in closed meetings this month and will continue into January. The board is expected to announce two or three finalists and hold open interviews where the public can participate.

The new superintendent will eventually replace Lisa Kvistad, a longtime district educator who has been serving as interim superintendent since June. She was selected to replace Jenkins earlier this year.

This time around, the board is looking for a superintendent familiar with Madison who can “lead large-scale change” and has a track record of improving outcomes for students of color, according to a job profile drafted and approved in October.

School Board elections also will take place on April 2. Incumbents Maia Pearson and Savion Castro have announced their reelection campaigns. Board members serve in staggered, three-year terms.

Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

The establishment did nothing until the internet revealed everything.

Balaji:

And yes, it was Twitter that drove the government to act. How do we know? Because the entire case was broken on crypto Twitter, from beginning to end!

It was Ian Allison revealing that SBF had no money, not Dan Primack asking whether SBF could cure world hunger
It was Erik Voorhees playing hardball with SBF on Bankless, not Joe Weisenthal throwing him softballs on Odd Lots
It was David Z. Morris calling FTX a crime, not David Yaffe-Bellany claiming SBF was a philanthropist
It was Crypto Twitter proving SBF was a fraud, not NYT Dealbook clapping for that fraud
And it was Twitter posting about SBF’s donations to Democrat politicians, even as those same politicians were welcoming him to Congress

NYT, Congress, Bloomberg, Axios — all these establishment organs failed where Coindesk, Bankless, and Crypto Twitter succeeded. Not a single corporate journalist, politician, regulator, or policeman thought to investigate SBF until Erik Voorhees smelled a rat and Ian Allison found the rat. In fact, even the least self-aware corporate journalist in modern history admittedthat citizen journalists “outshine traditional media on coverage of FTX implosion.”

So: yes, the only reason SBF was even exposed, let alone convicted was because of people posting on Twitter. Twitter is important! That’s why the regime didn’t want Trump to post on there, doesn’t want you to post on there, and doesn’t want Elon to let you post on there. As far back as the Arab Spring, it was clear that Twitter could topple regimes. And in this case, it toppled the regime’s #2 donor, “one of the people who is among the most responsible for [Biden] being in office.” Needless to say, this was not an outcome any establishment figure sought before the events of Nov 2022.

Ok. With that out of the way, let’s do the long version, just to make sure the actual history of this wretched episode is properly recorded somewhere.

Civics: “Campaign 2024: Not Left Versus Right, But Aflluent Versus Everyone Else”

Matt Taibbi:

Two sets of figures, collected four years apart by the research firm SSRS, for CNN:

Donald Trump, September, 2019: Strongly Disapprove, 48%. Strongly Approve, 28%
Joe Biden, August, 2023: Strongly Disapprove, 42%. Strongly Approve, 15%

Plunging numbers for Trump prompted stories like, “Tldr: Trump’s in 2020 Trouble.” Biden headlines this week try to speak an upbeat narrative into reality, the most humorous probably being “Biden Heads West For a Policy Victory Lap” and “Biden Goes West to Tout The Economy.” According to a slew of reports the president’s “touting” trip celebrates “growth in manufacturing,” and opportunities afforded by the Inflation Reduction and Chips and Science Acts. “You can expect us to highlight more groundbreakings of projects, more ribbon-cuttings,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Natalie Quillian told the Washington Post.

Reducing Rigor: Massachusetts’ teacher union edition

James Vaznis:

The Massachusetts Teachers Association’s board of directors voted unanimously Sunday to support a ballot question that would drop the requirement that high school students pass MCAS exams in order to graduate — a move that will allow the union to spend money and other resources to win over voters.

The vote came four days after union memberssubmitted a proposed ballot question to the state’s Attorney General’s Office for the 2024 election cycle. The question calls for eliminating the MCAS graduation requirement, established under the 1993 Education Reform Act, and instead allow students to receive diplomas by completing coursework that is consistent with the state’s academic standards and curriculum frameworks upon which the MCAS is based.

Notes and links on MTEL.

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004–

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

The tyrany of low expectations: Massachusetts’ Teachers Union Ballot initiative to eliminate high school graduation requirement

James Vaznis:

The ballot initiative would allow students to graduate “by satisfactorily completing coursework that has been certified by the student’s district as showing mastery of the skills, competencies, and knowledge contained in the state academic standards and curriculum frameworks in the areas measured by the MCAS high school tests.”

A small group of union activists, parents, and high school graduates filed a ballot initiative Wednesday, with the backing of the state’s largest teachers union, that would end a state provision requiring students to pass the MCAS tests to graduate, setting up a potentially costly election fight.

Currently, high school students must pass Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams in English, math, and science to graduate. More than 700 high school students a year typically don’t receive a diploma because they didn’t meet that requirement, according to state data. Instead, they received “certificates of attainment,” which are given to students who only satisfied local graduation requirements. However, many educators say a number of students who don’t pass MCAS ultimately drop out.

The ballot question is the MTA’s latest effort to end the graduation requirement. Earlier this year, the MTA and other unions had legislation introduced on Beacon Hill that would end the graduation requirement.

Groups, such as the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, have been aggressively fighting the unions’ efforts.

“MCAS is a crucial instrument for measuring students’ vital signs to make sure they’re getting the education they deserve and that they need to be successful after high school,” the business alliance said in a statement.

Notes and links on MTEL.

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004–

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]