219 results
“This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom.“ It’s fourth period in the auto lab at Madison’s Vel Phillips Memorial High School, and a dozen students maneuver between nearly as many cars. At one bay, a junior adjusts the valves of an oxygen-acetylene torch and holds the flame to a suspended Subaru’s […]
Erin Gretzinger: Madison school district officials who spoke with the Cap Times said the district wants to expand dual enrollment options to increase students’ access to college credit, with a focus on increasing on-site classes. The expansion would offer more alternatives to off-campus programs that pull students out of their schools and AP classes that […]
Deborah Fallows: It’s more than just talk. Many of the older students told us about the college level courses they had taken at WCPA as part of the school’s Pathways program, and how they appreciated the different style of teaching and demands of coursework. Professors from nearby Bakersfield College teach Pathway classes at WCPA; 100% […]
Wisconsin Policy Forum The number of Wisconsin high school students who participate in dual enrollment programs continued its decade-long growth in the 2023-24 academic year, hitting a new record. A combined 78,703 students participated in the dual enrollment programs offered by the University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Technical College systems, through which they could earn […]
Jill Barshay: A new analysis released in October 2024 by the Community College Research Center (CCRC), at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center tracked what happened to every high school student who started taking dual enrollment classes in 2015. Of these 400,000 high schoolers, more than 80 percent enrolled in college straight […]
Great conversation about the meteoric explosion of high schoolers taking college classes with @MLynchOnAir at @KMOX, one of the largest talk radio stations in the country. Listen to the 7-min segment on dual enrollment here: https://t.co/Q9OgAYlRHw — Jill Barshay (@jillbarshay) August 9, 2023
Jill Barshay When you think of a college student, you might imagine a young adult leaving home, moving into a dorm, navigating a campus and maybe attending a fraternity party. That’s an outdated image. We’ve written a lot about how older adults with jobs and children are a giant group on campus. But a more […]
Jill Barshay: When you think of a college student, you might imagine a young adult leaving home, moving into a dorm, navigating a campus and maybe attending a fraternity party. That’s an outdated image. We’ve written a lot about how older adults with jobs and children are a giant group on campus. But a more […]
Ron French: Dual enrollment is suffering growing pains. The popular program allows high schoolers to take college courses free, with the incentive that they will apply to a degree program. But opportunities still vary widely between counties, and credits earned come with strings attached at many Michigan universities. There is no state office assuring that […]
This study used data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88) to examine the effects of dual enrollment programs for high school students on college degree attainment. The study also reported whether the impacts of dual enrollment programs were different for first generation college students versus students whose parents had attended at least some college. In addition, a supplemental analysis reports on the impact of different amounts of dual enrollment course-taking and college degree attainment.
Dual enrollment programs offer college-level learning experiences for high school students. The programs offer college courses and/or the opportunity to earn college credits for students while still in high school.
The intervention group in the study was comprised of NELS participants who attended a postsecondary school and who participated in a dual enrollment program while in high school (n = 880). The study author used propensity score matching methods to create a comparison group of NELS participants who also attended a postsecondary school but who did not participate in a dual enrollment program in high school (n = 7,920).
ome Florida private schools face an unexpected dilemma this school year: Find extra dollars to pay for state college courses their high school students want to take – or deny them the option.
The problem stems from a new law requiring public school districts and individual private schools to cover tuition for students enrolled in the state’s popular dual enrollment program.
Though it’s unclear how many private school schools and students are affected, the change has left some schools curbing participation and others anxious about what they’ll do if local colleges, prompted by the new law, end up hiking charges.
The change “caught everybody off guard,” said Howard Burke of the Florida Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, and immediate past president of Florida Association of Academic Nonpublic Schools (FAANS). “This is a hardship for parents already paying taxes for public schools and paying for private school.”
For some high school students who want to get a head start on college, scraping together the roughly $160 needed to pay for a dual enrollment class in Tennessee can be a barrier.
Now, a coalition of business and education groups is shining light on the issue in a bid to reduce or eliminate the cost for students to participate in the classes, which count both as college and high school credit.
Earlier this year, the coalition led by the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce commissioned a study to look at how to improve the state’s dual enrollment program. The study, performed by the Community College Research Center at Columbia University, recommended increasing funding for the program.
Much more on dual enrollment here.
As opening days for fall classes draw near, agreements in support of dual enrollment have been reached between Daytona State College and Volusia and Flagler school districts.
The college’s District Board of Trustees on Aug. 13 approved agreements to cover the majority of the schools’ costs for services associated with dual enrollment in 2013-14.
The Volusia and Flagler school boards will vote on the agreements in upcoming weeks.
Dual enrollment provides college-credit classes on Daytona State campuses, giving college-bound students a head start on their higher education, at no cost to them.
Related:Obtaining credit for non Madison School District Courses has been an ongoing challeng. Perhaps this issue has faded away as past practices die? Madison’snon-diverse or homogeneous governance model inflictsnumerous cost, fromone size fits all curricula to growth in the ‘burbs accompanied byever increasing property taxes on top of stagnant or declining income.
It’s now even easier and cheaper for local high school students to get a college education.
At a joint meeting between City Council, The Roanoke City School Board and Virginia Western the community college talked about it’s newest program.
Back in March, Virginia Western announced it’s waiving tuition for students taking dual enrollment classes.
Those are classes students can take in high school and earn college credit, but many students weren’t.
They can now.
Related: Obtaining credit for non Madison School District Courses has been an ongoing challenge. Perhaps this issue has faded away as past practices die? Madison’s non-diverse or homogeneous governance model inflicts numerous costs, from one size fits all curricula to growth in the ‘burbs accompanied by ever increasing property taxes on top of stagnant or declining income.
Different students learn in different ways–we know that. Students know that too.
A precalculus student I talked to on a recent afternoon failed the class last fall and was on her way to failing it again this spring. Sadly, she will probably fail the class in the fall, too. Despite all the class aids (and there were many), she had not reacted to her consistently low exam scores until I spoke to her after class.
Her science major requires that she complete Calculus 1 and possibly Calculus 2. Her mathematics SAT score was 380.
We talked a little bit about the class, her performance, and where she should go next. The student explained that my class is not compatible with her “learning method.” She said that she prefers “that multiplying method, you know, where there are letters, A, B, C.”
I said, “You mean, multiple choice?”
Sitting in the back row of her South Fayette High School economics class, Emily Cord waved off her teacher as he passed out voter-registration cards.
“I’m not 18 till June,” she said.
An hour later, however, she was sitting in ECO102, Principles of Macroeconomics, at Community College of Allegheny County, with classmates beyond not just the voting age but the drinking age.
Emily is one of thousands of Pennsylvania students enrolled in both high school and college classes through the state’s dual enrollment program, which pays part of the college tuition.
A state report released last month notes “extraordinary demand and interest on the part of students” in the program. Since the dual enrollment program started in the 2005-06 school year, state funding has doubled, to $10 million for the current school year.
In the 2006-07 school year, the number of participants increased 69 percent from the previous year, from 7,270 students to 12,267 students statewide.
Related:
Dual enrollment courses are usually community college or four-year college courses taken by high school students, either at the college or at their high schools with instructors paid by, or at least supervised by, the college. Looking at the records of 299,685 dual enrollment students in Florida, the researchers found that taking dual enrollment courses correlated to higher rates of high school graduation, enrollment in two-year and four-year colleges and academic performance in college. Students who took dual enrollment courses while enrolled in Florida high schools had higher college grade point averages and more college credits three years after high school graduation than similar students who had not done dual enrollment.
A review of the records of 2,303 New York students found those in the “College Now” dual enrollment program were more likely to pursue a bachelor’s degree and have better college grades their first semester than students of similar backgrounds who did not do dual enrollment.
Despite the evidence that these college courses — like AP and IB — give high school students a taste of college rigor that can bring college success, the researchers reported that many students are being denied a chance to take them. The ill-considered limits on high schoolers who want to take college-level courses is also a big problem for AP, and suggests that most of our high school administrators and many state education officials are in dire need of an attitude adjustment.
Nash’s “Guidelines” state that no credit will be permitted for non-MMSD courses whenever THEY deem they offer a comparable course (i.e., regardless of format) ANYWHERE in the MMSD. Even when the MMSD doesn’t offer a comparable course, they will permit a maximum of TWO ELECTIVE credits, i.e., they can not be used to fulfill specific requirements for graduation. Thus, if these Guidelines are allowed to stand, no credit whatsoever will be permitted for any high school or college course the district offers that a student takes, instead, via WCATY, EPGY, UW-Extension, online, correspondence, etc., regardless of the student’s ability to access the District’s comparable course.
Scott Carlson: As the president of a small college in the Rust Belt, Jill Murray feels the crush of enrollment pressures. Her institution, Lackawanna College, has a plan to ease them: It’s starting the pipeline earlier by tapping into Pennsylvania’s 502 school districts. Lackawanna’s dual-enrollment system is a recruitment tool. It offers college-level courses at […]
Sonya Stinson: A more intense spotlight on college costs, student readiness and equal access is helping to increase the nationwide interest in programs that let high school students earn college credits. These programs are growing at a rate of about 7 percent per year, according to the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships (NACEP). Adam […]
When Gov. Rick Snyder was a student at Lakeview High School in Battle Creek, he started taking college courses at Kellogg Community College.
He had 23 credits by the time he was a senior. But the credits didn’t count toward his high school graduation, he said after speaking Oct. 4 at an event at Saginaw Valley State University promoting science, math, engineering and technology instruction as key to preparing public-school students for the careers of the future.
Now, Snyder is a proponent of dual-enrollment for high school students as a means to save money on their college educations. He would like the college credits to also count toward a high-school diploma.
“It’s a great opportunity. Students could complete a year of college before they graduate high school,” he said.
That would save them 25 percent on a degree at a four-year university or 50 percent toward an associate’s degree at a community college, Snyder said.
If Wisconsin wants an educated workforce that can compete in a global economy, it has to stop thinking in terms of education pieces: K-12, colleges and universities, technical schools. It has to start thinking in terms of one system that students can navigate with ease to get the education they want and need, both in basic knowledge and upgrades when they want them; a system aimed at best serving their needs, offering them enrichment and skills.
An important step in that direction was taken Tuesday with the signing of a dual enrollment agreement by state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers and University of Wisconsin Colleges and Extension Chancellor Ray Cross at UW-Marathon County in Wausau. The agreement allows high school students – mostly juniors or seniors – to earn credit that can be transferred easily to state four-year universities or two-year colleges after graduation, along with many private colleges.
Evers said in an interview Tuesday that the initiative “creates some synergy between systems that have not been directly connected in the past,” according to an article by Journal Sentinel reporters Erin Richards and Karen Herzog. “Even though we’re all differently governed, we need to make our systems look more like one instead of two or three or four.”
This helps students in several ways, including reducing the cost of a college degree. That’s more important than ever in light of the increasing cost of a college education. Just last week, UW officials announced a 5.5% hike in tuition.
The devil is in the details, as always.
Much more on credit for non-Madison School District courses, here.
Wisconsin DPI:
UW Colleges and DPI announce expanded dual enrollment program
Program will allow students to take UW Colleges courses at their high schools
High school students in Wisconsin will be able to earn college credits while still in high school under a new dual enrollment program announced by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) and the University of Wisconsin Colleges.
Tony Evers, state superintendent of public instruction, and Ray Cross, chancellor of UW Colleges and UW-Extension, signed an agreement and announced the new statewide model for dually enrolling high school students in high school and UW Colleges courses. They spoke at a June 12 ceremony at the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County, one of the UW Colleges campuses in Wausau. UW Colleges is the UW System’s network of 13 freshman – sophomore campuses and UW Colleges Online.
Evers and Cross said the new partnership would allow students across Wisconsin to access UW Colleges courses in their high schools via classroom teachers and online. The new dual enrollment program would accelerate students’ ability to earn UW credits, reduce the cost of obtaining a college degree, and increase the readiness of high school graduates for either college or the workplace. The program should be in place no later than the 2013-14 school year.
“We’re trying to better serve high school students by bringing our University of Wisconsin courses right into their high schools in a cost-effective way,” said Cross. “We’re committed to making these UW credits as affordable as possible for high school students, their families, and the school districts.”
“More students need the opportunity to take advanced courses and earn high school and college credit simultaneously,” Evers said. “This statewide dual enrollment agreement is a great way for students to get an introduction to college coursework and earn credits before even enrolling in a school of higher education. This will increase the number of students who graduate from high school ready for college and careers.”
Additional information is contained in the complete news release. A copy of the Memorandum of Understanding is available online.
Zoe Campbell Before fiscal year (FY) 2019, national K-12 public school enrollment was gradually increasing. However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a 2.3% decline in enrollment from FY19 to FY22. Although there was a slight recovery between FY21 and FY22, enrollment remained over one million students below pre-pandemic levels. From FY13 to FY22, there was […]
The Wisconsin Policy Forums’ recent brief look at Dual Enrollment (taking courses at a 2 or 4 year higher education institution while still enrolled in a high school) prompted me to update University of Wisconsin-Madison enrollment data by high school. The effort also reminded me of Janet Mertz’s tireless effort years ago on behalf of […]
Abbey Machtig and Dean Mosiman: the district had to pull $28 million from its general education fund to cover the extra expenses. The city, which has a growing population and a $405.4 million general fund operating budget for 2024, and the school district, which has a $591 million budget for the 2023-24 school year, both […]
Kayla Huynh: But Cramer warned not all students attend schools that promote such courses. “The distribution of who’s participating isn’t really equal across the state,” he said, adding that those who live near colleges that promote dual enrollment are more likely to have access to it. UW Oshkosh and UW-Green Bay, for example, have the […]
Scott Girard: This fall, the new three-story school off of Rimrock Road will house students currently attending Frank Allis Elementary School. That building will then be used for Nuestro Mundo Elementary School, MMSD’s dual-language immersion charter that currently leases a Monona school building. The school’s soon-to-come opening is monumental for the south side, which hasn’t […]
Devi Shastri: A new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum paints a grim picture of the future of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which was facing mounting financial challenges even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Enrollment was declining. State support per student lagged. Tuition was frozen. All of these challenges alone painted a worrisome picture of […]
Devi Shastri: A new report on the financial health of Wisconsin’s state universities and technical colleges found lagging state investment, enrollment challenges and — for University of Wisconsin schools — an ongoing tuition freeze as some of several factors threatening their competitiveness. The Wisconsin Policy Forum, a statewide nonpartisan, independent policy research organization, released the report Tuesday. “When you […]
In its first year operating free of a state-imposed enrollment cap, Racine’s private school voucher program saw enrollment more than double to 1,245 students, according to fall enrollment figures released by the state Department of Public Instruction.
Growth in the Milwaukee private-school voucher program continued its steady climb, increasing by about 3.6% from last year to 25,820 students, up from 24,941 last September.
Including the 512 students using a voucher to attend a private school in a new statewide program, the traditional third Friday of September head count reveals a total of 27,577 students using public dollars to attend 148 private, mostly religious schools in the state in the 2013-’14 school year.
Participating private school leaders and voucher-school champions celebrate the growth, saying they’re meeting a parent need and offering more children an opportunity to pursue a quality education.
“I think the community has responded very positively,” said Frank E. Trecroci, the founder and administrator of Mount Pleasant Renaissance School in Racine, which more than tripled its number of voucher students to 280 this fall, up from 89 voucher students in September 2012.
But many public-school advocates see the growth of voucher programs as a threat, and those concerns are now coming from a chorus of voices outside Milwaukee.
“I struggle with the wisdom of moving in this direction,” Patricia Deklotz, the superintendent of the Kettle Moraine School District in Waukesha County, said Thursday. “We’re building a dual system of funding here.”
Take advantage of great dual credit courses at your high school! Many of Minnesota’s high schools offer Dual Credit programs that allow qualifying students to earn college credit while still in high school at little or no cost. Dual Credit programs are a great way for high school students to challenge themselves academically, earn college credit, and save time and money. Eligible high school students can choose to participate in the following dual credit programs: Postsecondary Enrollment Options (PSEO),Concurrent Enrollment (CE), Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB).
We propose Chavez Elementary as the DLI site for the Memorial attendance area. Of all the elementary schools in this attendance area, Chavez student enrollment of Spanish-speaking English-language learners remained most consistent. This proposal reconunends that Chavez Elementary begin the 2011-2012 school year with two DLI classrooms, similar to Sandburg’s DLI program which opened this school year with two DLI classrooms.
In addition, opening a DLI program at Cesar Chavez Elementary acknowledges the school’s name sake, a Latino civil rights activist. The goals of DLI progrannning to develop cross-cultural understanding and bilingualism support Cesar Chavez’ vision, and the MMSD strategic plan.
Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:
The Board discussed the issue. Individual members expressed concern about the 3% cap, suggesting that this wasn’t the way for us to deal with the open enrollment issue. I was one of those who spoke against the proposal. The Board voted unanimously to support the other two proposed changes to WASB policy, but not the 3% cap. This amounted to a unanimous rejection of the 3% limit. (A video of the Board meeting can be found here. The WASB discussion begins about 48 minutes in.)
From the Board’s perspective, the endorsement of the proposal regarding financial stability wasn’t seen as one that had much bearing on our district. But we’d like support from other districts on our push for a fiscally neutral exchange of state dollars, and so we were willing to support proposals important to other districts, like this one, as a way of building a coalition for fresh consideration of open enrollment issues by the WASB.
The “financial stability” proposal certainly wasn’t intended by us as a dagger to the heart of the open enrollment policy; I don’t suppose that it was ever the intent of the legislators who supported the open enrollment statute that the policy could render school districts financially unstable.
The State Journal never reported that the Board rejected the 3% cap proposal. It ran letters to the editor on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday that all seemed premised on the assumption that we had in fact supported such a cap. The Wednesday letter said in part, “[T]he Madison School District’s answer to its shortcomings is to build a Berlin wall, preventing students from leaving.” From the Thursday letter, “Unfortunately, instead of looking inward to address the problems and issues causing flight from Madison schools, the School Board would rather maintain the status quo and use the coercive force of government to prevent its customers from fleeing for what they think is a better value.” From Friday’s letter: “So the way you stem the tide of students wanting to leave the Madison School District is to change the rules so that not so many can leave? That makes perfect Madison School Board logic.” (The State Journal also ran a letter to the editor on Friday that was more supportive of the district.)
Much more on outbound open enrollment and the Madison School Board here.
I’m glad Ed continues to write online. I continue to have reservations about the “financial stability” angle since it can be interpreted (assuming it becomes law…. what are the odds?) any way the Board deems necessary. Further, I agree with Ed that there are certainly more pressing matters at hand.
Whiteflame128, a participant in my Admissions 101 discussion group, described what happened when he graduated from a Fairfax County high school and showed up for college enrollment with an entire freshman year’s worth of credit from Advanced Placement courses and tests. “My advisor had absolutely no idea what to do with my schedule at orientation,” he said.
Many students have encountered this problem, some of them in just the last few weeks in this enrollment season. All those extra credits, from AP or International Baccalaureate, don’t fit easily into the standard college schedule. They force newcomers to compete with second-year students for limited space in second-year courses. They aggravate the need to take less favored courses just to maintain full-time status. They waste time and money. What do to about this is hard to figure out. Most of the colleges seem to throw up their hands.
Admissions 101 participant grcxx3 said “my son and I were just caught off-guard about how difficult it would be to schedule classes for that first year.” Grcxxe said the AP, IB or local college dual enrollment her son took in high school meant he was “coming in with 18-plus hours of credit, much of which [could exempt him from] common freshman classes (like freshman English) and basic general ed classes that are often taken during the first year”
via a kind reader:
Dear Parents and Guardians,
Last week we informed you of the heightened security measure at Middleton High School due to the gang-related homicide in Madison. The Middleton High School student involved in the incident was last seen in Texas and police do not believe he will return to the Madison area. As a result, security will be back to normal at the high school on Monday.
You have also likely seen the news in the media regarding the true identity and age of the student involved in the incident. The individual attending Middleton High School as Arain Gutierrez was later identified by police as 21-year old Ivan Mateo-Lozenzo. Once we were made aware of the suspect’s identity and age we immediately began to investigate how he was enrolled at Middleton High School. Federal privacy laws prevent us from releasing the specific information or documents that are provided for an individual student. It does appear that our enrollment policies and procedures were correctly followed for his admission to our school district. To enroll in our school district the following must be provided for the student:
– A completed enrollment form
– Proof of residency in our district, such as a MGE or Alliant Energy bill, a signed apartment lease or accepted offer to purchase a home
– Proof of age is asked for but only required for children entering kindergarten
– Immunization record, if available
– Transfer of records request from the previous school district, if applicable
We also rely on information in the Wisconsin Student Locator system. This is a database with information on every student who has attended public school in Wisconsin. Arain Gutierrez was in this system as he previously attended Madison West High School before coming to Middleton. School districts throughout the state use this database to transfer student information from one district to another for thousands of students. There would be no reason to question the legitimacy of a student name or date of birth. We also have no record of an adult ever falsifying documents to gain entrance in our school district as a minor.
As a result of this incident, we are reviewing our current policies and procedures to determine what, if any, changes will be made to our enrollment process. We also continue to work with law enforcement to assess the impact this student may have had on others in the school district. The security of our schools is our highest priority. We will continue to take all measures to ensure the safety of our students and staff.
Sincerely,
Dr. Don Johnson
Superintendent
I’ve not seen any additional comments from the Madison School District beyond this brief statement from Superintendent Dan Nerad:
Still, Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad said the district will review its enrollment policies.
“I cannot tell you where this will lead, but we will have conversations about it,” Nerad said.
Judy Kujoth, via a kind reader’s email:
In the spring of 2010, nearly 50 children will comprise the first graduating class of the Nuestro Mundo Community School on Madison’s East Side.
I am the proud parent of a daughter who will be among them.
My husband and I have spent the past five years marveling as she has acquired a second language, conquered challenging curricula and embraced friends from a variety of races and ethnicities. We eagerly anticipate the years to come as her love for languages and diversity continue to blossom.
But like many other parents, we are very worried about what the next stage of her academic journey will look like.
Nuestro Mundo is a charter school that has applied innovative teaching practices within a dual-language immersion framework. It is in its fifth year of offering elementary school students a dual-immersion curriculum in Spanish and English.
Kindergartners enter Nuestro Mundo as either native Spanish or native English speakers. By fifth grade, the goal is for all students to be proficient in both languages and at least on par, academically, with their peers at other schools. The skills they have cultivated need to continue being nurtured.
Unfortunately, charter schools and the Madison School District have mostly been “oil & water”. A few years ago, a group of parents & citizens tried to start an arts oriented charter – The Studio School. Read more here.
Every organization has its challenges and charters are certainly not perfect. However, it is more likely that Madison will see K-12 innovation with a diffused governance model, than if we continue the current very top down approach and move toward one size fits all curriculum. It will be interesting to see what the recent open enrollment numbers look like for Madison. Finally, a Chicago teacher on “magnet schools“.
Madison Metropolitan School District officials will unveil plans to offer a dual-language program at Leopold Elementary beginning next fall.
The new curriculum for the south side school would include education in English and Spanish, and discussion of the plan is anticipated at a Madison School Board meeting on Feb. 2.
Three sections of kindergarten classes with approximately 48 children will become part of the program, which will progress one grade level each school year until the program’s initial students finish fifth grade. The school will join east side’s Nuestro Mundo as the second public school in the Madison Metropolitan School District to offer a dual-language program. Nuestro Mundo, a charter school, has been in operation for five years.
Eight of Leopold’s 44 classrooms are bilingual, and the school is a perfect fit for the immersion program, according to Assistant Superintendent Sue Abplanalp.
“We know the benefits of dual-immersion programming,” Abplanalp said. “This is a perfect place to begin such a program because we know could get the enrollment that we need to make it a viable program for the future.
“We want native speaking Spanish children as well as non-native Spanish children, and that’s the population that is at that building,” she said.
Via the Madison School District [Press Release | AVID – TOPS Fact Sheet]:
The Boys & Girls Club (BGC) and Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) announced today a new joint initiative that intends to double the number of minority and low-income students who plan to pursue four-year college and technical college degrees upon high school graduation. The launch of the initiative is made possible through private commitments of $2.6 million to the Boys & Girls Club covering 50% of the first five years of the programs cost.
“We are so excited to partner with the Madison Metropolitan School District on this groundbreaking initiative, said Mary Burke, President of the Board of Directors for the Boys & Girls Club. “combining the school district’s AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) program with the Boys & Girls Club Teens Of Promise program (TOPs) we will make a difference, not only in the lives of the students involved in the program but also in the community at large. The health of our community is closely tied to having an educated, skilled workforce. This initiative is designed to do just that.”
The AVID program is a rigorous in-school elective that students take throughout high school to their improve study skills, grades, time management, reading and writing skills to better prepare them for college. The TOPs program offers summer job internships, mentors, scholarships, field trips, career exploration and financial support for tutoring. Students commit to staying on the college track, maintaining a 2.5 GPA, taking courses that will prepare them for college and having a good attendance record.
Impressed with the success of the 28 East High students enrolled in the program last year, the Boys and Girls Club of Madison has committed to raising $2.6 million, half the funding needed to increase enrollment to 100 students districtwide this fall and to add 100 each year until an 800-student cap is reached.
“This will fund college preparation for students not currently getting that opportunity,” said Boys and Girls Club board President Mary Burke.
Developed in California and based partly on a similar Milwaukee program, AVID is aimed at students from low-income households who want to develop the motivation to succeed in school. It is a daily elective students take throughout high school to improve their study skills, grades and time management.
Madison School District leaders on Monday announced a partnership with Boys and Girls Club of Dane County aimed at doubling the number of minority and low-income students who will be ready to enter college after high school.
District officials stressed that the new offering was not a remedial program or a free ride but instead was geared to help motivated students with average grades who have the desire to attend college but lack the practical skills and knowledge to get there and be successful.
And to do that really well, it was vital to involve the community, Pam Nash, assistant superintendent for the district ‘s four high schools, said at a news conference at East High School.
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI): Wisconsin high school students may apply to attend one or two courses in nonresident school districts, while remaining enrolled in their resident school districts for the majority of their classes. ACCEPTANCE OR REJECTION—RESIDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT No later than one week before the start of the course, the resident school […]
Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago: Following CPS (Chicago Public Schools) graduates from 1998, 1999, 2002 and 2003, this report uses records from Chicago high schools and data from the National Student Clearinghouse to examine the college experiences of all CPS alumni who entered college in the year after they graduated […]
Maryland’s public colleges are six months into complying with one of the nation’s most ambitious college completion bills. The state-mandated push puts Maryland in a class with Tennessee, Indiana and Georgia.
“It represents a defining moment for public higher education in the state of Maryland,” said Charlene M. Dukes, president of Prince George’s Community College. “It sets a whole new tone.”
A few educators said they were uneasy about the state’s Legislature getting so deep in the weeds with legislation that touches on everything from dual enrollment to remediation and completion plans for each student. (See below for more details about the measure.)
Making the many required changes has been a heavy lift at times. But several college leaders said the comprehensive nature of the legislation was a virtue.
That’s because Maryland’s completion law, which was enacted in July, deals simultaneously with K-12, community colleges and four-year institutions. Experts say attempted completion fixes, such as improving remedial course success rates, can benefit from reaching across the various stages of public education.
“If we really want to deal with developmental education,” said Bernie Sadusky, executive director of the Maryland Association of Community Colleges, “we have to go to the source of the problem. That is K-12.”
The union representing Kenosha teachers has been decertified and may not bargain base wages with the district.
Because unions are limited in what they can do even if they are certified, the new status of Kenosha’s teachers union — just like the decertification of many other teachers unions in the state that did not or could not pursue the steps necessary to maintain certification in the new era of Act 10 — may be a moral blow more than anything else.
Teachers in Milwaukee and Janesville met the state’s Aug. 30 deadline to apply for recertification, a state agency representative says. Peter Davis, general counsel for the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, said the Milwaukee and Janesville districts will hold recertification votes in November.
To continue as the recognized bargaining unit in the district, 51% of the union’s eligible membership must vote in favor of recertification, according to the controversial Act 10 legislation passed in 2011.
With contracts that were in place through the end of June, teachers in the three large southeastern Wisconsin districts were protected the longest from the new legislation, which limits collective bargaining, requires unions to hold annual votes to be recognized as official entities, and mandates that teachers and other public employees pay more out-of-pocket for their health care and retirement costs.
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“It seems like the majority of our affiliates in the state aren’t seeking recertification, so I don’t think the KEA is an outlier or unique in this,” Brey said.
She added that certification gives the union scant power over a limited number of issues they’d like a voice in.
Sheronda Glass, the director of business services in Kenosha, said it’s a new experience for the district to be under Act 10.
Contrary to some published media reports, however, the union did not vote to decertify.
In fact, no such election was ever held, according to KEA Executive Director Joe Kiriaki, who responded to a report from the Conservative Badger blog, which published an article by Milwaukee radio talk show host Mark Belling, who said he had learned that just 37 percent of the teachers had voted to reauthorize the union.
In a prepared statement, Kiriaki criticized the district for “promoting untrue information” to Belling.
Union chose to focus on other issues
Kiriaki said the union opted not to “jump through the hoops,” such as the recertification requirement, created by Act 10, the state’s relatively new law on collective bargaining.
The law, among other things required the annual re-certification of unions if they want to serve as bargaining representatives for teachers and other public workers. It also prohibits most public employees from negotiating all but base wages, limiting them to the rate of inflation.
Kiriaki cited a ruling by a Dane County Circuit Court judge on the constitutionality of Act 10, saying he believed it would be upheld.
Interestingly, Madison School District & Madison Teachers to Commence Bargaining. Far more important, in my view is addressing Madison’s long standing, disastrous reading results.
In my view, the unions that wish to serve their membership effectively going forward would be much better off addressing new opportunities, including charters, virtual, and dual enrollment services. The Minneapolis Teachers Union can authorize charters, for example.
Much more on Act 10, here.
A conversation with retired WEAC executive Director Morris Andrews.
The Frederick Taylor inspired, agrarian K-12 model is changing, albeit at a glacial pace. Madison lags in many areas, from advanced opportunities to governance diversity, dual enrollment and online opportunities. Yet we spend double the national average per student, funded by ongoing property tax increases.
An elected official recently remarked to me that “it’s as if Madison schools have been stuck in a bubble for the past 40 years”.
A growing body of research suggests that allowing students in high school to complete even a single college class could significantly increase their chances of attending college and eventually graduating. After studying tens of thousands of Texas students who completed college courses in high school, this report found that these students attended and completed college within the state at much higher rates than students with similar backgrounds who did not take college courses in high school.
States and school districts have been searching for ways to raise rates of college readiness and success among students, and particularly among groups that are underrepresented in college. Providing students with the opportunity to take college courses in high school, known as dual enrollment, is one promising strategy.
One of the priorities of the Department is to provide a challenging, yet customized education for Florida’s students and families. To deliver this type of education system for our individual students, the Department is able to showcase a variety of school choice options offered statewide.
Florida’s public schools offer a wide variety of curriculum options. Some of these aim to strengthen the availability, accessibility, and equity of educational options for parents including Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, dual enrollment and Advanced International Certification of Education, just to name a few.
While many gifted students may enroll in these options, I want to stress that any qualified student can take advantage of these options. These school choice options have demanding, personalized curriculum. I have heard many stories about students who struggled in traditional classes but excelled when they entered a more challenging program that focused on their needs and strengths.
As I learn more about community colleges, one of the most surprising lessons has been the sloppy and deceptive ways that students are introduced to courses. Placement tests are not well explained to students. Whether you have a passing score or not can depend on which college you attend.
At least as unsettling are studies showing that dual enrollment courses — community college courses given to high school students — often bar applicants who have less than a B average or fail a placement test, even though they need that taste of college-level work to prepare for the real thing.
Now a troubling new research paper says that the remedial courses given to community college students who do not score high enough on placement tests often do no good. Colleges still swear by the courses, however. Students are further deceived by upbeat guidance to a community college placement test owned by the College Board that tells students, wrongly, that they can’t really fail a placement test.
We all want more young people to attend college. Who would argue with that? Politicians and educators at all levels extol the obvious virtues, from enhanced earning potential to a greater satisfaction in life. One increasingly popular way to encourage college attendance is through dual enrollment, in which students take courses in high school for both high school and college credit.
In theory, dual enrollment enables high school students to accrue college credits for very little cost and imbues them with a sense of confidence that they can complete college work. If students can succeed in college classes while still in high school, conventional wisdom holds, they will be more likely to matriculate at the postsecondary level.
In Indiana, dual enrollment is encouraged at the highest levels, with state Education Secretary Tony Bennett maintaining that at least 25 percent of high school graduates should pass at least one Advanced Placement exam or International Baccalaureate exam, or earn at least three semester hours of college credit during high school.
In reality, though, dual enrollment may do more harm than good.
Other columnists spend the dark winter months reconnecting with their loved ones before a cozy fire or a richly laden holiday feast. I use that time to fill a spreadsheet with the names of high schools and their ratios of college-level tests to graduating seniors.
It doesn’t sound like much fun, but it is to me. Since 1997, when I devised a way to compare all U.S. high schools based how much they encouraged students to take challenging courses and tests, that has been my winter work. I have published the ranked list called America’s Best High Schools, based on my Challenge Index, in the spring.
I am working on a new list now, with a few twists. First, it will no longer be sponsored by Newsweek magazine, but by the Washington Post, and this Web site, washingtonpost.com. The Washington Post Company, my employer for 39 years, just sold Newsweek, so I brought the list over here.
Second, I am going to include in the ranking calculations not only Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Cambridge tests, which are standardized exams that come at the end of college-level courses given in high school, but also the final exams of what are called dual enrollment or concurrent enrollment courses. These are courses given by local colleges to high school students. The students either come to the college campuses for a part of the day or have college professors or specially trained instructors conduct the courses at their high school.
For instance, he’s the only state elected official to actually and seriously float a proposal to repair the broken state funding system for schools. He promises the proposal for his “Funding for Our Future” will be ready to introduce to lawmakers this fall and will include details on its impact on the state’s 424 school districts.
Evers also is interested in the potential of charter schools. Let’s be open and supportive about education alternatives, he says, but mindful of what’s already working well in public schools.
And he says qualified 11th and 12th graders should be allowed to move directly on to post-secondary education or training if they wish. Dual enrollment opportunites for high school age students attending college and technical schools will require a shift in thinking that shares turf and breaks down barriers, making seamless education — pre-K through post-secondary — a reality instead of some distant dream, according to Evers.
As to Evers’ comments on teacher testing, he joins a national conversation that has been sparked, in part, by the Obama administration as well as research that shows the single universal element in improved student performance is teacher quality. We recently featured a story about concerns over teacher evaluation based on student performance and test scores, and the issue has been a potent topic elsewhere, as well.
The proof, as always, is in the pudding, or substance.
Melissa Westbrook wrote a very useful and timely article on education reform:
I think many ed reformers rightly say, “Kids can’t wait.” I agree.
There is nothing more depressing than realizing that any change that might be good will likely come AFTER your child ages out of elementary, middle or high school. Not to say that we don’t do things for the greater good or the future greater good but as a parent, you want for your child now. Of course, we are told that change needs to happen now but the reality is what it might or might not produce in results is years off. (Which matters not to Bill Gates or President Obama because their children are in private schools.)
All this leads to wonder about our teachers and what this change will mean. A reader, Lendlees, passed on a link to a story that appeared in the LA Times about their teacher ratings. (You may recall that the LA Times got the classroom test scores for every single teacher in Los Angeles and published them in ranked order.)
Susan Troller notes that Wisconsin’s oft criticized WKCE (on which Madison’s value added assessment program is based) will be replaced – by 2014:
Evers also promised that the much maligned Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam, used to test student proficiency in 3rd through 6th, 8th and 10th grades, is on its way out. By 2014, there will be a much better assessment of student proficiency to take its place, Evers says, and he should know. He’s become a leading figure in the push for national core education standards, and for effective means for measuring student progress.
Ned Michie, Leah Puryear & Juandiego Wade:
According to the Virginia Department of Education, the drop-out rate for Charlottesville high school students is 13 percent.
How would you address this question? What measures would you recommend, specifically, to lower the rate?
As of last year, the state is calculating the dropout rate in a new, more accurate manner than in prior years, tracking individual students starting in ninth grade. Obviously the factors leading to a student’s high school success or failure start much earlier than ninth grade; therefore it is impossible to defeat the dropout problem even over several years of making all the right moves educationally. Moreover, because the educational needs of all children start at birth, every positive educational change will ultimately increase his or her chances of remaining in school.
Ned Michie
As a public school division, we take all comers regardless of aptitude, educational background, grade level, or other circumstance. While every school division has a set of challenges, Charlottesville’s student population presents a particularly unusual array of educational challenges for a small division.
On the one hand, we have a large number of children who will go on to the finest universities and become doctors, lawyers, scientists, entrepreneurs, and captains of industry. We ensure that these students stay challenged by providing an excellent gifted education program, honors classes, and about 20 AP and dual enrollment courses. On the other end of the spectrum, we have many children with great educational needs. For example, about 10 percent of our students use English as a second language (with about 50 different native languages). Half were refugees arriving with little or no knowledge of English; many had no education even in their own countries. Charlottesville also has a large number of group homes and, sadly, still has a significant population of economically disadvantaged families whose children are statistically at risk educationally.
The Question:
Is it better for college admissions to take an IB or AP class and receive a C or D or take a standard class and receive an A or B? Our office is decidedly split on this matter. The majority of us feel that it is better to make the grade since GPA is the first cut often for college admissions. We usually advise our students that if they are going to take an IB or AP class they need to get an A or B in the class, and to take an IB or AP class in their strength area.
My Answer:
The high school educators and college admissions officers I know best have convinced me that EVERY student going to college should take at least one college-level course and exam in high school. AP, IB or Cambridge are the best in my view, although a dual enrollment course and test given by the staff of a local college is also good. Students need that taste of college trauma to be able to make a smooth transition their freshman year.
When you consider actual situations, the threat of a bad grade from taking AP or IB fades away. A student strong enough to have a chance of admission to a selective college, the only kind that pays close attention to relative GPAs of their applicants, will be strong enough a student to get a decent grade in an AP or IB class, and a decent score on the exam. If they do NOT get a good grade in the course or the exam, then they are, almost by definition, not strong enough to compete with other students trying to get into those selective colleges. Their SAT or ACT score will show that, even if they don’t take AP or IB, and I suspect their overall GPA even without AP or IB will not be that great. If you know of a straight-A, 2100 SAT student who did poorly in an AP course, let me know, and I will revise my opinion. But I have never encountered such a student in 20 years of looking at these issues.
The College Board recently updated their AP Course Audit data. Dane County offerings are noted below, including changes from 2007-2008:
Related: Dual Enrollment, Small Learning Communities and Part and Full Time Wisconsin Open Enrollment.
The Performance & Achievement committee meets today at 5:00p.m. [Directions & Map] to discuss a policy on credit for non-MMSD courses. Janet Mertz has been following this issue for years, in an effort to support a “clearly written policy” on such courses. Read Janet’s summary after the most recent discussion of this matter (26 November 2007):
At the November 26, 2007 meeting of the MMSD BOE’s Performance and Achievement Committee [18MB mp3 audio], the District’s Attorney handed out a draft of a policy for the District’s Youth Options Program dated November 20, 2007. It is a fine working draft. However, it has been written with rules making it as difficult as possible for students to actually take advantage of this State-mandated program. Thus, I urge all families with children who may be affected by this policy now or in the future to request a copy of this document, read it over carefully, and then write within the next couple of weeks to all BOE members, the District’s Attorney, Pam Nash, and Art Rainwater with suggestions for modifications to the draft text. For example, the current draft states that students are not eligible to take a course under the YOP if a comparable course is offered ANYWHERE in the MMSD (i.e., regardless of whether the student has a reasonable method to physically access the District’s comparable course). It also restricts students to taking courses at institutions “located in this State” (i.e., precluding online courses such as ones offered for academically advanced students via Stanford’s EPGY and Northwestern’s CTD).
The Attorney’s memorandum dated November 21, 2007 to this Committee, the BOE, and the Superintendent outlined a BOE policy chapter entitled “Educational Options” that would include, as well, a policy regarding “Credit for Courses Taken Outside the MMSD”. Unfortunately, this memo stated that this latter policy as one “to be developed”. It has now been almost 6 years (!) since Art Rainwater promised us that the District would develop an official policy regarding credit for courses taken outside the MMSD. A working draft available for public comment and BOE approval has yet to appear. In the interim, the “freeze” the BOE unanimously approved, yet again, last winter has been ignored by administrators, some students are leaving the MMSD because of its absence, and chaos continues to rein because there exists no clearly written policy defining the rules by which non-MMSD courses can be taken for high school credit. Can anyone give us a timetable by which an official BOE-approved policy on this topic will finally be in place?
Links:
- 11/26/2007 Performance & Achievement Committee Meeting Video and Audio
- October 26, 2006: Latest on the Madison School District’s Policy Change Regarding Credit for Non-MMSD Courses
- December 11, 2006 Performance & Achievement Committee Minutes | Additional comments.
- Dual Enrollment, Up From Obscurity
Meanwhile, online learning options abound, including the news that National Geographic has invested in education startup ePals. Madison, home of a 25,000 student public school system, offers a rich learning environment that includes the University of Wisconsin, MATC and Edgewood among others.
While this might be typical work for a graduate student in the life sciences, Ballard is a senior at Madison West High School who is still shy of his 18th birthday. His work with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Eukaryotic Structural Genomics is part of the Youth Apprenticeship Program (YAP), an innovative project that gives exceptional high-school students an opportunity to get exposure and experience in their desired careers.
Created in 1991, the program is run by Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development, with collaboration from universities, schools and businesses. Statewide, more than 10,000 students have participated in 22 different program areas. This year, Ballard is one of nine Dane County students enrolled in YAP’s biotechnology focus, which offers a taste of working science that they can’t get in high school.
“Working in the research lab is amazing,” says Ballard, who plans to pursue both an M.D. and Ph.D. after college. “It’s meaningful. There is a point (to it). In high school, you do your labs and it’s not contributing to human knowledge in any way.”
Related:
At the November 26, 2007 meeting of the MMSD BOE’s Performance and Achievement Committee [18MB mp3 audio], the District’s Attorney handed out a draft of a policy for the District’s Youth Options Program dated November 20, 2007. It is a fine working draft. However, it has been written with rules making it as difficult as possible for students to actually take advantage of this State-mandated program. Thus, I urge all families with children who may be affected by this policy now or in the future to request a copy of this document, read it over carefully, and then write within the next couple of weeks to all BOE members, the District’s Attorney, Pam Nash, and Art Rainwater with suggestions for modifications to the draft text. For example, the current draft states that students are not eligible to take a course under the YOP if a comparable course is offered ANYWHERE in the MMSD (i.e., regardless of whether the student has a reasonable method to physically access the District’s comparable course). It also restricts students to taking courses at institutions “located in this State” (i.e., precluding online courses such as ones offered for academically advanced students via Stanford’s EPGY and Northwestern’s CTD).
The Attorney’s memorandum dated November 21, 2007 to this Committee, the BOE, and the Superintendent outlined a BOE policy chapter entitled “Educational Options” that would include, as well, a policy regarding “Credit for Courses Taken Outside the MMSD”. Unfortunately, this memo stated that this latter policy as one “to be developed”. It has now been almost 6 years (!) since Art Rainwater promised us that the District would develop an official policy regarding credit for courses taken outside the MMSD. A working draft available for public comment and BOE approval has yet to appear. In the interim, the “freeze” the BOE unanimously approved, yet again, last winter has been ignored by administrators, some students are leaving the MMSD because of its absence, and chaos continues to rein because there exists no clearly written policy defining the rules by which non-MMSD courses can be taken for high school credit. Can anyone give us a timetable by which an official BOE-approved policy on this topic will finally be in place?
Links:
A quick summary of Dane County, WI High School 2007-2008 AP Course Offerings (source – AP Course Audit):
Links and course details are available here.
Related: Dual Enrollment, Small Learning Communities and Part and Full Time Wisconsin Open Enrollment.
Via a kind reader’s email.
If those college-prep classes feel a little emptier in high school these days, it’s because they are. About 10 percent of the students aren’t there.
Those 17,000 juniors and seniors aren’t truant. They’re enrolled at the local community college, getting a jump-start on earning college credit before high school graduation even rolls around.
That’s about how many high school students the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges estimates are enrolled in Running Start, the early entrance program that lets qualifying juniors and seniors earn college and high school credit at the same time and without paying anything. Enrollment has grown steadily since the program’s launch in 1990 — so much so that community college officials say it’s costing them almost $35 million a year to educate those extra high school students.
Success has its price, and the community colleges will ask the Legislature for $35 million more over five years — specifically $7 million each year.
“Over time, the Running Start program has grown successfully and the reimbursement the colleges get has stayed the same, while inflation has steadily grown,” said Suzy Ames, spokeswoman for the state community college board.
Community colleges are entitled to 70 percent of the money earmarked for each Running Start student, Ames said. But with more students wanting to start college early, the colleges have to add classes, faculty and staff to accommodate them.
Related: Madison’s Dual Enrollment Climate.
Running Start.
Celeste Flint:
I don’t think Seattle’s coffee addiction is making our students smarter. High schools have lowered the bar too far, and everybody knows it.
At age 10, American students score well above the international average, but by age 15, when American students are tested against those in 40 other countries, they drop to 25th place, according to an ABC report.
Youth literally get dumber the longer they stay in American schools.
With high school teachers so sensitive to self-esteem issues that they make it impossible to fail, it’s only natural that motivated young people want to get out.
Running Start is the fire escape out of the collapsing American education system. But as a result, the 17,000 Washington Running Start students, many who aren’t quite ready for higher education, are taking a toll on college courses.
Many high school students just don’t have the maturity to handle a real workload, and as a result the dumbing-down continues into college.
Being a transfer student from a community college, I witnessed countless high school students regularly skip classes, not do the homework and then complain until the teacher slowed down the course. Inevitably half the material was re-taught.
Ananth Seshadri Executive Summary: On March 5, 2026, the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents Education Committee unanimously approved a policy allowing UW institutions to offer 90-credit bachelor’s degree programs—completing a bachelor’s degree in three years instead of the traditional four. This report examines the economic case for this policy. Key findings include:
Becky Jacobs: UW system administrators went too far this fall with proposed changes to how general education course credits transfer, according to faculty and staff across the Universities of Wisconsin. “It’s a clear overreach,” said Amy Lewis, an assistant professor of music at UW-Madison who co-leads the United Faculty & Academic Staff union on campus. The proposed […]
Suevon Lee: The admissions policy for Boston’s prestigious exam schools is once again changing, after the school committee approved a proposal Wednesday evening that could result in fewer Black and Hispanic students earning spots. Under the new policy, a fifth of open seats at the three schools will be offered to top-performing kids citywide, based on grades […]
Beckie Supiano: By all appearances, students in the honors program at the University of Iowa should make a seamless adjustment to their college courses. These students, who applied and were selected by the program in a holistic process, have long been on the academic fast track. Many came in with college credits, often from Advanced […]
Philip Greenspun: I’ve been talking to Canadian and American friends after this latest round of college admissions and they have one message in common: Don’t let kids take honors and AP classes in high school. College admissions these days are mostly about GPA, which means that a B in AP physics is toxic compared to […]
Colleen Hroncich My oldest child is graduating from college tomorrow, so it has me thinking about our educational journey—which could best be described as eclectic. At various times, we used private school, district school, and cyber charter school. But we ultimately landed on homeschooling. That doesn’t mean they were literally learning at home every day. […]
Elizabeth Beyer: Caire, UW-Oshkosh and Madison Area Technical College are hashing out a dual enrollment partnership that would allow students to gain college credits while in high school and potentially earn an associate degree, too, which could be used to transfer to a UW campus or an institution outside the System. The idea may even […]
Institute for Reforming Government, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Wisconsin, Federation for Children School Choice, Wisconsin Action ExcelinEd in Action, Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, The John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy Badger Institute, FreedomWorks and Building Education for Students Together: Dear Governor Evers, Speaker Vos, Majority Leader LeMahieu, and State Superintendent Stanford Taylor, […]
Kate McGee According to district data, students in schools with majority low-income students are more likely to fail Advanced Placement tests than students in schools with higher-income students. In low-income schools, students are often not taking Advanced Placement tests at all, instead, focusing on other ways to receive college credit in high school, like dual […]
Erin Richards: Wisconsin’s 16 technical colleges could establish independent charter high schools staffed by college instructors, under a proposal being circulated by two Republican lawmakers that aims to better prepare students for the workforce. Rep. Tom Weatherston (R-Racine) says charter high schools focused on occupational education or technology could attract students who would not otherwise […]
US Department of Education: Participation in a rigorous secondary school program of study may qualify a postsecondary student to receive an ACG, if otherwise eligible. The Secretary recognizes at least one rigorous secondary school program of study for each state annually. States may submit proposals for recognition or may elect to accept rigorous secondary school […]
When Dr. Jan Davidson spoke this week in Madison, she shared with her audience of parents, teachers, and administrators 12 low cost ideas for improving the educational opportunities of our academically advanced students. What can schools do? What can schools — schools that don’t have extra funds, but really care about the learning of their […]
Wall Street Journal: The Yass Prize, founded by Susquehanna co-founder Jeff Yass and his wife Janine, announced Wednesday that it will fund scholarships for 500 Philadelphia children to attend private school. The need is pressing because the city plans to close 17 district schools in 2027 thanks to declining enrollment. The 4,000 or so students […]
Erin Gretzinger: Under Madison’s approach, a student who receives an A in a standard class earns the same 4.0 grade points as a student who gets an A in an AP class. District officials also decided not to implement a tiebreaker for students with identical GPAs, meaning all students with GPAs in the top 10% and 5% […]
Daniela Vidart This paper examines correspondence education as an alternative educational pathway in early 20th-century America. Using newly digitized records from the International Correspondence Schools—the largest such institution, with over 4 million students by 1940—linked to census data, I show that enrollment increased the likelihood of skilled employment by 6-10pp within 3-10 years, particularly among […]
Terry Falk: In an open letter on April 6 to the board and the Office of Accountability and Efficiency, the MTEA challenged Superintendent Brenda Cassellius on her plans to implement the two-step COLA and to cut the number of assistant principals, paraprofessionals and centrally assigned teacher specialists, sending most back into schools as classroom teachers. Cassellius stated classroom teachers […]
By Jaeha Jang The English department has nearly halved the number of sections of an introductory writing course, from 32 last fall to 17 this fall, as budget cuts constrain academic offerings at Yale. In addition to that decrease in the fall sections of English 1014, “Writing Seminars,” the number for English 1020, “Reading and Writing […]
Joanne Jacobs Graduation rates are up since the new rules went into effect for the Class of ’23, she writes. “But at the same time, high school students’ scores on state math and reading tests have declined.” Statewide, about one-fifth of students use credentials to earn a diploma, but it’s 40 percent in Philadelphia. Students […]
Brian Blase: This morning, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a damning report showing that the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges are highly vulnerable to fraud. The report was requested by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith. As a result of expanded subsidies and […]
Robert Kelchen, Dubravka Ritter, Douglas Webber: “How did you go bankrupt?” one American expat asks another in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. “Two ways,” his friend responds. “Gradually and then suddenly.” The most dramatic college closures tend to follow a similar arc. A century-old, beloved liberal arts institution abruptly shuts its doors, sending students and […]
1636 Forum: “Students know that an ‘A’ can be awarded . . . for anything from outstanding work to reasonably satisfactory work. It’s a farce,” said a faculty member. “We are terrified of the A-,” one student admitted. Another added, “I think the current grading system is working very well.” These are among the many […]
Liam Beran: Eighty-two academic programs within the Universities of Wisconsin have been suspended or eliminated since 2022, according to records obtained by Isthmus in an open records request. A majority of those cuts were in the humanities or social sciences, according to an Isthmus analysis of the records. Individual campuses recommend their own program suspensions and eliminations. This is […]
Ravi Gupta: The fine print is striking. When Katrina hit in 2005, roughly 60 percent of New Orleans schools were labeled “failing” by the state. Today, that number is zero. High school graduation rates have soared from 54 percent to 78 percent. College enrollment has jumped by 28 percentage points. Students across all demographics—Black, White, low-income, students […]
Will Flanders and Cory Brewer: For decades, Wisconsin has been a pioneer in providing educational options to families, but this has generally only been available to those who choose to opt out of traditional public schools via private school choice or programs like open enrollment. A new federal option could open funding opportunities for all Wisconsin kids, but the […]
David Blaska: But also, families are voting with their feet — sending a net 13,005 students out of Madison’s public schoolssince 2005 through the state’s Open Enrollment program. They took with them about $90 million in state funding. Write off another $20.5 million from low-income parents using vouchers for eligible private schools. Remember that next time Madison Metro […]
Sergio Martinez: In the mid-20th century, schools in communist countries were tools of the state. History lessons became hagiographies of the Soviet Union. Math examples were drawn from military production. Even literature bowed to Marxist dogma. But what did all this ideological schooling do to the people who lived through it? Two new studies—one from Finland, […]
Jay Greene: Foreign students also added financial resources to U.S. universities because they tended to pay full tuition and sometimes brought with them large donations from wealthy foreign governments or families. In the context of the Cold War struggle between the Soviet Union and the West, foreign students who learned about the American political system […]
Kimberly Wethal: The NIH’s order attempted to drop the reimbursement rate for all colleges to 15%, a move that would cost UW-Madison about $65 million a year for costs such as maintaining facilities and paying support staff. UW-Madison has also received some stop-work orders from the federal government but has not elaborated on what work […]
George Shay: Saving CPS is not an easy task by any means, but our schools can be returned to centers of learning Chicago Public Schools (CPS) are in crisis, and it’s impossible to ignore the role the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) plays in Chicago’s ongoing educational failures. The CTU wields immense influence — over the […]
John Staddon: Dealing with an increasing number of marginal students in an equity-charged environment is one factor that has favored grade inflation. But there is a contributing factor that is built into the American system and has taken some years to reach fruition. When I first came to this country from Britain, I was surprised […]
Jess Pravin:: The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a case seeking to block selective public schools from using race-neutral admissions policies that conservative activists argue are illegally designed to increase Black and Hispanic enrollment. The case, involving Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., was seen as a follow-on to […]
Shawn Fleetwood: On Thursday, Parents Defending Education reported that students attending the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA) orchestrated a protest and walkout on Dec. 8 demanding harsh punishments for individuals who have “bias incident reports” filed against them. According to the academy’s website, anyone from IMSA students to alumni and visitors can file on-the-record or anonymous reports […]
Will Flanders: WILL Research Director Will Flanders’s new policy brief, Needs Improvement: How Wisconsin’s Report Card Can Mislead Parents, provides an important explanation of how Wisconsin’s school report cards work and how the various inputs work towards a school’s score. Specifically, Flanders highlights: The Report (PDF). Underly and our long term disastrous reading results…. WEAC: $1.57 million for […]
Juan Perez, Jr. Public schools are confronting significant post-Covid enrollment shifts to private and home schools. Policies that grant students access to school options beyond their traditional neighborhood campus are popular. That has left Cardona to protect the schoolhouse castle, navigate longstanding disagreements between labor unions and liberal education reform groups, and advance a distinctive Democratic vision […]
Christina Gomez-Schmidt: An essential duty of any school board is to help plan and approve the annual district budget. Like most budgets, household or business, the goal of a school district budget is to match revenue with expenses to produce a balanced budget. This goal ensures that school districts are managing local, state and federal […]
Justice Clarence Thomas blasts Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s arguments in his concurrence: KBJ “locks blacks into a seemingly perpetual inferior caste. Such a view is irrational; it is an insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds seeking to push through… pic.twitter.com/c3fUQPWETP — Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) June 29, 2023 This graph is widely shown, […]
Wisconsin coalition for education freedom: Wisconsin Watch has released its third article in a series attempting to discredit the great work choice programs do in Wisconsin. Their latest article misrepresents admission policies of choice schools while ignoring the fact that public schools often engage in admission practices that would be illegal for schools participating in […]
Will-Law Recently Wisconsin Watch released articles criticizing the Wisconsin parental choice programs and incorrectly claiming that private schools may “discriminate.” This memo provides resources and information about the false claims made in the article and talking points to refute them. The claims that private schools may “discriminate” are false. These claims are false. Wisconsin Watch claims […]
Owen Ayite-Atayi Now, participation in girls basketball has dropped to 19 percent while girls’ track and field has increased by 10 percent. Soccer and volleyball are also sports that have increased in girl’s participation. Overall, participation for both boys and girls high school sports have decreased by four percent. The majority of female athletes are […]
Victor Davis Hanson: “Gradually” and “suddenly” applies to higher education’s implosion. During the 1990s “culture wars” universities were warned that their chronic tuition hikes above the rate of inflation were unsustainable. Their growing manipulation of blanket federal student loan guarantees, and part-time faculty and graduate teaching assistants always was suicidal. Left-wing indoctrination, administrative bloat, obsessions with […]
Dan Shafer: The crisis in Milwaukee K-12 education is huge. This cannot be overstated. Yet, the trend seems to be toward getting smaller and smaller. For example, Milwaukee Public Schools just released its annual budget proposal noting it expects to lose 1,000 students between now and the start of the 2022-2023 school year, reducing enrollment to about 67,500 […]
Wenyuan Wu: The Test-Free Movement in a Historical Context Forces within, from slavery to school segregations under Jim Crow laws to race-based admissions, have tried to corrupt the grand proposal of equality and merit. Like previous illiberal bargains to categorize students by race, the central focus of test-free admissions is also preoccupied with immutable features […]
Scott Aaronson: Today, I’m turning over Shtetl-Optimized to an extremely important guest post by theoretical computer scientists Boaz Barak of Harvard and Edith Cohen of Google (cross-posted on the windows on theory blog). In addition to the post below, please read—and if relevant, consider signing—our open letter about math education in the US, which now has over 150 signatories, including Fields Medalists, Turing Award winners, and […]
Matthew Ladner: “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” —Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises The Arizona Charter School Association has released a new study on one of the last great equity issues to address in a choice-based system: student transport. Arizona has the largest percentage of students attending charters (around […]
Wall Street Journal: Students with disabilities, in foster care, or in families making no more than 200% of the income cap for reduced-price lunches—nearly $100,000 for a family of four—would be eligible. Individuals or businesses that donate to the scholarship funds would receive a tax credit equal to their donation. The legislation allows up to […]