All posts by AdminsXss94m

88 Years to Close Achievement Gap!

Based on a recent front-page story in Isthmus and other data provided by MMSD, here are some conclusions about closing the achievement gap at the advanced level of the third grade reading tests.
1. Eight schools increased the percentage of African American kids scoring advanced between the 1997-1998 and 2002-2003 school years.
Nine schools showed a decrease.
Seven schools showed no change.
2. Twelve schools had no African-American students in the advanced category in the 1997-98 year.
Nine had no students in advanced in 2002-2003.
Five school had none in 1997-98 and 2002-03.
3. Between the 1997-98 school year and the 2002-2003 school year, the percentage of African-American students scoring advanced rose from 8.03% to 10.08% — an increase of .4% per year.
4. At the current rate of increase, it will take almost 88 years to close the achievement gap at the advanced level! (In 2002-2003, 45% of the white students scored advanced. (45% – 10% = 35 divided by .4 = 88.)

School Board Budget Amendments – Keys Proposes Elementary Strings Students Pay for Custodians and Building Maintenance

On Wednesday, May 5th, six of seven Madison School Board members turned in their budget amendments to the Superintendent’s proposed 04-05 MMSD School Budget. Along with their budget amendments, school board members handed in recommendation on how they would “fund” their recommended changes to the Superintendent’s proposed budget.

Continue reading School Board Budget Amendments – Keys Proposes Elementary Strings Students Pay for Custodians and Building Maintenance

MMSD Administration’s Cost Analysis of Elementary Strings is Out of Tune – A Critique

If the City of Madison is to have confidence in the School Board’s decisions, a fair and equitable budget process that is clear and understandable to the public is essential.
In late April 2004, the District Administration responded to the Bill Keys’ question about the cost of the District’s elementary strings program. The following letter to the School Board is a critique of that analysis which concluded the budget and curriculum information presented to the Board on elementary strings was done in a manner inconsistent with other cost studies and was incomplete.

Continue reading MMSD Administration’s Cost Analysis of Elementary Strings is Out of Tune – A Critique

String ’em up – Strings Hits the Isthmus

In an article by Vikki Kratz in the Isthmus, published on May 7, 2004, the author wonders if the MMSD is tone deaf.
“Bill Keys, president of the Madison Board of Education, recently asked for a budget analysis of the popular 4th and 5th grade strings program. … The move by Keys was the last straw for Rick Neuenfeldt, the district’s coordinator of fine arts, who says he can no longer work in the district’s anti-arts atmosphere. ”
The analsysis that exasperated the District’s Fine Arts Coordinator was not prepared by him, but by District business professionals, unfamiliar with the academic curriculum. The analysis stated that a fee to cover the costs of the program would need to be nearly $500 per academic year.
The elementary strings program costs 1/4 what the District spends on extracurricular sports ($2 million per year) but a possible fee would be more than 5 times higher than what is currently paid for by any participant in a MMSD extracurricular sport this school year.
Examining the costs of all the District’s programs and services ought to be part of a robust budget process – targeting one program seems purposeful and biased. This approach runs the risk of losing rather than building the community’s confidence in its School Board.
The complete article and reference material is included below and can also be read at:
http://www.isthmus.com/features/docfeed/docs/document.php?intdocid=76

Continue reading String ’em up – Strings Hits the Isthmus

School Fees – School Board Presentation

Fees help to pay for extracurricular, special school activities that are not required by state law but that are valuable to a child�s education. Fees for extracurricular, special activities need to be developed fairly and equitably across all activities.
Introduction: Exponential increase in social service, special education, ESL expenses � unfunded mandates that hit the District�s bottom line under revenue caps � means less money is available for school activities.
The following presentation on school fees was made by Bruce Kahn and Barb Schrank before the MMSD School Board on February 16, 2004 and addressed the following questions:
Why are there school fees today?
What are the costs of Extra-Curricular activities?
How do Extra-Curricular costs compare to instructional costs?
What happens when fees don�t cover costs?
What are some suggestions for your consideration?
Inform Parents and the Community �
Fees share the costs
Fees save academics
Fees save extra-curricular activities
Recommendation: Bring the Community to the Table � To explore alternative funding options now � to develop a plan.
Summary: We cannot wait for school funding options to be worked out � our kids are at risk of losing these important activities now. We need to take meaningful action immediately � You can e-mail Madison’s School Board members at comments@madison.k12.wi.us.

Continue reading School Fees – School Board Presentation

Elementary Strings Rally A Success

About forty elementary string students serenaded the School Board members as they entered the McDaniels Auditorium Monday evening, May 3rd. Nearly 200 parents and children filled the auditorium to demonstrate to School Board members their support for the academic program.
If you have not written the School Board about the strings program, take a moment to compose an e-mail. Ask your children if they want to write a letter to School Board members (545 W. Dayton Street, Madison, 53703) – School Board members read these letters AND THEY DO MATTER.
MMSD School Board e-mail: comments@madison.k12.wi.us
Public Hearing on the Budget – May 13 5:00 p.m. in the McDaniels Auditorium.

Continue reading Elementary Strings Rally A Success

Adolescents and Depression Presentation May 18 at Cherokee Heights Middle School

Attention: Parents and Teachers of Adolescents
Join the Cherokee PTO and Dr. Hugh Johnston, Clinical Associate Professor of Child Psychiatry, UW Medical School & Department of Educational Psychology for a Question and Answer session on Adolescence and Depression Tuesday, May 18th (formerly May 12th) 7-8:30 pm Cherokee Heights Middle School LMC 4301 Cherokee Drive
Dr. Johnston will give a brief overview of Teen depression and the antidepressant medication controversy. The remainder of the evening will be devoted to an informal question/answer discussion.
Dr. Johnston is a child psychiatrist, on the clinical faculty of the UW Psychiatry Department and co-director of the Child Psychopharmacology Information Service. In addition to his educational and research endeavors, he volunteers as the medical consultant and board president for the Rainbow Project, Inc., a non-profit mental health clinic that serves young children and families challenged by a variety of mental health issues including abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, and domestic violence.
In lieu of a speaker�s fee, Dr. Johnston asks attendees to consider a donation to the Rainbow Project.

Advanced Placement

There is a tremendous disparity across the district in the availability of AP courses and thus accessibility to AP exams, and, by extension, the opportunity to earn college credit. The explanation is that there is a debate about the efficacy of the program with individual high schools reaching different conclusions. I come down on the side of the AP. Whether you agree on the merits, it’s still of concern that there is such wide variability across district high schools. Who should decide?

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Reading Instruction Workshop

2004 DIRECT INSTRUCTION TRAINING AND CONFERENCE
August 9-10, 2004
Edgewood College Campus
Madison, Wisconsin

  • Direct Instruction Training for both Beginning and Advanced
  • Sessions Specially Designed for Deaf/Hard of Hearing Teachers
  • College Credit Available
  • Great New Location

KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Sara Tarver, Ph.D., Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Issues and Debates about Direct Instruction
FEATURED PRESENTER
Terry Dodds, Author of the new High-Performance Writing Program
OTHER PRESENTERS
Tonja Gallagher, M.S., Doctoral Student and Teaching Assistant, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Jane Jung , Ph.D., Second Grade Teacher, Lapham School, Madison,WI
Dolores Mishelow, former principal in Milwaukee, WI
Norm Mishelow, principal of Barton School in Milwaukee, U.S. Dept. of Ed. Blue Ribbon Award Winner
Beverly Trezek, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison
Chris Uelmen, M.S., Curriculum Coordinator, Core Knowledge Charter School, Verona, WI

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WSJ Opinion Piece on School Board Governance

Today’s Wisconsin State Journal has a useful opinion piece on MMSD’s budget process & governance. This editorial is timely, given the current discussions regarding the district’s $310M+ budget:

The Madison School Board is in the midst of tackling the district’s budget woes, which include a $10 million shortfall between what the district can spend and what it wants to spend.
Board members can whine all they please that the “current way (the state) funds schools is broken,” but here’s the bottom line: The state school funding formula is not going to change this spring. If they want to fix something broken closer to home, they should start with their own flawed budgeting instead.
How bad is the district’s budgeting? Well, for starters, the board began debating cuts to the budget March 11, according to Barbara Schrank, a parent who was active in protesting last year’s proposed budget cuts, but they didn’t see the actual budget until three weeks later, on March 31. A month later, board members were told they couldn’t compare this year’s “same service” budget to next year’s “same service” budget because of computer software problems. And the board isn’t expected to finalize the budget until June, although layoff notices must be turned in by May 22

California Schools Update – The Economist

The Economist has a look at the state of eduction in California:

In Belmont, a huge high school with 5,500 pupils, security guards at the door, gangs in the classrooms and a 40% graduation rate, it is hard to imagine how children could ever learn anything in such a forbidding place. Yet even the better schools seem overrun. Placencia Elementary School, for instance, is full of smiling pupils, but like many other schools it does not have proper terms; instead, it follows a �year-round� schedule, with the students being rotated through the classrooms (three groups in, one out). But at least the pupils are being taught close to home. Every day, 6,000 children from the Belmont area are bused out to other districts. �Can it be good,� Mr Alonzo asks, �for a five-year-old to be woken up at 6am to travel two hours for a half-day of education?�
District F demonstrates what one leading Democrat calls the �these-are-not-our-children� attitude of white voters. With their own children now either educated privately or safe in smaller suburban districts, they have not stumped up the cash to build the schools needed to educate the new browner-skinned arrivals. As Roy Romer, the head of the LAUSD, points out, the same community found the money to build the sparkling Disney Concert Hall and the Staples conference centre.

Strings Community Action

A. Introduction:
There’s no need for community action if the MMSD Administration and BOE state support for the current elementary strings academic curriculum. They don’t. When the Board members don’t say yes, it means no, given their recent history with this curriculum.
The MMSD Board of Education adopted and approved the elementary strings program as a necessary component of its Music Education Curriculum in the late 1980s. Standards and benchmarks were added in the late 1990s. The BOE has neither discussed nor changed its decisions on this curriculum.
The recent treatment of the elementary strings curriculum is another example of what happens when our BOE is lacking Long Range Plans for curriculum, for funding and for letting the Administration call the shots for kids rather than the BOE.

Continue reading Strings Community Action

Elementary Strings – Call to Action

Who: Students, Parents, Teachers and Citizens � Elementary Strings Kids Need Your Help!
What: Rally in Support of the Elementary Strings Program � Grades 4 & 5.
When: Monday, May 3, 2004 � Meet at 6:30 p.m. to organize/picket before the 7:15 p.m.regular School Board Meeting and personal appearances. String teachers will organize children who bring their string instruments to play a couple of songs from the spring string festival.
Where: Doyle Building McDaniels Auditorium at 545 W. Dayton Street.
Why: To let the MMSD School Board know that we do not want to see elementary strings added to the cut list this year. No assessment of the cut�s curriculum impact has been made.
On March 21, Board President Bill Keys asked the Administration to prepare an analysisof the cost of the elementary strings program. The Administration�s analysis, which was released only last Thursday, April 22, was very biased, incorrect and unfavorable toward thecurriculum and proposed a $493 fee to cover the full cost of the program � no other activity has a 100% fee! Blatant, inequitable treatment � not fair to kids or Madison!
There is a chance the elementary strings program could be put on the cut list by School Boardmembers, and the May 3rd rally at the auditorium is to let the School Board hear from the public in a loud unison voice – NO.
Time is of the essence. Budget decisions will be made very soon. Here�s the budget timeline:

  • May 3 � Budget workshop before the 7:15 p.m. regular school board meeting. Further review of the proposed 2004-2005 budget.
  • May 5 � Board member amendments to the MMSD Administration budget cut list to be submitted. At this time a School Board member could recommend including elementary strings (4th and 5th grade) on the cut list.
  • May 10 � Board budget workshop to discuss and vote on Board member proposed amendments. Four votes are needed to include/exclude an item from the budget cut list
  • May 13 � Public Hearing on the Budget at 7 p.m. in the McDaniels Auditorium.
  • May 17 � Board budget workshop � determine personnel layoffs.

Come to the rally and let your voice be heard. Tell others. Call Board members. E-mail the Board: comments@madison.k12.wi.us.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead
PDF Version (print/distribute) 40K

Dumbing Down Our Schools

Ruth Mitchell writes:

If you visited these classes and didn’t look at the sign over the door of the school, you might think you were in an elementary school, or a middle school at best. But such classes are not atypical in large urban high schools, where, except for the Advanced Placement (AP) and honors classes, much of the classroom work is below grade level.
On one trip to a Midwestern city, I found one out of eight assignments at grade level in two high schools. A colleague popped in on about 40 English classes in the course of a day at a West Coast high school and found one — just one — class where real learning was going on.
This is the dirty secret in the wars over teacher quality: the low level of academic work at all levels in far too many schools. The consequences of low-level work are seen in poor test results: Students given only work that is below their grade level cannot pass standardized tests about material they have never seen.

A Priority Driven Budget

Model Cycle for Priority-Driven Budget
Purpose: Student achievement priorities drive budget allocations.

Administration uses specific, measurable goals to review student achievement inprior year according to district?s ?Strategic Priorities?. For example, it reviews reading, math, social studies, science curriculum for all student groups as well as programs aligned to district standards. Administration should ensure that suggestions for change come from the staff level that will implement the changes. Board committees, such as Performance & Achievement, monitor the review throughout the year.

Opportunities for public, staff input

Administration reviews facility, maintenance and non-instructional departments for prior year seeking efficiencies. Board committees, such as Budget & Finance and Long Range Planning, monitor the review throughout the year.

Opportunities for public, staff input

Before January, Administration recommends curriculum & program changes to improve student achievement. Appropriate committees review recommendations before sending them to full Board.

Opportunities for public, staff input

In January, Administration recommends budget for the next year allocating resources based on its analysis (connection between curriculum and programs and desired student achievement).

Opportunities for public, staff input

Where recommended budget exceeds revenue forecast for coming year, Administration presents funding alternatives including private partnerships or changes in fees.

Opportunities for public, staff input

Administration recommends modifications and cuts necessary to balance budget for coming year.

Opportunities for public, staff input

Board reviews recommendations for modifications and cuts, adopting or revising administrative recommendations.

Board approves budget for coming year. If budget exceeds revenues, Board considers referendum or further cuts.
Model based on recommendations in Team Leadership for Student Achievement, Ellen Henderson et al., National School Boards Association & American Association of School Administrators, 2001.
[40K PDF]