Of course you know that today is National Handwriting Day, in honour of John Hancock’s birthday. But our days of mastering penmanship seem long behind us. Kitty Burns Florey ruminates on this lost art
Did you get one? Nor did I. I stayed home and watched the inauguration on a screen. But a million inauguration invitations were sent out. There was a time when each of these would have been addressed, floridly, by hand, but needless to say these hordes of envelopes were done by machine.
And so is everything. With the exception of the odd thank-you note or letter from Aunt Gertrude in Florida, we seldom see anything handwritten in our mailboxes. I suspect there are actually people alive today who have never received a letter written with a pen on paper and mailed in an envelope with a stamp.
All posts by Jim Zellmer
We continue to fail our Chicago Public School kids
There is a school of thought-one that Mayor Richard Daley subscribes to-that says that if you are a good manager, you can manage anything.
That is the announced basis for Daley choosing Ron Huberman to head up the Chicago Public Schools, replacing Arne Duncan, who is now serving President Barack Obama as the Secretary of Education.
I have no doubt that Huberman, 37, who formerly was in charge of the Chicago Transit Authority, is intelligent. I have no doubt that Daley is a huge booster.
I have serious doubts, however, about Huberman’s fitness to lead the Chicago Public Schools.
The mayor pats himself on the back for choosing Arne Duncan, and before him, Paul Vallas. He says that the schools were in horrible shape in 1995 when the law was changed to allow him to take control of the school district. He said that “educators” were in charge of the district then, and it was an abysmal failure.
Super-secret superintendent contracts
I had a couple of interesting run-ins Tuesday when I was trying to get copies of some superintendents’ contracts in light of HISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra’s sweet deal. When I called Dallas ISD’s press office and identified myself as a reporter, two different people asked why I wanted a copy of Superintendent Michael Hinojosa’s contract. I told them — because I wanted to see how Saavedra’s deal compared — but, for the record, under the Texas Public Information Act, a superintendent’s contract (or any public document) is public, no matter why the requester is asking.
It’s also illegal for a governmental entity to ask a person why they want a particular document (see Section 552.222). Props, though, to Dallas for sending me a link to the contract with an hour or two. And speaking of links, why don’t all districts post copies of their superintendents’ contracts in an easy-to-find spot on their Web sites? Anyone?
Rhee Says Economy Forces D.C. to Cut Wage Proposal
D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee said yesterday that the deteriorating economy will force the District to cut the wage proposal in its contract offer to the Washington Teachers’ Union. At the same time, Rhee spoke in upbeat and conciliatory terms about negotiations with the union, now in their 15th month.
The financial package Rhee offered in July called for a minimum increase of 28 percent over five years, depending on which salary “tier” teachers selected. But with the District expected to collect at least $456 million less in tax revenue during the 2010 fiscal year, she said the situation has changed. Rhee said she would soon submit a revised final offer.
“Obviously, we’re in a much different situation financially,” Rhee said at a mid-morning news conference, called to highlight improved rates of graduation, attendance and service to special education students.
The chancellor said the financial downturn has not weakened what she has described as commitments from private foundations to fund an unprecedented five-year program of “reform stipends” and performance bonuses for teachers. An information packet given to the union this summer said senior teachers could make as much as $135,000 annually in salary and bonuses. Rhee has declined to name the organizations but has mentioned four to private audiences: Gates, Broad, Dell and Robertson.
College student information is in public domain
Unless University of Wisconsin students specifically restrict access to their directory information, businesses such as credit card companies and lenders can get a list of every student’s name, address, phone number and more from the university for a nominal fee.
Some parents of Wisconsin college students questioned how student information was released after they received official-looking letters in recent weeks urging them to pay $49 to apply for financial aid.
The letters included student names and where they attended school, leading some parents to believe the fee was required by the university, but the mailings were from College Financial Advisory, a business that charges money for information available free online.
Faye A. Ara, executive vice president of operations for the San Diego-based company, said the names were purchased from private vendors, none of which Ara would name.
UW-Madison did not provide the names to the company, said Registrar Joanne Berg. After some UW-Madison parents called the university to ask about the letters, the school made clear it does not endorse the business and posted a warning online.
Oconomowoc students to take act overseas to Fringe Fest
As plots go, this theater production has some twists that are still turning.
Tom Klubertanz had been a hotshot drama teacher at Wauwatosa West – even named Wisconsin Teacher of the Year in 2000 – when he was invited to seek a place in the prestigious Fringe festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, this summer.
By the time the invitation arrived, he’d moved on to Oconomowoc High School, succeeding Vic Passante, who retired in 2007 after 33 years leading the program. Klubertanz applied anyway and learned last spring that he’d been accepted.
It was some honor, with only 42 American schools accepted among the 1,600 applicants invited to apply. Now he’s taking 30 Oconomowoc High School drama students with him in August, but they’ve got work ahead.
They’re madly working to raise funds to help pay the hefty $5,500 per student cost. They’re also furiously working to write and perfect an original work that they will perform five times in Edinburgh.
The Fringe, for the uninitiated, is billed as the largest performing arts festival in the world, where hundreds of groups from around the world perform theater, dance, music and similar arts. It coincides with other events featuring classical dance and music, films, gallery art, books and piper and drummer performances, all under the umbrella The Edinburgh Festival.
Education Still the Pathway to Freedom
In recognition of Black History Month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has presented a flattering economic sketch of black people in the United States. In this drawing by the numbers, we are seen as a relatively young and hearty workforce — 17 million black people strong — poised to weather the difficult economic times ahead.
Nearly two-thirds of us are 45 and younger, according to the bureau. And more than one in four are employed in education and health service fields — where some of the fastest growing occupations are expected to be found through 2016.
The portrait, based on 2008 data, is relentlessly upbeat, without even a hint that 2.2 million black people were unemployed last year. It is as though they had been airbrushed from the picture altogether.
Yet, if you really want to cut black unemployment, who better to look at than those of us who have jobs? What you’ll see is a strong correlation between work and education. Hard to tell that when the numbers crunchers start whittling away at school programs in a recession.
Anti-truancy drive removed French
The scrapping of compulsory modern languages in England’s secondary schools was a consequence of truancy crackdowns, the BBC has learnt.
Former education secretary Estelle Morris, who took the decision in 2002, says the aim was a flexible curriculum for teenagers brought back into school.
Compulsory languages for these returned truants did not seem “appropriate”.
The number of pupils taking French GCSE has dropped 30% since it ceased to be compulsory for the over-14s in 2004.
The weakness of language learning in England has been a recurrent concern – with repeated warnings that the country lags behind international competitors.
KIPP’s Union
There has been a lot of commentary about this NYT story about the unionization drive at the KIPP school in New York. Two quick points, which are both obviously open to debate.
First, I don’t know exactly what is or is not happening at the school. But, isn’t this one possible counter-hypothesis to the assertions in the story: This school is populated with a lot of people — on all sides of the issue of whether or not to unionize — who care deeply about kids, care deeply about the school and its mission, and are going through this process for the first time? In other words, there is an assumption that this is Wal-Mart or some other entity with a track record of and skill set for fighting union drives when in fact it may just be a case of people fumbling through a new and complicated situation.
Loudoun County School Budget Freezes Salaries
The proposal would fully fund the Loudoun County School Board’s $747 million budget, which also freezes salaries, increases staff health-care costs and imposes new fees on students and cuts $12 million from this year’s level of local funding costs. Overall education funding is approved by the supervisors, but line-item spending power is in the hands of the School Board.
Bowers’s presentation also included proposals for local funding cuts of up to 15 percent, something supervisors asked to see so that they could better understand the consequences of the budget crunch. If they opt for the most extensive cuts, 404 jobs would be slashed and many public programs would be cut back or eliminated.
In Favor of (Much Needed) Education Funds
The House version of the stimulus plan also includes a one-time allotment for building maintenance. This state pays little more than half the costs of maintaining schools. No surprise then that most school districts have maintenance backlogs that are frightening and potentially dangerous. The $200 million in one-time money our state would receive would help whittle the backlog. The Senate’s version? Nada.
Fortunately, lawmakers in both houses grasp the need to spend more in special education. Washington state is in line for $120 million in new annual spending courtesy of the economic stimulus. For Seattle and many other school districts, the money would put more special-education services in all schools and end the segregating of kids with special needs in just a few schools. The money would also pay for training teachers to work with children with learning disabilities.
There will be new federal money for technology and to pay for educating homeless children. Pell grants will be increased and the underfunded No Child Left Behind federal law will get a much-needed infusion.
Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer Advocates Math & Science Teacher Accreditation
Steve Ballmer’s speech to a recent Democrat party retreat at Kings Mill Resort in Williamsburg, VA.:
This means investment in education is critical, and I’m really encouraged by the very heavy emphasis on education that’s in the stimulus package.
We really need to transform math and science education in America. We need to improve teacher training, teacher quality.
I was talking earlier in the day with some folks about just how many of our math and science teachers don’t have the correct training and accreditation, and that stands in the way of us really breaking through.
For those who are already in the workforce, we need programs that provide ongoing education and training, so they can be successful in this knowledge-based economy. For those who are unemployed, we need new technical skills training to give those people a start back up the economic ladder. And we are going to need lifelong learning programs to keep people fresh, as innovation and technology continues to power the economy.
The second thing we need-and I’ll tell the Speaker this was written even before our meeting this morning-we need greater government investment in our nation’s science and technology infrastructure.
I came in, flew in red eye, was a little groggy this morning when I got here. I sat down with the speaker at 8:00 AM, and she woke me right up. She said there are four things I want you to make sure you understand are a priority: science, science, science, and science. I was awake by the end of the fourth science for sure, and I couldn’t agree more wholeheartedly.
Survey for Secondary Teachers of Government & Social Studies
Cindy Koeppel @ The Dirksen Center, via email:
The Dirksen Congressional Center of Pekin, Il — http://www.dirksencongressionalcenter.org — has partnered with Federal Network, Inc. of Washington, DC — http://www.fednet.net/ — to develop a website geared to secondary teachers of Government and Social Studies. Our initial idea is this: the teacher in the classroom, when teaching concepts and terms relevant to the legislative branch, will be able to show sample footage from the House and Senate organized in a glossary format. If, for example, you are teaching about a filibuster, you will be able to click on “filibuster” and see digitized video of senators filibustering.
We are very excited by the prospects for this cutting-edge offering. In order to make this conceptual product a success, we seek your feedback and commentary. The product is for teachers, so we appreciate your thoughtful input. The survey will take less than five minutes to complete.
Thank you for participating. Your feedback is important.
SURVEY: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB228RNXYEBSU
Cindy Koeppel
ckoeppel@dirksencenter.org
The Dirksen Congressional Center
2815 Broadway
Pekin, IL 61554
http://www.dirksencongressionalcenter.org
Some schools are finding rehabilitation for playground bullies can save otherwise decent students from lives of despair
Ah Ho’s story is more common than many realise. Lee Tak-wai, an outreach worker with the Hong Kong Playground Association, says bullying has become a pervasive problem in schools.
“In the past, things were black and white: we had the bad youngsters and the good ones. But the line has become blurred and problematic behaviour is more common among teenagers,” Lee says. “Bullying has spread like an epidemic.”
A survey of 1,552 lower secondary students last year found that aggressive physical action – including shoving and kicking – had increased by 31 per cent compared with a similar study in 2001. Conducted jointly by the Playground Association and City University, the survey found that threatening behaviour such as taking others’ belongings and forcing victims to pay for snacks had risen by 42 per cent.
Educators and social workers view most bullies as products of circumstance. “School bullies are usually low achievers,” Lee says. “They often don’t receive sufficient attention from their parents and their relationships with teachers are strained. Since they can’t get a sense of achievement in school, they resort to improper behaviour to draw people’s attention and build their self-image. It’s a vicious cycle.”
US Education Secretary Duncan’s Speech to the American Council on Education
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago working and living with young children of color.
These kids were threatened every day. They lacked role models to protect them and guide them to a safe place where learning was valued and rewarded.
Barack and Michelle Obama can be those role models on a national scale–and that’s just one reason I am hopeful.
I am also hopeful because the leadership in Congress is so committed to education. They are very passionate about the issue–and they recognize its importance to our future.
I am hopeful because of the incredible progress in school districts, colleges and universities all across the country–developing new learning models–new educational approaches–and bringing new energy and ideas to the field of education.
From Teach for America to the KIPP charter schools to instructional innovations at colleges and universities, we have proven strategies ready to go to scale.
Projections of State Budget Deficits on K-12 Public Education Spending and Job Loss
Nearly all state budgets are in the red, suggesting looming cuts and possible job loss in K-12 education. New estimates of shortfalls in state revenues and K-12 staffing data enable early projections of the magnitude of both the impact on K-12 public education spending and corresponding job loss. These projections can help policymakers at all levels understand the size and scope of the problem as they work to craft next steps.
Assuming the absence of intervention via increased taxes or federal stimulus spending, this analysis projects an 18.5 percent drop in state funds for K-12 education from 2009 budgeted figures to FY 2011, creating an 8.7 percent drop in total public education spending over the same period. The implication is that states will spend a total of $54 billion less on public K-12 education during the 2009 and 2010 calendar years than if spending had been held at budgeted FY 2009 levels. That number jumps to $80 billion for state spending on K-16 education, if higher education spending projections are included.
Certificationmap.com
Certification Map is a simple, yet effective way to determine the requirements needed to become a teacher in your state. We realize that finding information and navigating through the certification process can be confusing and rather difficult. Our goal is to simplify that process by providing you with all of the teacher certification information you need in one easy place.
Federal Tax Dollar Bailout Funds Sought for Five Wisconsin School Districts
First came the banks, then came the car manufacturers, now federal assistance is being sought for five Wisconsin school districts that made bad investments.
At the urging of the Kenosha Education Association, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Russ Feingold have forwarded to the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve Bank a request that the government buy $200 million worth of “troubled assets” purchased by the districts in 2006.
KEA Executive Director Joseph Kiriaki said he hoped that the same Troubled Asset Relief Program that has spent billions of dollars buying the toxic debt and stock of financial institutions can help local schools, as well.
“It’s one public entity to another,” Kiriaki said.
In his letter to Wisconsin lawmakers, Kiriaki notes that the school districts purchased the same type of investment, known as collateralized debt obligations, that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York took off the books of American International Group last year.
Fascinating that they are referencing the AIG bailout. Much more on the stimulus/splurge here and the Treasury Department’s latest plan here.
The Washington Post posted a useful graphic on the stimulus package.
Student Fights Record of ‘Cyberbullying’
Katherine Evans said she was frustrated with her English teacher for ignoring her pleas for help with assignments and a brusque reproach when she missed class to attend a school blood drive.
So Ms. Evans, who was then a high school senior and honor student, logged onto the networking site Facebook and wrote a rant against the teacher, Sarah Phelps.
“To those select students who have had the displeasure of having Ms. Sarah Phelps, or simply knowing her and her insane antics: Here is the place to express your feelings of hatred,” she wrote.
Her posting drew a handful of responses, some of which were in support of the teacher and critical of Ms. Evans. “Whatever your reasons for hating her are, they’re probably very immature,” a former student of Ms. Phelps wrote in her defense.
A few days later, Ms. Evans removed the post from her Facebook page and went about the business of preparing for graduation and studying journalism in the fall.
But two months after her online venting, Ms. Evans was called into the principal’s office and was told she was being suspended for “cyberbullying,” a blemish on her record that she said she feared could keep her from getting into graduate schools or landing her dream job.
Santa Ana seeks to ease high school graduation requirements
While high schools across the state are toughening their graduation requirements to prepare students for college, one of the state’s largest school districts is planning to make it easier for students to graduate.
In a proposal that would cut out health, college and career planning, world geography and earth science as required courses, the Santa Ana Unified School District is seeking to reduce the number of credits necessary to graduate.
Santa Ana’s graduation requirement — 240 credits — is among the state’s highest benchmarks. And like several other school districts, Santa Ana’s move to lower the credit requirement to 220 may be an admission that it had pushed too hard, especially in a district where administrators struggle with keeping students in school.
“It will have a positive effect on dropout rates,” Deputy Supt. Cathie Olsky said of the proposal. “It puts graduation in reach.”
A Useful Comparison of the House / Senate Splurge/Stimulus Bills
One of the concrete benefits of open government data is that third parties can use the data to do something useful that no one in government has the mandate, resources, or insight to do. If you think what I am about to tell you below is cool, and helpful, then you are a supporter of open government data.
On my site GovTrack, you can now find comparisons of the text of H.R. 1, the stimulus bill, at different stages in its legislative life — including the House version (as passed) and the current Senate version (amendment 570).
The main page on GovTrack for HR 1 is:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-1
Here’s a direct link to the comparison:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1&version=as2&compareto=eh&view=side
Comparisons are possible between any two versions of the bill posted by GPO. Comparisons are available for any bill.
If you find this useful, please take a moment to consider that something like this is possible only when Congress takes data openness seriously. When GPO went online and THOMAS was created in the early 90s, they chose good data formats and access policies (mostly). But the work on open government data didn’t end 15 years ago. As “what’s hot” shifts to video and Twitter, the choices made today are going to impact whether or not these sources of data empower us in the future, whether or not we miss exciting opportunities such as having tools like the one above.
(Thanks to John Wonderlich and Peggy Garvin for some side discussion about this before my post. GovTrack wasn’t initially picking up the latest Senate versions because GPO seems to have gone out of its way to accommodate posting the latest versions before they were passed by the Senate, which is great, but caught GovTrack by surprise.)
Josh Tauberer
Busing or Extra Money for High Poverty Schools?
T. Keung Hui via a kind reader’s email:
North Carolina’s two largest school systems have taken vastly different approaches to two thorny issues — student reassignment and educating low-income students with hefty academic deficiencies.
Wake County, the state’s largest district, has used buses instead of greenbacks to address the academic needs of low-income students.
To meet the demands of growth and support a diversity policy aimed at reducing the number of high-poverty schools, Wake’s system moves thousands of students each year to different schools, sometimes sending kids on bus rides of more than 20 miles.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, the second-largest district in North Carolina, has shifted to a system of largely neighborhood schools, resulting in a stratified mix of affluent schools in the suburbs and high-poverty schools near downtown Charlotte.
Instead of busing kids to balance out the level of low-income students at each school, the district pours millions of dollars into these high-poverty schools each year to boost the performance of academically disadvantaged students.
Madison School District Seeks Community Volunteers for Strategic Planning Teams
The Madison School District is inviting members of the community to join them in putting into action five priorities for the future identified in a major planning bash last month.
The “strategic priorities” were developed by a planning committee — 60 strong — that met for a marathon 22 hours over several days in January. See a school district article about the process here.
The process was open and inclusive with more than token representation by people of color, committee member Annette Miller on Monday told members of Communities United, a Madison coalition committed to promoting social justice. “I didn’t feel like I was the African-American representing the whole African-American community,” Miller said.
The process may have been close to the ground, but the priorities developed by the committee smack of “educationalese” (and writing by committee) in the draft report released Monday to Communities United.
As roughly translated into plain English, they are: eliminate the achievement gap between students of color and white students; evaluate programs and personnel, then prioritize and allocate resources equitably; recruit and retain staff members who reflect the cultural composition of the student body; “revolutionize” Madison education with rigorous, culturally relevant and accelerated learning opportunities; provide a safe, welcoming learning environment for all children by building ties to the community, confronting fears about diversity, and being accountable to all.
Dual language immersion program to be offered at Leopold
Children entering Leopold Elementary School next year will have a chance to participate in a dual language immersion program which is designed to have the students proficient in both English and Spanish by the fifth grade.
Madison Metropolitan School District officials said the program will be offered for the first time in the 2009-2010 school year and parents will have an option of choosing either a standard English-only kindergarten program or enrolling students in the dual language program.
While the program is open to all families living in the Leopold Elementary attendance area, school officials said if there is greater demand than openings, a lottery system will be used to determine which students get into the new program.
The school system said it is anticipated that when the program is fully implemented in six years, the dual language program at Leopold will be used in 16 of the school’s 44 classrooms.
And informational meeting about the program will be held at the school, at 2602 Post Road, at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 24, in the school’s cafeteria.
Test Scores Provide Valuable Measure Of Success in D.C.
Brian Betts, a new principal in one of the District’s most troubled neighborhoods, excitedly displayed his school’s latest reading test results. Tall green bars on the graphs meant that in some classes a majority of students were proficient. This was big news for Shaw Middle School at Garnet-Patterson, an amalgam of two campuses where failure had been the norm.
Betts’s reaction to the quarterly results came in a rush of teachers’ names, explosive interjections and expansive adjectives: “Anita Walls! Boom, boom, boom! Unbelievable! Brian Diamond! Boom, boom, boom! Fantastic!”
He had not felt so giddy the week before, when his unit tests — written by his teachers — showed that students were still struggling in the mid-to-low-C range. Most of Shaw’s faculty members are new to the school, and many are new to teaching. That makes the school a crucial experiment for D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. She has put extra resources into it and given Betts, 41, extraordinary power to make his own rules, with the help of two teaching stars he recruited from Montgomery County. But in mid-January he was worried.
A Critique of “21st Century Skills”
The recent Madison School Board Strategic Planning Process included materials from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction on “21st Century Skills“.
Sandra Stotsky offers a critique.
Wagner’s book is engaging and sometimes points to real defects in American schools. Yet it fails to use research objectively to ascertain what is truly happening in America’s 90,000 public schools. Moreover, like all too many education “reformers” Wagner is simply hostile to academic content. Wagner does not seem to care if students can read and write grammatically, do math or know something about science and history – real subjects that schools can teach and policy-makers can measure.
Unfortunately, Wagner dismisses measurable academic content while embracing buzzwords like “adaptability” and “curiosity,” which no one could possibly be against, but also which no one could possibly measure. Do we really care if our students are curious and adaptable if they cannot read and write their own names?
The Structure of Everything
Did you know that 365 — the number of days in a year — is equal to 10 times 10, plus 11 times 11, plus 12 times 12?
Or that the sum of any successive odd numbers always equals a square number — as in 1 + 3 = 4 (2 squared), while 1 + 3 + 5 = 9 (3 squared), and 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 16 (4 squared)?
Those are just the start of a remarkable number of magical patterns, coincidences and constants in mathematics. No wonder philosophers and mathematicians have been arguing for centuries over whether math is a system that humans invented or a cosmic — possibly divine — order that we simply discovered. That’s the fundamental question Mario Livio probes in his engrossing book Is God a Mathematician?
Livio, an astrophysicist at the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, explains the invention-vs.-discovery debate largely through the work and personalities of great figures in math history, from Pythagoras and Plato to Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein. At times, Livio’s theorems, proofs and conundrums may be challenging for readers who struggled through algebra, but he makes most of this material not only comprehensible but downright intriguing. Often, he gives a relatively complex explanation of a mathematical problem or insight, then follows it with a “simply put” distillation.
An extended section on knot theory is, well, pretty knotty. But it ultimately sheds light on the workings of the DNA double helix, and Livio illustrates the theory with a concrete example: Two teams taking different approaches to the notoriously difficult problem of how many knots could be formed with a specific number of crossings — in this case, 16 or fewer — came up with the same answer: 1,701,936.
Madison Edgewood High School Wins English Award
National Council of Teachers of English:
The National Council of Teachers of English awarded the “highest award” for literary excellence to a magazine from Edgewood High School.
The Wayfarer has earned the highest rating in three of the last four years. According to Edgewood Public Information Associate Kate Ripple, the school is the only one in Wisconsin to receive this honor this year, and only one of 50 schools nationally.
Diane Mertens, head of the Edgewood English Department, has led students for the magazine’s entire 23 years of production.
Reforming schools starts with audits
School district audits need to be independent
In one of his more significant, although slightly flawed, education reform initiatives, Gov. Ted Strickland wants school districts to undergo annual financial and operational performance audits.
”Just as we provide an academic report card for our schools, we will provide parents, public officials and taxpayers an annual fiscal and operational report card for every school district. That means that when we send districts funding to help students who need additional attention and instruction, we will now be able to track our dollars to see that they directly reach those students,” Strickland said in his third State of the State address.
This is a great idea on a number of levels.
Parents and homeowners would be able to determine whether their district is making the grade on spending. For years, the Ohio Department of Education has issued academic report cards for districts.
Yes, at times, woeful news in the audits would make it more difficult for superintendents and school board members to ask voters to pass levies.
On the other hand, fiscal and operational performance audits would help districts identify and correct spending problems.
On School Consolidation
It is troubling that Gov. Ed Rendell’s budget-related proposal to reduce the number of school districts from 500 to fewer than 100 came as a surprise to educators.
Local administrators described it as a “bolt from the blue,” and one local superintendent said he was “shocked and awed” by the scope of the proposal, for which the governor, apparently with little or no comment from educators, is now seeking taxpayer funding for a commission to study and plan the consolidations.
Interviewed this week, several local school district administrators questioned whether school consolidations would actually save money and raised concerns about how the changes would affect educational programs and family involvement in the schools. Some of those same questions were addressed in a 2001 study by the Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
Researchers at Syracuse studied the impacts of consolidation in rural school districts in New York state from 1985 to 1997 and found operating cost savings of around 20 percent in the consolidation of two 300-pupil school districts, savings of 7 to 9 percent in the consolidation of two 900-pupil school districts and “little, if any, impact on the costs of two 1,500-pupil districts.”
The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age
I was pitched headfirst into the world of e-books in 2002 when I took a job with Palm Digital Media. The company, originally called Peanut Press, was founded in 1998 with a simple plan: publish books in electronic form. As it turns out, that simple plan leads directly into a technological, economic, and political hornet’s nest. But thanks to some good initial decisions (more on those later), little Peanut Press did pretty well for itself in those first few years, eventually having a legitimate claim to its self-declared title of “the world’s largest e-book store.”
Unfortunately, despite starting the company near the peak of the original dot-com bubble, the founders of Peanut Press lost control of the company very early on. In retrospect, this signaled an important truth that persists to this day: people don’t get e-books.
A succession of increasingly disengaged and (later) incompetent owners effectively killed Peanut Press, first flattening its growth curve, then abandoning all of the original employees by moving the company several hundred miles away. In January of 2008, what remained of the once-proud e-book store (now called eReader.com) was scraped up off the floor and acquired by a competitor, Fictionwise.com.
Unlike previous owners, Fictionwise has some actual knowledge of and interest in e-books. But though the “world’s largest e-book store” appellation still adorns the eReader.com website, larger fish have long since entered the pond.
And so, a sad end for the eReader that I knew (née Palm Digital Media, née Peanut Press). But this story is not just about them, or me. Notice that I used the present tense earlier: “people don’t get e-books.” This is as true today as it was ten years ago. Venture capitalists didn’t get it then, nor did the series of owners that killed Peanut Press, nor do many of the players in the e-book market today. And then there are the consumers, their own notions about e-books left to solidify in the absence of any clear vision from the industry.
China’s high school reform proposal triggers debate
Tens of thousands of Chinese have joined a debate on whether students should be separated into science and liberal arts classes in high school, a practice that allows them to stay competitive in college entrance exam by choosing preferred subjects.
The debate came after the Ministry of Education began to solicit opinions from the public on Friday on whether it was necessary and feasible to abolish the classification system, which have been adopted for decades.
In a survey launched by www.qq.com, a Chinese portal, more than 260,000 people cast their votes as of Saturday with 54 percent of those polled voted for the abolishment and 40 percent against.
More than 87,000 netizens have made also their voice heard as of 10 a.m. Sunday morning in the website’s forum.
A netizen from Chengdu, capital of southwest Sichuan Province, who identified himself as a high school math teacher, said “students should study both arts and science so they could have comprehensive development and become more flexible in using their knowledge.”
“Sciences can activate the mind, while arts could strengthen their learning capability,” he added.
How US Students Stack Up
Is America Falling off the Flat Earth?:
Nearly 60 percent of the patents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the field of information technology now originate in Asia.
• The U.S. ranks 17th among nations in high-school graduation rate and 14th in college graduation rate.
• In China, virtually all high school students study calculus; in the U.S., 13 percent of high school students study calculus.
• For every American elementary and secondary school student studying Chinese, there are 10,000 students in China studying English.
• The average American youth annually spends 66 percent more time watching television than in school.
Time for that ‘sextortion’ talk with your teen
As a parent, I thought I knew a few things about teenagers. And as a male, I figured I understood how guys think.
After hearing last week about the New Berlin Facebook sextortionist, I’m not so sure.
It made me wonder:
Did Anthony Stancl, the 18-year-old defendant, just one day dream up this scheme he’s charged with and decide to prey on his classmates at Eisenhower High and risk going to prison? Was sex by blackmail really his best hookup option?
Could he have dreamed that 31 guys, tricked into believing he was a female classmate on Facebook, would send along a naked photo or video of themselves? How many said no is not clear, but 31 thought, yeah, where’s my camera?
Do guys now have a good reason to believe that a girl at school truly wants naked pictures of them? And that she’ll send one of herself back to them? And that it’s perfectly safe to swap pics on the Internet where nothing ever falls into the wrong hands?
Isn’t everyone who approaches you online potentially someone other than who they say they are? Kids are adults. Boys are girls. Girls are cops.
Isn’t the Internet both the most fantastic and most monstrous invention in our lifetime?
The Kid Nobody Could Handle
Kurt Vonnegut – free from audible.com.
Madison Math Task Force Report Public Session: February 11, 2009 @ Cherokee Middle School
The Cherokee PTO [Map] is hosting a discussion of the Madison School District’s Math Task Force Report this Wednesday evening, February 11, 2009 in the Library.
Much more on the Math Task Force report here.
Waunakee parents in ‘an uproar’ over teaching social studies in Spanish
Being taught about famous people and events in Wisconsin history in Spanish is not how some Waunakee parents want their fourth-graders learning social studies at school.
“We as parents have been in such an uproar over this,” said Keith Wilke about the district’s elementary language program in which students learn Spanish by having the language integrated into social studies lessons for 30 minutes three days a week in first through fourth grades. “They’re force-fed Spanish.”
This is the third year for the program, which has added one grade a year since 2006 and is designed to continue until fifth grade.
“A fair amount of (social studies instruction) has been in Spanish,” said Wilke, who has a daughter in fourth grade. “The kids are to the point where they don’t understand it.”
Smaller school districts looking to consolidation
Three area school districts in need of building renovation or expansion are taking very tentative steps toward consolidation — a touchy topic for residents worried about losing a community’s identity.
The Belleville, Monticello and New Glarus school districts, located in Dane and Green counties, are asking the state Department of Public Instruction for $10,000 to study the idea of combining their programs and student populations.
“I think it’s just a case of having a nice discussion and getting solid, objective information,” said Randy Freese, superintendent for the Belleville School District.
Facing continued tight budgets, districts around the state will be looking at options to save money, and “investigating consolidation is definitely one of those options,” said Patrick Gasper, DPI spokesman. “I think we’ll see more people looking into it.”
Using money approved as part of the 2007-09 state budget, the DPI has funded grants for at least eight other district groups, including Pecatonica and Argyle in Lafayette and Iowa counties.
A Survey on College Preparation for Recent Madison High School Graduates
Madison School Board member Ed Hughes has posted a survey for recent Madison High School Graduates on their level of preparation for college. Via a kind reader’s email.
Bill Gates on “How Do You Make a Teacher Great?”
Madison Strategic Planning Short Video
MMSDTV posted a short video clip on the Madison School District’s recent Strategic Planning Process.
Daley Says Charter Schools Keep the System Honest
Collin Levy interviews Chicago Mayor Richard Daley:
Mayor Daley also sees an important role for charter schools. “You can’t have a monopoly and think a monopoly works. Slowly it dissolves. And I think that charter schools are good to compete with public schools.” Nobody says there’s something wrong with public universities facing competition from private ones. “I think the more competition we have, the better off we are in Chicago.”
But the mayor won’t support vouchers. “School choice is hard. You’re going back to arguing,” he says, trailing off without making clear whether he means the politics. But he does think it’s notable that, while federal money and Pell grants can be used to finance an education at a private college, federal money can’t be used to help students get a private education at the K-12 level.
Ron Huberman, Mr. Daley’s former chief of staff and head of the Chicago Transit Authority, is anything but an education bureaucrat, and that’s just what the mayor wants in the man he named to replace Mr. Duncan as chief of Chicago schools. Too often in the past, before the mayor took over, the city would bring in schools chiefs who seemed to be riding an education lazy-susan from school to school. “We’d give them big bonuses to come here and then when we’d fire them they’d go to other school systems.”
Reduced Prices Affect School Spending Authority
Schools would also be affected, since the per pupil limits on how much money schools can raise through property taxes and state aid are also linked to changes in consumer prices. Currently schools are limited to a statewide average of about $9,835 dollars per pupil, Schmiedicke said.
Normally schools’ roughly $270 annual increase in the per pupil limits would go up to reflect the rise in consumer prices. Because of deflation, that $270 increase may stay as it is or be slightly smaller, Schmiedicke said.
Senate Version of the “Splurge / Stimulus”
US Senate HR1 736 Page 1.3MB PDF. Much more on the splurge here. The word education is mentioned 259 times, while school is mentioned 90 times.
Meanwhile, it appears improved PR is on offer by the new Administration:
To improve the bailout’s poor public image, the administration is considering renaming the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program and making it independent of the Treasury. It is also going to announce new terms and conditions for companies that receive or have already taken government aid — in addition to the new executive-compensation limits announced this week — including a demand that they report how the money is being spent.
Related: Cicero & Plato on how republics die.
On Milwaukee’s Education Splurge: “Money for Unneeded Schools”
To understand the problem with the stimulus bill, it helps to focus on specific parts. Take the $142 billion for schools, which is nearly double the total outlays of the Department of Education in 2007. Now consider that much of this cash would go to public-school systems that don’t even need the money for its earmarked purposes.
The Milwaukee Public School system, for example, would receive $88.6 million over two years for new construction projects under the House version of the stimulus — even though the district currently has 15 vacant school buildings and declining enrollment. Between 1990 and 2008, inflation-adjusted MPS spending rose by 35%, per-pupil spending increased by 36% and state aid grew by 58%. Over the same period, enrollment fell by a percentage point and is projected to continue falling, leaving the system with enough excess capacity for some 22,000 students.
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“In general, MPS facilities have been described by school officials as being in good to better-than-good condition,” reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “The kind of situations that create urgent needs for renovation or new construction in some cities have not been on the priority list for MPS officials in recent years.”
Much more on the splurge here.
Did Rap, Crack or TV Kill Reading?
People my age are prone to what I call geezerisms, such as: What’s the matter with kids these days? Why aren’t schools good like they used to be? Where can I get a really thick milkshake? Stuff like that.
You don’t often run into these outbreaks of cranky nostalgia in educational research, but one has surfaced recently. Several prominent scholars have suggested that teenage reading for pleasure, and verbal test scores, plummeted after 1988 because of the rise of rap and hip-hop music and an increase in television watching.
Changes in youthful cultural tastes and habits always push us senior citizens into rants about declining values, so I wondered whether the researchers — many of them in my age group — were giving into one of those recurring bromides that the new music is terrible and will turn our society into a garbage dump.
I couldn’t sustain that argument because the scholars involved (including Ronald Ferguson, David Grissmer and Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom) are brilliant people whose work always meets the highest standards of professional inquiry. I was trying to decide how to sort this out when University of California at Los Angeles sociologist Meredith Phillips, one of my favorite writers on student achievement, came to the rescue with an intriguing take in a chapter of a new book, “Steady Gains and Stalled Progress: Inequality and the Black-White Test Score Gap,” edited by Katherine Magnuson of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University and published by the Russell Sage Foundation.
A Boost in Online Money Courses
ince September’s financial meltdown, community colleges and universities offering free personal-finance courses online have seen a sharp increase in enrollment.
Many people are turning to the more than 180 business courses offered through the OpenCourseWare Consortium — a group of about 250 universities world-wide, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California-Irvine. These courses aren’t exactly classes, but they offer free access to online syllabi and study materials, along with lecture notes and exams.
An MIT initiative called OpenCourseWare offers business courses online.
One course, “Fundamentals of Financial Planning,” has seen a 27% increase in traffic since September, according to the school. With 48,000 viewers, it has become the most popular of the University of California-Irvine’s OpenCourseWare offerings, the school says. Class takers are given worksheets and assessments to help them negotiate topics like college planning and retirement savings, says Gary Matkin, dean of continuing education. “It’s a cross between a reference and a learning experience,” says Mr. Matkin. As more people are affected by the downturn, he expects the number of course takers to grow.
5th Annual AP Report to the Nation
Educators across the United States continue to enable a wider and ethnically diverse proportion of students to achieve success in AP®. Significant inequities remain, however, which can result in traditionally underserved students not receiving the sort of AP opportunities that can best prepare them for college success. The 5th Annual AP Report to the Nation uses a combination of state, national and AP Program data to provide each U.S. state with the context it can use to celebrate its successes, understand its unique challenges, and set meaningful, data-driven goals to prepare more students for success in college.
Many links here.
Wisconsin ranked 14th in the percentage of seniors scoring 3+ on an AP exam.
Related: Dane County AP Course offering comparison.
Daniel de Vise has more.
Three California schools recognized for role in boosting Latino performance on AP tests by Carla Rivera:
Three public schools in California led the nation in helping Latino students outperform their counterparts in other states on Advanced Placement exams in Spanish language, Spanish literature and world history, according to a report released Wednesday by the College Board.
Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach was cited as the public school with the largest number of Latino students from the class of 2008 earning a 3 or better in AP world history. Exams are scored on a scale of 1 to 5, and many colleges and universities give students course credit for scores of 3 or higher. Advanced Placement courses offer college-level material in a variety of subjects.
Latino students at Fontana High School outpaced their peers on the AP Spanish-language exam, and San Ysidro High School in San Diego had the most Latino students who succeeded on the AP Spanish literature exam.
The “tension” between increased academic opportunities for all students as exemplified in this report versus curriculum reduction for all, in an effort by some to address the achievement gap was much discussed during last week’s Madison School District Strategic Planning Process meetings. Background here, here, here, here and here.
New Berlin teen accused of using Facebook for sexual blackmail
Jacqui Seibel and Mark Johnson:
A former New Berlin Eisenhower student was accused Wednesday of a pattern of manipulation and deception using the social networking site Facebook to coerce male schoolmates into sexual encounters.
Anthony R. Stancl, 18, posing as a female on Facebook, persuaded at least 31 boys to send him naked pictures of themselves and then blackmailed some of the boys into performing sex acts under the threat that the pictures would be released to the rest of the high school, according a criminal complaint.
All 31 boys attend New Berlin Eisenhower Middle/High School, said Waukesha County District Attorney Brad Schimel.
The sexual assaults occurred in a bathroom at the high school, the school parking lot, a New Berlin Public Library restroom, Valley View Park, Malone Park, Minooka Park and at some of the victims’ homes.
At least seven boys, 15 to 17, were forced into performing sex acts, Schimel said. The incidents occurred from spring 2008 until the time of Stancl’s arrest in November. Stancl had 300 photos and movie clips on his computer of boys from the school, ages 13 to 19, Schimel said.
The Great College Hoax
Higher education can be a financial disaster. Especially with the return on degrees down and student loan sharks on the prowl.
As steadily as ivy creeps up the walls of its well-groomed campuses, the education industrial complex has cultivated the image of college as a sure-fire path to a life of social and economic privilege.
Joel Kellum says he’s living proof that the claim is a lie. A 40-year-old Los Angeles resident, Kellum did everything he was supposed to do to get ahead in life. He worked hard as a high schooler, got into the University of Virginia and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history.
Accepted into the California Western School of Law, a private San Diego institution, Kellum couldn’t swing the $36,000 in annual tuition with financial aid and part-time work. So he did what friends and professors said was the smart move and took out $60,000 in student loans.
Kellum’s law school sweetheart, Jennifer Coultas, did much the same. By the time they graduated in 1995, the couple was $194,000 in debt. They eventually married and each landed a six-figure job. Yet even with Kellum moonlighting, they had to scrounge to come up with $145,000 in loan payments. With interest accruing at up to 12% a year, that whittled away only $21,000 in principal. Their remaining bill: $173,000 and counting.
THE WISCONSIN BUDGET DEFICIT: A SELF-INFLICTED WOUND
How did the state budget end up in shambles? Governor Doyle and supportive legislators lay the budgetary imbalance at the feet of the poor economy. State Senator Bob Jauch went so far as to call the budget shortfall “a natural disaster,” saying it was a “Katrina-style collapse.”
Yet despite these declarations that the budget shortfall is outside the control of Wisconsin’s elected officials, several questionable budget practices allow Wisconsin to continually spend more than it takes in. First, the state has been filling budget holes in the general fund by pouring in one-time revenues from segregated state accounts, paid for with various user fees. According to state government’s own financial records, from fiscal years 2001 through 2008, a total of $2.373 billion of these one time, non-routine, revenues was used to help the general fund show positive ending balances. Much of this came from the transportation fund, which was then made whole by issuing debt to backfill the hole left by the transfer.
With regard to the spending side of the ledger, the state can appear to spend less from the general fund by “offloading” spending to accounts funded with user fees. For instance, in the 2003-05 budget, $100 million was shifted out of the transportation fund and into the school aids equalization formula ($40 million in 2004 and $60 million in 2005). By replacing $100 million of spending previously paid from general purpose revenue with segregated transportation funds, the Governor and Legislature sought to create the appearance that general fund spending was being held in check.
High school hoops coach told to stop hypnotizing team
AP:
A high school basketball coach has been told he can’t hypnotize his players anymore because it sends the wrong message to other schools and could get the students hooked on hypnosis.
The St. John High School boys team — the same team that won state two years ago and finished second last year — was just 7-6 through last week when coach Clint Kinnamon decided to bring in a hypnotist.
He chose Carl Feril, a Church of Christ minister who also is a clinical family and marriage therapist.
Technology not the panacea for education
Now that Arne Duncan, President Obama’s new education secretary, has presented the administration’s $150 billion plan for reviving our education system, it’s time to start separating Obama’s smart ideas for schools from his dumb ones. The first folly Duncan could dispense with – at an enormous cost saving – would be Obama’s desire to outfit the nation’s classrooms with new computers. His big push for this idea occurred in December, when he said, “Every child should have the chance to get online,” Obama said, “and they’ll get that chance when I’m president – because that’s how we’ll strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world.”
Really?
Educators have been trying to improve schools with every technology we’ve ever invented, beginning with Thomas Edison’s promise, in 1912, to create “100 percent efficiency” in the classroom through the medium of “the motion picture.” Since personal computers and the Internet first arrived in classrooms, in the early 1990s, schools have spent approximately $100 billion on technology. Throughout this campaign, educators and the technology industry have been searching madly for solid evidence of whether the computers were boosting achievement. So little has been found that this data has become education’s WMD.
The Global Achievement Muddle
Wagner promotes seven “21st century” skills that he claims are not taught in our schools. These “survival” skills are also being promoted by advocacy groups like the National Educational Association.
Wagner’s list seems plausible. Who can argue against teaching students “agility and adaptability” or how to “ask good questions?” Yet these “skills” are largely unsupported by actual scientific research. Wagner presents nothing to justify his list except glib language and a virtually endless string of anecdotes about his conversations with high-tech CEOs.
Even where Wagner does use research, it’s not clear that we can trust what he reports as fact. On page 92, to discredit attempts to increase the number of high school students studying algebra and advanced mathematics courses, he refers to a “study” of MIT graduates that he claims found only a few mentioning anything “more than arithmetic, statistics and probability” as useful to their work. Curious, I checked out the “study” using the URL provided in an end note for Chapter 3. It consisted of 17, yes 17, MIT graduates, and, according to my count, 11 of the 17 explicitly mentioned linear algebra, trig, proofs and/ or calculus, or other advanced mathematics courses as vital to their work – exactly the opposite of what Wagner reports! Perhaps exposure to higher mathematics is not the worst problem facing American students!
Seniority-Based Layoffs Will Exacerbate Job Loss in Public Education
K-12 school districts that lay off personnel according to seniority cause disproportionate damage to their programs and students than if layoffs were determined on a seniority-neutral basis.
School districts face severe budget challenges with state funding at risk in this perilous economy. In this four-page analysis of K-12 district layoff issues, Marguerite Roza, a senior scholar at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, calculates that if a district is required to use layoffs to cut its budget by 10 percent and cuts the most junior employees, it will need to axe 14.3 percent of its workforce (including teachers) to meet the 10 percent budget reduction.
On the other hand, if that district followed a seniority-neutral layoff policy–say by a standard of employee effectiveness–only 10 percent of the workforce would lose their jobs.
Nationwide, if all districts followed a seniority-neutral layoff policy to save 10 percent, 612,256 jobs would be lost compared with 874,623 lost under a seniority-based policy.
Face of space Tyson laments Americans’ scientific illiteracy
Neil deGrasse Tyson is one in a million.
He said so himself.
“There are six-and-half billion people on this planet, and there are 6,500 astrophysicists, so that makes each of us (astrophysicists) one in a million,” Tyson said Monday night at the Wisconsin Union Theater as part of the UW’s Distinguished Lecture Series.
It’s too bad there aren’t a lot more like Tyson, who kept the packed house enthralled with his charisma, knowledge and off-the-cuff humor for more than two hours.
Tyson is the 21st century face of space, a mantle previously held by the late, great Carl Sagan. Tyson is director of the Hayden Planetarium and the host of PBS’ “NOVA ScienceNOW” program, aimed at educating a new generation of Americans in science.
And that is no small task.
Tyson pointed out numerous examples of scientific illiteracy in the U.S., including a general lack of understanding and a belief in silly superstitions.
On the screen behind him he showed a photo of the inside of an elevator in a tall building, and how there was no button for the 13th floor.
“We are supposedly a technologically advanced country, and yet people are afraid of the number 13?” he said.
Who gets what from the splurge/stimulus package?
How some of the major spending will be shared among the states, according to estimates for the current stimulus bill proposed by House Democratic leaders.
UW’s Delta Teaching Program
In its first five years on campus, Delta has made a profound impact on UW-Madison’s teaching and learning culture. A fall 2008 review found that more than 400 faculty and instructional staff enhanced their teaching practices in some way as a direct result of Delta workshops.
As Delta grows, it continues to receive recognition for its efforts. On Monday, Feb. 9, Delta will be presented with the National Consortium for Continuous Improvement in Higher Education’s Award for Leveraging Excellence.
Delta members are encouraged to take Delta courses and small-group-facilitated programs, attend roundtable dinners and seminars, and participate in the Delta internship program to learn how to implement Delta’s three pillars — teaching-as-research, learning community and learning-through-diversity — into the classroom.
Wisconsin Governor Stumps for Mandatory Autism Insurance Coverage
Gov. Jim Doyle is stumping for a bill that would require insurance companies to cover autism.
Most insurance companies don’t cover autism because it is classified as an emotional disorder rather than a neurological condition.
A host of lawmakers and Drew Goldsmith, a 12-year-old autistic boy from Middleton, backed Doyle at a press conference in his office Tuesday.
Doyle is proposing strengthening current legislation to include minimum coverage levels of $60,000 for intensive treatment and $30,000 for post-intensive services. He said it would cut the waiting list to join a state-run program for autism services by a third.
Lawmakers on Tuesday said they hope to win support for the bill in the Legislature.
The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On
In the summer of 1998, over two frantic weeks in July, I wrote an essay titled The Future of Online Learning. (Downes, 1998) At the time, I was working as a distance education and new media design specialist at Assiniboine Community College, and I wrote the essay to defend the work I was doing at the time. “We want a plan,” said my managers, and so I outlined the future as I thought it would – and should – unfold.
In the ten years that have followed, this vision of the future has proven to be remarkably robust. I have found, on rereading and reworking the essay, that though there may have been some movement in the margins, the overall thrust of the paper was essentially correct. This gives me confidence in my understanding of those forces and trends that are moving education today.
In this essay I offer a renewal of those predictions. I look at each of the points I addressed in 1998, and with the benefit of ten year’s experience, recast and rewrite each prediction. This essay is not an attempt to vindicate the previous paper – time has done that – but to carry on in the same spirit, and to push that vision ten years deeper into the future.
Madison School District Departing Parent Surveys
Via a kind reader’s email. Three surveys for families that have left the Madison School District for the following destinations [PDF]:
Related Links:
- Wisconsin Open Enrollment: the ability to attend a school (including virtual) within another district, outside your “home district”.
- Wisconsin Part Time Open Enrollment
- Wisconsin Home School Information
- A map of all schools, public and private in the Madison, WI area
The Madison School District’s tax and spending authority is based on its enrollment.
Google and Nasa back ‘singularity’ school for when technology overtakes humans
The Singularity University will be based at the space programme’s Ames campus in Silicon Valley, USA.
Its chancellor will be the controversial futurist Ray Kurzweil, whose 2005 book The Singularity is Near inspired the name of the school.
He believes that the rapid rise of technology will enable machines in the near future to use artificial intelligence to make themselves cleverer than humans.
Critics of singularity believe such sophisticated technology could end up being a threat to man.
But Mr Kurzweil said it was important to realise the potential of technological development: “The law of accelerating returns means technology eventually will be a million more times powerful than it is today and cause profound transformation.”
Singularity University will accept 30 graduate students in its first intake this summer, increasing to 120 next year.
Despite its name, the college is not an accredited university but will offer nine-week courses exploring ways to ensure technology improves mankind’s plight instead of harming it.
UWM online psych students outperform those in lecture hall class
Most sections of Psychology 101 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee fit the popular image of a college class: Hundreds of students pack into a lecture hall twice a week and attend regular discussion sections.
With four 100-point exams making up most of the grade, it is the kind of course an academically weak student might struggle to pass.
But as the university faces pressure to improve success rates for underprepared college students, one professor’s markedly different approach to the introductory psychology course is turning heads.
Professor Diane Reddy has replaced the traditional lecture format with an online version of Psych 101. Students learn at their own pace but also have to obtain mastery, demonstrated by passing a quiz on each unit, before they can move on to the next.
Along the way, students get help from teaching assistants who monitor their online activity, identifying weak spots and providing advice – even if the students don’t seek it.
Initial evidence says it works: In a study of 5,000 students over two years, U-Pace students performed 12% better on the same cumulative test than students who took traditional Psych 101 with the same textbook and course content, even though U-Pace students had lower average grades than those in the conventional course.
The online model, the study found, was particularly successful for disadvantaged or underprepared students – low-income students, racial and ethnic minorities, and those with low grades or ACT scores. And students in general do better in the class, too, earning a higher percentage of As and Bs than students earn in traditional Psych 101.
In Cutting Sports Funding, Everyone Loses
Times are tough, particularly in our schools. We don’t have the money, beleaguered education officials say, for every student who wants to play games after class. Some school sports have to go. Loudoun County is talking about cutting junior varsity lacrosse and all freshman sports. Fairfax County’s proposed budget would end girls’ gymnastics. Other teams are in jeopardy. The public high schools can’t afford them anymore.
And yet many people who reflect for a moment will remember their own school days and see this kind of financial austerity as shortsighted, like cutting back on English classes because most kids already speak that language. Many of us remember some competitive activity, usually in high school, that became a vital force in our adolescence. It gave us a self-awareness and self-confidence that changed us forever.
None of us read all of the 481,563 articles published last year on the early life and struggles of the soon-to-be president of the United States, but most of us know that if Barack Obama had not discovered basketball he would not have become the leader he is today. On the opposite end of that scale of significance, I compiled the worst record ever at my high school, 0-14, in league play as the tennis team’s No. 1 singles player. I didn’t care much about winning. I got some exercise, and something even better. I was a total nerd, but I could strut around with my very own varsity letter, just like the football players. I still carry that morale boost.
School segregation at highest level in decades
The legal segregation of U.S. public schools was supposedly halted in 1954 by the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. But according to a January report released by the Civil Rights Project, school segregation is now at the highest level in four decades.
The study, titled “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge,” [960K PDF] concludes that the election of the first African American president does not indicate that the United States has become a “post-racial” society. Rather, it argues against the notion that things are progressing in the right direction, especially in light of the harsh reality of race relations in public education.
The 1954 Supreme Court decision concluded that Southern segregation was “inherently unequal” and did “irreversible” harm to Black students. In an education system segregated by race, poverty and language, most Black and Latino students do not receive opportunities equal to their white counterparts. The U.S. Department of Education states, “Poverty poses a serious challenge to children’s access to quality learning opportunities and their potential to succeed in school.”
Institutionalized racism has effectively replaced the Jim Crow laws of the post-Reconstruction period as the basis for continued segregation. Although there have been significant reforms, mostly won during the Civil Rights movement, these victories have been eroded by reactionary court decisions and racist political leadership from elected officials.
Starting Out: The story of Stephen Sebro
ebro, who had never been to America before arriving in Palo Alto in late September 2005, had dreams of earning a degree in economics and going to work for a venerable bank, either in finance or computer systems.
Now, the 21-year-old Sebro is months shy of graduating. Financial markets have convulsed and unemployment is climbing. And Sebro, who interned at Goldman Sachs in New York in September, had a front row, white-knuckle seat as Lehman – once the nation’s fourth-largest investment bank – went bankrupt.
Sebro, who listens to friends talk about job offers rescinded and about the possibility of taking a fifth year of school in hopes the market will recover, is rethinking his own strategy as he prepares to leave the cocoon of college and make it on his own.
“I learned a lot from this crisis,” says Sebro, an economics major. “We do not know who will fail next. There is a total change in what is considered risky.”
Sebro added, “Nobody knows if a job offer is real these days. I’ve realized I can’t tie my fortune to a big bank. My thinking now is that starting my own business is going to be less risky than going to work for someone else.”
Rochester’s $100K Calculus Teacher: 5 Students…..
But while this generation of baby-boom teachers has witnessed remarkable transformations in their lifetime — in women’s rights, in civil rights — the waves of education reforms aimed at remaking our urban schools that they have been dispatched to implement have repeatedly fallen short.
Ms. Huff has taught both basic math and calculus at East High, a failing school under the federal No Child Left Behind law, considered by many here to be the city’s most troubled. As I walked in the front door one frigid day last month, ambulance attendants were rolling out a young man on a gurney and wearing a neck brace.
MS. HUFF’S eighth period has just five calculus students — normally not enough to justify a class — but the administration keeps it going so these children have a shot at competing with top students elsewhere. No sooner had they sat down and finished their daily warm-up quiz, than there was a loud clanging. “A pull,” Ms. Huff said. “Let’s go.” Someone had yanked the fire alarm. Ms. Huff led her students through halls that were chaotic. Several times when she tried to quiet students from other classes, they swore at her.
For 15 minutes she and her calculus students — none of them with coats — stood in a parking lot battered by a fierce wind off Lake Ontario. Everywhere, kids could be seen leaving school for the day, but all the calculus students returned, took their seats, and just as Ms. Huff started teaching, there was another false alarm and they had to march out again.
What is School For?
Seems like a simple question, but given how much time and money we spend on it, it has a wide range of answers, many unexplored, some contradictory. I have a few thoughts about education, how we use it to market ourselves and compete, and I realized that without a common place to start, it’s hard to figure out what to do.
So, a starter list. The purpose of school is to:
- Become an informed citizen
- Be able to read for pleasure
- Be trained in the rudimentary skills necessary for employment
- Do well on standardized tests
- Homogenize society, at least a bit
- Pasteurize out the dangerous ideas
- Give kids something to do while parents work
- Teach future citizens how to conform
- Teach future consumers how to desire….
The consumption aspects of this list are useful to consider, particularly in light of some reform textbooks.
More on the Splurge: Federal Spending Largess Could Leave Wisconsin Budget Worse Off
The giant economic stimulus bill working its way through Congress should deliver enough money to Wisconsin to keep the state from taking such draconian measures to close its $5.7 billion budget shortfall as furloughing prisoners, knocking poor children off Medicaid rolls and slashing school aids.
But the federal largesse — up to $4 billion or more for Wisconsin alone — carries the potential of leaving the state budget worse off in the future if the economy doesn’t recover and lawmakers don’t do a better job than they have in the past of making sure the state lives within its means.
“In two years this money won’t be there,” Sen. Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, said of the stimulus. “The programs will be there, the costs will be there, but the money will be gone.”
“(It’s as if) your uncle died and left you a few bucks,” Ellis said. “And did you take your wife out for a beer and a burger? No. . .You’ve spent the inheritance, and therein lies the problem.”
Jason Stein on Wisconsin’s lack of prudent budgeting:
Instead, they’ve pushed today’s bills off until tomorrow, creating some of the shakiest budgets in the nation and jeopardizing future commitments to safe roads, good schools and aid to the poor, according to a Wisconsin State Journal review of past budget practices.
“We’ve met the enemy and it’s us,” said Mark Bugher, a former Administration secretary who helped write state budgets when Republican Tommy Thompson was governor. “On both sides of the spectrum … politicians have just demonstrated a lack of ability to face the public and say, ‘We’re not going to be able to afford this.’ ”
Showing such leadership now is more difficult than it has been in decades. The recession has struck tens of thousands of families, leaving many workers without jobs or health coverage, and pinching businesses and local governments. Aging roads, dams and bridges require massive investments. The global economy calls for better schools and smarter graduates. The demand to hold the line on taxes is high.
In Black History Month, One-Room School Opens to Offer Lessons
A 19th-century school that served Prince William County’s African American population opens for public tours today in honor of Black History Month.
The Lucasville School, at 10516 Godwin Dr. in the Manassas area, will be open every weekend this month from noon to 4 p.m. The one-room school was the only one in the county solely for African Americans, said Robert Orrison, a historic site manager for the county. A few one-room schools that served whites remain, but most have been converted into homes.
“We opened the school up last February,” Orrison said. “It’s a great place to learn about segregated schools and how education was done in the 19th and early 20th century.”
Built in 1885, the Lucasville School served children in grades one through six until 1926, Orrison said. About 20 to 25 students of different ages would pack into the building each year to learn from a single instructor. The school was filled with benches, not desks, Orrison said, and blackboards were made of pieces of plywood painted black, unlike at white schools, where students had blackboard slates.
Madison School District Survey for Parents Who Have Left
via a kind reader’s email:
Superintendent Dan Nerad is conducting a survey of families who left the MMSD and invites your participation.
If you opted to not enroll your child/children in their MMSD school — if they attend private school, you home school or you moved out of the District — or you are strongly considering the same and you are willing to participate in this survey, please let Superintendent Nerad know. Send your contact information to his assistant, Ann Wilson (awilson@madison.k12.wi.us or 608 663-1607).
Related: Wisconsin Open Enrollment begins February 2, 2009.
Abolishing the Apostrophe in Birmingham
The problem child of English grammar is a tiny, tadpole-shaped bundle of trouble that makes no sound, but spells chaos. Three centuries after it invaded our language (almost certainly sneaked in by the French), the apostrophe continues to defeat, confuse and humiliate large numbers of people, and, in retaliation, they want to abolish it.
Then we wont have to worry about where its supposed to go.
Last week Birmingham city council announced that it would no longer use apostrophes on street signs . Councillor Martin Mullaney, the Liberal Democrat chairman of its transport scrutiny committee, claimed that dropping them would make the city’s signage policy “more consistent”, and easier for users of computer databases and satellite navigation systems. Apparently, if you have the misfortune to be a Mr O’Dowd, needing a minicab from the King’s Arms in D’Arcy Avenue, drivers can’t find you.
So, St Paul’s Square, an elegant, late-Georgian landmark in Jewellery Quarter, will become St Pauls Square. We’ll have the fashionably de-apostrophised Druids Heath and Acocks Green, but things are unlikely to stop there. Once they start to slide they slide quickly, and it surely won’t be long before Great Charles Street, in the shopping district, becomes GR8 Chas St.
Almost half of Americans want to live somewhere else
City dwellers want out
“City residents disproportionately are more likely than people living in other types of communities to say they would prefer to live in a place other than a city,” Morin says. “Fewer than half of all city residents say there is no better place to live than in a city.”
A smaller proportion of women express the desire to live in the nation’s largest cities. “Women are less drawn to big cities,” says Robert Lang, co-director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. “It could be safety.”
Wanting to live outside cities doesn’t necessarily mean people reject urban lifestyles, however. The appeal of developments with an urban flair — ones that combine housing, stores and offices in a neighborhood setting — is growing.
Students, Teachers Praise Janesville’s Single-Gender Classrooms
Marshall Middle School in Janesville is in its second year of offering single-gender classrooms, and students and teachers said the program has made a positive difference in their education.
Currently, more than 200 school districts around the country are testing out the teaching method, and about 10 schools in Wisconsin offer a single-gender classroom program.
Marshall Middle School teacher Charles Smith said getting eighth-grade boys and girls to agree on music isn’t easy. But his social studies class is girls only, and Smith said the class prefers to study to the music of Beyonce.
“If the kids are comfortable, they feel better about it. Then this is a good place for them,” said Smith.
Smith said the single-gender classroom is about making students feel comfortable.
While his students learn, he said he’s also learning how to better tailor his lessons.
Houston School Board Retreat Summary: “Differentiated Compensation Strategy”
*The administration has been developing a differentiated compensation strategy. Saavedra has hinted at this before, but the bottom line is he wants to pay the highest-performing teachers significantly more money. Some proposed details: The district would identify the teachers who rank among the top 10 percent of value-added student test data for at least two consecutive years. Those top performers would get a 10 percent salary increase, and they would have the option — Saavedra emphasized this would be a choice — to transfer to a low-performing school and get another 15 percent salary increase. These top teachers also could get even more money if they agree to teach summer school; rather than the usual $25-an-hour rate, they would get 125 percent of their full daily rate of pay. And there’s more: These teachers could choose to serve as master teachers and share their best practices across the district for 15 days, at a rate of $500 per day.
*Mission and vision for human capital, from Best’s PowerPoint (I’ll try to get an electronic copy and post later):
Mission: HISD’s most important resource in helping our students become college- and career-ready is our employees. Our success to move our organization to its next level of achievement depends on our ability to attract and cultivate human capital and provide the support for our employees to excel in their work.
Vision: HISD seeks to create a culture that values employees who are talented, innovative thinkers who are reuslts-oriented; individuals who strive to increase student achievement and revolutionize the field of education. We know that a wise investment in human capital in each individual at every level will yield success for our students.
*On the recruiting strategy, it sounds like Best wants the central HR department to have a bigger central office role in the recruiting process. Basically, the department would take the lead in identifying talent, wherever it is. Best is proposing a pilot where principals would agree to hire some of the centrally recruited teachers.
Madison School District’s Strategic Planning Process, An Update
I was honored to be part of the Madison School District’s “Strategic Planning Process” this weekend. More than 60 community members, students, parents, board members and district employees participated.
The process, which included meetings Thursday (1/29/2009) from 8 to 6 Friday (1/30/2009) from 8 to 5 and Saturday (1/31/2009) from 8 to 12, thus far, resulted in the following words:
MMSD Mission Statement (1/30/2009):
Our mission is to cultivate the potential in every student to thrive as a global citizen by inspiring a love of learning and civic engagement, by challenging and supporting every student to achieve academic excellence, and by embracing the full richness and diversity of our community.
Draft Strategic Priorities
1. Student:
We will eliminate the achievement gap by ensuring that all students reach their highest potential. To do this, we will prepare every student for kindergarten, create meaningful student-adult relationships, and provide student-centered programs and supports that lead to prepared graduates. (see also student outcomes)
2. Resource/Capacity:
We will rigorously evaluate programs, services and personnel through a collaborative, data-driven process to prioritize and allocate resources effectively and equitably, and vigorously pursue the resources necessary to achieve our mission.
3. Staff
We will implement a formal system to support and inspire continuous development of effective teaching and leadership skills of all staff who serve to engage our diverse student body while furthering development of programs that target the recruitment and retent ion of staff members who reflect the cultural composition of our student body.
4. Curriculum
We will revolutionize the educational model to engage and support all students in a comprehensive participatory educational experience defined by rigorous, culturally relevant and accelerated learning opportunities where authentic assessment is paired with flexible instruction.
5. Organization/Systems:
We will proudly leverage our rich diversity as our greatest strength and provide a learning environment in which all our children experience what we want for each of our children. We will:
- Provide a safe, welcoming learn ing environment
- Coordinate and cooperate across the district
- Build and sustain meaningful partnerships throughout our community
- Invite and incorporate (require) inclusive decision-making
- Remain accountable to all stakeholders
- Engage community in dialogue around diversity confront fears and misunderstandings
Why Easy Grading Is Good for Your Career
New Jersey high school teacher Peter Hibbard flunked 55 percent of the students in his regular biology class the year before he retired. There were no failures in his honors classes, he said, but many of his regular students refused to do the work. They did not show up for tests and did not take makeups. They did not turn in lab reports. Homework was often ignored.
“Still, the principal told me that the failure rate was unacceptable, and I needed to fix it,” Hibbard said. “The pressure to give grades instead of actually teaching increased. A colleague told me that he had no problem. If students showed up, they got a C. If they did some work, they got a B. If they did fair or better on tests, they got an A. No one ever complained, and his paycheck was the same. He was teacher of the year, and a finalist for a principal’s job.”
I often get helpful letters from teachers. They are fine people who assume I am educable, despite evidence to the contrary. Sometimes, as in Hibbard’s case, teachers are so candid and wise I am compelled to quote them, and see if readers share their view of reality.
Here is what Hibbard told me:
Well-Connected Parents Take On School Boards
For a new generation of well-wired activists in the Washington region, it’s not enough to speak at Parent-Teacher Association or late-night school board meetings. They are going head-to-head with superintendents through e-mail blitzes, social networking Web sites, online petitions, partnerships with business and student groups, and research that mines a mountain of electronic data on school performance.
In recent weeks, parent-led campaigns helped bring down a long-established grading policy in Fairfax County and scale back the unpopular practice of charging fees for courses in Montgomery County. They have also stoked debates over math education in Frederick and Prince William counties.
Links:
Duncan: Incentive Grants May Be Used to Reward Rigor
Arne Duncan, the brand-new Secretary of Education, said today that he would consider using $15 billion in proposed federal incentive grants to reward states for setting more “rigorous” standards. The money would be available to him under a broad $819 billion stimulus package that passed the House, with no GOP support, last night.
“There’s a series of things we’re looking for,” in allocating those funds, Duncan told me, in the first of a round of one-on-one interviews he gave to reporters. He indicated that the Department would want states that receive the funds to have a comprehensive data system, strong assessments, and rigorous standards. “With this fund, we really have a chance to drive dramatic changes, to take to scale what works, invest in what works.”
Given his emphasis on standards, I asked him whether he might use the fund to push for national or more uniform, rigorous standards. He left the door open for that. “Sure, absolutely,” he told me (though without committing himself.) “Lots of folks are already thinking this way. We want to reward rigor and challenge the status quo.”
I asked him about some of the reform-oriented programs in the stimulus package. He wasn’t specific about which items the administration had pushed for until I brought up the $200 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund in one version of the bill, which doles out grants to districts for alternative pay programs, the $25 million for charter school facilities, and the $250 million state data systems.
Building hope for financial literacy
Rarely in our history have two more critical and incredible moments collided the Inauguration of Barack Obama and the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. We feel the excitement of change no matter what our party affiliation may be, and yet our enthusiasm is tempered by what we know lies ahead.
In Sept. of 2008, our financial illiteracy as a nation dramatically revealed itself and the unraveling continues today. The propensity of many to spend beyond their means and make unwise financial decisions demonstrates that many of us don’t even know the basics of budgeting or handling debt.
But we have an opportunity to turn this crisis into the ultimate learning experience. Our new leaders, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, fresh from Chicago Public Schools, can help make sure future generations don’t repeat our mistakes.
Wauwatosa’s Trade Charter School
Lori Weiss via a kind reader’s email:
Wauwatosa School District officials have found a home for the trade charter school that will be opening for the 2009-10 school year.
For the first year, the School of the Trades will be housed in the basement of the Fisher Building, 12121 W. North Ave.
Superintendent Phil Ertl said the district is looking at the location for one year as it evaluates the viability and efficiency of the building.
It was determined that the Fisher Building would be the best place to house the district’s second trade charter school because it doesn’t need major renovations.
“It’s all there right now,” Jason Zurawik, West associate principal who has been working with the trade charter school committee, told the School Board on Jan. 26.
Do You Want An Internship? It’ll Cost You
Faced with a dismal market for college summer internships, a growing number of anxious parents are pitching in to help — by buying their kids a foot in the door.
Some are paying for-profit companies to place their college students in internships that are mostly unpaid. Others are hiring marketing consultants to create direct-mail campaigns promoting their children’s workplace potential. Still other parents are buying internships outright in online charity auctions.
Even as the economy slows, internship-placement programs are seeing demand rise by 15% to 25% over a year ago. Critics of the programs say they deepen the divide between the haves and have-nots by giving students from more affluent families an advantage. But parents say the fees are a small price for giving their children a toehold in a treacherous job market. And operators of the programs claim they actually broaden access to internships by opening them to students who lack personal or political connections to big employers.
The whole idea of paying cash so your kid can work is sometimes jarring at first to parents accustomed to finding jobs the old-fashioned way — by pounding the pavement. Susan and Raymond Sommer of tiny St. Libory, Ill., were dismayed when their daughter Megan, then a junior at a Kentucky university, asked them to spend $8,000 so she could get an unpaid sports-marketing internship last summer in New York City. Paying to work “was something people don’t do around here,” says Ms. Sommer, a retired concrete-company office worker; her husband, a retired electrical superintendent, objected that if “you work for a company, you should be getting paid.”
Loudon School Board Freezes Teacher Pay
The School Board in Loudoun County, where the recession might be having a greater effect on teachers’ wallets than in any other Washington area jurisdiction, late last night approved a budget of $747. million that would freeze teacher salaries.
The spending plan, which passed by an 8 to 1 vote, would omit cost-of-living and seniority raises to save $31. million. It would be the second straight year that Loudoun teachers have gone without a cost-of-living increase. The other type of raise, for rising seniority, is also known as a step increase. The no vote came from John Stevens (Potomac).
Last week, Superintendent Edgar B. Hatrick III proposed forgoing the step increase, a move he said would align Loudoun schools with others in the state. Some of the savings would preserve jobs that had been in jeopardy.
“We’ve been weighing this against the positions that were disappearing in order to keep the step alive,” Hatrick said before the board meeting in Ashburn. “We’re cognizant that there’s a lot of economic strife out there.”
Private Schools Feel the Pinch Amid Recession
Trinity Episcopal School survived Hurricane Ike last fall. But then another storm hit — the economy.
The Galveston, Texas, school, where tuition is between $5,000 and $8,000 a year, has seen its enrollment drop 12%, says David Dearman, the head of the school. Many parents of its students were among the 3,000 workers laid off by the area’s largest employer, the University of Texas Medical Branch. At the end of 2008, the school’s endowment was $800,000, down about 20% from July.
The school has ramped up donation efforts through its Web site, and held car washes and bake sales. It stopped using substitute teachers — other staff members now step in when a teacher is out sick. “Our school will survive, but it will take years to recover,” Mr. Dearman says.
Trinity Episcopal School is one of many kindergarten-through-12th-grade private schools caught in the middle of an economic tempest: anemic endowments, dwindling donations, financially strapped parents slashing tuition from the family budget, and an exodus to suburbs with more appealing public schools where costs are lower.
“The discourse has shifting from sustainability to survivability,” says Myra McGovern, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Independent Schools.
Obama Should Acknowledge His Catholic School Roots
Of the many parallels between Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy, one has eluded all coverage: Both attended Catholic school as children. In fact, while JFK may have been the Irish Catholic from Boston, he spent less time at the Canterbury School in Connecticut than did young Barry (as he was then called) at St. Francis of Assisi in Indonesia.
At a time when America’s 6,165 Catholic elementary and 1,213 secondary schools are celebrating Catholic Schools Week, President Obama’s first-hand experience here opens the door to a provocative opportunity. In his inaugural address, the president rightly scored a U.S. school system that “fail[s] too many” of our young people. How refreshing it would be if he followed up by giving voice to a corollary truth: For tens of thousands of inner-city families, the local parochial school is often the only lifeline of hope.
“When an inner-city public school does what most Catholic schools do every day, it makes the headlines,” says Patrick J. McCloskey, author of a new book called “The Street Stops Here,” about the year he spent at Rice High — an Irish Christian Brothers school in Harlem. “President Obama has a chance to rise above the ideological divide simply by giving credit where credit is due, by focusing on results, and the reason for those results.”
House Vote on the Stimulus / Splurge
HR1 on 28 January 2009: 244 (all Democrats) -188 (11 Democrats and 177 Republicans).
Much more on the splurge here.
Ohio Governor Strickland’s K-12 Finance Proposal
At least one local school administrator is encouraged by Gov. Ted Strickland’s education plan unveiled during Wednesday’s State of the State address.
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The plan includes the elimination of phantom revenue and a new conversion-levy option that would allow tax revenue to grow with inflation, Newark City Schools Superintendent Keith Richards said.
“House Bill 920 has been one of my pet peeves since I’ve become an administrator,” he said of the 1976 bill that freezes levy revenues at the amount of money they’re originally passed for. “I believe conversion is the way schools should be funded.”
The other funding portion Strickland addressed — the phantom revenue — means that the state will fund districts at the 20-mill floor, instead of funding them as if they were taxing at 23 mills.
Those funding ideas, however, didn’t hold weight with state Rep. Jay Hottinger, R-Newark, who said the solution was nowhere to be found.
“There was no new formula, no significant change. I’m flabbergasted and really underwhelmed,” he said.
Reporting the Stimulus/Splurge: Notes on Education Spending
‘ve lost count of how many trillions of bailout money have been laid out (fortunately for all of us, Bloomberg keeps track: $8.5 trillion and counting). Layoffs are being announced in the tens of thousands in a single day. The housing market continues to collapse, as does the banking industry. We have a new administration, which has created a huge appetite for any shred of news from the White House. Those two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still drone on. The news industry is collapsing. And Oklahoma is 20-1 in basketball (Beg pardon on this last one.)
But today, the heavy guns are out for the approaching-trillion-dollar stimulus package Obama is pushing through Congress. And it’s an impressive performance.
First, The New York Times has a double-barreled effort with its lead stories on page one today, one about the unprecedented education spending in the bill and the other on the massive health-care expenditures it contains.
The Times is excellent on both counts. On education, it reports that fully $150 billion of the stimulus package is allocated for learnin’. It puts the numbers in great context:
…a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget…
…would amount to the largest increase in federal aid since Washington began to spend significantly on education after World War II…
…New York would be among the biggest beneficiaries, at $760 per student, while New Jersey and Connecticut would fall near the bottom, with $427 and $409 per student, respectively. The District of Columbia would get the most per student, $1,289, according to the foundation’s analysis…
And it clearly explains the potential ramifications of implementing such an enormous plan:
Critics and supporters alike said that by its sheer scope, the measure could profoundly change the federal government’s role in education, which has traditionally been the responsibility of state and local government…
The bill would, for the first time, involve the federal government in a significant fashion in the building and renovation of schools, which has been the responsibility of states and districts…
2009 Madison Teachers, Inc. Candidate Questionnaire
1.2MB PDF File. This document includes responses from Madison School Board seat 1 candidates Arlene Silveira and Donald Gors, Seat 2 candidate Lucy Mathiak and a number of other local and statewide candidates for office in the upcoming April, 2009 election. Via a kind reader’s email.
4 Year Old Kindergarten Again Discussed in Madison
But there is controversy with 4K, and not just because of the cost. In other districts that have started programs, operators of private centers that stand to lose tuition dollars have emerged as opponents.
That’s unlikely to be true for Renee Zaman, director of Orchard Ridge Nursery School on Madison’s west side, who said last week that her center would be in a good position to participate with a 4K program because they already teach 84 4-year-olds and because all of their early childhood teachers are state certified.
But Zaman also said she hopes that the district doesn’t push a 4K program through too quickly. She is particularly worried that the curriculum might focus too heavily on academics.
One sticking point in past 4K discussions in Madison was concern from the teachers union, Madison Teachers Inc., that preschool teachers at off-site programming centers might not be employees of the school district.
But Nerad and MTI Executive Director John Matthews have had many discussions about 4K over the past several months, and Matthews said as long as no district teachers are displaced, he is in favor of the program.
Related: Marc Eisen on “Missed Opportunities for 4K and High School Redesign”.
The Obama Splurge / Stimulus: “A 40 Year Wish List”
Via a kind reader’s email: The Wall Street Journal:
“Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.”
So said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in November, and Democrats in Congress are certainly taking his advice to heart.
And don’t forget education, which would get $66 billion more. That’s more than the entire Education Department spent a mere 10 years ago and is on top of the doubling under President Bush. Some $6 billion of this will subsidize university building projects. If you think the intention here is to help kids learn, the House declares on page 257 that “No recipient . . . shall use such funds to provide financial assistance to students to attend private elementary or secondary schools.” Horrors: Some money might go to nonunion teachers.”
The US debate over the fiscal stimulus is remarkable in its neglect of the medium term – that is, the budgetary challenges over a period of five to 10 years. Neither the White House nor Congress has offered the public a scenario of how the proposed mega-deficits will affect the budget and government programmes beyond the next 12 to 24 months. Without a sound medium-term fiscal framework, the stimulus package can easily do more harm than good, since the prospect of trillion-dollar-plus deficits as far as the eye can see will weigh heavily on the confidence of consumers and businesses, and thereby undermine even the short-term benefits of the stimulus package.
We are told that we have to rush without thinking lest the entire economy collapse. This is belied by recent events. The spring 2008 stimulus package of $100bn (€76bn, £71bn) in tax rebates was rushed into effect in a similar way and we now know it had little stimulus effect. The rebates were largely saved or used to pay down credit card debt, rather than spent. The $700bn troubled asset relief programme bail-out was also rushed into effect and its results have been notoriously poor.
The Tarp has not revived the banks or their lending, but it has supported a massive transfer of taxpayer wealth to the management and owners of well-connected financial institutions. Some of those transfers – as in the case of Merrill Lynch using its government-financed sale to Bank of America to enable $4bn in bonuses last month – are beyond egregious. Yet the US is now inured to corruption and in such a rush that even billions of dollars of public funds shovelled into Merrill’s private pockets in broad daylight barely merited a day’s news cycle.
More from Victor Davis Hanson and Greg Mankiw on the Congressional Budget Office:
So only 8 percent of this spending occurs in budget year 2009, and only 41 percent occurs in first two years. Note that spending on transfer payments and tax relief occurs much faster than this: click through to the above link for details.
Mario Rizzo quotes Keynes:
“Organized public works, at home and abroad, may be the right cure for a chronic tendency to a deficiency of effective demand. But they are not capable of sufficiently rapid organisation (and above all cannot be reversed or undone at a later date), to be the most serviceable instrument for the prevention of the trade cycle.”
Finally, a look at the origins of the Madison School District’s $18M slice of the splurge. Long time Wisconsin Congressman David Obey is chair of the House Appropriations Committee, a position that gives him a prime seat for earmarks.
Finally, Nanette Asimove notes the proposed borrowing and printing money for California.
World Chess Queen is a Model Player
The best women’s chess player in the world flipped a dirty diaper into the trash as she pondered her next move after a dominating year.
“I want to open a chess academy online, keep training, doing the podcast,” says south Floridian Alexandra Kosteniuk. “But right now, my priority is being a mother.”
Kosteniuk, 24, won the Women’s World Chess Championship in her homeland, Russia, in September. After several months of travelling the globe, Kosteniuk, her husband, Diego Garces, and their 20-month-old daughter Francesca are home.
About 3,000 people subscribe to her podcast at chessiscool.com, and about 10,000 others log on each month to her website, where they can see photos of Kosteniuk in bikinis and buy her instructional DVDs. “It’s the most popular chess site out there,” says her husband, 49, who is also her webmaster and publicist.
Obama Stimulus/Splurge K-12 Reform Initiatives Gone?
I’m writing about the Democrats’ intra-party squabbles on schools, the kind that exploded during the campaign and grew more vociferous in the election’s aftermath but quieted down somewhat with President Obama’s appointment of (consensus candidate) Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education. Well, they’ve returned. Word is that Senate Democrats have stripped virtually all of the reform-friendly provisions out of the House stimulus bill (a bill that was not terribly reform-friendly to begin with ). The Teacher Incentive Fund (which supports merit pay programs): gone. Charter school facilities dollars: gone. Money for data infrastructure projects: gone. Language ensuring that charter schools have equitable access to the money: gone. The teachers unions firmly in control of the Democratic Party: back with a vengeance.
Related: Carl Hulse talks with the Splurge’s author: 40 year congressional veteran David Obey (D-Wisconsin):
Indeed, it was Mr. Obey, the third-most-senior member of the House, who, in large measure, shaped the bill, in concert with other House Democratic leaders. And though Mr. Obama has embraced the bill, not a single House Republican has lent it support. The president himself is scheduled to visit Capitol Hill on Tuesday to try to address Republican concerns that Mr. Obey and others are using the legislation to push vast amounts of money into health care and other favored initiatives.
Mr. Obey’s impatience, temper and occasionally cutting tone are well known. Even as he outlined the economic plan before Mr. Obama’s inauguration, he flippantly referred to the new president as “the crown prince.” The remark was evidence that Mr. Obey, like other veteran chairmen involved in writing the stimulus package, might not be entirely deferential to the new president until he proved he could exert his influence.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California placed Mr. Obey in charge of producing the economic measure and shares his view that the spending for health, nutrition and unemployment programs is justified and a quicker way than tax breaks to pump money into the economy. Ms. Pelosi is very loyal to the chairman, who was a top ally in her 2001 race for Democratic whip.
Putting the economic bill together turned out to be challenging. Mr. Obey and a contingent of Democratic staff members worked over the holidays, meeting with other lawmakers. They were in talks with Rahm Emanuel, who was soon to be the White House chief of staff, and Rob Nabors, a former staff director of the Appropriations Committee who had left to join the Obama team as a budget official.
More here:
For some House Democrats, the problem is less a matter of balancing the short and long term than a shortage of focus and will on the part of the administration. Their disappointment centers on the relatively small amount devoted to long-lasting infrastructure investments in favor of spending on a long list of government programs. While each serves a purpose, the critics say, they add up to less than the sum of their parts, and fall far short of the transformative New Deal-like vision many of them had entertained.
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The bill to be voted on today includes $30 billion for roads and bridges, $9 billion for public transit and $1 billion for inter-city rail — less than 5 percent of the package’s total spending. Administration officials have said they did not push for more infrastructure spending because of concerns about how many projects are “shovel ready” — a view that House members say is held most strongly by Lawrence H. Summers, Obama’s chief economic adviser.
Gates Advocates Charter School Growth
These successes and failures have underscored the need to aim high and embrace change in America’s schools. Our goal as a nation should be to ensure that 80 percent of our students graduate from high school fully ready to attend college by 2025. This goal will probably be more difficult to achieve than anything else the foundation works on, because change comes so slowly and is so hard to measure. Unlike scientists developing a vaccine, it is hard to test with scientific certainty what works in schools. If one school’s students do better than another school’s, how do you determine the exact cause? But the difficulty of the problem does not make it any less important to solve. And as the successes show, some schools are making real progress.
Based on what the foundation has learned so far, we have refined our strategy. We will continue to invest in replicating the school models that worked the best. Almost all of these schools are charter schools. Many states have limits on charter schools, including giving them less funding than other schools. Educational innovation and overall improvement will go a lot faster if the charter school limits and funding rules are changed.
One of the key things these schools have done is help their teachers be more effective in the classroom. It is amazing how big a difference a great teacher makes versus an ineffective one. Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.
Whenever I talk to teachers, it is clear that they want to be great, but they need better tools so they can measure their progress and keep improving. So our new strategy focuses on learning why some teachers are so much more effective than others and how best practices can be spread throughout the education system so that the average quality goes up. We will work with some of the best teachers to put their lectures online as a model for other teachers and as a resource for students.
California Plans to Reduce Education Spending
Although lawmakers continue to argue over how to resolve the state’s fiscal crisis, they already have endorsed $6 billion in spending cuts that provide a painful preview of what is likely to be in store for Californians.
The proposed cuts would mean that money for the state’s university systems would decrease. Transportation and schools would take a hit. Funds for regional centers that help treat developmental disabilities in babies and toddlers would decline. Cash to help the elderly, blind and disabled keep up with rising food costs would be slashed.
None of these cuts has been enacted. But the fact that they were included in the fiscal plan that Democrats passed last month — and have been separately backed by Republicans — ensures that they will be at the top of the list when lawmakers finally decide how to bridge a budget gap projected to exceed $40 billion within a year and a half.
School Spotlight: McFarland School Forest becomes classroom outside the classroom
Indian Mound Middle School students are spending study halls in an outdoor classroom right next to their school.
Two groups of sixth-graders trek weekly through the McFarland School Forest adjacent to their school during their study hall period. They participate in various activities such as the recent scavenger hunt to look for and photograph things like deer tracks and evidence of animals eating.
“It’s just a good way to get outdoors (and) shed off the extra energy we have,” said sixth-grader Dayne Mickelson. “We just have one recess.”
The field trips are part of an effort to have students spend more time in the immense natural resource in the school’s backyard.
“I would love to take every child in this school out in the woods as much as possible,” said Janet Moore, community outreach/school forest coordinator in the McFarland School District. “It is good to kind of get an ongoing relationship with the place.”
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Obama Stimulus/Splurge: School money will be hard to cut later
Democrats want to use the big spending package designed to jump-start the staggering economy to send billions to long-term programs to help poor and disabled school children.
President Barack Obama’s recovery plan amounts to the biggest increase ever in federal money for schools. Many Republicans say it is not a short-term boost but an immense expansion that will be impossible to roll back.
“What will happen two years from now when the Democrat spending spree comes to an end?” asked California Rep. Buck McKeon, top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee.
“It’ll never go away,” said Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “You’re talking about a permanent increase at a time when we are in the worst financial shape we’ve ever been in.”
The measure making its way through Congress would achieve a long-sought goal of Obama and other Democrats. For the first time, it would fully fund No Child Left Behind, former President George W. Bush’s education program. Democrats complain Bush never provided enough money for the kindergarten-through-12th grade program.
Not a coincidence, critics said.
Related: Democrats dispute the Congressional Budget Office’s report on the stimulus/splurge.
Minnesota’s Shared School Services Proposal
Joe Kimball, via a kind reader’s email:
Some details emerged today from the proposal by Gov. Tim Pawlenty and several lawmakers for what they call a bipartisan effort to require Minnesota school districts and charter schools to combine efforts to reduce costs.
Under their Minnesota K-12 Shared Service proposal, school districts and charter schools will be able to pool their purchasing power for information technology, food services, supplies and equipment, operations, transportation and other goods and services. All Minnesota public school districts and charter schools will be required to participate in shared services.
The proposal calls for the Minnesota Department of Education to create and maintain a list of preferred vendors for various shared services. Once the list was compiled, the ed department would create contracts with the preferred vendors on behalf of the state and work with school administrators, educators and other stakeholders on a two-year shared-services plan to best realize cost savings.
he bill would require (note the “require” part) all public K-12 and charter schools to purchase services in the following areas from a list of approved vendors: all school materials, supplies, tools, and equipment for school facilities operations and maintenance; technology equipment and communication services; food services; and transportation services. MDE would be responsible for approving the vendors and maintaining the list. The bill would be effective July 1, 2009. A consultant would be hired for the first two years to help the department implement the program. The consultant would be paid on a percentage of realized savings not to exceed 5%. The consultant’s fee would be paid from the savings realized by individual school districts, so each district would have to calculate how much their participation in the shared services program had saved them. MDE would reduce their state funding by a certain amount to recover the funds to pay the consultant. Each district’s savings would be required to be allocated to “classroom education.”
The senators quickly moved to the heart of the matter, and Sen. Bonoff introduced a Mr. Dahl from Deloitte, the accounting firm. Apparently Deloitte had done some work on shared services in schools in Pennsylvania. He shared a PowerPoint with the committee describing the benefits and anticipated savings. He estimated a potential savings for MN schools of $1M/week. The questions starting coming right after he was done.
Sen. Hann (R-Eden Prairie) wondered how the new bureaucracy would not consume all of the potential savings. Dahl recognized the work of the OET and existing service coops and said that their work would be made more effective.
Sen. Hann asked if it was possible that some schools in the state would see an increase in their costs because they had already negotiated very favorable contracts. Dahl said possible, but not likely.
Sen. Hann asked what constitutes “classroom use” for the allocation of savings. Sen. Bonoff said that the intent of the legislation is to be “loose” with the classroom use restriction.
Sen. Saltzman (DFL-Woodbury) asked if the bill would have curriculum implications for textbooks, etc. Bonoff said no.
Dubuque’s School Referendum
When voters on Feb. 3 decide on the Dubuque Community School District’s tax proposal, the decision comes down to one thing: trust.
Do they trust school officials when they say this is a revenue-neutral proposition?
Basically, the school district is cash-strapped in one account and adequately funded in another — but money from those funds cannot be commingled.
So, the proposal is that voters double the Instructional Support Levy and the school board promises to reduce the Cash Reserve Levy an equivalent amount. That way, taxpayers will pay the same but the district has the authority to spend dollars where they are most needed.
Voters should support the change.
However, taxing issues are never that simple. Taxpayers might vote against the Instructional Support Levy if they don’t trust the school district to keep its word. It’s a matter of trust. During this past decade, especially, the Dubuque Community School District has worked hard to earn and retain citizens’ trust.