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Corrinne Hess: She wants to make it easier for failing schools to somehow seem like they’re succeeding,” Vos said during a press conference. “I hope that’s one of the areas that we’ll get some speedy discussion on, hopefully bipartisan support. Because I would hope that no one, the most liberal person or the most conservative […]
Emilee Fannon: Are standards lower? DPI officials have defended the new benchmarks, saying they align more directly with the state’s Forward Exam and teaching standards. Underly noted other states, such as Oklahoma and New York, have recently lowered their testing benchmarks. However, the Institute for Reforming Government, a conservative think tank, points to changes for […]
Dave Cieslewicz And the racial achievement gap in Madison was far worse than the rest of the state. Statewide the gaps were 43% for English and 50% for math. About 60% of white students were proficient in English compared to 17% of Black students. About 64% of white students were proficient or better in math […]
Kayla Huynh Among the changes are lower scoring standards for each performance level and different labels categorizing students. In an interview with CBS 58, state Superintendent Jill Underly said students “appeared to be doing worse than they really were” under the previous system. Madison Metropolitan School District leaders this month offered the School Board a sneak […]
WisPolitics: Underly road a historic wave of cashflow to win in 2021, marking a significant win for Dems of the GOP. While the race was officially nonpartisan, the Dem Party contributed $949,844 to Underly’s campaign, which spent $1.53 million over the election. In all, candidates and outside groups spent $3 million on the race, a […]
Scott Girard: It’s been a challenging few years for K-12 education, both locally and nationally. Wisconsin State Superintendent Jill Underly is nonetheless “optimistic” about what’s ahead for the field. “I think people are coming together, realizing that if we want to improve the lives of all Wisconsinites and especially the kids who are going to […]
Dylan Pahman and Alexander William Salter: It would be one thing if inflation were unforeseeable, but it isn’t. The Federal Reserve flooded the market with money for years and supported the market for government debt. Politicians ran record deficits as the Fed happily purchased bonds. The result was an unprecedented money-supply increase, to almost $22 […]
Parents defending education: New documents released in a federal lawsuit filed by parents alleging anti-Asian discrimination case against the school board in Fairfax County, Va., reveal that board members knew that the new admissions policies to America’s No. 1 high school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, were “racist,” “anti asian” and “political.” […]
Representative Jeremy Thiesfeldt: Moving the goal line on scores doesn’t change the sorry outcomes Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt and the Chairman of Assembly Committee on Education released the following statement on the results of the 2019-20 District and School Report Cards released by the Department of Public Instruction on Nov. 16:“Wisconsin State Superintendent Jill Underly and […]
Molly Beck: One of the most influential lawmakers over the state budgeting process said he wouldn’t support increasing funding for the state education agency because its new leader elected Tuesday was heavily backed by Democrats and teachers unions. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, made the statement just an hour after Pecatonica School District Superintendent Jill […]
Transcript [Machine Generated PDF]: Deborah Kerr: [00:43:53] Um, whose turn is it to go first? Okay. That’s fine. Yeah, we’re pretty good at figuring this out. Um, [00:44:00] so that’s one thing we can do. Um, yes, I support the FORT. I fo I support the Praxis test. So you gotta think about something. Why […]
Wisconsin Democracy: Liberal groups are winning the money race in the so-called “nonpartisan” state school superintendent race, where Pecatonica Area School Superintendent Jill Underly faces Deborah Kerr, a retired Brown Deer schools superintendent. Three groups that generally back Democratic candidates in partisan elections – A Better Wisconsin Together, Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin – […]
Daniel Bice: No one has been a bigger promoter of public schools during the race for state school superintendent than Jill Underly. That was, no doubt, a large part of the reason that Underly, the Pecatonica school superintendent, has won the endorsement of state and local teachers unions. But back when it was her decision to […]
S.P. Glasby We investigate the combinatorics of permutations underlying the the daily word game Waffle, and learn why some games are easy to solve while extreme games are very hard. A perfect unscrambling must have precisely 11 orbits, with at least one of length 1, on the 21 squares.
AJ Bayatpour We’re doing profiles on all 3 candidates for state superintendent. We start with Brittany Kinser’s first interview since her campaign launch. Would she accept Republicans raising funds for her? “Anyone who aligns…I will work with anyone and attend a fundraiser from anyone” ——- 2 of 3 Madison School Board 2025 April election seats […]
Corrinne Hess: Act 20 was a bipartisan bill, proposed by Republicans who worked with DPI on the details. When it was approved, the Legislature created a separate, nearly $50 million appropriations bill for implementation. Then disagreements began over how that money would be used, and who would decide how to use it. Wisconsin allows its […]
Stephen Wolfram: For more than a century people had wondered how simple the axioms of logic (Boolean algebra) could be. On January 29, 2000, I found the answer—and made the surprising discovery that they could be about twice as simple as anyone knew. (I also showed that what I found was the simplest possible.) It was an interesting result—that […]
Laura Shkylnik: If you don’t know what Project Follow Through, this episode gives a great overview. — Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending Related: Act 10 Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection? taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery… The data clearly indicate that being able to read is […]
Corrinne Hess: More than 40 percent of Wisconsin parents believe their child is “above grade level” in math, and 45 percent said the same about reading, according to Wisconsin survey results. Only 9.5 percent of students were ranked “advanced” in math and just over 8 percent rated “advanced” in reading on the 2022-23 Forward Exam, […]
Kayla Huynh: Over 10% of the Madison school district’s teachers are relying on one-year emergency licenses to work in classrooms, according to figures obtained by the Cap Times under state open records laws. A majority of the Madison Metropolitan School District’s nearly 300 emergency licensed educators were teaching classes in bilingual education, English as a […]
Morgan Polikoff and William Hughes It’s been over four years since schools closed to stop the spread of COVID-19 and by now there is no question that the pandemic has a long shadow over Wisconsin education. Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress exam show Wisconsin students’ performance lags far behind historical peaks in the early to mid-2010s, […]
Representative Barbara Dittrich Evers’ statement is completely out of touch with voters. In my district, people complained to me about all of their wasted tax dollars producing MKE kids who can’t read, write, or do simple math. We need to restore standards that demand excellence, not throw more cash at it. —— Related: Act 10 Did […]
Abbey Machtig: During an initial conversation, some Madison School Board members said they wanted to avoid creating competition with the district’s technical education and youth apprenticeship opportunities. McKenzie told the Wisconsin State Journal via email he is still pursuing a charter agreement with the UW Office of Educational Opportunity. The final application to UW is […]
Sonya Gugliara Chicago‘s projected budget deficit is a whopping $982.4 million, according to The Civic Federation. Despite several tactics to save the city from bankruptcy, politicians have failed to get to the root of the issue – increasing pension payments to Chicago’s more than 40,000 public employees. ‘Retirement benefits are like free junk food to politicians […]
Jessica McBride: Embattled incumbent Jill Underly is under growing fire from multiple corners within her own party, as infighting fractures the Democrat party in the state school Superintendent’s race. Underly has drawn not one, but two, likely opponents in the Feb. 18 spring primary to continue heading the state Department of Public Instruction. The top […]
Corrinne Hess: A group of Wisconsin parents say the Department of Public Instruction is dragging its feet on implementing new curriculum that aims to improve children’s reading skills. In 2023, lawmakers passed legislation known as Act 20. It required schools to shift away from “balanced literacy” curriculum to a phonics-based model known as “the science […]
Colleston Morgan, Jr. As we @cfc_mke predicted, the election-time, partisan spin from @DrJillUnderly @WisconsinDPI on lowering standards is here. 🧵 The issue isn’t right vs left – it’s right vs wrong. Dems like @ppi & @DaveCieslewicz have spoken out. Some polls show 85% oppose lowering the bar! —— Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly […]
: Education consultant Brittany Kinser, who told WisPolitics last week she had decided against a run for state superintendent, reversed course and has filed to run for the office this spring. Kinser, who describes herself as a “Blue Dog Democrat,” declined to comment further to WisPolitics yesterday in light of a school shooting in Madison. […]
David Samuels When I wrote about Rhodes’ ambitious program to sell the Iran deal, I advanced the term “echo chambers” to describe the process by which the White House and its wider penumbra of think tanks and NGOs generated an entirely new class of experts who credentialed each other on social media in order to […]
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 […]
William Pope: and I hope they stimulate a deeper level of discussion and better solutions moving forward. Ultimately, only President Trump can decide how his administration handles the January 6 cases, and he will be considering these issues from a different perspective than anyone else. In this article, I try to surface factors President Trump might take into account, […]
Duet Stroebel: Publicly, @DrJillUnderly touts Act 20 as “landmark literacy legislation” and uses it as a campaign talking point. Privately, she refers to literacy reform as “nonsense” and is actively trying to undermine the historic reading reforms behind the scenes. Which is it, Jill? Kyle Koenen: DPI says that the dumbing down of standards happened […]
“Public education is non-partisan for a reason”—Jill Underly, at her State of Education Address (2023). https://t.co/BckLfiuUhE pic.twitter.com/NRftohKYsC — Brooks (@EBrooksUncut) December 15, 2024
IRG Senior Research Director Quinton Klabon: The Joint Committee on Finance was forced to dispute the actions of the Department of Public Instruction once again on critical Act 20 reading reforms. The Institute for Reforming Government calls for DPI to follow the law as written so Wisconsin can catch up to leading literacy states. What […]
Quinton Klabon: ACT 20 READING UPDATE@wispolitics had this letter from Superintendent Underly to the Legislature. Good news: DPI recommended what ELCC did (HMH: ugh), no additions. Bad news: DPI says rulings say they decide curriculum, not JFC. News: DPI criticizes Act 20 funding conflict. —— Much more on the Wisconsin DPI’s ongoing rigor reduction campaign. […]
Corrinne Hess Changes to UW-Madison’s School of Education math requirements Steffen Lempp, a math professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says over the last decade, the School of Education has changed how prospective K-8 teachers are taught math content to fully prepare them to teach children in the subject. The UW-Madison math department used to […]
John Schindler Nevertheless, it can be stated that the mid-1970s IC reforms birthed by the Church Committee broadly served the country well for nearly a half-century. Recent years, however, have brought America’s spy agencies back to the dark place they were in the early 1970s: mired in scandal, operating beyond legal norms, exploited by a […]
Quinton Klabon: AAAAH! After much waiting, @urbaninstitute adjusted national 2022 NAEP test scores for state demographics. Wisconsin: 28th in reading, 13th in mathematics. top reading states: MA, FL, LA, MS, INtop mathematics states: TX, MS, MA, FL, IN, LA 2024 come out in January. —- *** No mention of the DPI’s ongoing rigor reduction efforts…. more. The data […]
Kaylah Huynh: State Superintendent Jill Underly wants to put the responsibility of funding schools back on the state, she recently told the Cap Times in an interview. Underly, who leads the state Department of Public Instruction, is proposing over $4 billion in spending toward schools for the 2025-2027 state budget. The plans would reimburse 90% […]
Leila Fletcher and Sandy Flores Ruiz We are concerned that Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction seems less than committed to the reforms outlined in Act 20. It’s been over a year since Gov. Tony Evers signed Act 20, dubbed “the reading bill.” Act 20 looks to address our state’s dismal reading scores with science-based literacy […]
Will Flanders and Kyle Koenen This past summer, behind closed doors and under a veil of secrecy that even included the signing of a non-disclosure agreement, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, quietly took several steps that will lower academic standards for Wisconsin’s students – all with zero input from parents or lawmakers. These unilateral decisions by State […]
Kyle Koenen: Jill Underly’s proposed DPI budget would eat up 65% of the state’s budget surplus, all while allowing property taxes to continue to go up. We fund students at approximately $20k per student on average. When is it enough? Abbey Machtig: State Superintendent Jill Underly is proposing more than $4 billion in new spending […]
Alex Tabarrok: “and that “executing to a Chinese standard is now going to be the most important priority”.
Abbey Machtig: Student teachers could be paid $10,000 to help cover expenses and reduce debt while training in schools, according to a 2025-27 budget request from state Superintendent Jill Underly and the Department of Public Instruction. Aspiring educators must complete some form of preparation program to become a licensed teacher in Wisconsin. Many college students […]
Corinne Hess: “The Governor and DPI will very likely show that the Governor validly partially vetoed Act 100 and that DPI is entitled to the $50 million in disputed literacy funding,” Kaul wrote to the Supreme Court. “Both issues are destined for this Court, and leaving them to the ordinary appellate process would significantly harm […]
Will Flanders: An example of the problem with DPI changing standards from Reddit. This poster earnestly believes proficiency is up 12% this year. The average person doesn’t have time to delve into the nuance of state tests. DPI is willfully pulling the wool over our eyes to hide their failings. Curiously, after reducing rigor statewide, […]
Alec Johnson: Over a year after the Wisconsin Legislature approved Act 20 and Gov. Tony Evers signed it into law, the state Department of Public Instruction is still waiting for the joint finance committee to release nearly $50 million it was promised as part of the new legislation intended to improve reading among state schoolchildren. […]
Kalina Prelikj: For decades, school design was synonymous with rigidity. Rows of identical classrooms, harsh lighting and long, narrow corridors created environments that felt more like factories — or worse, prisons — than places for nurturing young minds. This comparison isn’t entirely accidental. While it may be more legend than the fact that many schools […]
Dave Cieslewicz: And, of course, all of the underlying reasons to send the school board a message about their priorities and their performance are still very much there. This is a district with some of the lowest test scores and some of the highest absenteeism rates in the state, a district where the racial achievement […]
Harvard Graduate School of Education Event: In a ballot question this fall, voters in Massachusetts will be asked if they wish to end the requirement that high school students pass exit exams in math, English, and science to earn a diploma. Critics of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) graduation requirement point to national studies […]
Kelly Meyerhofer: Student loans and controversial debt forgiveness programs also an Education Department responsibility Managing federal student loans also falls under the department’s oversight. Under the Biden administration, the department has canceled more than $160 billion in student loans for 4.7 million borrowers, largely by adjusting the rules of existing programs. The department also issues regulations about […]
IRG: Wisconsin’s 2024 test scores, out tomorrow, are inflated, biased, and unreliable. How they got that way is the subject of “Testing Our Patience: How Wisconsin Lowered Standards, Widened the Achievement Gap, and Busted Its State Exams,” the latest Institute for Reforming Government Center for Investigative Oversight (IRG CIO) report. The report and supporting materials […]
Jeff Richgels: Wright’s campaign said he has received the recommendation of the Wisconsin Education Association Council Political Action Committee. Wright is the first announced challenger to incumbent Jill Underly, who took office in 2021. More WEAC PAC asked for input on Wright for state superintendent, and liberal judge Susan Crawford for Supreme Court. The PAC did […]
Quinton Klabon: State test scores, out tomorrow, are inflated, biased, and unreliable. DPI knew achievement gaps for Black, low-income, and special-needs students would grow. Superintendent Underly criticized “nonsense going on with literacy” while Act 20 negotiations occurred. And So, why lower them? Because they were killing the vibes. Superintendent Underly wanted them changed in JANUARY […]
Barton Swaim: Why American politics in the 21st century is marred by incivility and mistrust is the subject of more books and essays than any normal person would wish to read. The premise underlying most of them is that it’s a left-right problem: The right hates the left and the left hates the right, only […]
Mike Masnick: These days, there’s a formula for articles pushing the unproven claims of harm from social media. Start with examples of kids harming themselves, insist (without evidence) that but for social media it wouldn’t have happened. Throw some shade at Section 230 (while misrepresenting it). Toss out some policy suggestions without grappling with what […]
Linda Jacobson: Changing standards and proficiency targets is a routine process for states that some say offers a more accurate reflection of what students know. But given the cataclysmic effects of COVID on student learning, experts say now is not the time to tweak how we measure performance. “Many parents are already underestimating the degree to which […]
Frank Newport and Joy Wilke: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that the U.S. general fertility rate reached an all-time low in 2011, at 63.2 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44. The fertility rate has dropped 11% from 1990, when there were 70.9 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44. The […]
Dean Gorrell: State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly recently took to defending her decision to lower the cut scores for the Wisconsin Forward Exam. Lowering the cut scores will make it appear that a greater percentage of students are performing at higher levels. Underly offered this reason for the change: “They (the students) were appearing to be […]
Jerry Ponio: Seriously, what does @DrJillUnderly do all day? Her administration at @WisconsinDPI allowed @MilwaukeeMPS to jeopardize school aid to every district in Wisconsin. And now this….. (@GovEvers, anytime you want to intervene the kids in MKE would benefit)
Benjamin Yount: A lot of students in Wisconsin are about to get far better grades on the state’s standardized tests, but advocates say it’s not because they are suddenly better at reading or math. Wisconsin’s State Superintendent of Schools is defending the decision to change the standards for Wisconsin’s Fordward Exam and the ACT. The […]
AJ Bayatpour: Wisconsin’s top education official is defending changes this year to the statewide standardized test taken by students in grades 3-8. The overhaul of the Forward Exam lowers the cut scores between groups, and it changes the terminology used to describe student performance. In her first interview since the state Department of Public Instruction […]
Zvi: As a bonus, here are two sections that would have been in my next childhood roundup: Ban Phones in Schools England to give the power to ban mobile phone use on primary and secondary school grounds, students will have to switch them off or risk confiscation. Reactions like this always confuse me: However, teachers’ […]
Joshua Trevino: The circumstance is quite different in America’s British — or more specifically, its English — inheritance. The Americans never convulsed themselves in a general social rejection of their British heritage: even the most-radical of the Founders, a handful of Jeffersonian and adjacent thinkers, nevertheless conceived of themselves as restoring Anglo-Saxon (which is to […]
Samir Jeraj: The Birmingham example also highlights another problem. Public-sector organisations have legacy systems and old data, which make any new system a challenge to implement. The underlying problem is that digital technology moves and develops quickly, whereas large organisations tend to move at a slower pace using bureaucratic processes. So, from the start there […]
Raul Castro Fernandez, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael J. Franklin, Sanjay Krishnan and Chenhao Tan language models (LLMs), such as GPT-4, are revolutionizing software’s ability to understand, process, and synthesize language. The authors of this paper believe that this advance in technology is significant enough to prompt introspection in the data management community, similar to previous […]
Corrinne Hess: This week, Underly sent a letter to Joint Finance Committee co-chairs Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green and Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, expressing frustration the money has not been released. “Despite the JCF’s and legislative leadership’s failure to act, the DPI continues to work in good faith to implement all components of this […]
Seeds of Science: But without knowing the underlying kinetics of science and economic growth, this inertia model is just a guess. There are lots of other explanations which are consistent with the observation of diverging fuel use and acceleration. Our car could be going up a hill, or over a rough and rocky road. Or […]
Corrinne Hess: We had asked that the governor use the Audit Bureau, but he’s decided to go on a different path. That doesn’t mean we can’t pursue it as well. The more eyes looking at what happened to prevent problems going forward, the better.” As of Thursday, the MPS audit was not listed as one of […]
By: A.J. Bayatpour Wisconsin’s top education official said in an interview Friday the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is considering changes to how it handles districts falling behind on their financial reporting. The policy revisions would largely be in response to a fiscal crisis Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) is now facing. The state’s biggest district is now […]
Matt Smith: The thing is, we pushed to make this public,” Wisconsin state superintendent Jill Underly said on financial crisis in Milwaukee Public Schools: “When it comes to our, you know, the community is informed, we can do better. And we are looking at ways to make that more transparent” —— Brian Fraley: Get a […]
Barbara Dittrich Representative Barbara Dittrich (R – Oconomowoc) issued the following statement regarding the MPS fiscal scandal and its impact on local school districts: “Aside from the fact that the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) and Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) leadership have deceived the public and hurt some of Wisconsin’s most underprivileged students, there is […]
Brian Fraley: State Superintendent Jill Underly put out a written press statement today (Thursday) wherein she shared startling, detailed statistics regarding the historic failure of DPI and MPS to educate hundreds of thousands of Milwaukee Public School students over the last several decades. She included information regarding the district’s increased spending and the flow of […]
JD Tuccille: In a new report, Preventing “Torrents of Hate” or Stifling Free Expression Online?, The Future of Free Speech, a think tank based at Vanderbilt University, points out that online regulation changed in 2017 with Germany’s adoption of the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG), “which aimed to combat illegal online content such as defamation, incitement, and […]
Molly Beck, Rory Linnane And Kelly Meyerhofer The review proposed by Evers would be funded through federal dollars allocated for MPS but yet used or funding leftover from previously awarded contracts, according to the governor. The audits would produce “a comprehensive review and evaluation of the district’s systems, processes, and procedures to identify areas for improvement,” and […]
WILL: The News: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) strongly condemns the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) for changing the terminology regarding student performance as well as once again considering changing the cut points for proficiency on the state’s Forward Exam. This represents a blatant effort to conceal lackluster academic performance for Wisconsin students. […]
Quinton Klabon: Dean Haddix will oversee science of reading rollout at UW-Madison. Her literacy research focused elsewhere, but the group of which she was president wrote a nuanced defense of balanced literacy and called out UW’s Mark Seidenberg. How does she feel? —- DPI Superintendent Underly: “I support Eliminating the Foundations of Reading (FORT)” Teacher Test […]
Quinton Klabon: Good news! DPI fixed Milwaukee Public Schools! No, I don’t mean MPS’ finance crisis. The Forward Exam categories were OFFENSIVE.YUCKY: Below Basic, Basic, Proficient, AdvancedHAPPY: Developing, Approaching, Meeting, Advanced So, 68% of Black students are Developing. ✨ Will Flanders Changing terms for student performance on the Forward Exam will only serve to cloud […]
Will Flanders: The person put in charge of implementing the Science of Reading in Wisconsin apparently wrote positively about Lucy Calkins. More. Quinton Klabon: GENUINE QUESTION: She was the 2017 president of the Wisconsin State Reading Association, which lobbied against Act 20 in 2023! Many know her, so can someone explain? DPI Superintendent Underly: “I […]
Jessica McBride & Jim Piwowarczyk State School Superintendent Jill Underly’s executive director, the powerful leftist ex=campaign operative Sachin Chheda, donated to the committee working to push through a $252 million Milwaukee Public Schools referendum at the same time DPI was failing to tell the public that the district had not turned in key financial data as far […]
Chris Reed: Given how many kids struggle with reading proficiency, it’s stunning that the ‘whole language’ approach is still used in so many elementary schools Who are the most dangerous cultists — adherents of a belief system regarded as unorthodox or spurious, to use a common definition — in the United States? Some will point […]
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 […]
Abbey Machtig: Shabazz High School science teacher Brian Counselman has been named a Wisconsin Teacher of the Year, the first time since 2010 that a Madison School District teacher has earned that honor. The school held a surprise assembly Tuesday to announce the award, which was presented by State Superintendent Jill Underly in front of […]
By Kayla Huynh For decades, the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras rehearsed in what Artistic Director Kyle Knox called “the bowels” of the UW-Madison humanities building. After the organization moved out four years ago, WYSO became scattered, with members practicing in schools, churches and even parking lots throughout Dane County. Now, for the first time in the nonprofit’s […]
Committee to unleash prosperity: The firm Cover & Rossiter (certified public accountants) has estimated that the tax code and the regulations now total 35 million words. That’s more than 6 times as many words as War and Peace, the Bible, the entire Harry Potter series, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Les Miserables, the Hunger […]
Robin Hanson: The clearest proof of biologically maladaptive culture drift is fertility. Children per woman per lifetime has been declining worldwide for centuries, and is now below replacement levels almost everywhere. Earth passed peak births in 2016, and in a few decades, we’ll pass peak population. Absent huge AI advances, innovation rates will then fall even […]
Abbey Machtig: Still, at least once major American leader of the balanced literacy movement, Lucy Calkins, has rolled out changes to her reading curriculum under pressure from the science of reading movement. And initial test scores from around the country show this science of reading model seems to be working. Mississippi was one of the […]
Lucy Caulkins: Your Feb. 29 cover story, “When Kids Can’t Read,” references Springfield public schools and my curriculum, Units of Study. I applaud Springfield for attending to the individual differences among children as readers. It is fundamentally important to recognize that children are all different. Assessments from reading specialists and individualized support for those who need […]
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 […]
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 […]
Linda Carnine, Susie Andrist, and Jerry Silbert Project Follow Through was probably the largest study of educational interventions that was ever conducted, either in the United States or elsewhere. While it is now largely forgotten, at the time it embodied many of the hopes and ideals of those who wanted a more just and equitable […]
Karen Vaites: In recent weeks, we’ve wondered which curriculum list would prevail in Wisconsin. Would it be the list proposed by the expert Early Literacy Curriculum Council (four programs, widely acclaimed in the literacy community) or the list proposed by Wisconsin DPI (eleven curricula, the top-rated programs on the increasingly-under-fireEdReports review site), which DPI’s own staff characterized as […]
Quinton Klabon: Joint Finance Committee REJECTS the curriculum lists presented to 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, […]
Dave Cieslewicz: A few weeks ago I wrote about a study that showed that Madison public schools are underperforming both state and national averages for math scores. And while everyone is bouncing back a bit after COVID, Madison students’ improvement has severely lagged. Now comes a Wisconsin State Journal report on absenteeism. It’s bad everywhere but again worse in […]
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 […]
Abbey Machtig: Board members and administration, however, have begun talking more seriously about adding referendum questions to the November ballot to help remedy the financial uncertainty. If the district moves forward with referendums and voters approve the measures, local property taxes will increase beyond the levy limits set by the state. This proposal from the […]
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? […]
Abbey Machtig and Dean Mosiman: the district had to pull $28 million from its general education fund to cover the extra expenses. The city, which has a growing population and a $405.4 million general fund operating budget for 2024, and the school district, which has a $591 million budget for the 2023-24 school year, both […]
Alan Borsuk: The approach is best known for emphasizing phonics-based instruction, which teaches children the sounds of letters and how to put the sounds together into words. But when done right, it involves more than that — incorporating things such as developing vocabulary, comprehension skills and general knowledge. More:What is phonics? Here’s a guide to […]
Jill Underly: “Wisconsin, everything is on the line. Our democracy and our civil rights. Our children’s future. Our character as a nation.” ——- Media commentary. ——- The Wisconsin DPI and our long term, disastrous reading results. Much more on Jill Underly.