2,712 results
Kaleem Caire’s FB post (screenshot): Today, we will welcome back more than 400 children to One City Schools. Nearly 85,000 children will walk through the doors of traditional public, public charter, and private K-12 schools in Dane County, Wisconsin, and another 17,500 will attend child care programs. That’s more than 100,000 children being taught and […]
Erin Gretzinger: In Caire and his team’s view, One City and other charter schools are more accountable than traditional public schools given the specific academic goals and other stipulations in their charter contracts. Wittke, the Republican lawmaker, said One City’s lobbying wasn’t a factor in his support for funding demonstration charter schools. “I don’t care […]
Kaleem Caire: One City Schools was mentioned in the United States Congress during the House Appropriations Committee hearing today! Dr. Holly Lane, Director of the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI), highlighted the groundbreaking partnership we are forming with UFLI, Project Read AI, and others during her testimony. She also referenced the highly successful and […]
Ava Menkes: One City Schools, the independent charter school on Madison’s south side, plans to hold a community rally Thursday at The Sylvee to celebrate its 10th anniversary. Over the last decade, One City has raised $50 million to help serve underprivileged students in the area through innovative and unique ways, according to founder and […]
In this brief video, Dr. Cheryl Twyman, Director of Partnerships, and Dr. Penny Rossetto, Senior Coach and School Designer, both with EL Education, speak about their organization and its partnership with One City Schools. They also share their assessment of the progress being made at One City’s elementary and middle schools. About EL Education EL […]
Kaleem Caire One City Preschool continues to attract far more children than we can enroll, and is ready to grow and expand. Our two public charter schools, One City Elementary School and One City Preparatory Academy, are making notable progress as well: In July 2025, we will host our 10th anniversary celebration and first 8th […]
Arman Rahman Arman Rahman Arman Rahman Reporter Author email : According to Caire, the school was forced to take its foot off the gas by closing 9th and 10th grades, when five core subject teachers left between last September and December. “We didn’t hire teachers, enough teachers, that could retool their curriculum to serve students […]
Chris Rickert: Citing an exodus of core-class teachers, Madison charter school One City Schools told parents of about 60 students Thursday that it would shut down its first ninth- and 10th-grade classes after only one semester. The school’s vice president of external relations, Gail Wiseman, said the school lost five teachers since the beginning of […]
Rhonda Foxx: Some education experts and parents fear the “summer slide” may be more troublesome due to the lasting impacts the pandemic has had on learning. For students at One City Schools, the learning doesn’t stop. Students at One City Schools eagerly don pajamas for spirit week in July because for them, it’s a regular […]
Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: Dear Community Members, In November 2019, the Wisconsin Partnership Program, located within the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health, awarded One City Schools a five-year, $1 million grant to support the implementation of our education programs, and the design and launch of a long-term longitudinal evaluation […]
One City Schools (expanding in Monona…) Our formal enrollment for Elementary School period for the 2022-23 school year will begin on March 1, 2022 at 8 am. Applications will be accepted for all Elementary grades from 4K through 5th. One City Preparatory Academy enrollment period starts on April 4, 2022 for Sixth grade only for […]
Elizabeth Beyer: Caire, UW-Oshkosh and Madison Area Technical College are hashing out a dual enrollment partnership that would allow students to gain college credits while in high school and potentially earn an associate degree, too, which could be used to transfer to a UW campus or an institution outside the System. The idea may even […]
Logan Wroge: With a $14 million donation from American Girl founder and philanthropist Pleasant Rowland, One City Schools announced plans on Tuesday to purchase an office building in Monona that will become a new home for the fast-growing independent charter school. One City will use the donation to buy a 157,000-square-foot office building on the […]
Logan Wroge: A Chinese approach to teaching preschool students has made its way to Madison. One City Schools, a Madison charter school founded by former Urban League president Kaleem Caire and authorized by an office within the University of Wisconsin System, was the first school in the United States to practice Anji Play and is […]
Logan Wroge: In a previous attempt at a charter school, Caire proposed the Madison Preparatory Academy, which would have served a similar population as One City Schools, but would have been for grades 6-12. The Madison School Board rejected the idea in December 2011. Caire sought to bring his “change-maker” approach to the Madison School […]
Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: One City Schools, Inc., a local nonprofit operating an independent preschool and public charter school, announced today that it has been accepted into a coveted network of more than 150 schools nationwide in the EL Education (EL) program. EL Education (formerly Expeditionary Learning) is an educational model that balances […]
New Gingrich: I could never understand why the education bureaucracies and teachers’ unions could tolerate terrible outcomes for millions of children (most of them poor and minority) and do nothing to fix the system. Then I read “Failure Factory.” Now, I see the corruption clearly. Papst has done the entire country an enormous service by […]
Chris Rickert: The free charter school is required to meet minimum instructional hour requirements contained in state law, which Davis said the school exceeds because its school day runs from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and its year from Sept. 1 to July 31, longer than most traditional public schools. The school will continue to […]
Elizabeth Beyer: A contract, inked in February with the UW System, greenlit Caire’s 33-year dream of growing One City Schools from early childhood education and elementary to include students through grade 12, roughly a decade after the Madison School Board rejected a similar proposal for a charter school overseen by the Madison School District that […]
Somewhat ironically, Madison has unused capacity in a number of schools, yet a successful Spring, 2015 referendum will spend another $41M+ to expand certain schools, including some of the least diverse such as Hamilton Middle School. Madison School District (PDF): Key Findings 1. Most MMSD schools are not over capacity. Six of the 32 elementary […]
New York city’s controversial ban on cellphones in schools has persuaded some kids to leave their devices at home — a stranger’s home! The New York Post reports.
Dozens of students at the former Bushwick HS campus have been paying $1 per day to store their phones at an alumnus’ apartment — just down the street from the Brooklyn campus.
Academy of Urban Planning graduate Giovanni Monserrate — known affectionately as either “Gio” or “The Mayor” — has padded his income as a Broadway usher by serving as a cellphone-storage site for between 30 and 100 teens daily over the last seven years.
Citing a critical need to not underestimate the stakes at hand, Commissioner of Education Chris Nicastro presented to the State Board of Education today her analysis of ways the state could assist the Kansas City Public Schools in regaining accreditation.
The State Board met in Branson on Dec. 1-2, where discussion of the Kansas City Public Schools was part of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s recommendation for revamping a statewide system of support. This system would identify risk factors and target limited resources to assist unaccredited school districts and those that are at risk of becoming unaccredited. Currently, nearly one dozen schools would receive focused attention.
A federal judge has halted longtime state payments intended to help integrate three Arkansas school districts, including Little Rock, site of one of the most bitter desegregation fights in U.S. history.
U.S. District Court Judge Brian S. Miller, who oversees the districts’ federally ordered desegregation efforts, found the payments were “proving to be an impediment to true desegregation” by rewarding school systems that don’t meet their long-standing commitments.
Judge Miller’s recent rulings triggered protests by the school districts. But some lawmakers and state officials hailed the decision to shut off the payments, which totaled roughly $1 billion over the past two decades.
Lawyers for Little Rock and the other districts said the loss of as much as $70 million for the year that begins in August would cause budgetary chaos. The state payments amount to about 10% of the Little Rock budget and about 9% for each of the other two districts. The parties have until Friday to seek a stay of the order.
The taxpayer funded Madison School Board Special Meeting: School Board Memo: One City Schools, Inc. submitted two Initial Applications on August 14, 2026, requesting conversion of its existing charter schools from authorizer status under the University of Wisconsin Office of Educational Opportunity (OEO) to instrumentality charter schools under MMSD. On Wednesday, the Board of Education […]
George F. Will The Chicago Teachers Union’s cupidity in enriching itself, and the dismal results of Chicago’s public schools, have drained the public’s reservoir of goodwill. Among the reasons for the CTU’s downfall is a school named for someone who, as a slave, taught himself to read — a skill poorly imparted by Chicago teachers, […]
Austin Berg: Just 27 students are enrolled at Frederick Douglass Academy, which was built to serve more than 1,000 kids. Frederick Douglass learned to read in secret. He understood from a young age that literacy was, in his words, “the pathway from slavery to freedom.” But at Frederick Douglass Academy High School in Chicago, the […]
Matthew Haag: A disproportionately small number of Black and Hispanic students received admission offers to New York City’s elite public high schools for the upcoming academic year, continuing a pattern of racial and ethnic gaps that has existed for years despite promises by elected officials to address the divide. About 62 percent of the students […]
Rich Witzel: Chicago Public Schools followed Chicago Teachers Union’s staffing-first approach. Now the district faces cuts. After years of adding staff and expanding programs while enrollment declined, buildings sat underused andacademic results remained weak, Chicago Public Schools proposes eliminating about 120 assistant principal positions as it faces a projected budget deficitof $732.5 million. CPS has been pushed in this […]
Teagan King: Roughly six months into the Monona Grove School District’s efforts to sell two properties, the district is still searching for a buyer for one and has ditched plans to sell the other. At a June meeting, the Monona Grove School Board approved plans to request a letter of intent from the city of […]
Matthew Yglesias: I was at a couple of education events in the spring that all featured very smart, very achievement-oriented people talking about how to address the national crisis in basic reading and math attainment. A common lament was that politicians and pundits are simply not focused enough on the question of whether kids are […]
Nicola Mastrorocco & Edoardo Teso We investigate how technologies that reduce the costs of monitoring by central authorities have shaped the historical transition from small patrimonial states to large bureaucratic organizations. Our analysis is based on a novel dataset that traces changes in the organizational structure and geographic presence of the U.S. federal government over […]
Alan Borsuk: “All eyes fixed on Hi-Mount,” the newspaper headline read. The school was “the city’s showcase of school reform,” the story said. That was then – November 1995, to be specific. The story on Hi-Mount Community School, which I wrote, was part of an extensive project by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel examining the state of Milwaukee Public Schools. Why did we single out the […]
John Sailer: In a recording that I obtained, Isaac Kamola—the director of the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF)—repeatedly states his desire to delegitimize the upstart civic centers. “I would really love to see kind of a robust research project on these right-wing centers and individuals—like, naming and shaming and discrediting and undermining the […]
Harrie Ryan: Ah’Mari Stevens, a 16-year-old football player from South Florida, boarded a helicopter with a videographer one day last spring. As the chopper circled Miami, the cameraman explained the purpose of the shoot: “Everybody and their mama wants to know where he’s going to play ball next year.” Ah’Mari, a whip-fast sophomore wide receiver […]
Erin Gretzinger But between the years where scores jumped, the state Department of Public Instruction adjusted testing benchmarks and lowered the threshold to score proficient. The number of students reading and writing proficiently statewide went from 39% to 51%. The department cautions the public against comparing test scores before and after the change because the results “cannot be […]
WisPolitics: MILWAUKEE — A new statewide survey of 1,658 likely Wisconsin voters by City Forward Collective and CFC Action Fund finds Wisconsin voters deeply concerned about the performance of the state’s public schools and ready to support candidates who treat accountability and outcomes as the central education issue heading into the 2026 election cycle. “Wisconsin voters […]
Christina Buttons Governor Gavin Newsom used California’s youth mental-health crisis to build a sprawling therapeutic bureaucracy rooted in the idea that white supremacy was driving children’s distress—and committed billions in taxpayer dollars to it. Beginning in 2021, the Newsom administration justified a major overhaul of the state’s youth mental-health system by invoking “an escalating behavioral health crisis” […]
Dale Mezzacappa More than 100 students and some teachers rallied before the Board of Education meeting Thursday to protest how the lottery system for citywide and selective admission high schools is causing huge enrollment drops for many of next fall’s incoming classes. The declines mean that schools will lose staff positions and many teachers will […]
Danyela Souza Egorov: American K-12 public education spending reached $1 trillion for the first time in 2024. But what are students getting for that money? While spending grew by 56% since 2013, reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — known as “the nation’s report card” — declined. Over the next decade, national student enrollment […]
Natasha Singer: Last week, the Los Angeles school board passed a resolution requiring the district to restrict student access to YouTube, eliminate digital devices entirely through first grade and develop screen time limits for higher grades — becoming the first major U.S. school system to do so. The parents’ successful campaign points to an escalating national reckoning […]
Steven Wilson: Student achievement gains eroded amid shift to “social justice” education BOSTON – After years during which too many charter public schools turned away from the rigorous academic practices that made them the nation’s most successful urban education reform, the sector should return to the proven model that closed achievement gaps, according to a new “Charter School Toolkit” […]
Marc Novicoff: New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, will soon confront an ordeal that might finally knock that trademark smile off his face: balancing the budget. The city is projected to have a $5 billion deficit this year and is required by law to make up for that shortfall by raising revenue, cutting spending, or […]
Hugo Cox: On a clear spring day in an inner-city neighbourhood, a large primary school, recently closed, stands as both a relic of the past and a sign of a contemporary social shift. For a century and a half, its imposing facade gathered and dispensed more than 200 local children every school day. They would […]
David Blaska: We wanted Ray Mendez to run for school board this year but he has more sense than that. No entity in local government more needs a disrupter than the Metropolitan Madison Board of Education. We introduced the gentleman to Werkes readers in November 2025. Mr. Mendez picks up on a platform this on-line scribbler […]
Will Flanders: Interesting that DPI has removed files revenue files from their website that I used to disprove the narrative that schools are underfunded. I used the files to show that school districts have more inflation-adjusted money than in 2000. Wonder why they were removed? 🤔 Related:
Teagan King: The programs are shuttering at the end of this school year, the district confirmed Monday, after President Donald Trump’s administration cut funding for AmeriCorps initiatives like United Way’s Schools of Hope last year. “We are deeply grateful to United Way of Dane County, as well as the many volunteers who have supported our […]
Michael Hicks: Simple measures, such as differences in standardized test scores, account for as much as one-third of the differences in home values between communities. So, measuring school quality should be a central goal of state policymakers. One key challenge in evaluating school quality is that households choose their schools. Family characteristics play a huge […]
By Paul Ciotti: For decades critics of the public schools have been saying, “You can’t solve educational problems by throwing money at them.” The education establishment and its supporters have replied, “No one’s ever tried.” In Kansas City they did try. To improve the education of black students and encourage desegregation, a federal judge invited […]
Tristar Daily: Key Findings from the Interim Report – Deficiencies and Observations: Nearly 175 deficiencies were identified across various sections of the report, indicating systemic issues. – Financial Mismanagement: – Disbursements: $1,145,909.97 flagged as waste or abuse, with about $1,112,750 linked to contract-related spending. – Issues included inadequate oversight, unsupported or duplicative […]
Dave Cieslewicz: For example, in 2024, Madison voters approved a record $507 million capital improvements referendum. One of the largest items in that referendum was $85 million for a new, bigger building to house Sherman Middle and Shabazz High schools. Yet, that building is at only 50% of capacity, and projections are for enrollments to go down. Before […]
Shannon Whitworth: For example, the Obama administration implemented a race-based disciplinary approach for secondary schools. In practice, this policy led many schools to limit discipline to avoid racial disparities in disciplinary outcomes, reducing accountability for students’ unacceptable behavior in school. In turn, that policy encouraged disruptive behavior in classrooms. It also created an environment not conducive […]
Teagan King: This year, 25,029 students are enrolled in Madison schools, a 0.5% decrease from last year, when 25,155 attended. Enrollment also has fallen statewide over the past five years, according to data from the Department of Public Instruction released earlier this month. Larger 12th-grade classes than incoming freshman classes are partially to blame for […]
Paul Runko: So it’s time for K-12 public education to have a “Moneyball” moment. Here’s the “stats” that should matter when schools construct their teacher rosters: 1. Classroom Management Students can’t learn if they are constantly distracted by their peers or chaos in the classroom. Principals, administrators, and school board members can easily observe a […]
Jessica Harkay: The “And Stay Out!” report, released this month by the education reform nonprofit Available to All, builds off UCLA segregation research from 2014.The new report found overlaps and similarities among dozens of redlining maps from 1938 with school attendance zones in New York City, Long Island, Westchester County as well as upstate cities, such as Albany, […]
Aakash Gupta: The numbers explain why. CS degrees doubled from 52,000 to 113,000 per year over the last decade. Universities kept expanding enrollment because the demand signal from 2021 said “hire everyone.” Then three things happened simultaneously: tech companies overhired, corrected with 250K+ layoffs across 2024-2025, and started replacing junior engineering tasks with AI tooling. […]
Jordan Powell: The closing of four Catholic elementary schools in Chicago, Saints Bruno & Richard, Saint Jerome, Saint Stanislaus Kostka Academy, and Saint Francis Borgia looks at first glance like a familiar story: Declining enrollment, rising costs, and another set of urban parish schools unable to make the numbers work. But beneath the surface sits […]
Will Flanders: We also look at Wisconsin’s largest school choice program–open enrollment. Here, you see the marketplace working as families move to school districts with better academic outcomes and graduation rates. The Report: WILL’s Apples to Apples report provides a rigorous, side-by-side comparison of academic performance across Wisconsin’s public, charter, and private choice schools. Because […]
Preeya P. Mbekeani, John P. Papay, Ann Mantil & Richard J. Murnane: Improving education and labor market outcomes for low-income students is critical for advancing socioeconomic mobility in the United States. We use longitudinal data on five cohorts of 9th grade students to explore how Massachusetts public high schools affect the longer-term outcomes of students, […]
Jason Riley: Far too many children are still assigned to substandard schools, and too many remain unable to read or do math at grade level. Meanwhile, educators and policymakers seem preoccupied with nonsense like helping students “transition” behind their parents’ backs or indoctrinating impressionable youngsters with social-justice poppycock to promote trendy political causes. American kids […]
Dan Lennington: Note that the plan tells teachers to actively deceive parents by referring to students one way in school & another way in front of family. WILL: “The Supreme Court reinforced that parents have enforceable rights to be involved in major decisions affecting their children’s health and wellbeing. Because of this clarification, WILL is […]
Preeya P. Mbekeani, John P. Papay, Ann Mantil & Richard J. Murnane: Improving education and labor market outcomes for low-income students is critical for advancing socioeconomic mobility in the United States. We use longitudinal data on five cohorts of 9th grade students to explore how Massachusetts public high schools affect the longer-term outcomes of students, […]
Erin Gretzinger: In letters sent to residents with their tax bills this year, the city of Madison reported eight area school districts, including the Madison Metropolitan School District as the largest one, accounted for more than half of residents’ tax bill this year. Schools have historically accounted for 42% to 46% of the average tax […]
Rachel Bachman and Laine Higgins: For almost all of its 129-year existence, the Big Ten has positioned itself as a moral custodian of college football. This was a conference of hulking stadiums and buttoned-up traditions that was older than the NCAA itself. It bragged about the academic prestige of its schools and reminded its athletes […]
Julie Quinlan Brame Last month, the MPS Board voted to end the Carmen Northwest Charter Schoolcontract in 2027. That decision dismayed me deeply, because it appeared driven more by ideology about charter schools than by the needs of students, families, staff — and even MPS itself. I come from a family of teachers. In fact, my […]
Jason McGahan: The head of the L.A. teachers’ union is ambitious, audacious, and uncompromising. But critics blast her as a demagogue whose gamesmanship during the pandemic took a toll on the kids she claims to fight for Cecily Myart-Cruz rarely sits for interviews. When she wants to communicate with the media, which is infrequently, she usually […]
Karen Vaites: Getting rid of public gifted education programs will accelerate the enrollment crisis hitting American public schools When Zohran Mamdani came out in favor of eliminating New York City’s gifted and talented program in the earliest grades, it represented the latest chapter in an ongoing debate about gifted and selective schooling options in our nation’s largest […]
Guardian: In a letter to school families obtained by WBAL TV 11 News, the school wrote: “We understand how upsetting this was for the individual that was searched as well as the other students who witnessed the incident. Our counselors will provide direct support to the students who were involved in this incident and are also […]
Roland Fryer: In 2012, my graduate student Will Dobbie and I collected unprecedented data from nearly 50 New York City charter schools to see which practices truly boosted student learning. Class size and teacher credentials—political obsessions for decades—mattered little. What mattered most were five concrete, replicable practices: more instruction time, high expectations, frequent teacher feedback, […]
Enjoyiana Nururdin: If approved by city leaders, most agencies would receive increases of 1% to 8% from previous spending levels. One exception would be a 30% budget increase requested by the City Clerk’s Office. The office is restructuring this year after the resignation of longtime City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl. City Attorney Michael Haas, who is serving as […]
Terry Falk: Partly, for that reason, new Superintendent Brenda Cassellius asked the Council of Great City Schools (CGCS) to evaluate the MPS Office of Human Resources. This is not the first time CGCS has looked at the district’s HR department. But of the 19 recommendations it made in 2019, only one was fully implemented. At the July […]
Ron French, Mike Wilkinson & Isabel Lohman: Frustrated by declining academic performance in state schools, education leaders in 2015 announced an audacious goal: make Michigan a top 10 education state by 2025. “If 10 years from now we’re not a top 10 performing state, then shame on all of us,” said then-State Superintendent Brian Whiston.
Wisconsin Policy Forum The number of Wisconsin high school students who participate in dual enrollment programs continued its decade-long growth in the 2023-24 academic year, hitting a new record. A combined 78,703 students participated in the dual enrollment programs offered by the University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Technical College systems, through which they could earn […]
Kaleem Caire: This summer marks a truly historic moment in our journey. On Friday, July 11, 2025 in the auditorum at Trustage, the same place where we announced the creation of One City Schools 10 years ago to an audience of 400 community leaders and supporters, we will celebrate our first class of 8th graders: […]
Jason Riley: The Ford Foundation has spent billions of dollars on poverty initiatives, human-rights advocacy and other selected causes, yet Henry Ford’s most significant achievement was developing the moving assembly line in the 1910s, which transformed manufacturing. Ford made automobiles accessible to America’s burgeoning middle class, expanded job opportunities, and accelerated the expansion of related […]
Jill Tucker: San Francisco school officials killed plans Wednesday to test out alternative ways to grade some high school students after politicians and parents panned the proposal in the wake of misinformation about it. An estimated 70 teachers in 14 high schools — about 10% of the educators in grades nine to 12 — were […]
Mike Dowd But if you thought that was an honest measure of how many kids are passing, I have bad news. High-school grading policies have become so corrupt, class credits have become almost meaningless. In recent years, the Department of Education and many individual schools, have adopted “equity grading” practices intended to benefit disadvantaged students. But […]
James Walsh: Lee thought it absurd that Columbia, which had a partnership with ChatGPT’s parent company, OpenAI, would punish him for innovating with AI. Although Columbia’s policy on AI is similar to that of many other universities’ — students are prohibited from using it unless their professor explicitly permits them to do so, either on […]
Joanne Jacobs summary: New York City’s Catholic schools are closing their doors, writes Ray Domanico in City Journal. Families with children are leaving the city, and parents who might have turned to Catholic school in the past are choosing tuition-free charter schools. A small group of Catholic high schools has learned how to survive in […]
Jennifer Gaither The name Baltimore City College may not mean much to the rest of the world, but it means a whole lot to people who live in Baltimore. Baltimore City College, or “City,” founded in 1839, is the third oldest public high school in the nation and is typically ranked in the top high […]
Quinton Klabon: This is 1 of the coolest things I have done. We did an unbiased, deep poll of Black and Latin Milwaukee parents to see how and why they pick the schools they do. 🧵 In short, parents lack the information they need to make the best match for their children. We were shocked […]
Andy Pierotti: – A pending lawsuit claims a publishing giant sold defective instructional material to school districts for decades, allegedly hurting children’s ability to read. An Atlanta News First investigation uncovered the same publisher sold its curriculum in metro Atlanta, including Gwinnett County, the state’s largest school district. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two Massachusetts parents whose […]
Carl Hendrick: Over the past century, a powerful idea has taken root in the educational landscape. The notion of intelligence as something innate and fixed has been supplanted by the idea that intelligence is instead something malleable; that we are not prisoners of immutable characteristics and that, with the right training, we can be the […]
Marguerite Roza As enrollments drop, city after city is facing pressure to close half-empty schools. Fewer kids means fewer dollars. Consolidating two schools saves money because it means paying for one less principal, librarian, nurse, PE teacher, counselor, reading coach, clerk, custodian… you get the idea. Low-enrollment schools end up on the chopping block because […]
Standard & Poors: S&P Global Ratings placed its ‘A+’ long-term ratings on Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) Wis.’s outstanding series 2016A and 2017A redevelopment lease revenue bonds; series 2015A, 2016B, and 2016C taxable redevelopment lease revenue bonds; and ‘A’ long-term and underlying ratings (SPUR) on the district’s series 2003C and 2003D taxable pension funding bonds, all […]
Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner Here’s one fact Chicagoans should know as the Chicago Teachers Union demands billions more for its massive labor contract: only half of the $10 billion spent at CPS each year makes it to classrooms and instruction. The other $5 billion goes to fund a sprawling bureaucracy of near-empty to half-empty […]
Paul Vallas: Easy solution to avoid Mayor’s $300 million property tax increase without eliminating the 2,476 Police and 646 Firefighter and EMS positions he threatened: Reduce city subsidies to the schools by an amount equal to the annual TIF “WINDFALL” which would save the city $300 mil. Schools don’t lose property tax revenues to TIF’s because […]
Marguerite Roza & Maggie Cicco: Financial dysfunction is plaguing many city school districts. Chicago is the most concerning. The district’s current $300 million budget gap is set to triple next year, which isn’t surprising since enrollment dropped 10% over six years as the district added staff. Now, it won’t close schools, won’t reduce the workforce […]
Chester Finn: In 1953, the Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin published one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated essays, titled “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” He was riffing on the Greek poet Archilochus, who wrote that “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” In this essay, Sir Isaiah divided people—well, writers […]
Dave Cieslewicz: This morning it’s grades. They’re getting rid of them. No more letters, only “advanced,” “proficient,” “developing,” and “emerging.” Only four categories — apparently no one will fail. Actually, this is nothing new. MMSD has had this system for elementary and middle schoolers for a while and it was being “piloted” (read: phased in) at East […]
Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner It’s shameful. Chicago Public School officials want to celebrate a record graduation rate when much of the other data shows they are failing Chicago’s children. Only 26 percent of CPS 11th-graders can read and do math at grade level, according to the latest Illinois Report Card data, and yet last week the district […]
Judith Davidoff & Liam Beran: Soglin opened the news conference at the Park Hotel noting that the room contained an array of “unconnected” folks who are “connected by their concern for the city.” Audience members included former Alds. Nino Amato, Dave Ahrens and Dorothy Borchardt; Lisa Veldran, who led the city council office for 30 […]
Notes and links on the Foundation for Madison Public Schools. Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall. Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending. The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, […]
Will Flanders: A typical Wisconsin school district now gets more than $17,900 per student. In a class of 20 kids, that’s $358,000 of taxpayer money. If a district can’t “keep the lights on” for that, it’s more than just MPS who’s cooking the books. More. Scott Manley: We spend more per kid than the tuition […]
Kayla Huynh Less is clear with the district’s plans for the $100 million referendum, which would fund day-to-day operating costs, such as salaries and programs. Approving this referendum alone would hike property taxes on the average home by over $300 in the first year, the district estimates. By 2028, the operations referendum would permanently raise the […]
Zachary R Mider and Nic Querolo: At 1 p.m. on certain Saturday afternoons, hundreds of foreign-born professionals from all over the US converge on a small city in central Pennsylvania. They assemble in a high-rise office building, where they sit through four hours of college classes. Then they return to the airport and head home. […]
David Blaska: The canary in the coal mine has already died when a city’s schools are in decay. So we must double down on school choice, aided by vouchers that allow the state’s school district contribution to follow the student to the school of his/her family’s choice. Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government […]
I noticed these signs placed on the Wisconsin State Capitol grounds Saturday, 28 September 2024 and wondered who was behind their printing and placement (along with whether such partisan activity can be placed on taxpayer funded facilities)? One week later, two employees of the Foundation for Madison Public Schools (8 total employees according to them) […]
Abbey Machtig: More referendum money would pay for an estimated $15 million increase in health care costs, and for new teaching and mental health staff. An additional pay increase for district employees also is tied to the operating referendum. The district and Madison Teachers Inc. already agreed to a 2.06% wage increase, in addition to […]
Masterman: The recommendations in the report were developed by the HSA Board and also were informed by conversations with administration in an effort to gain consensus around some of the main recommendations. One primary recommendation (see page 48) is to end the randomized admissions process and restore human judgment to admissions, preferably with a designated […]
Abbey Machtig: Plus, the combined tax impact of the city’s operational referendum and the two measures from the School District means will likely have to increase monthly rent for tenants living in his rental property. “This will mean about $1,500 a year, best-case scenario, which means rent for everybody will go up at least 150 bucks a […]