Search Results for: When a stands for average
When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
Lake Wobegon has nothing on the UW-Madison School of Education. All of the children in Garrison Keillor’s fictional Minnesota town are “above average.” Well, in the School of Education they’re all A students.
The 1,400 or so kids in the teacher-training department soared to a dizzying 3.91 grade point average on a four-point scale in the spring 2009 semester.
This was par for the course, so to speak. The eight departments in Education (see below) had an aggregate 3.69 grade point average, next to Pharmacy the highest among the UW’s schools. Scrolling through the Registrar’s online grade records is a discombobulating experience, if you hold to an old-school belief that average kids get C’s and only the really high performers score A’s.
Much like a modern-day middle school honors assembly, everybody’s a winner at the UW School of Education. In its Department of Curriculum and Instruction (that’s the teacher-training program), 96% of the undergraduates who received letter grades collected A’s and a handful of A/B’s. No fluke, another survey taken 12 years ago found almost exactly the same percentage.
A host of questions are prompted by the appearance of such brilliance. Can all these apprentice teachers really be that smart? Is there no difference in their abilities? Why do the grades of education majors far outstrip the grades of students in the physical sciences and mathematics? (Take a look at the chart below.)The UW-Madison School of Education has no small amount of influence on the Madison School District.
“Average homeowners would see a more than $833 increase in property taxes under the Madison school district’s proposed budget”
Kayla Huynh: Last year, during the Madison Metropolitan School District’s campaign for two referendums, the district estimated property taxes would increase by about $1,000 for the average homeowner. Voters in November approved the combined $607 million in school referendums, hiking property taxes to fund school building upgrades and day-to-day operating costs. Approval of the $100 […]
The Average College Student Today
“Hilarious Bookbinder” I’m Gen X. I was pretty young when I earned my PhD, so I’ve been a professor for a long time—over 30 years. If you’re not in academia, or it’s been awhile since you were in college, you might not know this: the students are not what they used to be. The problem […]
“If both measures pass, that means the average tax bill for Madison residents could increase by $2,030 by 2028”
Abbey Machtig: The estimated tax impact for residents is as follows: Operational referendum: 2024-25 — $316.72 increase; 2025-26 — $315.49 increase; 2026-27 — $209.1 increase; 2027-28 — $208.28 increase; total: $1,049.58 increase in property tax bill over the next four years. Facilities referendum: 2025-26 — $327.47 increase; 2026-27 — $328.83 increase; 2027-28 — $326.20 increase; […]
Mississippi students and educators have closed the gap and reached the national average on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Julia James: This growth can be attributed to several factors, but chief among them is a 2013 state law that created a more robust infrastructure around helping children learn to read and holding them back at the end of third grade if they didn’t hit a certain benchmark. But this national test also measures students […]
On average, 79% of U.S. adults nationwide are literate in 2024.
National Literacy Institute: 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 […]
Cost of Student Debt Cancelation Could Average $2,000 Per Taxpayer
Andrew Lautz: Public reporting indicates President Biden may soon announce executive action canceling federal student loan debt for a large set of borrowers. Though parameters of the student debt cancellation have yet to be announced, the Biden administration may cancel $10,000 of debt per borrower for borrowers making $125,000 in income per year or less. Based […]
Analysis finds average eighth graders may have skills indicative of fifth grade
John Fensterwald: The analysis, which looks at performance over time, shows that students fell behind each year incrementally even before the pandemic, starting in third grade when tests were first given. Progress completely stalled last year, when most students were in remote learning. Eighth graders overall scored at the same level that they did when […]
Children in masked districts experienced, on average, 4-times the number of disrupted learning days as those in mask-optional districts
Emily Burns, with Josh Stevenson, and Phil Kerpen (Figure 1).The same districts also had 2.5 times higher case rates during the same period as we demonstrated in analysis published on March 9th, 2022. This result is as important as it was expected. The CDC promised that whatever potential (and willfully ignored) harms might come to children […]
Madison’s education academics get involved in the argument over education reform; What is the Track Record of ties between the Ed School and the MMSD?
“I’m an academic,” says Slekar, a Pittsburgh-area native whose mother and grandmother were elementary school teachers and who was a classroom teacher himself before earning a Ph.D. in curriculum from University of Maryland.
“I understand scholarship, I understand evidence, I understand the role of higher education in society,” he says. “When initiatives come through, if we have solid evidence that something is not a good idea, it’s really my job to come out and say that.”
Michael Apple, an internationally recognized education theorist and professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison agrees. In the face of conservative state legislators’ push to privatize public education, “it is part of my civic responsibility to say what is happening,” says Apple.
“In a society that sees corporations as having all the rights of people, by and large education is a private good, not a public good,” he says. “I need to defend the very idea of public schools.”
Both Apple and Julie Underwood, dean of the School of Education at UW-Madison, share Slekar’s concern over the systematic privatization of education and recognize a role for scholars in the public debate about it.
…
A wide-ranging, animated, sometimes loud conversation with Slekar includes familiar controversies hotly debated around the country and in the Wisconsin Capitol, like high-stakes testing, vouchers and Common Core standards. The evidence, Slekar says flatly, shows that none of it will work to improve student learning.
The reform initiatives are instead part of a corporate takeover of public education masquerading as reform that will harm low-income and minority students before spreading to the suburbs, says Slekar, in what he calls the civil rights issue of our time.
A 30-year attack has worked to erode the legitimacy of the public education system. And teachers are taking much of the blame for the stark findings of the data now pulled from classrooms, he says.
“We’re absolutely horrible at educating poor minority kids,” says Slekar. “We absolutely know that.”
But neither the so-called reformers, nor many more casual observers, want to talk about the real reason for the disparities in achievement, Slekar says, which is poverty.
“That’s not an excuse, it’s a diagnosis,” he says, quoting John Kuhn, a firebrand Texas superintendent and activist who, at a 2011 rally, suggested that instead of performance-based salaries for teachers, the nation institute merit pay for members of Congress.Local Education school academics have long had interactions with the Madison School District. Former Superintendent Art Rainwater works in the UW-Madison School of Education.
Further, this 122 page pdf (3.9mb) includes contracts (not sure if it is complete) between the UW-Madison School of Education and the Madison School District between 2004 and 2008. Has this relationship improved achievement?
Related: Deja Vu? Education Experts to Review the Madison School District and When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
Thin data analysis of Wisconsin Teachers in Training
The 2.8 percent decrease between 2010 and 2012 at University of Wisconsin System campuses comes after a 6.8 percent increase between 2008 and 2010, according to System data reported to the federal Education Department provided to the State Journal by the UW System in response to a request for enrollment data for the System’s teacher-training programs.
The numbers do not include students seeking teaching licenses with majors not classified by the UW System as education majors.
It’s unclear why the number of students enrolled in teacher-education programs has dropped, but Cheryl Hanley-Maxwell, associate dean of the UW-Madison School of Education, said some graduates there are now reporting feeling ill prepared for what they call the political atmosphere surrounding teaching.
“Until our most recent surveys, we’ve never had a complaint that ‘you didn’t prepare us for the political atmosphere'” of teaching, said Hanley-Maxwell about surveys the school sends to graduates who have been teaching for about three years.
She said about 60 percent of the school’s graduates respond to the after-graduation surveys that question how well the school prepared them for the teaching profession.
Tougher on teachers: One in four aspiring (Michigan) teachers pass new teacher test
Becoming a teacher in Michigan just became a lot more difficult.
Only one in four aspiring teachers passed a beefed-up version of Michigan’s teacher certification test – an exam that teachers must pass to be hired to lead a classroom – when the new test was administered for the first time last month.
The initial pass rate for the old version of the test was 82 percent; In October, with more difficult questions and higher scores needed to pass, the pass rate was 26 percent.
That means that three out of four students who completed what is typically a four- or five-year college program will have to retake the test or find another career.
The toughened certification tests are an effort to assure that only the most highly-qualified teachers are leading Michigan classrooms.
“Just like we’d want the best and most effective doctor,” said State Superintendent Mike Flanagan said in a news release about the new, low pass rates. “The same applies to teaching Michigan’s students.”
Bridge Magazine raised concerns about the ease of teacher certification tests in October. At the time, aspiring Michigan teachers had a similar pass rate on certification tests as cosmetologists.
That story was part of a series examining the crucial role of teacher preparation in increasing learning in Michigan classrooms, where test scores show students are falling behind students in other states.Related NCTQ study on teacher preparation and When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?.
UW-Madison School of Education Dean Julie Underwood continues her “status quo” advocacy via this latest op-ed.
Madison Literary Club Talk: Examinations for Teachers Past and Present
California teacher preparation reform
For years, California has attempted to reform its teacher preparation programs to better prepare new teachers for the classroom. Alternative routes have popped up to offer aspiring teachers, in many cases, a less expensive and faster route to teaching. The state’s extensive performance exams for teacher candidates have served as a model for the rest of the nation.
Now, a teacher preparation program in California is pledging career-long support to its graduates. On Thursday, the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education launched a free helpline for its 25,000 alumni that will connect struggling graduates with a “rapid response team” of nine full-time faculty members. That team will diagnose problems, build individual plans for alumni, and offer solutions that range from site visits, to coaching, to professional development resources.Related NCTQ study on teacher preparation and When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?.
UW-Madison professor says ALEC assault on public schools threatens American tradition of ‘educated citizen’
The attack by the American Legislative Council (ALEC) threatens public education on five critical fronts, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Julie Mead explains in an article published Wednesday by theInstitute for Wisconsin’s Future.
Interviewed by The Real News Network as protesters were arrested trying to crash ALEC’s 40th annual convention in Chicago last week, Mead said that education model bills flowing out of the conservative organization introduce market forces into and privatize education, increase student testing and decrease the influence of local school districts and school boards.
“One of the things that I like to talk about is what’s public about public education, because I really do believe that that is precisely what is at stake: what is public about public education,” Mead, a professor in the department of educational leadership and policy analysis, said in the article.
Trends fueled ALEC jeopardize five essential dimensions of public education, she said: Public purpose, public funding, public access, public accountability to communities and public curriculum.Taking care of the basic such as reading and teacher preparation, will address some of the present public education system’s governance issues.
Related When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
Stronger teacher preparation needed to improve schools
We Californians like to think our state is the national leader in policy change and innovation, that new ideas are born here and other states follow our lead.
In one area, I am sad to say, that is not the case.
California is short-selling too many of its public school students because of education programs that inadequately prepare the next generation of teachers. A new review from the National Council on Teacher Quality that evaluates educational institutions, state by state, produced some sobering results for anyone who cares about what’s going on inside California schools of education.
Among the more disturbing findings from the institutions that provided data:
- Half of 72 programs for elementary school preparation failed the evaluation, a higher failure rate than programs in any other state.
- California’s secondary certification structure combined with inadequate coursework requirements, particularly in the sciences and social sciences, showed that only 17 percent of programs adequately prepared secondary teaching candidates in core subjects. That compared with 34 percent nationally.
- Coursework in a majority (63 percent) of California elementary programs did not mention a single strategy for teaching reading to English language learners.
- Of the 139 elementary and secondary programs that were evaluated on a four-star rating system, 33 programs earned no stars and only three earned as many as three. Not a single program earned four stars.
Related: Richard Askey: Examinations for Teachers Past and Present:
I have written about the problem in mathematics and hope that some others will use the resouces which exist to write about similar problems in other areas.
In his American Educational Research Association Presidential Address, which was published in Educational Researcher in 1986, Lee Shulman introduced the phrase “pedagogical content knowledge”. This is a mixture of content and knowing how to teach this content and is the one thing from his speech which has been picked up by the education community. However, there are a number of other points which he made which are important. Here is an early paragraph from this speech:
Fascinating: UW education dean warns school boards that ALEC seeks to wipe them out
ALEC is still at it, Julie Underwood, dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, cautions in “School Boards Beware,” (PDF) a commentary in the May issue of Wisconsin School News.
The model legislation disseminated by the pro-free market American Legislative Exchange Council’s national network of corporate members and conservative legislators seeks to privatize education and erode the local control, Underwood says.
“The ALEC goal to eliminate school districts and school boards is a bit shocking — but the idea is to make every school, public and private, independent through vouchers for all students. By providing all funding to parents rather than school districts, there is no need for local coordination, control or oversight,” she writes in the magazine of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.
Underwood, who says that Wisconsin public schools already face unprecedented change, last year co-authored a piece about ALEC’s grander plans, a “legislative contagion (that) seemed to sweep across the Midwest during the early months of 2011.”
In her recent piece, Underwood argues that a push to privatize education for the “free market” threatens the purpose of public education: to educate every child to “become an active citizen, capable of participating in our democratic process.”Related:
- The state this year will start rating each school on a scale of 0 to 100 based on student test scores and other measurables. The idea, in part, is to give parents a way to evaluate how a school is performing while motivating those within it to improve.
- Several schools across the state — including Madison’s Shorewood Elementary, Black Hawk Middle and Memorial High schools — are part of Wisconsin’s new teacher and principal evaluation system, which for the first time will grade a teacher’s success, in part, on student test scores. This system is to be implemented across Wisconsin in 2014-15.li>And instead of Wisconsin setting its own student benchmarks, the state is moving toward using Common Core State Standards, which have been adopted in 45 other states. State schools are starting new curricula this year in language arts and math so students will be prepared by the 2014-15 school year to take a new state exam tied to this common core and replacing the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination.
Although Underwood says she generally backs most of these changes, she’s no fan of the decision announced last month that makes it easier for a person to become a public school teacher — even as those who are studying to become teachers must now meet stiffer credentialing requirements. Instead of having to complete education training at a place like UW-Madison en route to being licensed, those with experience in private schools or with other teaching backgrounds now can take steps to become eligible for a public teaching license.
“I think that’s really unfortunate,” says Underwood, who first worked at UW-Madison from 1986-95 before coming back to town as education dean in 2005.
Related:
- When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
- Many notes and links on Julie Underwood.
- The oft-criticized WKCE will soon be replaced by Wisconsin’s Common Core implementation.
- NCTQ Sues UW Ed Schools over Access to Course Syllabi.
- An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Math Teacher Hiring Criteria
So why haven’t we ensured that all children get a rigorous, supportive education? Fear Factor: Teaching Without Training
Lisa Hansel, via a kind reader’s email:
So why haven’t we ensured that all children get a rigorous, supportive education?
This is a question I ask myself and others all the time. I think it’s more productive than merely asking “How can we?” Those who ask how without also asking why haven’t tend to waste significant amounts of time and resources “discovering” things that some already knew.
Okay, so I’ve partly answer the why question right there. Much better answers can be found in Diane Ravitch’s Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, E. D. Hirsch’s The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them, and Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.
But still, those answers are not complete.
Right now, Kate Walsh and her team with the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) are adding to our collective wisdom–and potentially to our collective ability to act.
NCTQ is just a couple months away from releasing its review of teacher preparation programs. The results may not be shocking, but they are terrifying. Walsh provides a preview in the current issue of Education Next. In that preview, she reminds us of a study from several years ago that offers an insiders’ look at teacher preparation:The most revealing insight into what teacher educators believe to be wrong or right about the field is a lengthy 2006 volume published by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Studying Teacher Education. It contains contributions from 15 prominent deans and education professors and was intended to provide “balanced, thorough, and unapologetically honest descriptions of the state of research on particular topics in teacher education.” It lives up to that billing. First, the volume demonstrates the paucity of credible research that would support the current practices of traditional teacher education, across all of its many functions, including foundations courses, arts and sciences courses, field experiences, and pedagogical approaches, as well as how current practice prepares candidates to teach diverse populations and special education students. More intriguing, however, is the contributors’ examination of the dramatic evolution of the mission of teacher education over the last 50 years, in ways that have certainly been poorly understood by anyone outside the profession.
Studying Teacher Education explains the disconnect between what teacher educators believe is the right way to prepare a new teacher and the unhappy K-12 schools on the receiving end of that effort. It happens that the job of teacher educators is not to train the next generation of teachers but to prepare them.Huh? Really? How exactly does one prepare without training? Walsh goes on to explain that. But the only way to prepare yourself to comprehend the teacher educators’ reasoning is to pretend like “prepare them” actually means “brainwash them into believing that in order to be a good teacher, you have to make everything up yourself.” Back to Walsh:
Harking back perhaps to teacher education’s 19th-century ecclesiastical origins, its mission has shifted away from the medical model of training doctors to professional formation. The function of teacher education is to launch the candidate on a lifelong path of learning, distinct from knowing, as actual knowledge is perceived as too fluid to be achievable. In the course of a teacher’s preparation, prejudices and errant assumptions must be confronted and expunged, with particular emphasis on those related to race, class, language, and culture. This improbable feat, not unlike the transformation of Pinocchio from puppet to real boy, is accomplished as candidates reveal their feelings and attitudes through abundant in-class dialogue and by keeping a journal. From these activities is born each teacher’s unique philosophy of teaching and learning.
There is also a strong social-justice component to teacher education, with teachers cast as “activists committed to diminishing the inequities of American society.” That vision of a teacher is seen by a considerable fraction of teacher educators (although not all) as more important than preparing a teacher to be an effective instructor.Nowhere is the chasm between the two visions of teacher education–training versus formation–clearer than in the demise of the traditional methods course. The public, and policymakers who require such courses in regulations governing teacher education, may assume that when a teacher takes a methods course, it is to learn the best methods for teaching certain subject matter. That view, we are told in the AERA volume, is for the most part an anachronism. The current view, state professors Renee T. Clift and Patricia Brady, is that “A methods course is seldom defined as a class that transmits information about methods of instruction and ends with a final exam. [They] are seen as complex sites in which instructors work simultaneously with prospective teachers on beliefs, teaching practices and creation of identities–their students’ and their own.”
The statement reveals just how far afield teacher education has traveled from its training purposes. It is hard not to suspect that the ambiguity in such language as the “creation of identities” is purposeful, because if a class fails to meet such objectives, no one would be the wiser.
The shift away from training to formation has had one immediate and indisputable outcome: the onus of a teacher’s training has shifted from the teacher educators to the teacher candidates. What remains of the teacher educator’s purpose is only to build the “capacity” of the candidate to be able to make seasoned professional judgments. Figuring out what actually to do falls entirely on the candidate.
Here is the guidance provided to student teachers at a large public university in New York:
In addition to establishing the norm for your level, you must, after determining your year-end goals, break down all that you will teach into manageable lessons. While so much of this is something you learn on the job, a great measure of it must be inside you, or you must be able to find it in a resource. This means that if you do not know the content of a grade level, or if you do not know how to prepare a lesson plan, or if you do not know how to do whatever is expected of you, it is your responsibility to find out how to do these things. Your university preparation is not intended to address every conceivable aspect of teaching.
Do not be surprised if your Cooperating Teacher is helpful but suggests you find out the “how to” on your own. Your Cooperating Teacher knows the value of owning your way into your teaching style.Related: When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?.
Wisconsin has recently taken a first baby step toward teacher content knowledge requirements (something Massachusetts and Minnesota have done for years) via the adoption of MTEL-90. Much more on teacher content knowledge requirements, here.
Content knowledge requirements for teachers past & present.
The U.S.’s Low Standards for Teacher Training
The U.S. public education system is trying any number of techniques–from charter schools to presidential initiatives to oil-company-run teacher academies–to catch up to countries like Finland and South Korea in math and science education. But policymakers seem to be overlooking one simple solution: requiring math and science teachers to progress further up the educational ladder before they teach those subjects to kids.
The map above shows the minimum level of education each country requires teachers to obtain before working at the upper-secondary level. The map, based on data collected by Jody Heymann and the World Policy Analysis Center and subsequently published in Children’s Chances: How Countries Can Move from Surviving to Thriving, illustrates that the United States lags behind most other countries in its requirements.
Many U.S. school systems defer to teachers with higher degrees when they hire faculty, and teachers are required to have some kind of state certification along with a bachelor’s degree. However, the precise certification requirements vary, depending on how a teacher enters the profession and what state they teach in. The traditional route to becoming a teacher in the United States usually involves a bachelor’s or master’s degree in education along with a standardized test and other state-specific requirements. But most states have some form of an alternative route, usually involving a bachelor’s degree and completion of an alternate certification program while a person simultaneously teaches full-time. There is no federal mandate for teacher education requirements, according to the World Policy Analysis Center. The federal Improving Teacher Quality State Grants program rewards states with funds when they meet the “highly qualified teacher” requirement set forth in the No Child Left Behind Act.Related: When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
and,
Examinations for Teachers Past and Present by Dr. Richard Askey.
McCullough on Teaching Training: Don’t Major in Education!
David McCullough, author of Truman and John Adams and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, was interviewed by Morley Safer on Sixty Minutes recently. During a discussion regarding Americans’ “historical illiteracy,” McCullough opined on teacher training:
Well we need to revamp, seriously revamp, the teaching of the teachers. I don’t feel that any professional teacher should major in education. They should major in a subject, know something. The best teachers are those who have a gift and the energy and enthusiasm to convey their love for science or history or Shakespeare or whatever it is. “Show them what you love” is the old adage. And we’ve all had them, where they can change your life. They can electrify the morning when you come into the classroom.
Related: When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That? and the National Council for Teacher Quality has been looking into school of education curriculum.
NCTQ Wins Minnesota Court Battle over Open Records Access to Ed School Curriculum
National Council on Teacher Quality, via a kind email:
Yesterday, a court in Minnesota delivered a summary judgment ordering the Minnesota State Colleges and University system to deliver the documents for which we asked in our open records (“sunshine”) request for our Teacher Prep Review.
At the heart of our Teacher Prep Review is a simple idea: the more information that aspiring teachers, district and school leaders, teacher educators and the public at large have about the programs producing classroom-ready teachers, the better all teacher training programs will be.
In our effort to produce the first comprehensive review of U.S. teacher prep, we’ve faced a number of challenges — perhaps the most serious of which has been the argument made by some universities that federal copyright law makes it illegal for public institutions publicly approved to prepare public school teachers to make public documents that describe the training they provide.
We want to make sure that everyone understands what this ruling does and does not mean. The Minnesota State colleges and universities system agreed with us that the syllabi we seek are indeed public record documents. Their case came down to the claim that because the course syllabi are also the intellectual property of professors, they should not have to deliver copies of their syllabi to us.
Minnesota’s open records law, the court ruled, is clear: public institutions must make documents accessible to individuals seeking them — which includes delivering copies to them. Delivering copies of these documents to us in no way, shape or form deprives the professors who created them of their intellectual property rights. NCTQ is conducting a research study, which means that our use of these syllabi falls under the fair use provision of the copyright law. This is the exactly the same provision that enables all researchers, including teacher educators, to make copies of key documents they need to analyze to make advances in our collective knowledge.Related:
How to Fix the Schools
“We have to find a way to work with teachers and unions while at the same time working to greatly raise the quality of teachers,” he told me recently. He has some clear ideas about how to go about that. His starting point is not the public schools themselves but the universities that educate teachers. Teacher education in America is vastly inferior to many other countries; we neither emphasize pedagogy — i.e., how to teach — nor demand mastery of the subject matter. Both are a given in the top-performing countries. (Indeed, it is striking how many nonprofit education programs in the U.S. are aimed at helping working teachers do a better job — because they’ve never learned the right techniques.)
What is also a given in other countries is that teaching has a status equal to other white-collar professionals. That was once true in America, but Tucker believes that a quarter-century of income inequality saw teachers lose out at the expense of lawyers and other well-paid professionals. That is a large part of the reason that teachers’ unions have become so obstreperous: It is not just that they feel underpaid, but they feel undervalued. Tucker believes that teachers should be paid more — though not exorbitantly. But making teacher education more rigorous — and imbuing the profession with more status — is just as important. “Other countries have raised their standards for getting into teachers’ colleges,” he told me. “We need to do the same.”Related: When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That? and Wisconsin begins to adopt teacher content standards.
Outlook not set in stone for Wisconsin school of education enrollment
For all the changes implemented in 2011, one thing hurt enrollment at schools of education more than others, said John Gaffney, recruitment and retention coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point’s School of Education.
“The message of teachers being the problem hurt us the most,” Gaffney said.
The Act 10 legislation affected teachers’ pocketbooks – with union bargaining largely eliminated, higher deductions for benefits were imposed – and the political firestorm that resulted put teachers at the center of attention.
Maggie Beeber, undergraduate advising coordinator at the UW-Stevens Point education school, recounted a story where she was meeting with incoming freshmen. She asked the students if anyone had tried to discourage them from becoming teachers. Nearly every hand went up. Then she asked if more than five people had discouraged them. Most of the hands stayed up.
“It’s easy to follow the public discourse about teaching right now and conclude that everything is doomed,” said Desiree Pointer Mace, associate dean for graduate education at Alverno College.Related:
- When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
- Many notes and links on Julie Underwood.
- The oft-criticized WKCE will soon be replaced by Wisconsin’s Common Core implementation.
- NCTQ Sues UW Ed Schools over Access to Course Syllabi.
- An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Math Teacher Hiring Criteria
An Interview with UW-Madison School of Education Dean Julie Underwood
It’s an unprecedented amount of change, honestly,” says Julie Underwood, the dean of UW-Madison’s highly ranked School of Education.
Consider:
- The state this year will start rating each school on a scale of 0 to 100 based on student test scores and other measurables. The idea, in part, is to give parents a way to evaluate how a school is performing while motivating those within it to improve.
- Several schools across the state — including Madison’s Shorewood Elementary, Black Hawk Middle and Memorial High schools — are part of Wisconsin’s new teacher and principal evaluation system, which for the first time will grade a teacher’s success, in part, on student test scores. This system is to be implemented across Wisconsin in 2014-15.li>And instead of Wisconsin setting its own student benchmarks, the state is moving toward using Common Core State Standards, which have been adopted in 45 other states. State schools are starting new curricula this year in language arts and math so students will be prepared by the 2014-15 school year to take a new state exam tied to this common core and replacing the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination.
Although Underwood says she generally backs most of these changes, she’s no fan of the decision announced last month that makes it easier for a person to become a public school teacher — even as those who are studying to become teachers must now meet stiffer credentialing requirements. Instead of having to complete education training at a place like UW-Madison en route to being licensed, those with experience in private schools or with other teaching backgrounds now can take steps to become eligible for a public teaching license.
“I think that’s really unfortunate,” says Underwood, who first worked at UW-Madison from 1986-95 before coming back to town as education dean in 2005.Related:
- When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
- Many notes and links on Julie Underwood.
- The oft-criticized WKCE will soon be replaced by Wisconsin’s Common Core implementation.
- NCTQ Sues UW Ed Schools over Access to Course Syllabi.
- An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Math Teacher Hiring Criteria
Loss of master’s degree pay bump has impact on teachers, grad schools
Erin Richards, via a kind reader’s email:
The dropping of the master’s bump in many districts is also raising new questions about what kind of outside training is relevant to help teachers improve outcomes with their students, and what those teachers – who are already taking home less pay by contributing more to their benefits – will consider to be worth the investment.
Wauwatosa East High School government teacher Ann Herrera Ward is one educator puzzled by the turning tide on advanced degrees.
Ward earned her bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before working in the U.S. House of Representatives for seven years, then got on the road to a teaching license through Marquette University, where she got a master’s in instructional leadership.
Entering her 20th year as a teacher, she’s finishing her dissertation for her doctorate degree: a study of how kids learn about elections and politics by discussing the matters in school and at home.Related:
- When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
- Many notes and links on Julie Underwood.
- The oft-criticized WKCE will soon be replaced by Wisconsin’s Common Core implementation.
- NCTQ Sues UW Ed Schools over Access to Course Syllabi.
- An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Math Teacher Hiring Criteria
Singapore vs. Madison/US Schools: Do We (Americans) Put Money into Our Children?
I read with interest Nathan Comps’ article on the forthcoming 2012-2013 Madison School District budget. Board Vice President Marj Passman lamented:“If Singapore can put a classroom of students on its money, and we can’t even put our money into children, what kind of country are we?” asks Passman, Madison school board vice president. “It’s going to be a horrible budget this year.”
Yet, according to the World Bank, Singapore spends 63% less per student than we do in America on primary education and 47% less on secondary education. The US spent $10,441/student in 2007-2008 while Madison spent $13,997.27/student during that budget cycle. Madison’s 2011-2012 budget spends $14,858.40/student.
The Economist on per student spending:Those findings raise what ought to be a fruitful question: what do the successful lot have in common? Yet the answer to that has proved surprisingly elusive. Not more money. Singapore spends less per student than most. Nor more study time. Finnish students begin school later, and study fewer hours, than in other rich countries.
In Finland all new teachers must have a master’s degree. South Korea recruits primary-school teachers from the top 5% of graduates, Singapore and Hong Kong from the top 30%.Rather than simply throwing more money (Madison taxpayers have long supported above average K-12 spending) at the current processes, perhaps it is time to rethink curriculum and just maybe, give Singapore Math a try in the Madison schools.
Related:
- 60% to 42%: Madison School District’s Reading Recovery Effectiveness Lags “National Average”: Administration seeks to continue its use
- Singapore Math and Math Forum.
- Singapore school statistics (PDF)
- When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
- Alabama, unlike Wisconsin, participated in the 2011 global TIMSS examinations. Perhaps one day, Wisconsin will have the courage to compare our students to the world.
Via the Global Report Card. The average Madison student performs better than 23% of Singapore students in Math and 35% in reading.
MTEL Arrives in Wisconsin: Teacher Licensing Content Requirement, from 1.1.2014
2011 WISCONSIN ACT 166, via a kind reader:
Section 21. 118.19 (14) of the statutes is created to read:
118.19 (14) (a) The department may not issue an initial teaching license that authorizes the holder to teach in grades kindergarten to 5 or in special education, an initial license as a reading teacher, or an initial license as a reading specialist, unless the applicant has passed an examination identical to the Foundations of Reading test administered in 2012 as part of the Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure [blekko]. The department shall set the passing cut score on the examination at a level no lower than the level recommended by the developer of the test, based on this state’s standards.
(c) Any teacher who passes the examination under par. (a) shall notify the department, which shall add a notation to the teacher’s license indicating that he or she passed the examination.
and….
115.28 (7g) Evaluation of teacher preparatory programs.
(a) The department shall, in consultation with the governor’s office, the chairpersons of the committees in the assembly and senate whose subject matter is elementary and secondary education and ranking members of those committees, the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, and the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, do all of the following:
1. Determine how the performance of individuals who have recently completed a teacher preparatory program described in s. 115.28 (7) (a) and located in this state or a teacher education program described in s. 115.28 (7) (e) 2. and located in this state will be used to evaluate the teacher preparatory and education programs. The determination under this subdivision shall, at minimum, define “recently completed” and identify measures to assess an individual’s performance, including the performance assessment made prior to making a recommendation for licensure.
2. Determine how the measures of performance of individuals who have recently completed a teacher preparatory or education program identified as required under subd. 1. will be made accessible to the public.
3. Develop a system to publicly report the measures of performance identified as required under subd. 1. for each teacher preparatory and education program identified in subd. 1.
(b) Beginning in the 2013-14 school year, the department shall use the system developed under par. (a) 3. to annually report for each program identified in par. (a) 1. the passage rate on first attempt of students and graduates of the program on examinations administered for licensure under s. 115.28 (7) and any other information required to be reported under par. (a) 1.
(c) Beginning in the 2013-14 school year, each teacher preparatory and education program shall prominently display and annually update the passage rate on first attempt of recent graduates of the program on examinations administered for licensure under s. 115.28 (7) and any other information required to be reported under par. (a) 1. on the program’s Web site and provide this information to persons receiving admissions materials to the program.
Section 18. 115.28 (12) (ag) of the statutes is created to read:
115.28 (12) (ag) Beginning in the 2012-13 school year, each school district using the system under par. (a) shall include in the system the following information for each teacher teaching in the school district who completed a teacher preparatory program described in sub. (7) (a) and located in this state or a teacher education program described in sub. (7) (e) 2. and located in this state on or after January 1, 2012:
1. The name of the teacher preparatory program or teacher education program the teacher attended and completed.
2. The term or semester and year in which the teacher completed the program described in subd. 1.Related:
- A Capitol Conversation on Wisconsin’s Reading Challenges
- 9.27.2011 Wisconsin Read to Lead Task Force Notes
- Excellence in Education explains Florida’s reading reforms and compares Florida’s NAEP progress with Wisconsin’s at the July 29th Read to Lead task force meeting
- The Economist on Florida’s Education Reform
- July 29 Wisconsin Read to Lead task force meeting notes
- Notes and links on Wisconsins’s oft criticized WKCEGeorgia, Wisconsin Education Schools Back Out of NCTQ Review
- Grade Inflation for Education Majors and Low Standards for Teachers When Everyone Makes the Grade
- When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
This is a sea change for Wisconsin students, the most substantive in decades. Of course, what is entered into the statutes can be changed or eliminated. The MTEL requirement begins with licenses after 1.1.2014.
More Election Tea Leaves: UW-Madison Ed School Dean on K-12 Tax & Spending: Defunding and privatization threaten public schools
UW-Madison Ed School Dean Julie Underwood:
Public education currently stands under twin towers of threat — de-funding and privatization. This is consistent with a conservative agenda to eliminate many public programs — including public education.
In Wisconsin, school districts have been under strict limits on their revenues and spending since 1993. These limits have not kept pace with the natural increases in the costs of everyday things like supplies, energy and fuel. So every year, local school board members and administrators have had to cut their budgets to comply with spending limits. Throughout these years, school boards and administrators have done an admirable job of managing these annual cuts, but taken together, reductions in programs and staff have had a significant and very negative impact on our schools and the education they can provide to children.
Unfortunately this year, these same districts have received the largest single budget cut in Wisconsin history. For example, high poverty aid was cut by 10 percent during a time when poverty in children has increased in Wisconsin. As a result, schools are cutting programs and staff. According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction data, the cuts in 2012 are greater than the two previous years combined. These cuts will be compounded when next year’s cuts come due.Related:
- WEAC (Wisconsin Teacher’s Union): $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
How much do election-year firewalls cost to build? For the state’s largest teachers union, $1.57 million.
That’s how much the Wisconsin Education Association Council said last week it will spend trying to make sure four Democratic state senators are re-elected – enough, WEAC hopes, to keep a Democratic majority in the 33-member state body.
- Georgia, Wisconsin Education Schools Back Out of NCTQ Review
- Grade Inflation for Education Majors and Low Standards for Teachers When Everyone Makes the Grade
- When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
- Mike Ford:
have always been irritated by this line of reasoning, is it really that far-fetched that those who support school choice actually care about education? And who stands to gain if public education is destroyed?
One longstanding criticism of voucher programs is they are part of a plot to allow private entities to profit off of K-12 education. If true, there should be a profit seeking school sector pushing vouchers for their own benefit. But is there one in Milwaukee?
To get at this question I examined the non-profit status of private schools in Milwaukee’s voucher program. First, I put the Archdiocesan, WELS, and Missouri Synod schools tied to parishes in the non-profit column. Second, I cross-referenced the names and addresses of the non-Catholic and non-Lutheran schools in the choice program against a database of Wisconsin non-profit corporations I obtained from the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions.
UW profs shed light on ALEC’s threat to public education
University of Wisconsin-Madison professors Julie Underwood and Julie Mead are expressing concern over the growing corporate influence on public education in an article published Monday.
In particular, they are highly critical of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which connects conservative state legislators with like-minded think tanks, corporations and foundations to develop “model legislation” that can be enacted at the state level.
Underwood is the dean of UW-Madison’s School of Education, while Mead chairs the ed school’s department of educational leadership and policy analysis. The two make their opinions known in an article they co-authored for the March issue of Phi Delta Kappan magazine, which serves members of the PDK professional organization for educators.
Underwood says much of the information in the article is an outgrowth of research she conducted while helping get the ALECexposed.org website up and running last summer.Related:
- WEAC (Wisconsin Teacher’s Union): $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
How much do election-year firewalls cost to build? For the state’s largest teachers union, $1.57 million.
That’s how much the Wisconsin Education Association Council said last week it will spend trying to make sure four Democratic state senators are re-elected – enough, WEAC hopes, to keep a Democratic majority in the 33-member state body.- Georgia, Wisconsin Education Schools Back Out of NCTQ Review
- Grade Inflation for Education Majors and Low Standards for Teachers When Everyone Makes the Grade
- When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
NCTQ Sues UW Ed Schools over Access to Course Syllabi
Kate Walsh, via a kind reader’s email:
As reported by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and the Associated Press, NCTQ filed a lawsuit yesterday — a first for us — against the University of Wisconsin system.
UW campuses issued identically worded denials of our requests for course syllabi, which is one of the many sources of information we use to rate programs for the National Review of teacher preparation programs. They argue that “syllabi are not public records because they are subject to copyright” and therefore do not have to be produced in response to an open records request.
We believe that the University’s reading of the law is flawed. We are engaged in research on the quality of teacher preparation programs, and so our request falls squarely within the fair use provision of copyright law. What’s more, these documents were created at public institutions for the training of public school teachers, and so should be subject to scrutiny by the public.
You can read our complaint here.Related Georgia, Wisconsin Education Schools Back Out of NCTQ Review
Public higher education institutions in Wisconsin and Georgia–and possibly as many as five other states–will not participate voluntarily in a review of education schools now being conducted by the National Council for Teacher Quality and U.S. News and World Report, according to recent correspondence between state consortia and the two groups.
In response, NCTQ and U.S. News are moving forward with plans to obtain the information from these institutions through open-records requests.
In letters to the two organizations, the president of the University of Wisconsin system and the chancellor of Georgia’s board of regents said their public institutions would opt out of the review, citing a lack of transparency and questionable methodology, among other concerns.
Formally announced in January, the review will rate education schools on up to 18 standards, basing the decisions primarily on examinations of course syllabuses and student-teaching manuals.Lake Wobegon has nothing on the UW-Madison School of Education. All of the children in Garrison Keillor’s fictional Minnesota town are “above average.” Well, in the School of Education they’re all A students.
The 1,400 or so kids in the teacher-training department soared to a dizzying 3.91 grade point average on a four-point scale in the spring 2009 semester.
This was par for the course, so to speak. The eight departments in Education (see below) had an aggregate 3.69 grade point average, next to Pharmacy the highest among the UW’s schools. Scrolling through the Registrar’s online grade records is a discombobulating experience, if you hold to an old-school belief that average kids get C’s and only the really high performers score A’s.
Much like a modern-day middle school honors assembly, everybody’s a winner at the UW School of Education. In its Department of Curriculum and Instruction (that’s the teacher-training program), 96% of the undergraduates who received letter grades collected A’s and a handful of A/B’s. No fluke, another survey taken 12 years ago found almost exactly the same percentage.
Grade Inflation for Education Majors and Low Standards for Teachers When Everyone Makes the Grade
Students who take education classes at universities receive significantly higher grades than students who take classes in every other academic discipline. The higher grades cannot be explained by observable differences in student quality between education majors and other students, nor can they be explained by the fact that education classes are typically smaller than classes in other academic departments. The remaining reasonable explanation is that the higher grades in education classes are the result of low grading standards. These low grading standards likely will negatively affect the accumulation of skills for prospective teachers during university training. More generally, they contribute to a larger culture of low standards for educators.
Key points in this Outlook:
Grades awarded in university education departments are consistently higher than grades in other disciplines.
Similarly, teachers in K-12 schools receive overwhelmingly positive evaluations.
Grade inflation in education departments should be addressed through administrative directives or external accountability in K-12 schools.When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
Statement by State Education Chiefs Supporting the National Council on Teacher Quality’s Review of Colleges of Education
Foundation for Excellence in Education, via a Kate Walsh email:
Today, the following members of Chiefs for Change, Janet Barresi, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Information; Tony Bennett, Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction; Steve Bowen, Maine Commissioner of Education; Chris Cerf, New Jersey Commissioner of Education; Deborah A. Gist, Rhode Island Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education; Kevin Huffman, Tennessee Commissioner of Education; Eric Smith, Florida Commissioner of Education; and Hanna Skandera, New Mexico Public Education Department Secretary-Designate, released a statement supporting the National Council on Teacher Quality’s colleges of education review.
“Great teachers make great students. Preparing teachers with the knowledge and skills to be effective educators is paramount to improving student achievement. Ultimately, colleges of education should be reviewed the same way we propose evaluating teachers – based on student learning.”
“Until that data becomes available in every state, Chiefs for Change supports the efforts of the National Council on Teacher Quality to gather research-based data and information about the nation’s colleges of education. This research can provide a valuable tool for improving the quality of education for educators.”Related: Georgia, Wisconsin Education Schools Back Out of NCTQ Review
Public higher education institutions in Wisconsin and Georgia–and possibly as many as five other states–will not participate voluntarily in a review of education schools now being conducted by the National Council for Teacher Quality and U.S. News and World Report, according to recent correspondence between state consortia and the two groups.
In response, NCTQ and U.S. News are moving forward with plans to obtain the information from these institutions through open-records requests.
In letters to the two organizations, the president of the University of Wisconsin system and the chancellor of Georgia’s board of regents said their public institutions would opt out of the review, citing a lack of transparency and questionable methodology, among other concerns.
Formally announced in January, the review will rate education schools on up to 18 standards, basing the decisions primarily on examinations of course syllabuses and student-teaching manuals.When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?:
Teacher colleges balk at being rated Wisconsin schools say quality survey from national nonprofit and magazine won’t be fair.
“Transparency Central” National Review of Education Schools
The National Council on Teacher Qualty:
Higher education institutions, whether they are private or public, have an obligation to be transparent about the design and operations of their teacher preparation programs. After all, these institutions have all been publicly approved to prepare public school teachers.
Here at Transparency Central, you can keep track of whether colleges and universities are living up to their obligation to be open. Just click on a state to learn more about the transparency of individual institutions there.
NCTQ is asking institutions to provide documents that describe the fundamental aspects of their teacher preparation programs: the subject matter teachers are supposed to know, the real-world classroom practice they are supposed to get, the outcomes that they achieve once they enter the classroom. Taken together, the evidence we gathering will answer a key question: Are individual programs setting high expectations for what new teachers should know and be able to do for their students?
A number of institutions have let us know that they do not intend to cooperate with our review, some even before we formally asked them for documents. As a result, we have begun to make open records requests using state “sunshine” (or “freedom of information act”) laws.
We’ll be regularly updating our progress, so come back soon to learn more about our efforts to bring transparency to teacher prep.Related:
- Georgia, Wisconsin Education Schools Back Out of NCTQ Review
- Teacher colleges balk at being rated Wisconsin schools say quality survey from national nonprofit and magazine won’t be fair
- When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
Important voice missing in blue ribbon reading discussion
While working on another story this morning, I kept checking Wisconsin Eye’s live coverage of the first meeting of Gov. Scott Walker’s blue ribbon task force on reading.
Sitting next to the Governor at the head of the table was State Superintendent Tony Evers, flanked by Sen. Luther Olsen, chair of the Education Committee and Rep. Steve Kestell. Also on hand were representatives from organizations like the Wisconsin State Reading Association (Kathy Champeau), teachers and various other reading experts, including a former Milwaukee area principal, Anthony Pedriana, who has written an influential book on reading and student achievement called “Leaving Johnny Behind.” Also on hand was Steven Dykstra of the Wisconsin Reading Coalition.
Dykstra, in particular, had a lot to say, but the discussion of how well Wisconsin kids are learning to read — a subject that gets heated among education experts as well as parents and teachers — struck me as quite engaging and generally cordial.
There seemed to be consensus surrounding the notion that it’s vitally important for students to become successful readers in the early grades, and that goal should be an urgent priority in Wisconsin.
But how the state is currently measuring up to its own past performance, and to other states, is subject to some debate. Furthermore, there isn’t a single answer or widespread agreement on precisely how to make kids into better readers.Related:
- Georgia, Wisconsin Education Schools Back Out of NCTQ Review
- Teacher colleges balk at being rated Wisconsin schools say quality survey from national nonprofit and magazine won’t be fair
- When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
- Julie Underwood: SIS and Clusty Searches.
Georgia, Wisconsin Education Schools Back Out of NCTQ Review
Stephen Sawchuk, via a kind reader’s email:
Public higher education institutions in Wisconsin and Georgia–and possibly as many as five other states–will not participate voluntarily in a review of education schools now being conducted by the National Council for Teacher Quality and U.S. News and World Report, according to recent correspondence between state consortia and the two groups.
In response, NCTQ and U.S. News are moving forward with plans to obtain the information from these institutions through open-records requests.
In letters to the two organizations, the president of the University of Wisconsin system and the chancellor of Georgia’s board of regents said their public institutions would opt out of the review, citing a lack of transparency and questionable methodology, among other concerns.
Formally announced in January, the review will rate education schools on up to 18 standards, basing the decisions primarily on examinations of course syllabuses and student-teaching manuals.
The situation is murkier in New York, Maryland, Colorado, and California, where public university officials have sent letters to NCTQ and U.S. News requesting changes to the review process, but haven’t yet declined to take part willingly.
In Kentucky, the presidents, provosts, and ed. school deans of public universities wrote in a letter to the research and advocacy group and the newsmagazine that they won’t “endorse” the review. It’s not yet clear what that means for their participation.Lake Wobegon has nothing on the UW-Madison School of Education. All of the children in Garrison Keillor’s fictional Minnesota town are “above average.” Well, in the School of Education they’re all A students.
The 1,400 or so kids in the teacher-training department soared to a dizzying 3.91 grade point average on a four-point scale in the spring 2009 semester.
This was par for the course, so to speak. The eight departments in Education (see below) had an aggregate 3.69 grade point average, next to Pharmacy the highest among the UW’s schools. Scrolling through the Registrar’s online grade records is a discombobulating experience, if you hold to an old-school belief that average kids get C’s and only the really high performers score A’s.
Much like a modern-day middle school honors assembly, everybody’s a winner at the UW School of Education. In its Department of Curriculum and Instruction (that’s the teacher-training program), 96% of the undergraduates who received letter grades collected A’s and a handful of A/B’s. No fluke, another survey taken 12 years ago found almost exactly the same percentage.
Grade Inflation: Who Really Failed?
Dominique G. Homberger won’t apologize for setting high expectations for her students.
The biology professor at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge gives brief quizzes at the beginning of every class, to assure attendance and to make sure students are doing the reading. On her tests, she doesn’t use a curve, as she believes that students must achieve mastery of the subject matter, not just achieve more mastery than the worst students in the course. For multiple choice questions, she gives 10 possible answers, not the expected 4, as she doesn’t want students to get very far with guessing.
Students in introductory biology don’t need to worry about meeting her standards anymore. LSU removed her from teaching, mid-semester, and raised the grades of students in the class. In so doing, the university’s administration has set off a debate about grade inflation, due process and a professor’s right to set standards in her own course.
To Homberger and her supporters, the university’s action has violated principles of academic freedom and weakened the faculty.Related: Marc Eisen: When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?.
notes on Madison’s Disastrous Literacy Results and Tutors
Erin Gretzinger Members of the Wisconsin Literacy Justice Coalition have talked with school district administrators about their ideas. FitzGerald described the district’s response to their proposals as “lukewarm,” while Wagner said the conversations so far have been “cordial” and the coalition is open to either taking a leading role or supporting the district’s plans. “We […]
“I was the highest-performing teacher in Colorado. No one noticed.”
Holly Korbey, Luke Morin: What I would come to learn over time is that the qualities schools are quickest to reward aren’t always the ones most closely tied to student learning. Early in my career, I was celebrated for effort, visibility, and good intentions. Years later, after deliberately studying great classrooms and becoming a far […]
“Lowering the temperature shouldn’t mean lowering accountability”
Neetu Arnold: I appreciate @NickKristof visiting AL/MS to learn from their educational gains. But I reject the growing “both sides” frame for why good reforms haven’t scaled It downplays how unions & ideology resist sound policies. Even if blue states now support reading & math reforms, that doesn’t mean the political instincts behind bad choices […]
A republic needs literacy
Mary Katherine Ham: more. In a video I stumbled on recently, a man in a hoodie reads to the camera, somewhat haltingly telling the story of Aslan and the Pevensie children. He’s been working his way, one chapter a day, through The Chronicles of Narnia. The text over the video reads, “37 years old, fifth-grade […]
Open Records and the Taxpayer Funded Wisconsin DPI
Brian Fraley: The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has many problems. They’re self righteous, secretive and indignant. Their communications efforts do not offer clarity, they obfuscate. This was on full display in their spokesperson’s response to Dairyland Sentinel’s reporting. The statement was emailed out to many media outlets. Here’s a link to the full statement as […]
“Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, which oversees educator licenses, is against the proposed changes to its (sexual misconduct) investigations”
Danielle DuClos: The bill would require the department to publish on its website if an educator surrendered their license amid an investigation into misconduct. It would also remove ways to justify denying access to case records under state open records laws and mandate the department fulfill requests for case records within 14 days, if an […]
“Those [Madison referendums] look a lot more real on a property tax bill than a ballot.”
Liam Beran: Amy Robertson keeps a pretty close eye on the Madison school district. She is part of a group of parents who have raised concerns about the performance of Van Hise principal Rebecca Stein and she tries to keep up with school board meetings. She rates the board’s performance “fine, but not amazing,” but […]
Why Boys Are Behind in Reading at Every Age
Claire Cain Miller But while average scores have declined for everyone, boys are doing much worse. On standardized tests, they score lower than girls in reading in nearly every school district in the United States, and at every grade level that tests are given, according to a new analysis from researchers at the Educational Opportunity […]
Delayed DPI Records Reveal Taxpayers Soaked with $368K Water Park Resort Bill to Weaken State Exam Standards
Brian Fraley: UPDATE 6:18pm As a result of Dairyland Sentinel’s reporting, this afternoon the Joint Finance Committee delayed a scheduled vote to release $1 million to the Department of Public Instruction for agency operations. Committee Co-chair Mark Born, R–Beaver Dam, cited this report as the reason for the postponed vote, saying the committee decided to […]
New Jersey Is Moving to End HS Graduation Exam
Chris Cerf: The New Jersey Assembly recently moved to eliminate the New Jersey Graduation Proficiency Assessment, joining a troubling national trend of states that now allow students to graduate from high school without any objective evidence that they have mastered the minimal skills necessary for future success. Diluting academic standards, reducing cut scores or eliminating test-based performance measures altogether […]
The Bipartisan Failure on Education
Garry Tan: The Center for Educational Progress lays it out plainly: Democrats were once the party Americans trusted on education. That trust has eroded because the progressive reform movement became laser-focused on equity—specifically, on closing achievement gaps between demographic groups—at the expense of effective pedagogy and educational excellence. The result? Gifted programs get cut. Selective […]
Madison schools OK $165K study after union’s pay complaints
Erin Gretzinger: The Madison School Board approved a $165,500 contract for a compensation study at its Monday meeting following months of mounting calls from the teachers union to address salary compression for veteran teachers. The Madison Metropolitan School District’s board green lit a proposal from Evergreen Solutions, a Florida-based consulting firm, to conduct a study of about […]
“So now, failure is not an option at MMSD”
Dave Cieslewicz: There’s a fundamental dishonesty to all this. If you get a “D” you’re not “emerging.” Emerging implies improvement. But there’s a good chance you’re treading water at best. In any event, you’re falling behind, not meeting standards. You need to be told so. Honestly. In clear language. You need to hear that you […]
Madison’s Taxpayer Funded K-12 System Expands “Standards based” Grading to Most High Schools
Chris Rickert: After testing a new grading system at East High School that downplays traditional letter grades, the Madison School District plans to extend the system to its three other traditional high schools. The district’s communications office, however, wouldn’t reveal a timeline for when “standards-based” grading will make its way to West, La Follette and […]
The Battle over Rigor
Jordan McGillis: “Contemporary liberalism’s equity concerns cut directly against the widely shared preference among technologists to let students progress, particularly in math and science, at the greatest rate their abilities allow.” What liberals have failed to internalize is the earnestness of techno-populist godfather Peter Thiel’s hostility to established institutions. Thiel sees tech, the Democratic Party, […]
How a professor bungled the facts of Wisconsin school choice
Patrick Michleran From history to poverty to treating kids like wildlife, errors compound Bungling facts is bad enough. The harm’s far greater when you’re paid by taxpayers to profess them at Wisconsin’s flagship state university. A case in point: A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of education policy revealed a grave misunderstanding of school choice as […]
Comments from Madison’s taxpayer funded K-12 Superintendent
Erin Gretzinger: Between state open enrollment, some of our charter school opportunities, private school, home schooling — even more popular out of the pandemic than before — there are definitely downward pressures on enrollment. It’s one of the reasons that we have to look very carefully at areas where we’re vulnerable. So if we see […]
“because you’ve become the underdog. You cannot compete with China, so you blame it”
Janice Turner: The man who meets me at his gated estate in the Portuguese countryside is 68 now, but seems calmer and healthier and has shed his Buddha-like bulk. “You know when a tree is in autumn, when the leaves come down,” he says, “it looks slimmer.” Ai moved here during lockdown, buying the holiday […]
“but whether they’re learning anything at all”
Mark Lilla: It is that so many are learning nothing at all. And here he lays responsibility at the feet of the American educational establishment, which has, in the words of one scholar, been turning the “meat of academic subjects into meatloaf.” One of the peculiarities of the American educational system, compared with those in […]
“The irony of protesting legislative enforcement at the house of legislative production”
Ann Althouse summary: Students from both Madison East and West high schools have walked out to protest against ICE at the state Capitol. I’d estimate there’s 200-300 students between the first floor rotunda and second floor bridges above pic.twitter.com/xnMjqEAsmo— A.J. Bayatpour (@AJBayatpour) January 14, 2026 ——— more. ——— A.B.T.: “Ain’t been taught.” 8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade […]
adding buildings amidst declining Madison k-12 enrollment
Erin Gretzinger: Residents can stay updated on the referendum projects by checking the district’s dedicated website, Superintendent Joe Gothard said. The district recently hired a new member to its communications department who has a license to fly a drone, which Gothard said he hopes will help the district share progress on the projects as construction gets […]
Behind The Supremacy of Mississippi
Scott Johnson: Dr. Sidney Bondurant has written to provide relevant background to “The supremacy of Mississippi.” Dr. Bondurant writes: I read your Power Line post on Mississippi’s Literacy Based Promotion Act and the progress made in reading and math in our elementary schools. This act was passed during the administration of Governor Phil Bryant. I was Governor Bryant’s legislative […]
A.B.T.: “Ain’t been taught.”
Sarah Mervosh Kindergartners arrived not knowing their letters from their numbers. After a few years in school, they were still far behind. A decade ago, just 12 percent of Hazlehurst students were reading on grade level. Today, Hazlehurst has clawed that figure to 35 percent. And Mississippi has emerged as one of the best places […]
Literacy Improvement and the 2028 Presidential Election
Rahm Emanuel: Mississippi went from 49th to 9th in their reading scores – known as the “Mississippi Miracle.” Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama adopted the same (phonics) model and are seeing similar gains for their kids. It works. What are we waiting for? We need the courage to stand by our kids. China is not holding […]
Another attempt at an independent charter school in Madison
Erin Gretzinger: A proposed independent charter school in Madison has passed the first stage of the approval process to apply for charter status with the Universities of Wisconsin’s Office for Educational Opportunity, which has authorityunder state law to authorize and oversee new charter schools in the state North Star Preparatory is seeking to provide a tuition-free […]
Legislation on k-12 student pronoun use…..
Olivia Herken: The bill, SB120, was first introduced last March, and a companion bill was passed by the Assembly later that month. The legislation would require all Wisconsin school boards to adopt two policies, one on how a school keeps records of a student’s preferred name or pronouns, and another on how school staff may address a student. Specifically, […]
“We don’t expect the book will be usable in unionized public schools”
James Hankins: You are right. We don’t expect the book will be usable in unionized public schools. It’s written for classical schools, where students have a much larger vocabulary, more discipline, and a higher level of reading comprehension. The book can be read by 11th-12th graders and college students. There is a “young readers” edition […]
“Urgent need”: Nearly half of Utah’s kindergarten through third grade kids can’t read at grade level, report finds
Carmen Nesbitt About half of Utah’s third-graders are not reading at grade level, according to a new report from the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. Neither are nearly half of Utah’s kindergarteners through second graders, the study found. The analysis, commissioned by the Clark and Christine Ivory Foundation, comes about two weeks before the […]
Competitive Races! 2026 Madison School Board election Candidates; achievement?
Enjoyiana Nururdin, Erin Gretzinger and Olivia Herken: Two of the board’s seven seats are up for election, and both races are poised to be contested. Board members serve three-year terms. Seat 6 incumbent Blair Mosner Feltham faces Daniella Molle, a qualitative researcher at the the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research. Seat 7 […]
Madison’s k-12 overton window lacks rigor
Erin Gretzinger: At the end of the semester, the UW-Madison students presented their findings to school district leaders in the Doyle Administration Building. Superintendent Joe Gothard thanked the students for their work, emphasizing the importance of better understanding the families opting out of enrolling in Madison’s schools and 4K programs. “This is what we do […]
Madison’s 10 Year Behavior Education Plan outcome analysis
Chris Rickert: More than 10 years after the Madison School District’s implemented its Behavior Education Plan, one of the plan’s primary goals — reducing racial disparities in discipline — remains unmet. David Blaska: Madison’s public schools have a “coordinator for progressive discipline.” Things we never knew, thanks to Chris Rickert, writing for our favorite local morning newspaper. Yes, you […]
A look at the Taxpayer Funded Madison School District’s Goals, Staffing Growth (declining enrollment) and Rhetoric
Madison School District PDF: “Strategic Framework Goal 1”: +10 percentage points in literacy proficiency +10 percentage points in students’ math proficiency +3 percentage points in 4-year HS completion “Strategic Framework Goal 2”: +15 percentage points in percentage of students with annual attendance rate of +90% 100% of district departments and schools with documented improvement plans, […]
A Reform Agenda for the very well funded Madison k-12 District
David Blaska Schools we can be proud of: ——- Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery… The data clearly indicate that being able to read is […]
Voters could decide fate of Gov. Tony Evers’ 400-year school funding Tax increase
Mitchell Schmidt: The proposed amendment, which would restrict Wisconsin’s governor from using a partial veto to increase taxes or fees in appropriation bills such as state budgets, passed the Legislature the first time in early 2024. If the measure passes both chambers early next year, the ballot question could come before voters in the state’s […]
Georgia looks to Mississippi to help children learn to read. Yes, Mississippi. Madison?
Andy Pierrotti Georgia education officials are studying Mississippi’s dramatic literacy transformation as 70 percent of the Peach State’s 4th graders cannot read proficiently, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Mississippi, once ranked 49th nationally in 4th grade reading scores in 2013, now ranks 9th best in the nation and leads the country for […]
A 16 Year Old Who Can’t Read
Via Quinton Klabon: Steven Dykstra is a retired clinical psychologist in Milwaukee. He didn’t think much about dyslexia until his son had trouble reading in first grade. He and his wife arranged a conference with the teacher, who asked whether they read to their son at home. “When we assured her that we had read […]
Civics: Uncontested 2026 Madison Elections
Keegan Kyle: Madison’s first elections of 2026 are shaping up to be rather quiet, but that landscape could shift in the next two weeks if more candidates jump in. Nine of 10 Madison City Council seats, one of two Madison School Board seats and most Dane County Board seats up for election in April are […]
Madison School Board Vice President arrested Friday evening
Via a kind reader: As a supporter and campaign contributor to Mia Pearson’s MMSD school board races, I am deeply disappointed to report that on Friday evening, MMSD Board Vice President — Mia Pearson was arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, alongside — Nextdoor – Nextdoor ——— Chris Rickert: According to a report about […]
“Empty Schools, Empty Wallets:”
Quinton Klabon: In 2024-2025, Wisconsin public schools employed more people than at any other time in state history.1 2 The problem: Wisconsin educated the fewest public-school students since 1991-1992.3 4 With schools set to have the fewest students since the 1950s in just 5 years, budgets are ripping at the seams.5 That fiscal cliff is […]
Botched report cards, lowered standards, licensing and finance scandals erode faith in DPI
Jim Bender & Patrick McIlheran: Accused of gutting academic standards, manipulating report cards, slacking on fiscal oversight and bungling oversight of sexual misconduct among teachers, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction is facing a crisis of confidence — and new questions about whether it is capable of handling myriad key functions. Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice […]
Grades
link: At Yale, 92% of grades in women’s studies classes are either A or A-. Only 55% in mathematics are. You couldn’t ask for a better metaphor for what ails elite American academia and culture. ——- When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
“meaning (Wisconsin) school districts may raise revenue by that amount each year until 2425”
Jessie Opoien: Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, a former public school educator, used his powerful partial veto authorityto extend that provision for 400 years – meaning school districts may raise revenue by that amount each year until 2425. That funding increase can be filled in by state lawmakers, or by local property taxes. School districts are also not required […]
“Gross K-12 school property taxes in Wisconsin are rising 7.8 percent on December bills”
Corrinne Hess When Brad Cortright opened his property tax bill this month, he saw the same thing most Wisconsin homeowners are experiencing: A big jump. Cortright’s taxes on his Wauwatosa home are up $2,400. “It’s not quite 50 percent, but it’s a lot,” Cortright said. “I think what happened to us was we didn’t get […]
“Madison school district’s property tax increase accounts for 17% of the rise in total tax levies for K-12 schools statewide”
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 […]
Madison Metropolitan School District hires new executive director of schools
Samantha Calderon: A new senior executive director of schools and learning at the Madison Metropolitan School District has been hired, according to officials. Dr. Keona S. Jones brings nearly three decades of experience as an administrator and educator Jones was most recently the assistant state superintendent for the Division for Student and School Success at […]
Madison’s k-12 property tax burden, which, according to District budget documents is $478,683,790, up 19.48% from 2024-2025 and 32% from 2022-2023
George Wiebe Most of the jump is the result of two Madison School District referendums passed last year, which increased school taxes by nearly $780, or about 18%, on the average Madison home, according to the city’s breakdown of the tax bill. Voters also approved a $22 million city referendum last year, although that increase was reflected […]
Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class.
Dana Goldstein: “We do one book after state testing, and we did ‘The Great Gatsby.’ … A lot of kids had not read a novel in class before.” — Laura Henry, 10th-grade English teacher near Houston “My son in 9th grade listened to the audio of ‘A Raisin in the Sun.’ For ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ […]
Why Are Leftists So Pessimistic About School Reform?
Jonathan Chait: Every once in a while, a state or city discovers a new and better way to educate poor children. Inevitably, a group of skeptics arises to insist that this new way doesn’t work, that even attempting to shrink the gap between rich and poor students is a fool’s errand. Strangely enough, these skeptics tend, […]
One year into the Oneida Reads program, reading proficiency among Native students in Brown and Outagamie Counties has improved
Richelle Wilson: Recent test scores show that only about half of Wisconsin students are proficient in reading. Those numbers are even more stark for Native American students. In 2022, only 5 percent of Native third graders in Brown County were reading at grade level. “To find out that 95 percent of our children were struggling — […]
notes on Mississippi’s literacy success
Quinton Klabon: Is the Mississippi Miracle in reading real? Yeah! If anyone ever debunks it, it will not be people who cannot read a ranking chart. “To their credit, when I reached out to the authors about this mistake, they acknowledged it and reached out to get it fixed before publication.” Kelsey Piper: All right, […]
Wisconsin Early Literacy Screener Report: 2024-2025
Developed by Barb Novak, PhD Director, Office of Literacy: School and District level data (.xlsx). Act 20 annual reporting. —— Chris Rickert: Nearly 44% of Madison School District 4K through third graders scored below the 25th percentile on an early literacy screener required under a 2023 state law, the state Department of Public Instruction reported Monday, […]
Renaming process for taxpayer funded Madison schools slows to a trickle
Chris Rickert: Folger explained the delay in getting to Elvehjem and Lindbergh by saying that the process last school year to pick a name for the former Southside Elementary — now Lori Mann Carey Elementary — took longer than expected. “We are now on track to start the process for two schools this year,” he […]
has many more details about how and why public education quality has collapsed in America.
Noah Smith: Rice’s article is very long and has many more details about how and why public education quality has collapsed in America. The basic story is that the education reform movement spearheaded by George W. Bush, which focused on improving test scores, collapsed in the mid-2010s. After that, public schools across the country began […]
“choose among 16 Cal State campuses that are trying to fill classroom seats”
Joanne Jacobs summary: The most selective schools — San Jose State, San Diego State, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cal Poly Pomona, Cal State Fullerton and Long Beach State — are not included. Cal State schools have higher graduation rates than community colleges. But students who wouldn’t apply if they had to fill out an […]
The signs of educational decline are now impossible to ignore
Megan McArdle: UC San Diego report shows students are not prepared for college, especially in math. Progressive educators watered down curriculums, gutted gifted and talented programs, and weakened admissions standards for honors classes and magnet schools. Colleges dropped standardized testing requirements, in part because that made it easier to diversify their student body. None of […]
“how do you capitalize in cursive?”
Garry Trudeau arrives (finally) in 2025…. —— Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection? ——- Only 31% of 4th graders in Wisconsin read at grade level, which is worse than Mississippi. ——- Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long […]
This is all you need to know: “Wisconsin DPI’s report cards measure poverty, not quality”
Quinton Klabon: ——- Poverty explains 50% of Forward Exam scores and 36% of ACT. So, control for poverty, and you can accurately rate and rank schools! best: Wauzeka-Steuben (small), Fond Du Lac (medium), Sheboygan/Janesville (big) ——- large districts’ Forward: Sheboygan: mid 4Janesville: mid 4Elmbrook: high 3Waukesha: mid 3Middleton: mid 3Wausau: mid 3Eau Claire: mid 3Appleton: […]
Taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI: Governance and Outcone Inquiries
By Jim Bender & Patrick McIlheran Accused of gutting academic standards, manipulating report cards, slacking on fiscal oversight and bungling oversight of sexual misconduct among teachers, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction is facing a crisis of confidence — and new questions about whether it is capable of handling myriad key functions. The latest blow […]
200 Madison teachers haven’t finished state mandated early literacy training
Erin Gretzinger: Asked by the Cap Times this month about the school district’s progress on fulfilling the requirements, district officials said 703 teachers had enrolled in the training as of the 2025-26 school year. Out of those enrolled, about 524 educators — or 75% — had completed the training. The district said 25 teachers hadn’t […]
Civics & K-12 Climate: The Fate of Empires
Sir John Glubb: Education undergoes the same gradual transformation. No longer do schools aim at producing brave patriots ready to serve their country. Parents and students alike seek the educational qualifications which will command the highest salaries. The Arab moralist, Ghazali (1058-1111), complains in these very same words of the lowering of objectives in the […]
“We do not have the number of students in the entirety of Boston Public Schools performing at grade level in ELA and math to fill the total available seventh-grade seats across the three exam schools.”
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 […]
Tax & $pending Practices: Madison k-12 edition
Erin Gretzinger: Ian Folger, a spokesperson for the district, declined to identify the individual who created the new logo or comment on why the district paid Fieldtrip the same amount of money for less work. Edell Fielder, the district’s senior executive director of communications, said the individual who created the logo wants to remain anonymous. […]
Faking K-12 District Achievement Data: “Schools with proficiency rates in reading as low as 12.70% were rated as “Exceeds Expectations””
Institute For Reforming Government “DPI’s state report cards say rich districts are worth the property taxes, even when they aren’t, and poor districts meet expectations, even when they don’t. Meanwhile, DPI underrates many of Wisconsin’s best districts,” said Quinton Klabon, Senior Research Director at the Institute for Reforming Government. “Parents should not have to play a guessing […]
Notes on an audit of the taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI
Kayla Huynh: The state Legislature’s bipartisan audit committee on Nov. 5 ordered a review into the Department of Public Instruction’s process for removing, suspending or restricting educator licenses. The audit comes as State Superintendent Jill Underly has received criticism for her department’s handling of grooming and sexual misconduct allegations against licensed school staff. The Legislative Audit Bureau will examine the […]
The Case Against Property Taxes: Property taxes violate natural rights, distort markets, and fund overspending
Vance Ginn: Note from Adam: There is growing momentum to limit or repeal state and local property taxes, which poses an interesting dilemma for libertarians and fiscal conservatives. Advocates see property taxes as relatively efficient, transparent, and minimally distortionary, while critics argue they fuel government growth, undermine secure property rights, and make housing more expensive. The […]
