3,653 results
Kaleem Caire’s FB post (screenshot): Today, we will welcome back more than 400 children to One City Schools. Nearly 85,000 children will walk through the doors of traditional public, public charter, and private K-12 schools in Dane County, Wisconsin, and another 17,500 will attend child care programs. That’s more than 100,000 children being taught and […]
Erin Gretzinger: In Caire and his team’s view, One City and other charter schools are more accountable than traditional public schools given the specific academic goals and other stipulations in their charter contracts. Wittke, the Republican lawmaker, said One City’s lobbying wasn’t a factor in his support for funding demonstration charter schools. “I don’t care […]
Kaleem Caire: One City Schools was mentioned in the United States Congress during the House Appropriations Committee hearing today! Dr. Holly Lane, Director of the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI), highlighted the groundbreaking partnership we are forming with UFLI, Project Read AI, and others during her testimony. She also referenced the highly successful and […]
Ava Menkes: One City Schools, the independent charter school on Madison’s south side, plans to hold a community rally Thursday at The Sylvee to celebrate its 10th anniversary. Over the last decade, One City has raised $50 million to help serve underprivileged students in the area through innovative and unique ways, according to founder and […]
In this brief video, Dr. Cheryl Twyman, Director of Partnerships, and Dr. Penny Rossetto, Senior Coach and School Designer, both with EL Education, speak about their organization and its partnership with One City Schools. They also share their assessment of the progress being made at One City’s elementary and middle schools. About EL Education EL […]
Kaleem Caire One City Preschool continues to attract far more children than we can enroll, and is ready to grow and expand. Our two public charter schools, One City Elementary School and One City Preparatory Academy, are making notable progress as well: In July 2025, we will host our 10th anniversary celebration and first 8th […]
Arman Rahman Arman Rahman Arman Rahman Reporter Author email : According to Caire, the school was forced to take its foot off the gas by closing 9th and 10th grades, when five core subject teachers left between last September and December. “We didn’t hire teachers, enough teachers, that could retool their curriculum to serve students […]
Chris Rickert: Citing an exodus of core-class teachers, Madison charter school One City Schools told parents of about 60 students Thursday that it would shut down its first ninth- and 10th-grade classes after only one semester. The school’s vice president of external relations, Gail Wiseman, said the school lost five teachers since the beginning of […]
Rhonda Foxx: Some education experts and parents fear the “summer slide” may be more troublesome due to the lasting impacts the pandemic has had on learning. For students at One City Schools, the learning doesn’t stop. Students at One City Schools eagerly don pajamas for spirit week in July because for them, it’s a regular […]
Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: Dear Community Members, In November 2019, the Wisconsin Partnership Program, located within the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health, awarded One City Schools a five-year, $1 million grant to support the implementation of our education programs, and the design and launch of a long-term longitudinal evaluation […]
One City Schools (expanding in Monona…) Our formal enrollment for Elementary School period for the 2022-23 school year will begin on March 1, 2022 at 8 am. Applications will be accepted for all Elementary grades from 4K through 5th. One City Preparatory Academy enrollment period starts on April 4, 2022 for Sixth grade only for […]
Elizabeth Beyer: Caire, UW-Oshkosh and Madison Area Technical College are hashing out a dual enrollment partnership that would allow students to gain college credits while in high school and potentially earn an associate degree, too, which could be used to transfer to a UW campus or an institution outside the System. The idea may even […]
Scott Girard: One City Schools received a $1 million donation from the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation to support the school as it expands to serve students in grades 4K-12. “The Frautschi family has a long history of investing in initiatives to make Madison a great city for everyone, dating back to their contributions to downtown […]
Logan Wroge: With a $14 million donation from American Girl founder and philanthropist Pleasant Rowland, One City Schools announced plans on Tuesday to purchase an office building in Monona that will become a new home for the fast-growing independent charter school. One City will use the donation to buy a 157,000-square-foot office building on the […]
Logan Wroge: A Chinese approach to teaching preschool students has made its way to Madison. One City Schools, a Madison charter school founded by former Urban League president Kaleem Caire and authorized by an office within the University of Wisconsin System, was the first school in the United States to practice Anji Play and is […]
Logan Wroge: In a previous attempt at a charter school, Caire proposed the Madison Preparatory Academy, which would have served a similar population as One City Schools, but would have been for grades 6-12. The Madison School Board rejected the idea in December 2011. Caire sought to bring his “change-maker” approach to the Madison School […]
Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: One City Schools, Inc., a local nonprofit operating an independent preschool and public charter school, announced today that it has been accepted into a coveted network of more than 150 schools nationwide in the EL Education (EL) program. EL Education (formerly Expeditionary Learning) is an educational model that balances […]
Jordan Weissmann: Most of America’s major cities have made little to no progress reducing racial segregation in their public schools over recent decades. Many have slid backward, and are more polarized today than they were at the turn of the century. These challenges were highlighted in Nikole Hannah-Jones’s wrenching New York Times Magazine piece in September about […]
The taxpayer funded Madison School Board Special Meeting: School Board Memo: One City Schools, Inc. submitted two Initial Applications on August 14, 2026, requesting conversion of its existing charter schools from authorizer status under the University of Wisconsin Office of Educational Opportunity (OEO) to instrumentality charter schools under MMSD. On Wednesday, the Board of Education […]
Erin Gretzinger But between the years where scores jumped, the state Department of Public Instruction adjusted testing benchmarks and lowered the threshold to score proficient. The number of students reading and writing proficiently statewide went from 39% to 51%. The department cautions the public against comparing test scores before and after the change because the results “cannot be […]
By Paul Ciotti: For decades critics of the public schools have been saying, “You can’t solve educational problems by throwing money at them.” The education establishment and its supporters have replied, “No one’s ever tried.” In Kansas City they did try. To improve the education of black students and encourage desegregation, a federal judge invited […]
Jessica Harkay: The “And Stay Out!” report, released this month by the education reform nonprofit Available to All, builds off UCLA segregation research from 2014.The new report found overlaps and similarities among dozens of redlining maps from 1938 with school attendance zones in New York City, Long Island, Westchester County as well as upstate cities, such as Albany, […]
New Gingrich: I could never understand why the education bureaucracies and teachers’ unions could tolerate terrible outcomes for millions of children (most of them poor and minority) and do nothing to fix the system. Then I read “Failure Factory.” Now, I see the corruption clearly. Papst has done the entire country an enormous service by […]
Jill Barshay: A troubling post-pandemic pattern is emerging across the nation’s schools: test scores and attendance are down, yet more students are earning high school diplomas. A new report from Washington, D.C., suggests bleak futures for many of these high school graduates, given the declining rate of college attendance and completion. The numbers are stark […]
Kaleem Caire: Thank you CapTimes for printing my OpEd. Interestingly, in a conversation with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction yesterday, state officials told us that we are legally obligated to count our students who are enrolled and present on the day of the pupil count (tomorrow, Friday). This is state law. They also told […]
Scott Girard: For the full 2022-23 school year, an independent charter school like One City receives $9,264 per student from the state that the student’s resident school district would otherwise receive. The state counts students twice each school year: the third Friday of September and the second Friday of January. If a student is enrolled […]
Chris Rickert: The free charter school is required to meet minimum instructional hour requirements contained in state law, which Davis said the school exceeds because its school day runs from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and its year from Sept. 1 to July 31, longer than most traditional public schools. The school will continue to […]
Elizabeth Beyer: A contract, inked in February with the UW System, greenlit Caire’s 33-year dream of growing One City Schools from early childhood education and elementary to include students through grade 12, roughly a decade after the Madison School Board rejected a similar proposal for a charter school overseen by the Madison School District that […]
Minneapolis, among the most segregated school districts in the country, with one of the widest racial academic gaps, is in the midst of a sweeping plan to overhaul and integrate its schools. And unlike previous desegregation efforts, which typically required children of color to travel to white schools, Minneapolis officials are asking white families to […]
Kristin Graham: The Philadelphia School District has pushed back its reopening date for a third time. Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. said Wednesday 9,000 prekindergarten through second-grade students won’t return on Feb. 22 as planned but will instead go back March 1 amid an ongoing building safety dispute between the district and its teachers’ union. […]
Scott Girard: The leadership of the Madison charter school signed the lease Aug. 28 after a search for new space, and D’Abell recalled the busy weekend of preparing the building while also communicating with parents about where the year would begin. “We didn’t know where we were going to be,” D’Abell said during a recent […]
Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: Madison, WI – One City Schools Founder and CEO Kaleem Caire — with support from One City parents, Board of Directors, and partners — is pleased to announce that One City’s plan to establish One City Expeditionary Elementary School in South Madison has been approved. Last Friday, One City […]
Via a kind email: Dear Friends. Last night, we learned that our application to establish One City Senior Preschool as a public charter school serving children in 4 year-old and 5 year-old kindergarten was approved by the University of Wisconsin System. We are very excited! This action will enable us to offer a high quality, […]
One City Early Learning, via a kind Kaleem Caire email: A high quality preschool education, from birth to age 5, should be available and accessible to every child in the United States of America. Please join us on Tuesday, October 31, 2017 from 11:30am to 1:00pm for lunch and an important presentation and dialogue. We […]
Lisa Speckhard: My mom and dad would let me go run the neighborhood. I would play with friends and I was back before the sun went down. I think kids, especially in this generation, have lost some of that, so this is giving them the play back,” he said. Bailey acknowledges that much of what […]
Somewhat ironically, Madison has unused capacity in a number of schools, yet a successful Spring, 2015 referendum will spend another $41M+ to expand certain schools, including some of the least diverse such as Hamilton Middle School. Madison School District (PDF): Key Findings 1. Most MMSD schools are not over capacity. Six of the 32 elementary […]
Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: We’ve been quiet because we’ve been building. We have some exciting updates to share with you as we move forward to establish One City Early Learning Centers on Madison’s South Side. Since August, we have: Established a 15-member Board of Directors Filed for nonprofit recognition with the IRS Identified […]
At last year’s State of the City speech, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced the creation of a public high school called the Academy for Software Engineering. The school would be part of an ambitious expansion of computer science education in the city, and Mr. Bloomberg called it the “brainchild” of a local teacher named Michael Zamansky.
Mr. Zamansky was seated on the stage, a few steps from the mayor. But by that point, he said recently, the project was his in name only: he said he had been effectively cut out of the school’s planning process, and his vision of an elite program had given way to one that was more focused on practical job skills.
“I don’t know if they think my plans are too grandiose, or too unrealistic or if I’m an elitist snob,” he said.
The mayor spoke about other efforts to train the city’s future engineers and entrepreneurs. But Mr. Zamansky worried that the new school would be too small: not enough students, not enough ambition.
Mr. Zamansky, 45, had spent two decades developing the computer science program at Stuyvesant High School. Former students now working at Google and Facebook call him a mentor, a role model, a man who showed them their future.
Related: Primary School Computer Science (!) Curriculum in Vietnam and, Dave Winer comments.
New York city’s controversial ban on cellphones in schools has persuaded some kids to leave their devices at home — a stranger’s home! The New York Post reports.
Dozens of students at the former Bushwick HS campus have been paying $1 per day to store their phones at an alumnus’ apartment — just down the street from the Brooklyn campus.
Academy of Urban Planning graduate Giovanni Monserrate — known affectionately as either “Gio” or “The Mayor” — has padded his income as a Broadway usher by serving as a cellphone-storage site for between 30 and 100 teens daily over the last seven years.
Citing a critical need to not underestimate the stakes at hand, Commissioner of Education Chris Nicastro presented to the State Board of Education today her analysis of ways the state could assist the Kansas City Public Schools in regaining accreditation.
The State Board met in Branson on Dec. 1-2, where discussion of the Kansas City Public Schools was part of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s recommendation for revamping a statewide system of support. This system would identify risk factors and target limited resources to assist unaccredited school districts and those that are at risk of becoming unaccredited. Currently, nearly one dozen schools would receive focused attention.
A federal judge has halted longtime state payments intended to help integrate three Arkansas school districts, including Little Rock, site of one of the most bitter desegregation fights in U.S. history.
U.S. District Court Judge Brian S. Miller, who oversees the districts’ federally ordered desegregation efforts, found the payments were “proving to be an impediment to true desegregation” by rewarding school systems that don’t meet their long-standing commitments.
Judge Miller’s recent rulings triggered protests by the school districts. But some lawmakers and state officials hailed the decision to shut off the payments, which totaled roughly $1 billion over the past two decades.
Lawyers for Little Rock and the other districts said the loss of as much as $70 million for the year that begins in August would cause budgetary chaos. The state payments amount to about 10% of the Little Rock budget and about 9% for each of the other two districts. The parties have until Friday to seek a stay of the order.
Nearly 50 New York City school principals were fired immediately in what Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein declared a “warning shot across the bow.” Blackwater USA was awarded a no-bid contract to take over school security. And a national education foundation offered a $100 million endowment to any university that established a degree in “high-stakes test-taking.”
Those satirical news items, which appear on an education blog, are always slightly off-kilter, but several have seemed believable enough to prompt inquiries to the Education Department’s headquarters from parents and journalism students asking to follow up on a story they saw elsewhere.
“The best part is when people can’t distinguish their reality from the reality that is made up,” said Gary Babad, the writer of dozens of mock news items dealing with the Education Department. “I think of it as a kind of therapy and my form of quiet dissent. And it’s a stress reliever.”
Matt Barnum: What’s the quality of education like at Brooklyn’s P.S. 307? This was the elementary school where New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones sent her daughter. In a much-discussed essay, she described low expectations, an indifferent administrator, and disappointing outcomes. But that was several years ago, and schools can change as staff turns over. Indeed […]
Richard D. Kahlenberg: For more than half a century after Milton Friedman proposed using taxpayer money to support students in private schools, the libertarian economist’s idea went almost nowhere. Republican presidents, including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, pushed vouchers—which help parents enroll their children in schools of their choice, including private and religious schools, at taxpayer expense—as […]
Richard D. Kahlenberg: For more than half a century after Milton Friedman proposed using taxpayer money to support students in private schools, the libertarian economist’s idea went almost nowhere. Republican presidents, including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, pushed vouchers—which help parents enroll their children in schools of their choice, including private and religious schools, at taxpayer expense—as […]
Erin Gretzinger: Chuck Moore, executive director of Impact Christian Schools, agreed the voucher cap lifting won’t significantly impact Madison private schools largely due to capacity limits. The nonprofit supports more than two dozen private Christian schools across Wisconsin, including several in Dane County. “I think there’s a very big misunderstanding by people about the cap […]
Ian Leslie: Following the confrontation in the car, and after much soul-searching, Hannah-Jones decided to let Najya choose which high school to go to. Najya identified the top-performing schools in the area as her preferred options. This meant a heavily white, middle class school, and one with academic selection: the kind of school to which […]
Jack Despain Zhou Parents should fight for their children in education, not against them. There are two stories I could tell you right now, in the wake of Nikole Hannah-Jones’s viral article about her daughter’s education. The first is this: The Pulitzer-winning New York Times writer of the 1619 Project sent her daughter Najya to an impoverished, […]
Karol Markowicz 1619 Project founder expresses regret over education choices for daughter Manhattan Institute senior fellow Chris Rufo reacts to 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones admitting she regrets her public education choices. Writing in an essay, Hannah-Jones states she feels she failed her child by enrolling her in a high-poverty Brooklyn school. Rufo argues progressive […]
Dion Thompson-Davoli As the core city of a large metropolitan area, Kansas City is designed around — and financially reliant upon — the cluster of white collar office employment in its downtown. Office towers pay a huge share of our commercial property taxes and the people who work in them live in our neighborhoods, go […]
Jenisha Watts: Since before he could even talk, I’ve been worrying about where to send my son to school. I know that having a choice to make at all is a mark of status: I am part of a group of parents who have enough money, time, and education to decide what is best for […]
Charles C. W. Cooke ‘My daughter,” wrote Nikole Hannah-Jones in 2024, “is not worth more than any other child.” This assessment was offered as part of a reflection on a New York Times essay that Hannah-Jones had written eight years earlier on the subject of choosing an appropriate school. In tandem, she imparted two other reflections: that the school she’d made […]
Coleman Hughes It is a sad reality of the modern era that when an ideological opponent admits they made a terrible mistake, most people are tempted to kick them while they’re down. This exact situation has arisen with Nikole Hannah-Jones’ latest essay in The New York Times Magazine, which returns to a decision she wrote about a decade […]
Alex Tabarrok: Nikole Hannah-Jones famously sent her child to a predominantly black/lower-income public school in New York City. Now her child says she shouldn’t have been used as political fodder. The essay makes for hard reading and I acknowledge NHJ’s courage in writing about her mistakes and the cost to her child. The piece is raw and true […]
Andrew Rotherham In my view, given her profile, previous writing and past statements, Hannah-Jones deserves credit for doing this in public rather than sweeping it under the rug one way or another. Few would have noticed if she didn’t revisit her choice this way, or if she quietly used the various carve outs available to […]
Nikole Hannah-Jones A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter’s education that I hoped would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice. My hands tightened on the steering wheel as I worked to keep my face neutral, buying a few moments to […]
Chicago Tribune: Meet Eric Witherspoon, the interim school superintendent of Evanston/Skokie School District 65. We only wish he were working for the Chicago Public Schools. Witherspoon inherited a fiscal mess at the Evanston/Skokie school district, which overspent for years, created positions it could not afford to support and accumulated a hefty deficit even as it […]
Wall Street Journal: “If any staff member learns a student is transgender or gender non-conforming,” the document says, according to the lawsuit, “that information should be relayed to the school principal without delay.” The principal can discuss accommodations and schedule a meeting to go over pronouns and locker rooms. If the student doesn’t want to […]
Jill Tucker: A year ago, San Francisco dad Matte Scheinker was mired in the process of figuring out which high schools would be best for his eighth-grade child and how to apply for the public and private options. He was overwhelmed. Frustrated. Stuck in a cycle of searching each school’s web pages for information, a […]
by Doug Lemov Key Points Introduction The importance of fluent reading is routinely underestimated, especially as it applies to middle and high school students. Far from a mere primary-grade issue, fluency is a prerequisite to reading comprehension at every level. Dysfluency is a hidden crisis in American schools, and the decline in recreational reading among children […]
George Mitchell: Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Crowley is more of a threat to Wisconsin’s school choice programs than was Francesca Hong. While I believe Hong’s chances in November were very slim, Crowley has a shot at winning. His stated choice agenda — a cap on enrollment and more regulation — basically mirrors proposals advanced by […]
George F. Will The Chicago Teachers Union’s cupidity in enriching itself, and the dismal results of Chicago’s public schools, have drained the public’s reservoir of goodwill. Among the reasons for the CTU’s downfall is a school named for someone who, as a slave, taught himself to read — a skill poorly imparted by Chicago teachers, […]
Austin Berg: Just 27 students are enrolled at Frederick Douglass Academy, which was built to serve more than 1,000 kids. Frederick Douglass learned to read in secret. He understood from a young age that literacy was, in his words, “the pathway from slavery to freedom.” But at Frederick Douglass Academy High School in Chicago, the […]
Matthew Haag: A disproportionately small number of Black and Hispanic students received admission offers to New York City’s elite public high schools for the upcoming academic year, continuing a pattern of racial and ethnic gaps that has existed for years despite promises by elected officials to address the divide. About 62 percent of the students […]
Rich Witzel: Chicago Public Schools followed Chicago Teachers Union’s staffing-first approach. Now the district faces cuts. After years of adding staff and expanding programs while enrollment declined, buildings sat underused andacademic results remained weak, Chicago Public Schools proposes eliminating about 120 assistant principal positions as it faces a projected budget deficitof $732.5 million. CPS has been pushed in this […]
Teagan King: Roughly six months into the Monona Grove School District’s efforts to sell two properties, the district is still searching for a buyer for one and has ditched plans to sell the other. At a June meeting, the Monona Grove School Board approved plans to request a letter of intent from the city of […]
Matthew Yglesias: I was at a couple of education events in the spring that all featured very smart, very achievement-oriented people talking about how to address the national crisis in basic reading and math attainment. A common lament was that politicians and pundits are simply not focused enough on the question of whether kids are […]
Nicola Mastrorocco & Edoardo Teso We investigate how technologies that reduce the costs of monitoring by central authorities have shaped the historical transition from small patrimonial states to large bureaucratic organizations. Our analysis is based on a novel dataset that traces changes in the organizational structure and geographic presence of the U.S. federal government over […]
Alan Borsuk: “All eyes fixed on Hi-Mount,” the newspaper headline read. The school was “the city’s showcase of school reform,” the story said. That was then – November 1995, to be specific. The story on Hi-Mount Community School, which I wrote, was part of an extensive project by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel examining the state of Milwaukee Public Schools. Why did we single out the […]
John Sailer: In a recording that I obtained, Isaac Kamola—the director of the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF)—repeatedly states his desire to delegitimize the upstart civic centers. “I would really love to see kind of a robust research project on these right-wing centers and individuals—like, naming and shaming and discrediting and undermining the […]
Harrie Ryan: Ah’Mari Stevens, a 16-year-old football player from South Florida, boarded a helicopter with a videographer one day last spring. As the chopper circled Miami, the cameraman explained the purpose of the shoot: “Everybody and their mama wants to know where he’s going to play ball next year.” Ah’Mari, a whip-fast sophomore wide receiver […]
By Annie Gaus: San Francisco parent advocates are furious over what they call an “unvetted and illegal” ethnic studies course that was rammed through without meaningful input — citing divisive lesson plans like a “privilege wheel” that sorts student into an “oppressor/oppressed framework,” according to a legal warning sent to city leaders. The Friends of […]
WisPolitics: MILWAUKEE — A new statewide survey of 1,658 likely Wisconsin voters by City Forward Collective and CFC Action Fund finds Wisconsin voters deeply concerned about the performance of the state’s public schools and ready to support candidates who treat accountability and outcomes as the central education issue heading into the 2026 election cycle. “Wisconsin voters […]
Christina Buttons Governor Gavin Newsom used California’s youth mental-health crisis to build a sprawling therapeutic bureaucracy rooted in the idea that white supremacy was driving children’s distress—and committed billions in taxpayer dollars to it. Beginning in 2021, the Newsom administration justified a major overhaul of the state’s youth mental-health system by invoking “an escalating behavioral health crisis” […]
Dale Mezzacappa More than 100 students and some teachers rallied before the Board of Education meeting Thursday to protest how the lottery system for citywide and selective admission high schools is causing huge enrollment drops for many of next fall’s incoming classes. The declines mean that schools will lose staff positions and many teachers will […]
Danyela Souza Egorov: American K-12 public education spending reached $1 trillion for the first time in 2024. But what are students getting for that money? While spending grew by 56% since 2013, reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — known as “the nation’s report card” — declined. Over the next decade, national student enrollment […]
Natasha Singer: Last week, the Los Angeles school board passed a resolution requiring the district to restrict student access to YouTube, eliminate digital devices entirely through first grade and develop screen time limits for higher grades — becoming the first major U.S. school system to do so. The parents’ successful campaign points to an escalating national reckoning […]
Steven Wilson: Student achievement gains eroded amid shift to “social justice” education BOSTON – After years during which too many charter public schools turned away from the rigorous academic practices that made them the nation’s most successful urban education reform, the sector should return to the proven model that closed achievement gaps, according to a new “Charter School Toolkit” […]
Common Sense Institute Introduction Arizona’s district public school system has deep roots, stretching back to its territorial days. For most of its history, this system grew alongside Arizona’s population, fueled by the fact that 80% or more of Arizona’s 6-year-olds went to their local district public school. Arizona school districts built schools, hired teachers, and […]
Marc Novicoff: New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, will soon confront an ordeal that might finally knock that trademark smile off his face: balancing the budget. The city is projected to have a $5 billion deficit this year and is required by law to make up for that shortfall by raising revenue, cutting spending, or […]
Alessandra Caruso: Active: Federal lawsuit challenges race-based changes to New York City’s Specialized High Schools admissions Yi Fang Chen came to the United States from China in 1996 as a teenager, speaking little English. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford University and today works as a data scientist in New York […]
Hugo Cox: On a clear spring day in an inner-city neighbourhood, a large primary school, recently closed, stands as both a relic of the past and a sign of a contemporary social shift. For a century and a half, its imposing facade gathered and dispensed more than 200 local children every school day. They would […]
Joye Walker: I read a document by Hung-Hsi Wu entitled “What is school mathematics?” I recall reading about some of Wu’s ideas back in the 1990s when I worked for the Department of Mathematics at The University of Iowa. Since that time, I did spend 23 years teaching high school mathematics, 22 of which were […]
David Blaska: We wanted Ray Mendez to run for school board this year but he has more sense than that. No entity in local government more needs a disrupter than the Metropolitan Madison Board of Education. We introduced the gentleman to Werkes readers in November 2025. Mr. Mendez picks up on a platform this on-line scribbler […]
WILL: The Wisconsin Constitution grants the Legislature the authority to determine education policy and to effectuate school funding and charges the Superintendent of Public Instruction with the task of supervising public instruction, not the judicial branch. Moreover, the Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of Wisconsin’s Choice Programs 30 years ago. The Quote: WILL Deputy Counsel, […]
Will Flanders: Interesting that DPI has removed files revenue files from their website that I used to disprove the narrative that schools are underfunded. I used the files to show that school districts have more inflation-adjusted money than in 2000. Wonder why they were removed? 🤔 Related:
Kaleem Caire: We have raised nearly $52 million in private philanthropy over eleven years to bridge a gap that should never have been ours alone to bridge. What distinguishes One City from other public charter schools in Wisconsin isn’t just our academic growth. No other charter school in Wisconsin was established with the specific purpose […]
Teagan King: The programs are shuttering at the end of this school year, the district confirmed Monday, after President Donald Trump’s administration cut funding for AmeriCorps initiatives like United Way’s Schools of Hope last year. “We are deeply grateful to United Way of Dane County, as well as the many volunteers who have supported our […]
Erin Gretzinger: Blair Mosner Feltham and Nicki Vander Meulen will retain their seats on the Madison School Board, defeating challengers Daniella Molle and Dana Colussi-Lynde in two contested races Tuesday. In the Seat 6 election, Mosner Feltham, a teacher in the Sun Prairie Area School District, received 61.8% of the vote with 100% of precincts […]
Michael Hicks: Simple measures, such as differences in standardized test scores, account for as much as one-third of the differences in home values between communities. So, measuring school quality should be a central goal of state policymakers. One key challenge in evaluating school quality is that households choose their schools. Family characteristics play a huge […]
Kyle Koenen: Reality: ~$17,900 (Madison > $26,000) If people don’t know how much we’re spending, it becomes difficult to determine the “right” amount of spending on schools. 🧵/2 WILL: Parents Are Unaware of Current School Spending: 44% of parents surveyed say they are “not sure” how much is spent on each student. Another 43% provide estimates […]
Tristar Daily: Key Findings from the Interim Report – Deficiencies and Observations: Nearly 175 deficiencies were identified across various sections of the report, indicating systemic issues. – Financial Mismanagement: – Disbursements: $1,145,909.97 flagged as waste or abuse, with about $1,112,750 linked to contract-related spending. – Issues included inadequate oversight, unsupported or duplicative […]
Dave Cieslewicz: For example, in 2024, Madison voters approved a record $507 million capital improvements referendum. One of the largest items in that referendum was $85 million for a new, bigger building to house Sherman Middle and Shabazz High schools. Yet, that building is at only 50% of capacity, and projections are for enrollments to go down. Before […]
Shannon Whitworth: For example, the Obama administration implemented a race-based disciplinary approach for secondary schools. In practice, this policy led many schools to limit discipline to avoid racial disparities in disciplinary outcomes, reducing accountability for students’ unacceptable behavior in school. In turn, that policy encouraged disruptive behavior in classrooms. It also created an environment not conducive […]
Teagan King: This year, 25,029 students are enrolled in Madison schools, a 0.5% decrease from last year, when 25,155 attended. Enrollment also has fallen statewide over the past five years, according to data from the Department of Public Instruction released earlier this month. Larger 12th-grade classes than incoming freshman classes are partially to blame for […]
Thomas Briggs Later today, the SFUSD Board of Education will vote on a new math placement policy for the district’s middle schools. In 2014, Algebra 1 courses were removed from middle schools as part of a “detracking” effort by the district to address racial gaps in advanced math placement. This idea, of course, was a terrible one. […]
Paul Runko: So it’s time for K-12 public education to have a “Moneyball” moment. Here’s the “stats” that should matter when schools construct their teacher rosters: 1. Classroom Management Students can’t learn if they are constantly distracted by their peers or chaos in the classroom. Principals, administrators, and school board members can easily observe a […]
Chad Aldeman: Besides, thanks largely to the state’s investments in free community college for everyone and tuition- and fee-free public four-year college for students from low-income families, the number of students attending public colleges and universities has jumped by about 24,000 since 2022. That’s a gain of 16 percent in three years, reversing years of declines and […]
Erin Gretzinger: As Mosner Feltham and Vander Meulen underscored their track records and ongoing endeavors to improve the Madison Metropolitan School District, Molle and Colussi-Lynde spotlighted their ideas and what differentiates them from their opponents. The candidates share many overarching priorities, such as advocating for changes to the state funding formula for public schools and addressing salary compression for […]
Aakash Gupta: The numbers explain why. CS degrees doubled from 52,000 to 113,000 per year over the last decade. Universities kept expanding enrollment because the demand signal from 2021 said “hire everyone.” Then three things happened simultaneously: tech companies overhired, corrected with 250K+ layoffs across 2024-2025, and started replacing junior engineering tasks with AI tooling. […]