Beren: Minor terminological nitpick. People often describe the LLM as ‘hallucinating’ information whenever it makes up information which seems like it should fit for a given query even when it is trivially false. While evocative, this isn’t actually correct terminology. We already have a perfectly word for this precisely phenomenon in psychology: confabulation. Confabulation is … Continue reading LLMs confabulate not hallucinate
Dr. Judith E. FitzGerald: Wisconsin has a reading problem, especially for those whose home language is not mainstream English, which is the language of instruction, government and business. Every year we have watched our literacy scores and state ranking suffer as other states pursue teacher training and education legislation. Illiteracy has multiple causes including poverty … Continue reading Get serious about improving literacy
Audio Transcript One of the line items in Wisconsin Motion 57 directly connects to our ED prep programs and reading. It states that Wisconsin will [00:11:00] contract with a vendor who will conduct an analysis of reading program coursework in our UW institutions. After engaging in our very robust and required state procurement process, the … Continue reading DPI Testimony, Q&A Wisconsin Education Committee
TPI-US: In 2022, TPI-US was awarded a contract to conduct statewide literacy coursework, “landscape analysis,” through which TPI-US will invite all 13 University of Wisconsin educator preparation programs to participate in a study of evidence-based early reading instructional practices. Participation by EPPs is an entirely voluntary opt-in, and reports will only be shared with the … Continue reading Wisconsin School of Education literacy coursework “landscape analysis”
Astral Códex Ten: Still, on the most nitpicky level, as far as I can tell the article doesn’t say a lot which is literally false. Perhaps great journalism would investigate how the printing process worked and where it went wrong, but as far as I know neither side does that – they just report the … Continue reading “Manipulation by omission”
Andrew Joseph Scientists have been scrutinizing the papers on PubPeer, a site where researchers can flag potential problems in articles, the Daily reported. The Chronicle of Higher Education first reported the university board’s investigation. “The university will assess the allegations presented in the Stanford Daily, consistent with its normal rigorous approach by which allegations of research misconduct … Continue reading Stanford is investigating its president over allegations of research misconduct
Daniel Buck: It’s worthwhile to stymie the flow of politics into our classrooms. But the real fallout of our woke-ified teacher-prep programs is simply mediocrity. My teacher training featured Black Lives Matter friendship bracelets, lectures on acupuncture and essential oils, acrostic poems as final projects, and a solid grounding in critical race theory. Notably lacking … Continue reading Yes, Teacher-Prep Programs Are That Woke
NEO Remember back when transgender rights was about adults, and there was lengthy screening by the medical and therapy professionals involved to make sure that those adults were not making the choice because of other mental health issues? Now it’s about keeping kids’ secrets from parents whose rights diminish every day: “Parents are not entitled … Continue reading Parents, taxpayer supported Administrators and Governance Rights Notes
Robin Lake: Several months ago I critiqued a report by Dr. Gordon Lafer that was published by In the Public Interest (ITPI), a think tank that has long been critical of charter schools and recently helped rally supporters of a five-year moratorium on new charters. Unfortunately, the report continues to inform policy deliberations in California, … Continue reading Assessing charter schools’ impact on districts is too important to get wrong
Martin Feldstein: The most dangerous domestic problem facing America’s federal government is the rapid growth of its budget deficit and national debt. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the deficit this year will be $900 billion, more than 4% of gross domestic product. It will surpass $1 trillion in 2022. The federal debt is now … Continue reading K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: The Debt Crisis is Coming Soon
Tracy Carto: But when the CIE morphed to the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, the management structure changed completely. The equitable balance became one that, I’ve come to understand, is inherently sexist. This corporate model, with a CEO-like position holding almost complete control and being the face of the Center and CMU’s entrepreneurship on and off … Continue reading Lenore Blum shocked the community with her sudden resignation from CMU. Here she tells us why.
June Casagrande: To hear some sticklers talk, you’d think that somewhere, in a classified location, there’s a top-secret grammar law library that houses the voluminous Grammar Penal Code: an official list of all the things you’d be “wrong” to do. It’s wrong to split an infinitive, some say. It’s wrong to end a sentence with … Continue reading Grammar Purity is One Big Ponzi Scheme
Nicholas Eberstadt: Is the human condition becoming more unequal? Many assert it is, but their focus is almost exclusively on economic inequality. This is problematic for two key reasons. First, even in data-rich America, statistics on wealth distribution are at best rudimentary. Measured economic equality differs dramatically depending on whether one looks at income (pre- … Continue reading On Equality
High school, where kids socialize, show off their clothes, use their phones–and, oh yeah, go to class.
Every once in a while, education policy squeezes its way onto President Obama’s public agenda, as it did in during last month’s State of the Union address. Lately, two issues have grabbed his (and just about everyone else’s) attention: early-childhood education and access to college. But while these scholastic bookends are important, there is an awful lot of room for improvement between them. American high schools, in particular, are a disaster.
In international assessments, our elementary school students generally score toward the top of the distribution, and our middle school students usually place somewhat above the average. But our high school students score well below the international average, and they fare especially badly in math and science compared with our country’s chief economic rivals.
What’s holding back our teenagers?
One clue comes from a little-known 2003 study based on OECD data that compares the world’s 15-year-olds on two measures of student engagement: participation and “belongingness.” The measure of participation was based on how often students attended school, arrived on time, and showed up for class. The measure of belongingness was based on how much students felt they fit in to the student body, were liked by their schoolmates, and felt that they had friends in school. We might think of the first measure as an index of academic engagement and the second as a measure of social engagement.
On the measure of academic engagement, the U.S. scored only at the international average, and far lower than our chief economic rivals: China, Korea, Japan, and Germany. In these countries, students show up for school and attend their classes more reliably than almost anywhere else in the world. But on the measure of social engagement, the United States topped China, Korea, and Japan.
In America, high school is for socializing. It’s a convenient gathering place, where the really important activities are interrupted by all those annoying classes. For all but the very best American students–the ones in AP classes bound for the nation’s most selective colleges and universities–high school is tedious and unchallenging. Studies that have tracked American adolescents’ moods over the course of the day find that levels of boredom are highest during their time in school.
It’s not just No Child Left Behind or Race to the Top that has failed our adolescents–it’s every single thing we have tried.
One might be tempted to write these findings off as mere confirmation of the well-known fact that adolescents find everything boring. In fact, a huge proportion of the world’s high school students say that school is boring. But American high schools are even more boring than schools in nearly every other country, according to OECD surveys. And surveys of exchange students who have studied in America, as well as surveys of American adolescents who have studied abroad, confirm this. More than half of American high school students who have studied in another country agree that our schools are easier. Objectively, they are probably correct: American high school students spend far less time on schoolwork than their counterparts in the rest of the world.
Trends in achievement within the U.S. reveal just how bad our high schools are relative to our schools for younger students. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, administered by the U.S. Department of Education, routinely tests three age groups: 9-year-olds, 13-year-olds, and 17-year-olds. Over the past 40 years, reading scores rose by 6 percent among 9-year-olds and 3 percent among 13-year-olds. Math scores rose by 11 percent among 9-year-olds and 7 percent among 13-year-olds.
By contrast, high school students haven’t made any progress at all. Reading and math scores have remained flat among 17-year-olds, as have their scores on subject area tests in science, writing, geography, and history. And by absolute, rather than relative, standards, American high school students’ achievement is scandalous.
In other words, over the past 40 years, despite endless debates about curricula, testing, teacher training, teachers’ salaries, and performance standards, and despite billions of dollars invested in school reform, there has been no improvement–none–in the academic proficiency of American high school students.
It’s not just No Child Left Behind or Race to the Top that has failed our adolescents–it’s every single thing we have tried. The list of unsuccessful experiments is long and dispiriting. Charter high schools don’t perform any better than standard public high schools, at least with respect to student achievement. Students whose teachers “teach for America” don’t achieve any more than those whose teachers came out of conventional teacher certification programs. Once one accounts for differences in the family backgrounds of students who attend public and private high schools, there is no advantage to going to private school, either. Vouchers make no difference in student outcomes. No wonder school administrators and teachers from Atlanta to Chicago to my hometown of Philadelphia have been caught fudging data on student performance. It’s the only education strategy that consistently gets results.
The especially poor showing of high schools in America is perplexing. It has nothing to do with high schools having a more ethnically diverse population than elementary schools. In fact, elementary schools are more ethnically diverse than high schools, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. Nor do high schools have more poor students. Elementary schools in America are more than twice as likely to be classified as “high-poverty” than secondary schools. Salaries are about the same for secondary and elementary school teachers. They have comparable years of education and similar years of experience. Student-teacher ratios are the same in our elementary and high schools. So are the amounts of time that students spend in the classroom. We don’t shortchange high schools financially either; American school districts actually spend a little more per capita on high school students than elementary school students.
Our high school classrooms are not understaffed, underfunded, or underutilized, by international standards. According to a 2013 OECD report, only Luxembourg, Norway, and Switzerland spend more per student. Contrary to widespread belief, American high school teachers’ salaries are comparable to those in most European and Asian countries, as are American class sizes and student-teacher ratios. And American high school students actually spend as many or more hours in the classroom each year than their counterparts in other developed countries.
This underachievement is costly: One-fifth of four-year college entrants and one-half of those entering community college need remedial education, at a cost of $3 billion each year.
The president’s call for expanding access to higher education by making college more affordable, while laudable on the face of it, is not going to solve our problem. The president and his education advisers have misdiagnosed things. The U.S. has one of the highest rates of college entry in the industrialized world. Yet it is tied for last in the rate of college completion. More than one-third of U.S. students who enter a full-time, two-year college program drop out just after one year, as do about one fifth of students who enter a four-year college. In other words, getting our adolescents to go to college isn’t the issue. It’s getting them to graduate.
If this is what we hope to accomplish, we need to rethink high school in America. It is true that providing high-quality preschool to all children is an important component of comprehensive education reform. But we can’t just do this, cross our fingers, and hope for the best. Early intervention is an investment, not an inoculation.
In recent years experts in early-child development have called for programs designed to strengthen children’s “non-cognitive” skills, pointing to research that demonstrates that later scholastic success hinges not only on conventional academic abilities but on capacities like self-control. Research on the determinants of success in adolescence and beyond has come to a similar conclusion: If we want our teenagers to thrive, we need to help them develop the non-cognitive traits it takes to complete a college degree–traits like determination, self-control, and grit. This means classes that really challenge students to work hard–something that fewer than one in six high school students report experiencing, according to Diploma to Nowhere, a 2008 report published by Strong American Schools. Unfortunately, our high schools demand so little of students that these essential capacities aren’t nurtured. As a consequence, many high school graduates, even those who have acquired the necessary academic skills to pursue college coursework, lack the wherewithal to persevere in college. Making college more affordable will not fix this problem, though we should do that too.
The good news is that advances in neuroscience are revealing adolescence to be a second period of heightened brain plasticity, not unlike the first few years of life. Even better, brain regions that are important for the development of essential non-cognitive skills are among the most malleable. And one of the most important contributors to their maturation is pushing individuals beyond their intellectual comfort zones.
It’s time for us to stop squandering this opportunity. Our kids will never rise to the challenge if the challenge doesn’t come.
Laurence Steinberg is a psychology professor at Temple University and author of the forthcoming Age of Opportunity: Revelations from the New Science of Adolescence.
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Quite the year we had in Wisconsin education in 2011, so we have lots of awards to give out in our annual recognition ceremony. Let’s get right to the big one for this year:
The “Honey, I Blew Up the Education Status Quo” Award: No surprise who is the winner. Like him or hate him (and there certainly is no middle ground), when you say Gov. Scott Walker, you’ve said it all. State aid cuts. Tightened school spending and taxing. Benefit cuts to teachers. An end to teacher union power as we knew it. No need to say more.
Book of the Year: In some school districts – and the number will grow quickly – it was the handbook issued by the school board, replacing contracts with teachers unions. No more having to get union approval for changing every nitpicky rule about the length of the school day or assigning teachers to lunch duty.
Tool of the Year: Well, it wasn’t anything small. In the Legislature, it was more like a jackhammer, as Republicans and Democrats engaged in all-out battle. As for schools, Walker talked often about giving leaders tools to deal with their situations. This is where it will get very interesting. Will leaders act as if they are holding precision tools to be used cautiously or as if they, too, are holding jackhammers? As one state school figure said privately to me, how school boards handle their new power is likely to be a key to whether there is a resurgence of teacher unions in the state. Which leads us to:
I think Borsuk’s #3 is critical. I suspect that 60ish% of school boards will continue with the present practices, under different names. The remainder will create a new environment, perhaps providing a different set of opportunities for teachers. The April, 2012 Madison School Board election may determine the extent to which “status quo” reins locally.
I have to at least give credit the WSJ for continuing to keep education front and center of their Sunday opinion section. This last Sunday, under the headline “Protect kids from cuts” the WSJ takes on the issue of closing the remaining Madison SD budget gap and editorializes for a pay freeze for teaching staff. Although the current budget situation probably makes reducing compensation for staff in one way or another inevitable, I don’t think that devaluing the teaching profession can be construed as “Protecting kids”. After all, the number one factor in educational outcomes is the placement of a highly qualified teacher in front of each class.
Attracting quality teachers means we have to be sure it is rewarding profession, so balancing the budget through reductions in teacher compensation is in the long term unsustainable. If the current situation was a one or two year problem then a freeze might serve as a bridge to recovery, and although I don’t know the Madison situation I’m pretty sure their problems are similar to ours: shortfalls that extend year after year for the foreseeable future. The article notes that the Madison teachers receive the “standard” 1% raise this year. This year that seems inappropriate, but the fact that the same 1% is the “standard” every year since 1993 is also a problem.
I don’t think that 1% annual raises have been “standard since 1993”. I would certainly like to see a substantive change in teacher compensation, replacing the current one size fits all approach.
Current Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes, noted in May, 2005 that:
Here is an excerpt from the article in this morning’s State Journal that deserves comment: Matthews said it was worth looking at whether layoffs can be avoided, but he was less optimistic about finding ways to achieve that.
He said MTI’s policy is that members have to have decent wages, even if it means some jobs are lost.
The last teachers contract provided a 1 percent increase in wage scales for each of the past two years. This year’s salary and benefits increase, including raises for seniority or advanced degrees, was projected at 4.9 percent, or $8.48 million. Teachers’ salaries range from $29,324 to $74,380.
“The young teachers are really hurting,” Matthews said, adding that the district is having difficulty attracting teachers because of its starting pay.
Mr. Matthews states that young teachers are really hurting. I assume by “young” he means “recently-hired.” On a state-wide basis, the starting salary for Madison’s teachers ranks lower, relatively speaking, than its salaries for more experienced teachers. Compared to other teacher pay scales in the state, Madison’s scale seems weighted relatively more toward the more-experienced teachers and less toward starting teachers. This has to be a consequence of the union’s bargaining strategy – the union must have bargained over the years for more money at the top and less at the bottom, again relatively speaking. The union is entitled to follow whatever strategy it wants, but it is disingenuous for Mr. Matthews to justify an apparent reluctance to consider different bargaining approaches on the basis of their possible impact on “young teachers.”
According to the article, Mr. Matthews also stated that “the district is having trouble attracting teachers because of its starting pay.” Can this possibly be true? Here’s an excerpt from Jason Shepard’s top-notch article in Isthmus last week, “Even with a UW degree, landing a job in Madison isn’t easy. For every hire made by the Madison district, five applicants are rejected. June Glennon, the district’s employment manager, says more than 1,200 people have applied for teaching jobs next year.”
AP:
Leaders in Total Compensation at Private Colleges, 2007-8. Source: IRS tax reports analyzed by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
1. Shirley Ann Jackson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: $1,598,247
2. David Sargent, Suffolk University: $1,496,593
3. Steadman Upham, University of Tulsa: $1,485,275
4. Richard Meyers, Webster University: $1,429,738
5. Cornelius M. Kerwin, American University: $1,419,339
6. Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia: $1,380,035
t’s easy to see why United Teachers Los Angeles doesn’t like the new Public School Choice policy at L.A. Unified, which allows outside groups to apply to take over about 250 new or underperforming schools. Those groups are likely to include a large number of charter school operators that would hire their own teachers rather than sign a contract with the teachers union.
What’s less understandable is why UTLA would minimize its chances of keeping some of the schools within the district, along with their union jobs. Yet that’s what appears to be happening. A rift has developed within the union’s leadership over whether to allow more so-called pilot schools, and if so, how many and under what conditions. Pilot schools are similar to charter schools, except that they remain within L.A. Unified, staffed by the district’s union employees. The staff is given more independence to make instructional and budgeting decisions in exchange for greater accountability and “thin contracts,” which contain fewer of the prescriptive work rules that can stultify progress.
Related: A Wisconsin State Journal Editorial on Madison’s lack of charter school opportunities.
The Steamboat Springs School Board formally accepted a lawsuit settlement offer from the Pilot & Today on Monday.
The settlement was tentatively approved by board members last month on the heels of a March ruling by the Colorado Court of Appeals that the previous School Board violated the state’s Open Meetings Law by not properly announcing the intention of its executive session at a Jan. 8, 2007, meeting. As a result of the ruling and settlement offer, the district will pay $50,000 of the newspaper’s attorney fees and release the transcripts from the illegal meeting.
The motion to accept the settlement offer was approved 4-1 on Monday, with a couple of board members expressing satisfaction that the lawsuit is now behind them. Board member John DeVincentis was the only dissenting vote, but he wasn’t the only one displeased with the outcome.
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:
The Legislature may actually complete an important assignment quickly and on time, earning high marks from voters.
Yes, we are talking about the Wisconsin Legislature, the same group of truants who logged one of the longest and latest budget stalemates in state history last year.
Maybe the Capitol gang is finally learning the importance of punctuality and cooperation.
Let ‘s hope so.
Key lawmakers announced a compromise bill Thursday that will keep open a dozen online schools in Wisconsin. The proposal also seeks to improve the quality of learning delivered via computer to educate more than 3,000 students in their homes.
The state Court of Appeals had put the future of virtual education in jeopardy last month. The District 2 Court in Waukesha ruled that the Wisconsin Virtual Academy, based in suburban Milwaukee, violates state laws controlling teacher certification, charter schools and open enrollment.
The Sun Prairie School District is set to once again tap into the Earth’s natural body temperature to warm and cool its newest elementary school.
Creekside Elementary, located on the city’s south side, will be the second of three Sun Prairie schools the district plans to heat and cool using a geothermal system.
Geothermal technology has seen “an explosion of growth in the last seven years or so in Wisconsin,” said Manus McDevitt, principal with Sustainable Engineering Group in Madison. “It’s coming to a point now where electricity and gas prices are so high … that really the argument for geothermal becomes stronger and stronger. For school districts it makes a lot of sense.”
The systems can cut schools’ energy use by 10 percent to 40 percent, McDevitt said.
Alisha Berns ‘ enthusiasm for the Sun Prairie Scholar Society speaks volumes.
“I really get excited. I don ‘t sleep well the night before, ” said the Sun Prairie High School junior. “It ‘s a nice getaway. I ‘m very comfortable being here. ”
Sarah Benish, a school counselor at Sun Prairie High School, wanted to increase black students ‘ participation in advanced level courses, so she did some research and started the Sun Prairie Scholar Society last year. The student members are selected on academic success.
The society, which is called S Cubed for short, supports the academic success of high-achieving black students through group advising, supporting individual student goals, providing a space for students to connect, assisting students in reaching their highest academic potential and helping students find purpose in their learning.
“I really wanted to support these students and help them access opportunities, ” said Benish, who is in her third year at the high school. “This group has been a highlight of my work here and I have learned so much from the students. “
Slender and smiling, Emma Geer bounces into an interview in the offices of Madison Repertory Theatre wearing jeans, wool clogs and a turtleneck sweater the same smoky color as her deep gray eyes.
The Madison eighth-grader is on a break from rehearsals for the Rep ‘s “The Diary of Anne Frank, ” in which she plays the title role. And if that job ‘s not ambitious enough for a 13-year-old, Emma also knows what a lot of audience members will have in the back of their minds when the play continues tonight at Overture Center ‘s Playhouse: That this Anne Frank is also the daughter of Richard Corley, the Rep ‘s artistic director.
When Corley hired Madison native Jennifer Uphoff Gray, a 12-year veteran of the New York theater scene, to direct “The Diary of Anne Frank, ” he told her “The casting is in your hands, ” says Gray.
So Gray contacted drama teachers across the area asking for names of talented actresses who might play Anne. She saw a slew of local spring school plays, scouting for talent. Finally she went to Chicago to find the right girl for the part, auditioning some 16-, 17- and 18-year-old actresses in the process.
Move over Melville — comic-style books are popping up in classrooms throughout Dane County, giving educators a new tool to teach literature.
Graphic novels, a literary form that marries bold art and often edgy text, have persuaded reluctant students to open books and are providing a new way to teach visual learning, area educators and librarians say.
Libraries have long been aware of the value of such “sequential art” in helping students become better readers, said Hollis Rudiger, a former librarian at UW-Madison’s School of Education. “It’s the classroom teachers that are finally starting to see the value,” she said.
This fall, students at Monona Grove and DeForest high schools studied graphic novels in English classes. Next year, if there’s enough interest, Monona Grove plans to offer an art class focusing on the novels and cartooning.
“I’m very, very excited about teaching this class because it’s a step in a different direction,” said Judith Durley, a Monona Grove High School art teacher who proposed the class.
Key Republican and Democratic leaders launched competing efforts on Thursday to rewrite Wisconsin ‘s laws for online schools, just weeks before families begin filling out applications to transfer from their traditional home school districts.
Their proposals, described as attempts to clarify confusion after a recent court ruling, quickly came under attack from the opposing party.
Rep. Brett Davis, R-Oregon, chairman of the Assembly Education Committee, proposed that online schools, also known as virtual schools, be allowed to continue operating with few restrictions. About 3,000 Wisconsin students attend online schools.
Sen. John Lehman, D-Racine, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said he ‘s introducing a measure restricting online schools to half of the approximately $6,000 in state aid they currently receive for each student who transfers from a home district.
“I really believe it ‘s important to wring the profits out of these operations, ” said Lehman, who contends that Davis ‘ approach forces taxpayers to pay too much to online schools such as the Northern Ozaukee School District ‘s Wisconsin Virtual Academy. The district north of Milwaukee, with curriculum from a Virginia-based firm, K12 Inc., operates the online school that was the focus of the recent court ruling.
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:
If there ‘s one institution in Madison that needs strong leaders to tackle huge challenges, it ‘s the city ‘s school district.
Unfortunately, only two people are seeking two open School Board seats in the coming spring election. The deadline for declaring a candidacy was Wednesday.
That means voters won ‘t have any choice in who will serve, barring any late write-in campaigns.
That ‘s a shame — one that Madison can ‘t afford to repeat.
he rigors of a campaign test potential board members and help the community choose which direction to take the district.
Competitive School Board campaigns also draw considerable and much-needed attention to huge local issues, such as the increasing number of children who show up for kindergarten unprepared, rising health insurance costs for school employees, shifting demographics, school security and tight limits on spending.
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:
he teachers union in Wisconsin wants all public schools to spend more time teaching students about organized labor.
Here ‘s a better idea with much greater need:
Require the leaders of the teachers union to enroll in a remedial civics class.
The Wisconsin Education Association Council showed how badly it needs a refresher course in the basic framework of American government when it lobbied against a sensible limit on the governor ‘s out-of-control veto powers.
WEAC suffers the dubious distinction of being the only organization in the state to register this year with the state Ethics Board to lobby against Senate Joint Resolution 5. The resolution, heading to voters for final approval this spring, will rein in the most outlandish veto power in the nation — the notorious “Frankenstein ” veto.
Modern governors, Republicans and Democrats, have used this veto trick with increasing gall. They cross out all but a handful of unrelated words and figures across long passages of spending bills. The remaining bits and pieces of sentences can then be stitched together to create law completely unrelated to the original text.
It ‘s a lot like the way literature ‘s Dr. Frankenstein stitched together his monster.
A few articles on the current tax and spending climate:
In some markets where real-estate values had been rising sharply for years, property taxes are still climbing. That is because it can take a long time for assessments, which commonly are based on a property’s estimated market value, to catch up with the realities of the real-estate market.
The lag time has led to an outcry to cut property taxes reminiscent of the 1970s, says Gerald Prante, an economist with the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in Washington.
“In many cases, incomes were growing faster than property-tax bills in the 1990s,” Mr. Prante says. “Recently, property-tax bills have grown faster than incomes, on average.”
State and local property-tax collections increased 50% from 2000-06, according to Census Bureau data. During the same time period, the median household income rose 15%, before adjustment for inflation.
Property taxes supply $65% of the Madison School District’s $349M budget (2007-2008) [Citizen’s Budget with 2.5MB PDF amendments]
Despite all the deductions, loopholes and clever accountants the federal income tax is strongly progressive. Moreover the federal tax system remains progressive even if you include the payroll tax, corporate taxes and excise taxes. The chart below with data from the Congressional Budget Office, shows the effective tax rate by income class from all federal taxes. Effective tax rates are considerably higher on the rich than the poor.
The effective tax rate is higher on the rich and the rich have more money – put these two things together and we can calculate who pays for the federal government. The final column in the table shows the share of the 2.4 trillion in federal tax revenues that is paid for by each income category.
School taxes increased more than 7 percent statewide, the biggest increase in 15 years, fueling renewed cries for reform of the state school funding system.
The state school finance system is “broken, ” said Pete Etter, interim superintendent of the tiny Black Hawk School District about 60 miles south of Madison, which had the highest local school property tax increase of any district in the state. “It ‘s not only Black Hawk. It ‘s every district in the state. ”
Critics say the system is flawed because state revenue limits for districts don ‘t grow enough, if at all. If state aid is insufficient, districts must turn to taxpayers, sometimes through referendum.
Dane County range
School taxes — as well as the total tax bill — depend mostly on where you live.
The schools are virtual, but the children learning from them are very real.
And, sometimes, real kids have real problems.
Brennan Fredericks, 16, had big problems in middle school. His parents, Dan and Donna of Black Earth, said his former school did little to protect him from bullies. He has life-threatening food allergies and, his mother said, other kids would throw peanut butter sandwiches at him and taunt him.
“He ‘d sit all alone at a table labeled peanut ‘ and get picked on, ” Donna Fredericks said.
It got so bad that the thought of going to school made him ill.
After home schooling their son through much of eighth grade, the family was delighted to find the Monroe Virtual High School, a charter school run out of the Monroe School District.
To fulfill high school requirements, Brennan can choose between high school and college courses, which arrive with books and online homework. When it ‘s time to take exams, a teacher from the Monroe school drives to Black Earth and administers the test at the local library.
It has worked well for a kid who struggled in regular school.
After more than a decade of aiding younger students, the Schools of Hope project is heading to high school.
The Schools of Hope Leadership Team, a 27-member community group, decided Wednesday to establish a tutoring program for ninth graders in the Madison School District.
More than 50 volunteer adult tutors — and possibly many more — will be sought to serve at least an hour a week in high schools.
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:
The state Court of Appeals just handed the Legislature an important assignment:
Update state laws governing public education to take advantage of the opportunities presented by online learning in virtual schools.
Lawmakers should dig into the homework, starting now.
Virtual schools, which deliver coursework via computer to educate students in their homes, have great potential as a cost-effective alternative to standard schools.
But last week the District 2 Court of Appeals in Waukesha put the future of virtual education in Wisconsin in doubt.
The court ruled that the Wisconsin Virtual Academy based in suburban Milwaukee violates state laws controlling teacher certification, charter schools and open enrollment.
The three-judge panel also put the academy in a financial bind by ordering the state to stop paying for students who attend the academy when those students are not residents of the local school district.
Terry Millar: Improvement in math and science education is a priority in Madison, as it is across the nation. Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) training is not only of growing importance to our technology-dependent society, these disciplines also represent esthetically compelling advances in human knowledge that all students should have the opportunity to appreciate. … Continue reading Millar: Improving education in math and science
The students with the highest Advanced Placement exam scores in Wisconsin are both graduates of Marshfield High School.
Noah Elmhorst and Jamie Robertson, Wisconsin ‘s 2007 Advanced Placement state scholars, were to be recognized at a ceremony at the school, Assistant Principal Elizabeth Dostal said last week.
“We have had past AP State Scholars, but we have never had the top male and the top female in the same year, ” Dostal said. “We were just pleasantly surprised. ”
Marshfield High has 1,385 students and offers 23 AP classes, Dostal said. Elmhorst took 17 of the advanced classes, while Robertson took 13, she said.
Statewide, 25,020 Wisconsin students took 39,811 AP exams in the 2006-2007 school year. More than 68 percent of those students earned a grade of three or higher.
Nationwide, more than 1.4 million high school students took more than 2.5 million AP exams in 2007.
By Friday, the system, known as Infinite Campus, will be available to all parents of Madison School District middle and high school students. Those students, and parents of elementary students, will be able to tap in sometime after the first of the year.
Parents and students receive individual passwords. Parents can e-mail teachers and see whether their children owe any fees. They also can view, on a single calendar, a summary of important upcoming assignment deadlines and school events for all of their children.
With the arrival of Infinite Campus, Madison becomes the 13th of Dane County’s 16 school districts to offer around-the-clock electronic access to student information.
Officials at the three remaining districts — Marshall, Deerfield and Stoughton — plan to install similar systems soon and Stoughton already permits parents to receive frequent e-mail summaries of their children’s grades. More than 80 percent of Stoughton parents have signed up for the e-mail updates.
The Madison School District should be quite pleased with this effort. Initiatives on this scale are never easy. Certainly, much remains to be done, but lifting off, getting a great deal of staff buy in and opening it up to parents is a significant win.
The magic of charter schools isn’t so much the innovation they strive to achieve. The magic is the effect these schools have on parents.
At the Nuestro Mundo charter school on Madison’s East Side, you have to win a lottery to get your child into the program. This is true even for parents like me who live just a few blocks from Allis Elementary School, where Nuestro Mundo (which means “Our World ” in Spanish) is housed.
Imagine that — parents flooding a city school with enrollment applications for their kids. This is the opposite trend that Madison fears and must avoid.
Though rarely discussed in a frank way, Madison is increasingly nervous about middle- to upper-income parents losing faith in city schools and moving to the suburbs. As so many Madison leaders love to say: “As the schools go, so goes the city. ” Madison doesn ‘t want to become Milwaukee.
Related: Where have all the students gone?
n its fourth year, the Madison school district’s Spanish-English charter school is so popular that the parents who helped found the East Side school are having trouble getting their children in and there’s talk of expanding the program.
The district’s other charter school, Wright Middle, is one student above capacity and this year has a waiting list for the first time.
A growing number of residents say Madison needs more places, like charter schools Nuestro Mundo and Wright, that offer unique options to students. In response, the School Board has begun probing possibilities.
“The critical issue is, ‘What do we need to do to engage a broader range of students in what’s happening in school?'” board member Carol Carstensen said at an Oct. 22 Performance and Achievement Committee meeting that examined ways the district could create programs or schools.
In Dane County, charter schools operate in the Madison, Verona, Middleton-Cross Plains, Monona, Marshall and Deerfield districts.
The Members of the Madison School Board have agreed to attend and participate in the Northside Planning Council and the East Attendance Area Parent/Teacher Organization Coalition (NPC/EAAPTO) Forum to be held on Sunday, October 21, 2007 (3:00p.m. at the UW Memorial Union’s Tripp Commons). This joint meeting of the NPC/EAAPTO Coalition and the members of the School Board constitutes an open meeting of the members of the Madison School Board for which public notice must be given pursuant to Wisconsin Statute § 19.82 through § 19.84.
Map & Directions to the UW Memorial Union. Maya Cole has more.
Andy Hall:
But do small, neighborhood schools really lead to higher achievement levels for students?
“I don ‘t think there ‘s any hard-core answer to that, ” said Allan Odden, a UW-Madison education professor and nationally recognized expert in education policy and reform.
Research so far, Odden said, fails to show a clear link between achievement and school size, particularly within the range of sizes in Madison.
The district ‘s smallest elementary school is Nuestro Mundo, with 181 students, and largest is Leopold, with 718.
Odden does offer an opinion, though, of Madison ‘s turmoil over neighborhood schools.
“What I would say is the city has too many schools in some neighborhoods and it costs too much to keep some of them open, ” Odden said. “The issue to me here is not effectiveness (of small schools compared to larger schools). The issue to me is budget and politics. ”
The other trade-off, in some neighborhood schools, is that students may be packed into classrooms or have inferior bathrooms or gyms, compared to their peers in larger, newer buildings.
This is an issue. The classroom fixtures in new school structures (far west elementary building) are quite different than those found in most facilities.
Rebecca Kremble: [Additional Links & Background here] Last week, the consultants hired to organize the superintendent search conducted 31 hour-long individual and focus group sessions to gather information from concerned citizens and stakeholders about the strengths and challenges of the Madison School District, as well as characteristics we would like to see in the next … Continue reading More Notes on the Madison Superintendent Search
Andy Hall: And somehow, in a time window one third the size that many adults take for lunch, 215 young children crowd around picnic-style tables, consume chicken nuggets — or whatever they brought from home — and hustle outside to play. Squeezed by tight school budgets, the federal No Child Left Behind law and Wisconsin … Continue reading Madison schools’ lunch period isn’t what it used to be
Andy Hall: An unprecedented windfall is on the horizon for the city of Madison and Madison School District, promising to relieve some budget pressures and affect major issues such as the city ‘s hiring of 30 police officers and the School Board ‘s debate over whether it still needs to ask voters for more money … Continue reading City, School District get $9 million windfall
Nicholas Heynen: Verona elementary school students who participated in the United Way of Dane County-led Schools of Hope tutoring program showed better-than-expected improvement in reading and class-participation last year, according to program organizers who are kicking off a major volunteer recruitment effort this week. The Schools of Hope program began in 1995 in Madison as … Continue reading Volunteers Sought for Area Schools
Andy Hall: Madison School Board Vice President Lawrie Kobza announced Monday that she won’t seek re-election, and retired teacher Marj Passman immediately jumped into the race to succeed her. Kobza’s move guarantees that the board will gain two new members in the April 1 election. “I’ve very much appreciated the opportunity to serve on the … Continue reading Kobza decides to not run for school board next year
Brittany Schoepp: Children seeing people run from police through their backyard, waking up to the sound of a gunshots, watching drug deals. These were some of the scenes described by West and Southwest Side residents as hundreds of them turned out Wednesday to voice their concerns about crime in their neighborhoods at a meeting with … Continue reading Madison Police Chief Hears About West Side Crime
Andy Hall: Madison resident Allison Cizek, 5, is about to enter kindergarten, but a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that restricts the use of race in assigning children to schools may influence which school district she attends. Allison ‘s parents, Jeff and Jennifer Cizek, filed a petition in Dane County Circuit Court on Thursday seeking … Continue reading Madison Parents Seek Court Order to Open Enroll into Monona Grove School District
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial: Wisconsin should reward hard-working, innovative teachers such as William Farnsworth with merit pay. Farnsworth, a science teacher at Waunakee Intermediate School, received the 2006 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. He was the only Wisconsin teacher among the 93 teachers honored. Performance-based pay serves as an incentive for … Continue reading Advocating Teacher Merit Pay
Gena Kittner: Even as they are first taught to read, kindergartners here could be learning to say hello, goodbye and much more in Japanese, German, Spanish, Arabic or another foreign language. The Oregon School District is considering teaching a different language at each of the district’s three elementary schools, starting in kindergarten and continuing through … Continue reading Oregon may teach foreign languages in grade school
John Matthews: The union is obligated to represent its members interests. The union surveyed its members prior to entering bargaining and the members spoke loudly and clearly: Retain our health insurance options. MTI members value Wisconsin Physicians Service because it enables freedom of choice in medical providers. And MTI members value the services of Group … Continue reading Insurance coverage teachers’ top priority
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial: The district proposed to add two more HMO options for teachers. If a teacher chose any of the three HMO options, the district would pay the full premium. But if a teacher chose the high-cost WPS option, the district would pay only up to the cost of the highest-priced HMO plan. … Continue reading Cut Costs for Teacher Health Insurance (Or Not)
Conversation regarding the recent MMSD / MTI collective bargaining agreement continues: Andy Hall wrote a useful summary, along with some budget numbers (this agreementi s56% of the MMSD’s $339.6M budget): District negotiators headed by Superintendent Art Rainwater had sought to free up money for starting teachers’ salaries by persuading the union to drop Wisconsin Physicians … Continue reading Madison Schools MTI Teacher Contract Roundup
Andy Hall: The number of Wisconsin schools failing to meet federal No Child Left Behind standards this year grew from 87 to 95 and includes all four Madison high schools and three middle schools in the Madison, Middleton-Cross Plains and Mount Horeb school districts. None of the Madison high schools attained the goal for reading … Continue reading NCLB Adequate Yearly Progress & Wisconsin Schools
Gayle Worland: There are plenty of pages to turn in a library, though usually it’s between book covers. At the Pinney Branch Library, carefully arranged and locked behind glass, stand adventures in paper of a much different sort: “Origami By Children,” a traveling exhibit of tiny, ingeniously folded works selected in an international competition by … Continue reading Madison Students Participate in an International Origami Exhibit
Audrey Hoffer: The silence crackled in a downtown hotel Thursday as Isabel A. Jacobson, an eighth-grader from Madison and the sole Wisconsin entrant to the Scripps National Spelling Bee, enunciated “c-y-a-n-o-p-h-y-t-i-o-n.” Ping, the telltale final bell. Shoulders shrugging helplessly. Applause. Misspelling the word cyanophycean, Isabel, the last girl in the group of five finalists, dropped … Continue reading Isabel Jacobson National Spelling Bee Roundup
Gena Kittner: Isabel Jacobson remembers every word she was dealt while on stage at the Scripps National Spelling Bee last year, including the word that ended her run in Round 7 — symminct. This week she’ll return to the national bee in Washington, D.C., with a well-stocked arsenal of spelling bee words and an improved … Continue reading Prime Time is Goal for Madison Speller
Andy Hall: Wisconsin students’ performances improved in math and held steady in reading, language arts, science and social studies, according to annual test data released today. Dane County students generally matched or exceeded state averages and paralleled the state’s rising math scores, although test results in Madison slipped slightly on some measures of reading, language … Continue reading Wisconsin State Student Test Scores Released
Barry Adams: Philip Streich’s science project may be difficult to comprehend. But the awards for his work on nanotubes are clear. Streich, a 16-year-old who is home-schooled in Belmont and takes classes at UW-Platteville, was one of three students out of 1,500 to take home top honors last week at the Intel International Science and … Continue reading 16 Year Old Platteville Student Wins Top Intel Prize
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial: After the Greek King Pyrrhus defeated the Romans in 279 B.C., he cut his celebration short. Pyrrhus realized that the battle had been more costly to his army than it had been to the Romans. His response went something like this: “One more such victory, and we are undone.” Those words … Continue reading Madison School Board Should “Learn from Fiasco”
Susan Lampert Smith: So kids, what did we learn from the Madison School Board’s decision Monday to reverse itself and not consolidate the half-empty Marquette and Lapham elementary schools? We learned that no doesn’t really mean no. We learned that, oops, maybe there is money after all. And most importantly, we learned that whoever yells … Continue reading Madison School Board “Kowtows to Complainers”
Jason Stein: Public schools in Madison and Dane County could save thousands of dollars a year on the costs of transporting private school students under a draft bill in the Legislature. The Assembly legislation would end the requirement that school districts pay certain parents multiple times for the costs of taking students to the same … Continue reading Fair support or unfair subsidy: Private school busing faces legislative review
Andy Hall: Two weeks after voting to close Marquette Elementary, the Madison School Board bowed to public pressure Monday evening and decided to keep the school open. The board’s 5-2 vote was greeted by cheers and a standing ovation from about 50 parents, children and activists who campaigned to save the school at 1501 Jenifer … Continue reading Madison School Board Votes to Keep Marquette School Open
Andy Hall: But when students resume classes in the fall, fewer special education teachers like Bartlett will be available to work with Karega and 228 other of the Madison School District’s 3,600 special education students. That’s because the School Board last week voted to save $2.2 million in the 2007-08 school year — by far … Continue reading Madison Schools’ Special Ed Reductions
The Capital Times: ‘Tis the season for student honors. Two students from Madison West and two students from Mount Horeb High School recently took first prizes at the Distributive Education Clubs of America’s 61st conference in Orlando, Fla. Jacinth Sohi and Payton Larson from Madison West High School were winners in the business law and … Continue reading Area students win honors, scholarships
Deborah Ziff: The Madison School Board may reverse its decision to consolidate Lapham and Marquette elementary schools after a neighborhood group mobilized in opposition to the budget cut. The board is nearing the five votes needed to overturn its decision. Four of the seven board members — Carol Carstensen, Beth Moss, Johnny Winston Jr. and … Continue reading Madison School Board to Reconsider Marquette / Lapham Consolidation
Susan Troller: Although the Madison School Board so far has held its ground on a host of unpopular decisions, it may be approaching a tipping point, at least on the issue of school consolidation. The School Board’s meeting was a multi-ring circus Monday night as a capacity crowd presented a collective howl of anguish about … Continue reading Critics pack meeting on unpopular school decisions
The Capital Times: Members of The Capital Times nonsupervisory staff have chosen reporter Susan Troller as the winner of the 2007 Allegretti Award. They judged Troller’s work as best carrying on the legacy of former Capital Times reporter and editorial writer Dan Allegretti in exposing injustices in the community. Troller’s colleagues honored her coverage of … Continue reading Troller, schools reporter, wins 2007 Allegretti Award
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial: When the Madison School Board approved budget cuts last week, it underscored a message important to every school district in Wisconsin: Schools can no longer afford to conduct business as usual. If Wisconsin is to preserve high quality education, its school boards, administrators, teachers, students, parents and taxpayers must recognize the … Continue reading For schools, status quo is not an option
Susan Troller: Marquette Elementary students may be happy to know that if they must move to Lapham Elementary next year as part of a consolidation plan, the teachers they know from Marquette will most likely go with them. The Madison teachers union and the Madison school district have reached an agreement, similar to one used … Continue reading Marquette Teachers will go to Lapham
Susan Troller: When newly elected Madison School Board members Maya Cole and Beth Moss went into Monday night’s crucial budget meeting, both intended to vote against closing schools, consistent with their campaign promises. But by the time the seven-member board patched together the various cuts, additions and compromises necessary to restore some programs and services … Continue reading Board members explain votes to close schools
In The Capital Times for May 4, 2007, the editorial board analyzes the recent vote of the Madison School Board to close Marquette Elementary School. Doing what nobody wants to do
Bill Cooney: In an anticipated move, Big Eight Conference athletic directors unanimously voted to reject the Madison School Board’s proposal to consolidate prep boys golf teams beginning next spring. With a 9-0 vote, it was agreed that combining athletic teams was strictly a participation issue as opposed to a financial one, Madison Memorial athletic director … Continue reading More on the MMSD Golf Team Consolidation
Andy Hall and Rob Hernandez: The Madison School District may have “opened a big door” by authorizing the consolidation of golf teams at its four high schools into two programs as a tiny part of its $7.9 million in budget cuts, a Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association official said Tuesday. The Madison School Board included that … Continue reading Consolidated Madison Golf Team Causes Controversy
Susan Troller: Board members tussled over dozens of suggestions to try to find money to return various programs and services to the district that had been cut by the administration in an effort to balance the $339.6 million budget. The administration had originally proposed about $8 million in cuts, including $2 million from special education … Continue reading 2007 / 2008 Budget Approved: School Board keeps Lindbergh open
Development on the isthmus continues, according to two two stories in the news today, making the prospect of closing central-city schools rather shortsighted. From a longer story by Mike Ivey in The Capital Times: E. Dayton Apartments: In other action Monday night, a plan from developer Scott Lewis and architect John Sutton for a five-story, … Continue reading Isthmus growth continues; closing plans shortsighted
Susan Troller: Catholic school parents and administrators are upset by proposed Madison school district budget cuts that would eliminate the bus service they receive to get their kids to school. But the school district is hoping to trim nearly $230,000 from its budget by offering more than $162,000 directly to parents to transport their children … Continue reading MMSD’s Proposed Private School Busing Reductions
Andy Hall: A controversial plan to close and consolidate schools on Madison’s North and East sides appears dead a week before the Madison School Board’s self- imposed deadline for determining $7.9 million in spending reductions. Four of the board’s seven members plan to vote against Superintendent Art Rainwater’s proposal to save $1 million by closing … Continue reading 2007 / 2008 $339M+ MMSD Budget: “School Shuffle is Losing”
Susan Troller’s recent article on possible school closings mentioned that some Madison Schools have smaller populations than others in the District. I’ve posted a simple table that summarizes MMSD elementary, middle and high school student population numbers with those from nearby suburban communities: Middleton-Cross Plains, Monona Grove, Stoughton, Sun Prairie, Verona and Waunakee. MMSD facility … Continue reading Madison Area School Student Population Numbers
Susan Troller: At the heart of the issue is the fact that the East High School attendance area has more elementary schools and schools with smaller populations than the other attendance areas in the district. Of the 10 elementary schools in the East High attendance area, only Hawthorne has more than 300 students. By contrast, … Continue reading MMSD School Closing Discussion
From an Associated Press story in the Capital Times by Scott Bauer: MADISON (AP) – If Wisconsin businesses would pay the national average in state and local taxes, an additional $1.3 billion would flow to school districts, fire departments and other governmental services, a new report concluded. The study released Wednesday by the Institute for … Continue reading Wisconsin businesses don’t pay their fair share
John Nichols: So how did Cole secure her 3,000-vote majority? The answer would appear to have a lot to do with threats by school administrators to consolidate and perhaps close schools on the isthmus. A few months before the election, the administration floated the notion that budgets could be balanced by radically altering how Lapham … Continue reading School closings critical in board race
WSJ Editorial – The next time you’re shocked by the announcement of yet another school referendum in your community, don’t tee off on the school board.
Tuesday, April 3rd Madison votes returned Johnny Winston, Jr., to the School Board and elected two new board members – Maya Cole and Beth Moss. Election of Cole, Moss may ease thoughts of school closings As candidates, both Cole and Moss have said they would look for other places to make cuts rather than disrupt … Continue reading Cole, Moss and Winston – Newly Elected and Re-Elected to the MMSD School Board
Vote Today – I’m endorsing Maya Cole for Seat 5. A letter to the editor On Tuesday, please join me in voting for Maya Cole. For many years, I’ve been an active advocate for Madison’s schools, working on campaigns and task forces, as well as a volunteer in schools and a PTO officer. I’ve been … Continue reading Cole’s vision makes her best fit for board – Vote Today
Ruth Robarts, who supports Maya Cole and Rick Thomas for School Board, wrote the following letter to the editor: I voted no on Carol Carstensen’s proposed three-year referendum for several reasons. First, a referendum requires careful planning. Two weeks’ notice did not allow the School Board to do the necessary analysis or planning. Second, the … Continue reading Ruth Robarts: Let’s take school closings off the table, start the planning needed for another referendum
Dear Editor: My ten years on the Madison School Board have convinced me that the board’s highest priorities must be new ideas and new community partnerships. Maya Cole gets my vote for Seat 5 because innovation is her top priority and she has the energy to bring the community together to plan for the future. … Continue reading Ruth Robarts: Cole is just what the School Board needs
“If we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it right,” board member Lucy Mathiak argued for the majority of the board in rejecting longtime board member Carol Carstensen’s push for the referendum. School Board Member Mathiak has also detailed a number of options other than closing near eastside schools, which she does not … Continue reading Hasty Vote Wisely Avoided
COMPLAINT [67K PDF] HAS BEEN FILED AGAINST MADISON METROPOLITAN SCHOOL DISTRICT IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF WISCONSIN Linda Martin, Plaintiff v. Madison Metropolitan School District and District officials Roger Price, Renee Bremer, Mary Teppo and Donna Williams, Defendants. The District was Ms. Martin’s employer. Ms. Martin received a right … Continue reading Linda Martin Files Suit Against the MMSD
Our schools need a new School Board majority, one committed to open government, including transparent budgeting and decision-making, and accountability to the community. The next board will also hire the new superintendent and handle his or her performance evaluation, something Superintendent Art Rainwater has had little of from the current majority. We stand at a … Continue reading Board needs Cole and Thomas
Anita Clark, Wisconsin State Journal, writes: Thousands more voters than usual are seeking absentee ballots from the Madison city clerk’s office as Tuesday’s election approaches.
“Please don’t ruin our east side schools,” said parent Sue Arneson at Wednesday night’s hearing on closing east side schools.
From a story by Deborah Ziff in the Wisconsin State Journal: The Madison School Board voted against asking taxpayers to help stave off budget cuts as Madison public schools face a projected $10.5 million budget shortfall. The board voted 5-2 against holding a June referendum, a measure proposed by School Board Treasurer Carol Carstensen. Outgoing … Continue reading School Board rejects referendum
Kristion Knutsen continues Isthmus’s excellent weekly Take Home Tests: The number of low-income kids coming into the Madison schools has accelerated in recent years, posing a new set of challenges for educators. We’ve asked the Madison school board candidates to talk about those challenges, including the apparent loss of some middle-class families who’ve left Madison … Continue reading April 3, 2007 Madison School Board Election Update
The Capital Times: Under Johnny Winston Jr.’s leadership, the often contentious Madison School Board has become a model of cooperative, respectful and efficient governance. No, the board’s not perfectly harmonious, but with Winston at the helm, it’s far more functional than it has been for a long time. Indeed, Winston’s proven to be exactly the … Continue reading Cap Times Editorial: “Give Winston Another Term”
The Capital Times: Moss is an experienced educator who has taught diverse students in classrooms overseas and in urban districts in the U.S. Moss is an incredibly active parent, who has been a classroom volunteer at Glenn Stephens Elementary School, a Schools of Hope tutor, a Madison School & Community Recreation program club coordinator, and … Continue reading Cap Times Editorial: “Beth Moss for School Board”
Ron Seely: Forget basketball. The real action in Madison on Saturday was on a brightly lit stage at Monona Grove High School where 47 gutsy young people stared down the vagaries of the English language and slugged it out verbally in the Badger State Spelling Bee. The ending matched the thrill of a double-overtime NCAA … Continue reading Madison Spelling Champ Does it Again
Scott Milfred: It’s a contentious fact that has run through so many Madison School Board races and referendums in recent years: Madison schools spend a lot — $12,111 per student during the 2005-06 school year. If the district is spending that much, how can it be in crisis? The answer is complex and a bit … Continue reading Hard MMSD Budget Still Has Wiggle Room
Wisconsin State Journal Endorsements: Seat 3: Rick Thomas (opposed by Beth Moss) Seat 4: Johnny Winston, Jr (opposed by Tom Brew) Seat 5: Maya Cole (opposed by Marj Passman) Isthmus latest Candidate Take Home Test on Budget Cuts (or the reduction in the $333M+ budget increase) Seat 3: Beth Moss vs. Rick Thomas Seat 4: … Continue reading Spring Election Update – Vote April 3!
WSJ Endorse Thomas for Seat 3 Rick Thomas has run a successful business. He understands the importance of serving customers. He has made decisions about which employees, equipment and services he can afford and which he can’t afford. He also understands and appreciates schools. He has been a substitute teacher and a volunteer tutor. He … Continue reading WSJ Endorses Rick Thomas
Mary Yeater Rathbun: Mayoral candidate Ray Allen told 250 Rotarians Wednesday that he would pull cops out of the schools, but later told The Capital Times that is not what he meant. Allen said after the debate that what he meant to say, as he has said numerous times before, is that he would pull … Continue reading Mayor Candidates Debate City Schools
Andy Hall: The Madison School District’s struggle to handle a $10.5 million budget shortfall moved into a new stage Monday night, as 17 people spoke out against proposed cuts and a School Board member urged her colleagues to turn to voters for more money. The School Board began struggling with the budget cuts following Superintendent … Continue reading Parents Balk at Proposed Cuts
Doug Erickson on the 2007/2008 $345M budget (up from $333M in 2006/2007) for 24,342 students): As feared by some parents, the recommendations also included a plan to consolidate schools on the city’s East Side. Marquette Elementary students would move to Lapham Elementary and Sherman Middle School students would be split between O’Keeffe and Black Hawk … Continue reading “Bitter Medicine for Madison Schools”:
07/08 budget grows 3.6% from 333M (06/07) to $345M with Reductions in the Increase
Doug Erickson: Madison School District administrators are scheduled to announce today their recommendations for millions of dollars in program and staff cuts, a grim step in a budget process that typically consumes the School Board’s attention each spring. Larger class sizes at the elementary level and bigger caseloads for special education teachers likely will be … Continue reading School District Annual Reductions in Budget Increases