All posts by Jim Zellmer

Education Expenditure of Government, total, as Percent of Gross National Income

UNdata has published some interesting data sets, including those that compare US education spending with other countries. Here’s a few data points:

United States: 2003 = 5.8%
United Kingdom 2003 = 5.4%
Switzerland 2003 = 5.1%
Singapore 2001 = 3.7%
New Zealand 2003 = 7.1%
Mexico 2003 = 5.9%
Korea 2003 = 4.6%
Japan 2003 = 3.6%
France 2003 = 6%
Germany 2002 = 4.8%
India 2003 = 3.3%
Denmark 2003 = 8.5%

Freedom Means Responsibility

George McGovern:

Nearly 16 years ago in these very pages, I wrote that “‘one-size-fits all’ rules for business ignore the reality of the market place.” Today I’m watching some broad rules evolve on individual decisions that are even worse.
Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior. Much paternalist scrutiny has recently centered on personal economics, including calls to regulate subprime mortgages.
With liberalized credit rules, many people with limited income could access a mortgage and choose, for the first time, if they wanted to own a home. And most of those who chose to do so are hanging on to their mortgages. According to the national delinquency survey released yesterday, the vast majority of subprime, adjustable-rate mortgages are in good condition,their holders neither delinquent nor in default.
There’s no question, however, that delinquency and default rates are far too high. But some of this is due to bad investment decisions by real-estate speculators. These losses are not unlike the risks taken every day in the stock market.

About George McGovern.

NYT: We Need National Teen Licensing Laws

Robert Farago:

I’m a little confused about The New York Times’ position regarding states’ rights. On one hand, it’s down with California’s desire to enact CO2 emissions regulations that trump national standards. On the other hand, when it comes to teen licensing, it asserts “What the country needs is a uniform set of rules, based on the soundest research. That is the best way to keep teenage drivers, and everyone who shares the roads with them, safer.” The Old Gray Lady argues that “Congress flexed its muscle in the mid-1980s and pressed states to adopt a minimum drinking age of 21. More recently, it did so to pass tougher drunken driving laws. The country’s highways are safer for those efforts. Congress now needs to do the same for teenage driving.” To that end, the paper supports Senator Chris Dodd’s proposal to withhold federal highway funds from states that refuse to set the minimum driving age at 16 and adopt graduated licensing for 16- and 17-year-olds (including nighttime and passenger restrictions).

What you usually don’t hear about WEAC

Thomas Zachek:

It’s amazing how much some people dislike WEAC.
One e-mailer called it a “collective” (like the Borg?). Another said teachers love unionization “because you can’t think for yourselves!”
The Wisconsin Education Association Council has never told me how to think or what to teach. WEAC may take positions on issues, but its members can think what they want – and do. I have attended at least five WEAC Representative Assemblies, and I assure you that the debate is vigorous and disagreement is extensive.
I wonder which organizations those e-mailers belong to that might encourage free thinking and not allegiance to dogma from on high. The Republican Party perhaps? The National Rifle Association? The Catholic Church?
News media repeatedly refer to the “powerful teachers union” as if it’s somehow emptying our pockets and preventing life from being beautiful. Rep. Don Pridemore (R-Hartford), whose newsletters used to cite a “WEAC Atrocity of the Month,” wrote that the union influences every education decision in the state.

Snow – seen “through my eyes as a first year principal at Marquette”

Andrea Kreft:

welcome you to see through my eyes as a first year principal at Marquette Elementary.
Right now I see snow: a record amount of snow!
It covers our staff’s cars in the parking lot, our playground and our students. It is the time of year when the shine on the floors turns to a dull, salty dust and a scattering of wet boots lay “close to” lockers in the halls. No wonder the Lost and Found bin overflows so quickly.
We’ve rounded the corner into the second semester and I’ve learned a lot about snow and how our attention clings to what the weather brings. It begins with a continuing debate in determining where snow boots and pants need to be worn on the playground.
With every new layer of snow, I am thankful for the staff that fashion the blaze orange vests and assist in addressing these questions to keep our students safe and as dry as possible outside.

Wisconsin teenagers compete for academic honors

Anita Clark:


After months of practice and grueling drills, 180 Wisconsin teenagers will converge on Madison next week to face tough competition.
For these young people, the contests are academic, not athletic. They’ll be competing in the finals of the Wisconsin Academic Decathlon, which this year includes Dane County teams from McFarland and Sun Prairie high schools.
It’s among a growing number of academic extracurricular activities that help students flex their brains, polish their skills and pump up pride in their schools and communities.

Amy Hetzner has more:

After six straight state championship years, with nearly half of last year’s winning team returning, what worries could face Waukesha West High School’s Academic Decathlon team going into next week’s state competition?
“We talk about the New England Patriots,” West’s veteran decathlon coach Duane Stein said. “We think anybody can fall on any day.”
So the nine members of West’s team have been staying late at school and studying in their spare time to try to avoid repeating at Wisconsin’s academic Super Bowl the performance of a certain undefeated football team that lost its final game of the season.
They’re not the only ones hard at work, however.

These Benefactors Do Homework as Charities Fawn

Amy Merrick:

Amy Herzog took some curious steps as she prepared to interview with a big donor, one that could write a huge check for medical research on her son’s rare digestive disorder. She fretted over choosing the sweater and pants she wore, not wanting to look like “some old mom.” She made her husband, Brian, go with her. “I did not want to walk in there alone,” she says.
The Herzogs found the meeting room and sat down. Before them, with pens poised over questionnaires, was a committee of students at Highland Park High School.
The 1,888-student school in an affluent Chicago suburb is one of a number of schools across the country that have emerged as highly sought scientific benefactors. Last year, the students raised $180,000, and an anonymous donor matched that. Students gave the $360,000 in one lump to a research organization started by a local family whose son has Huntington’s disease and whose daughter will develop the fatal genetic disorder.

At Charter School: Higher Teacher Pay

Elissa Gootman:

A New York City charter school set to open in 2009 in Washington Heights will test one of the most fundamental questions in education: Whether significantly higher pay for teachers is the key to improving schools.
The school, which will run from fifth to eighth grades, is promising to pay teachers $125,000, plus a potential bonus based on schoolwide performance. That is nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher earns, roughly two and a half times the national average teacher salary and higher than the base salary of all but the most senior teachers in the most generous districts nationwide.
The school’s creator and first principal, Zeke M. Vanderhoek, contends that high salaries will lure the best teachers. He says he wants to put into practice the conclusion reached by a growing body of research: that teacher quality — not star principals, laptop computers or abundant electives — is the crucial ingredient for success.
“I would much rather put a phenomenal, great teacher in a field with 30 kids and nothing else than take the mediocre teacher and give them half the number of students and give them all the technology in the world,” said Mr. Vanderhoek, 31, a Yale graduate and former middle school teacher who built a test preparation company that pays its tutors far more than the competition.

Related: The Teacher Free Agent Market in Denver.

California Court: Credential Needed to Home School

AP:

California parents without teaching credentials cannot legally home school their children, according to a recent state appellate court ruling.
The immediate impact of the ruling was not clear. Attorneys for the state Department of Education were reviewing the ruling, and home schooling organizations were lining up against it.
“Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,” Justice H. Walter Croskey wrote in a Feb. 28 opinion for the 2nd District Court of Appeal.
Noncompliance could lead to criminal complaints against the parents, Croskey said.

An earlier post on this item can be found here.
Bob Egelko & Jill Tucker:

A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.
The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming.
“At first, there was a sense of, ‘No way,’ ” said homeschool parent Loren Mavromati, a resident of Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County) who is active with a homeschool association. “Then there was a little bit of fear. I think it has moved now into indignation.”
The ruling arose from a child welfare dispute between the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and Philip and Mary Long of Lynwood, who have been homeschooling their eight children. Mary Long is their teacher, but holds no teaching credential.
The parents said they also enrolled their children in Sunland Christian School, a private religious academy in Sylmar (Los Angeles County), which considers the Long children part of its independent study program and visits the home about four times a year.

NPR:

Parents who home-school their children need a teaching credential, according to a recent appellate court ruling in California. What does the ruling mean for those who home-school more than 1 million American children?

Making Kids Money Savvy: Try These Four Financial Tricks

Jonathan Clements:

Give them a few dollars — and some financial common sense.
Want to make sure your children grow up to be money-smart adults? Check out the four experiments below.
My advice: Try these tricks on your kids, talk to them about the lessons to be learned — and then quietly muse about whether you, too, fall prey to these financial traps.
Favoring today. If children are to save diligently once they’re adults, they need to learn to delay gratification. Yet this skill doesn’t come easily.
Want proof? Let’s say you give your kids $5 a week in pocket money. When it’s next time to fork over their allowance, offer them a choice: They can have the usual $5 right away — or they can have $7, equal to a whopping 40% more, if they’re willing to wait a week.
“It’s about immediate gratification,” says Shlomo Benartzi, an economics professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. “Getting nothing right now doesn’t sound good, so they’d probably go for the $5.”

After School Programs in the 21st Century: Their Potential and What It Takes to Achieve It

Priscilla M. D. Little, Christopher Wimer, and Heather B. Weiss, Harvard Family Research Project:

Harvard Family Research Project’s (HFRP) Issues and Opportunities in Out-of-School Time Evaluation briefs highlight current research and evaluation work in the out-of-school time field. These documents draw on HFRP’s research work in out-of-school time to provide practitioners, funders, evaluators, and policymakers with information to help them in their work. This brief looks at 10 years of research on after school programs and finds implications for the future of the after school field.
This research brief draws on seminal research and evaluation studies to address two primary questions: (a) Does participation in after school programs make a difference, and, if so (b) what conditions appear to be necessary to achieve positive results? The brief concludes with a set of questions to spur conversation about the evolving role of after school in efforts to expand time and opportunities for children and youth in the 21st century.

Iowa State University journalism director challenges cyber trend

Lisa Rossi:

When Iowa State University journalism school Director Michael Bugeja asked a group of Simpson College students what inspires awe in them, he was greeted with deafening silence.
After a second attempt to get a reaction generated only a feeble response, Bugeja pondered his own question and concluded: Technology creates simulated lives for too many of today’s college students. In some cases, he said, they get so wrapped up in their online lives that they lose touch with reality.
Bugeja blames technology. He warns anyone who will listen about the blind embrace of avatars, cyber lives and Web surfing during class.
“What we’re seeing is these consumer technologies are blurring the line between entertainment and learning,” he said.
His views have landed him at the center of a debate among education leaders over how to simultaneously capture the attention of tech-savvy students and still maintain the depth of instruction they will need to survive in the modern wired world.
Not everyone agrees with Bugeja. That’s why there’s a spam e-mail named for him. And it’s why the editor of the campus newspaper characterized his comments as “iPhobic” in 2006. Some, however, give Bugeja credit for putting the issue on the front burner.
“He makes us stop and think about the impact of that technology and why do we think that it works, how could we improve on it,” said Jim Davis, ISU’s chief information officer.

Teen Aggression May Really Be a State of Mind

Alan Mozes:

For parents of emotionally combative teens, new research offers a powerful biological reason for all the family feuding — adolescent brain size.
A team of Australian scientists has found that when key regions of the brain known for controlling emotions are bigger, boys and girls tend to be more aggressive and more persistent during their fights with Mom and Dad.
“This is a bit of a unique study,” said study author Nicholas Allen, an associate professor with the Orygen Research Centre at the University of Melbourne. “Because we’ve shown for the first time that in terms of aggression — not physical, but being argumentative and unfriendly — some of the differences in the way teen kids interact with parents are biologically based. The adolescent is developing, their brain is developing, and there’s a link between the two.”
The finding was published in this week’s online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A Discussion of Madison’s Virtual Campus

Joan Peebles:

In the past weeks, judges, legislators, parents and school district staff throughout Wisconsin have created a lot of buzz around virtual charter schools. Meanwhile, the Madison Metropolitan School District quietly, but proudly, launched a long-awaited and much-needed program named Madison Virtual Campus (MVC) that has avoided the virtual school controversy through careful and thoughtful planning.
MVC is not an online school, but rather is a group of online educational options that serve students and staff across the district. The district recognizes that high school students sometimes have learning needs that may not fit the typical school attendance model.
For example, high school students are now able to register for up to two online high school courses at any time during a school year. To assure success, online students are guided and supported by online teachers at each of the district’s high schools.

Homeowners Petition to Leave the Waukesha School District

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Editorial:

The fact that 66 out of 99 residents in the Meadowbrook Farms single-family home development in Pewaukee are willing to spend an average of $700 more in property taxes to leave the Waukesha School District says something about the disturbing trend in what the district is offering its families.
If the district and taxpaying voters in the district want to become more attractive to families moving into Waukesha County, they’re going to have to find ways to reverse that trend and be willing to pay the price.
As the Journal Sentinel’s Amy Hetzner detailed in a Tuesday article, two sets of property owners plan to ask a state panel to overrule the Waukesha School Board’s denial of their requests to detach from Waukesha and join Pewaukee’s school system

High Schools Add Classes Scripted by Corporations
Lockheed, Intel Fund Engineering Courses

Anne Marie Chaker:

In a recent class at Abraham Clark High School in Roselle, N.J., business teacher Barbara Govahn distributed glossy classroom materials that invited students to think about what they want to be when they grow up. Eighteen career paths were profiled, including a writer, a magician, a town mayor — and five employees from accounting giant Deloitte LLP.
“Consider a career you may never have imagined,” the book suggests. “Working as a professional auditor.”
The curriculum, provided free to the public school by a nonprofit arm of Deloitte, aims to persuade students to join the company’s ranks. One 18-year-old senior in Ms. Govahn’s class, Hipolito Rivera, says the company-sponsored lesson drove home how professionals in all fields need accountants. “They make it sound pretty good,” he says.
Deloitte and other corporations are reaching out to classrooms — drafting curricula while also conveying the benefits of working for the sponsor companies. Hoping to create a pipeline of workers far into the future, these corporations furnish free lesson plans and may also underwrite classroom materials, computers or training seminars for teachers.
The programs represent a new dimension of the business world’s influence in public schools. Companies such as McDonald’s Corp. and Yum Brands Inc.’s Pizza Hut have long attempted to use school promotions to turn students into customers. The latest initiatives would turn them into employees.

A Look at California’s Dropouts

Nanette Asimov:

If California hopes to stop hemorrhaging the billions of dollars it spends by producing so many high school dropouts, the state needs to give schools better incentives to hold on to troubled students, change its graduation requirements and do more to plug the problem, researchers warn.
Each year, about 120,000 students fail to get a diploma by age 20, according to the California Dropout Research Project, which on Wednesday released detailed recommendations for state lawmakers and educators.
Each annual wave of dropouts costs the state $46.4 billion over their lifetimes because people without a high school diploma are the most likely to be unemployed, turn to crime, need state-funded medical care, get welfare and pay no taxes, according to the report.
“California uses a number of strategies to reduce dropout rates … but together they are insufficient to address the problem,” say the researchers, led by education Professor Russell Rumberger of UC Santa Barbara.

Racine’s Maintenance Referendum Tour

Dani McClain:

Racine Unified’s school board has a new plan to convince taxpayers to support its April 1 facilities referendum:
District officials are loading residents onto school buses Saturday morning and taking them on a tour.
“A picture says a thousand words,” board member Don Nielsen says. “The real thing says even more.”
District finance director David Hazen will lead the “tourists” from Case High School (where Nielsen says doors are in bad shape), to Janes Elementary school (where the fire alarm system is too old, Nielsen says), to Walden III Middle and High School (where Nielsen says the boiler has just about had it).

The Teacher Free Agent Market in Denver

Mike Antonucci:

The autonomy movement in Denver is leading to a strange phenomenon: a boom market for quality teachers:

Diane Kenealy interviewed for a teaching job at West Denver Preparatory Charter School on Jan. 9, received a job offer within 24 hours and accepted the position three days later.
Compare that rapid hiring to this spring’s staffing calendar in traditional Denver Public Schools, which dictates principals can’t schedule interviews with teaching candidates until the middle of March.
Even then, they can only talk to candidates already working in a city school.
A DPS principal who wants to talk to a college senior such as Kenealy, who spends her summers teaching poor children in Denver, has to wait another full month, until mid-April.

Next Question: Can Students Be Paid to Excel?

Jennifer Medina:

The fourth graders squirmed in their seats, waiting for their prizes. In a few minutes, they would learn how much money they had earned for their scores on recent reading and math exams. Some would receive nearly $50 for acing the standardized tests, a small fortune for many at this school, P.S. 188 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
When the rewards were handed out, Jazmin Roman was eager to celebrate her $39.72. She whispered to her friend Abigail Ortega, “How much did you get?” Abigail mouthed a barely audible answer: $36.87. Edgar Berlanga pumped his fist in the air to celebrate his $34.50.
The children were unaware that their teacher, Ruth Lopez, also stood to gain financially from their achievement. If students show marked improvement on state tests during the school year, each teacher at Public School 188 could receive a bonus of as much as $3,000.
School districts nationwide have seized on the idea that a key to improving schools is to pay for performance, whether through bonuses for teachers and principals, or rewards like cash prizes for students. New York City, with the largest public school system in the country, is in the forefront of this movement, with more than 200 schools experimenting with one incentive or another. In more than a dozen schools, students, teachers and principals are all eligible for extra money, based on students’ performance on standardized tests.

Madison Schools’ “Above the Line Behavior” Staff Training

Ron Lott:

Imagine being a student in a school where:

  • All the adults (teachers, bus drivers, administrators, after-school staff) work hard to develop relationships.
  • Behavioral expectations are consistent and taught in a way that makes sense.
  • Misbehaviors are viewed as teachable moments and responses help build responsibility.

Such an experience was the goal of the summer professional development series provided last August 20-24. Through the combined funding of an Evjue mini-grant ($4730), an Aristos grant ($2500), and a grant through The Foundation for Madison Public Schools ($10,000), a six-session series with noted presenter Corwin Kronenberg (pictured) was planned for an array of different target audiences. Kronenberg, the author of the Above the Line model for supporting student behavior, had provided smaller-scale trainings during the two previous summers.

School Lunch at Risk for Years

Elizabeth Williamson:

The U.S. Agriculture Department has for years had problems ensuring that beef supplied to the national school-lunch program meets food-safety standards, federal auditors’ reports show, suggesting more widespread problems than those that triggered the biggest food recall in U.S. history.
In reports dating back to 2003, the USDA Office of Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office cited the USDA’s lunch-program administrators and inspectors for weak food-safety standards, poor safeguards against bacterial contamination, and choosing lunch-program vendors with known food-safety violations. Auditors singled out problems with controls over E. coli and salmonella contamination.

Balancing Academic Tradition and Skills Employers Demand
Some Colleges Push for Focus on Writing

Valerie Strauss:

While designing a new core curriculum at Virginia Commonwealth University to help graduates thrive in the 21st century, Vice Provost Joseph Marolla seized on an old standard to ensure its success: teaching students to write better.
This school year, all freshmen at Virginia’s largest university began taking a two-semester course called Focused Inquiry that replaces English 101 and targets specific skills, writing chief among them.
The same thinking was behind a shake-up at the 50,000-student University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where an initiative was launched this school year, and a new department created, to make writing an essential element of every student’s education.
The push to improve writing is taking hold at many colleges and universities amid a national debate about what higher education in 21st century should look like in the face of government projections that nearly two-thirds of all high-growth, high-wage jobs created in the next decade will require a college degree — a degree only one-third of adults have.
The curriculum debate started at least 200 years ago when Thomas Jefferson grew tired of trying to change the curriculum of the College of William and Mary and founded the University of Virginia to launch the “liberal arts.” It is being played out at schools that are revamping curriculum to meet the demands of business leaders who want workers better trained in problem solving and collaboration and academics dedicated to a broad, intellectually rich education.
“We don’t want college to be a trade school,” Marolla said. “Everybody understands that. But as we’ve moved into the 21st century, we know that college kids have to have certain skills to be able to be successful over their lifetime.”

Giving Families the Preschool Choice

Kenneth Blackwell:

Across the country, governors are rushing to pour more and more tax dollars into state-run preschool programs. Today, all but ten states offer some sort of taxpayer-funded preschool for some three and four year olds — primarily based on need.
According to the National Institute for Early Education Research, more than $3.3 billion is spent on the nearly 950,000 children who used these programs each year. And last year, 28 states increased government funding by a combined 13%.
Reaching our youngest and most vulnerable children early with the basics of a good education is a good idea. The problem is many states are locking these students into dysfunctional and underperforming public education systems just a few years early.
If governors and legislatures want to expand public preschool, they should be mindful of the mistakes of the past. Instead of ceding more authority and tax dollars to entrenched educational bureaucracies and teachers’ unions, parent empowerment and education choice programs should be considered. And, if parents choose parochial or faith-based schools, so be it.
The real strength of America’s education system is in the diversity of educational opportunities. This diversity has allowed competition, preserved choice, and increased educational experimentation. Any valid proposal to improve educational opportunity for our youngest children will build on both of these strengths.

Take Home Test: Madison school board (unopposed) candidates take on charter schools

Marc Eisen @ Isthmus:

More and more Wisconsin school districts are experimenting with charter schools. Some 231 are in operation. Most have a specialty focus and are exempted from certain state regulations to facilitate new approaches to learning.
Appleton, for example, has 14 charter schools for its 15,000 students. These schools focus on Montessori learning, environmentalism, gifted education, the construction industry, arts immersion and alternative programs, among others.
Madison with its almost 25,000 students has held back, authorizing just two charters, the bilingual Nuestro Mundo on the east side, and the south side’s Wright Middle School, which despite its charter designation offers a program similar to Madison’s other middle schools.
The two Madison school board candidates — Marj Passman is the lone candidate for Seat 6, while Ed Hughes is running unopposed for Seat 7 — were relatively vague when we asked them about charter schools this week. Perhaps an inquiring voter will pin them down at an upcoming forum.

Much more on Finland’s Education System

A reader emailed these links regarding the recent article on Finland’s education system:

  • The PISA survey tells only a partial truth of Finnish children’s mathematical skills:

    The results of the PISA survey (http://www.jyu.fi/ktl/pisa/) have brought about satisfaction and pride in Finland. Newspapers and media have advertised that Finnish compulsory school leavers are top experts in mathematics.
    However, mathematics teachers in universities and polytechnics are worried, as in fact the mathematical knowledge of new students has declined dramatically. As an example of this one could take the extensive TIMSS 1999 survey, in which Finnish students were below the average in geometry and algebra. As another example, in order not to fail an unreasonably large amount of students in the matriculation exams, recently the board has been forced to lower the cut-off point alarmingly. Some years, 6 points out of 60 have been enough for passing.
    This conflict can be explained by pointing out that the PISA survey measured only everyday mathematical knowledge, something which could be – and in the English version of the survey report explicitly is – called “mathematical literacy”; the kind of mathematics which is needed in high-school or vocational studies was not part of the survey. No doubt, everyday mathematical skills are valuable, but by no means enough.

  • Severe shortcomings in Finnish mathematics skills:

    Basic school teacher Antero Lahti expressed (HS 28.2.) the opinion that the concern of over 200 university teachers for the mathematics teaching (HS 17.2.) were merely academic criticism.
    In fact, about one half of those signing are teachers at polytechnics (universities of applied sciences) and technical universities. They do not teach “academic” mathematics but mathematics needed in technical practice and engineering sciences. Over 12 000 students start engineering studies yearly.
    The mathematics skills of new engineering students have been systematically tested during years 1999-2004 at Turku polytechnic using 20 mathematical problems. One example of poor knowledge of mathematics is the fact that only 35 percent of the 2400 tested students have been able to do an elementary problem where a fraction is subtracted from another fraction and the difference is divided by an integer.
    If one does not know how to handle fractions, one is not able to know algebra, which uses the same mathematical rules. Algebra is a very important field of mathematics in engineering studies. It was not properly tested in the PISA study. Finnish basic school pupils have not done well in many comparative tests in algebra (IEA 1981, Kassel 1994-96, TIMSS 1999).

A Cautionary Case for Schools

Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

The words of Madison School Superintendent Art Rainwater should stand as a warning to school administrators statewide:
“In the context of what we know now, we would take a whole different approach. ”
Rainwater was referring to the district ‘s experience with a former male employee, allowed to quietly resign after a complaint of inappropriate behavior toward a female student.
The man later got a job with a different school district, which was unaware of the accusation at La Follette High School.
The man is now charged with repeated sexual assault of a child and with possession of child pornography.
The Madison district ‘s handling of the 2006 resignation of the employee, Anthony Hirsch, now of DeForest, should prompt all school districts to take a skeptical view of signing resignation agreements that require the district to keep quiet about any suspicions of inappropriate behavior on the job.

Madison School Board Approves West Side Boundary Change

Channel3000:

ome disappointed Madison parents said they will try to find the words to tell their children that they’ll be moving to another school next year.
In a unanimous decision, the Madison Metropolitan School District’s Board of Education voted to approve Plan F, which will move dozens of students from Chavez Elementary School to Falk Elementary next year. The affected area is referred to by the district officials as the “Channel 3 area,” which is the neighborhood that basically surrounds WISC-TV studios on the West Side of the city.
The district’s Long Range Planning Committee recommended Plan F, which will move 65 children in those neighborhoods to another elementary school for the fourth time in the last 15 years.

Andy Hall:


After hearing from about 30 speakers, a few of whom were moved to tears, the Madison School Board on Monday night approved controversial plans to redraw elementary and middle school attendance boundaries on the West Side.
Two hours of public testimony and 90 minutes of discussion by board members resulted in six unanimous decisions to approve changes in the Memorial High School attendance area to accommodate population changes and an elementary school that will open in the fall on the Far West Side.
Several speakers said the changes, which also affected Jefferson and Toki middle schools, will cause them to consider enrolling their children in private school.

Susan Troller also covered Monday’s meeting.

Is Reform Math a Big Mistake?

Via a Linda Thomas email:

Flash cards are out. Math triangles are in.
Mrs. Potter grabbed a chunky stack of flashcards, stood in front of the classroom and flipped through them every day when I was in second grade: 6 + 6 = blank, 7 + 3 = blank, 5 + 6 = blank. In unison, we responded 12, 10, 11. Our robotic pace slowed a bit when she held up subtraction cards.
That’s so old school.
The triangles my second-grade son brought home from school this year have plus and minus signs in the middle, with one number on each point. Students learn number families. For example, on a triangle of 6, 8 and 14 students see that 6 + 8, 8 + 6, 14 – 6 and 14 – 8 are all related.
Math triangles are part of the reform math curricula taught in more than one quarter of the nation’s schools. (See article “Math Wars” for a history of U.S. math education.) Seattle’s public elementary and middle schools teach reform math. This month the Seattle School Board will hear a recommendation for a new high school math curriculum that will be reform based. A key feature of this type of instruction is an emphasis on concepts, as opposed to computations.
In a traditional classroom, solving 89 + 21 involves lining the numbers up, carrying the one and arriving at 110 as the answer. Students learning reform math would think about the problem and reorganize it in several ways: 80 + 20 + 10, or 80 + 30, or 90 + 20. Same answer, different method.

Oconomowoc Must Pay for Disabled Student

Amy Hetzner:

The Oconomowoc Area School District must pay the educational costs of a disabled man placed by Winnebago County court order in a residential treatment center within district boundaries, an appeals court has decided.
Officials involved in the case say it could affect other school districts that host residential care and education centers, which often serve the most drastically disabled and costly students.
“Special education tuitions can run thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Oconomowoc Superintendent Patricia Neudecker said.
The ruling affirms a decision by the state Department of Public Instruction that transferred the financial burden of the man’s education at the Oconomowoc Developmental Training Center to the Oconomowoc district once he reached 18 and moved to an adult residential facility located in the district.
The DPI had argued that while state law exempts local school districts from paying the costs of students placed by court order in residential care centers such as the one in Oconomowoc, that exemption does not apply to adult students living in community facilities.
Neudecker said her district challenged the state’s decision to assign to it the educational costs of a person who had never been enrolled in the school system or lived there before his court-ordered placement, not only because of the financial burden but also because of the larger implications.

SMALLER CLASSES NOT ENOUGH TO REDUCE ACHIEVEMENT GAP

Northwestern News:

A Northwestern University study investigating the effects of class size on the achievement gap between high and low academic achievers suggests that high achievers benefit more from small classes than low achievers, especially at the kindergarten and first grade levels.
“While decreasing class size may increase achievement on average for all types of students, it does not appear to reduce the achievement gap within a class,” said Spyros Konstantopoulos, assistant professor at Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy.
Konstantopoulos’ study, which appears in the March issue of Elementary School Journal, questions commonly held assumptions about class size and the academic achievement gap — one of the most debated and perplexing issues in education today.
The Northwestern professor worked with data from Project STAR, a landmark longitudinal study launched in 1985 by the State of Tennessee to determine whether small classes positively impacted the academic achievement of students.
Considered one of the most important investigations in education, STAR made it abundantly clear that on average small classes had a positive impact on the academic performance of all students.

Autism Breakthrough: Girl’s Writings Explain Her Behavior and Feelings

John McKenzie:

Autism Breakthrough: Girl’s Writings Explain Her Behavior and Feelings
Two years ago, working with pictures and symbols on a computer keyboard, she started typing and spelling out words. The computer became her voice.
“All of a sudden these words started to pour out of her, and it was an exciting moment because we didn’t realize she had all these words,” said speech pathologist Barbara Nash. “It was one of those moments in my career that I’ll never forget.”
Then Carly began opening up, describing what it was like to have autism and why she makes odd noises or why she hits herself.
“It feels like my legs are on first and a million ants are crawling up my arms,” Carly said through the computer.

Do little ones need formal lessons?

Hilary Wilce:

War has broken out over the under-fives. As the Government moves to bring in a compulsory “nappy curriculum” for pre-schoolers, thousands of protesters are lobbying to keep children’s early years out of the hands of Whitehall bureaucrats. Their case is being brought before Parliament, and early-childhood experts from around the world are backing their cause.
The latest of these is educational psychologist Aric Sigman, who, in a research paper commissioned by the campaigners, sets out the evidence that early computer-based learning, which the new curriculum explicitly encourages, has a negative effect on language, maths, reading and brain development.
“Parents and the educational establishment should, in effect, ‘cordon-off’ the early years of education,” he concludes, “providing a buffer zone where a child’s cognitive and social skills can develop without the distortion that may occur through the premature use of ICT.”
The cause of the furore is the Government’s early years foundation stage, which sets out a detailed learning framework for the under-fives. Everyone who works with young children, be they childminders, play assistants or nursery teachers, will be required to use it from this September. The framework stresses that although children develop at different rates and young children learn by play and exploration, it lists 69 goals that most children should attain by the age of five, and outlines how children must be assessed against them.

Let Them Drop Out, Then Get Them Back

Jay Matthews:

Every time I hear from a teacher, I learn something. It may be a new reading report, a promising homework technique, a story of a student’s success. And sometimes it is a taboo-busting, eye-widening, troublemaking idea. Consider the e-mail that Michael Goldstein, founder of the MATCH Charter Public High School in Boston, sent, saying that if a kid wants to drop out, let him.
I would usually hit the delete button on something that impolitic. But Goldstein has created one of the most successful inner-city high schools in the country. He has proven to me time and again that he knows what he is talking about.
I think our awful dropout rate — only half of urban low-income students complete high school — is the most difficult educational problem in the country. It may require much more than our usual buzzword solutions such as “engaging lessons,” “personal contact” or “individualized instruction.” What Goldstein wants to do is sort of educational jujitsu: Let the force of the kid’s rush out of school bring him back, somewhat later, with enough money to get the learning he finally realizes he needs.
I am going to quote Goldstein’s e-mail in full, because anyone who is willing to risk his splendid reputation to this degree should have a chance to explain all the details. He wrote in response to my request for solutions to the hopelessness found in many of our urban high schools, exemplified by Washington Post Staff Writer Lonnae O’Neal Parker’s two-part series in November on Calvin Coolidge Senior High School senior Jonathan Lewis, a potential dropout if there ever was one.

Special ed’s costs endanger other programs

Kathleen Carroll:

The Demarest school district eliminated health insurance for teacher’s aides.
Becton Regional High School canceled the school play.
Ramsey postponed repairs to an athletic field so dangerous that the track team hosted meets in nearby towns.
The reason: skyrocketing special-education bills.
“It’s uncomfortable,” said Ramsey Superintendent Roy Montesano. “You don’t ever want to have it appear that we’re taking away, because we don’t want it to be a fight between general education and special education.”
Districts are under intense financial pressure after five years of flat state funding, rising health-care costs, public despair over sky-high tax bills and a law capping tax increases. At the same time, costs for New Jersey’s neediest special-education students have tripled to $595 million.

Parents “Ready for Monday’s Boundary Battle”

Channel3000:

A ciritical meeting on Monday night could decide the fate of where some Madison students will go to school.
VIDEO: Watch The Report
On Sunday, some West Side parents prepared for battle, concerned that they are becoming a swing neighborhood, WISC-TV reported.
The area at issue is located near the WISC-TV studios and is referred to as the “Channel 3 Area” by the Madison Metropolitan School District. If the current recommended plan is passed, their neighborhood children would be moved to the fourth elementary school in 15 years.
“It was Huegel, Orchard Ridge, Chavez, Mold, then new school,” said one concerned parent.
Parents in the neighborhood gathered together on Sunday night to share their talking points and prepare to fight for their neighborhood school.

Susan Troller has more here.

The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They Think They Know

David Wolman:

The YouTube clip opens with a woman facing away from the camera, rocking back and forth, flapping her hands awkwardly, and emitting an eerie hum. She then performs strange repetitive behaviors: slapping a piece of paper against a window, running a hand lengthwise over a computer keyboard, twisting the knob of a drawer. She bats a necklace with her hand and nuzzles her face against the pages of a book. And you find yourself thinking: Who’s shooting this footage of the handicapped lady, and why do I always get sucked into watching the latest viral video?
But then the words “A Translation” appear on a black screen, and for the next five minutes, 27-year-old Amanda Baggs — who is autistic and doesn’t speak — describes in vivid and articulate terms what’s going on inside her head as she carries out these seemingly bizarre actions. In a synthesized voice generated by a software application, she explains that touching, tasting, and smelling allow her to have a “constant conversation” with her surroundings. These forms of nonverbal stimuli constitute her “native language,” Baggs explains, and are no better or worse than spoken language. Yet her failure to speak is seen as a deficit, she says, while other people’s failure to learn her language is seen as natural and acceptable.
And you find yourself thinking: She might have a point.

Cheating Scandals Rock Three Top-Tier High Schools

Susan Donaldson James:

Sam is a top student in a high-pressure high school just outside New York City who openly admits he “cheats along the way” to academic success.
The 16-year-old sees nothing wrong with looking at another student’s paper during a quiz or borrowing a classmate’s ideas.
He insists “90 percent or higher” of the students at his school engage in cheating — from tucking vocabulary crib sheets under their hats to stealing math exams.
But Sam insists he has a moral conscience — he won’t use his last name for this article — and he swears he will never cheat in college. But he justifies his cheating.
“My parents would consider this cheating, but I don’t have any major problems with it,” Sam told ABCNEWS.com. “It’s school, and you’re cheating your way through the system.”
Sam is typical of most American students. An estimated two-thirds of all high school students admit to “serious” academic cheating, according to a national survey by Rutgers’ Management Education Center in New Jersey.

Many college students found to be unprepared

Rodrique Ngowi:

Massachusetts may have one of the highest rates of students going to college, but the first statewide school-to-college report shows that 37 percent of public high school graduates who enter public higher education may not be ready.
The joint report released Thursday by the Massachusetts Department of Education and the Board of Higher Education analyzed the performance of the class of 2005 and indicated that students lagging behind needed remedial courses in college.
State education officials say about 80 percent of Massachusetts high school students go to college. The report found that more students from low-income families, some racial and ethnic minorities, those who do not speak English as their first language, and those who receive special education services in high school go to community colleges, where most of them need remedial academic help.
Higher education officials were not surprised by the finding, saying they hope the report leads to new efforts to help students.

Final Meeting of the National Math Panel

Ednews:

March 13, 2008
Longfellow Middle School
Fairfax, VA
Registration (first-come, first-served basis)
We are now taking registrations for guests who would like to attend the final meeting of the National Math Panel.
Please note: There will be no public comments session at this meeting as the Panel will be adopting and releasing its Final Report.
Location:
Longfellow Middle School, 2000 Westmoreland Street, Falls Church, Virginia 22043
OnThursday, March 13 the Panel will complete its work by adopting and releasing the Final Report.

Education Revolt in Watts

Drew Carey video:

Vikki Reyes has had it with Locke High, the school her daughters attend in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. She walked in on class one day and recalls “the place was just like a zoo!” Students had taken control, while the teacher sat quietly with a book.
Frank Wells has also had it with Locke High. When he became principal he says gangs ruled the campus. He tried to turn things around but ran into a “brick wall” of resistance from the school district and teachers union.

Obama cracks a ruler, and the crowd goes wild

Mark Barabak:

They came to cheer. They got a lecture. The crowd went wild.
During a Barack Obama town-hall meeting on the economy, the topic turned to education, which, the Illinois senator said, could not be remedied by spending alone. “It doesn’t matter how much money we put in if parents don’t parent,” he scolded.
The line is one the Democrat delivers often, but on Thursday in Beaumont, Texas, he struck a remarkable chord with his mostly African American audience.
“It’s not good enough for you to say to your child, ‘Do good in school,’ and then when that child comes home, you’ve got the TV set on,” Obama lectured. “You’ve got the radio on. You don’t check their homework. There’s not a book in the house. You’ve got the video game playing.”
Each line was punctuated by a roar, and Obama began to shout, falling into a preacher’s rhythm. “Am I right?”
“So turn off the TV set. Put the video game away. Buy a little desk. Or put that child at the kitchen table. Watch them do their homework. If they don’t know how to do it, give ’em help. If you don’t know how to do it, call the teacher.”
By now, the crowd of nearly 2,000 was lifted from the red velveteen seats of the Julie Rogers Theatre, hands raised to the gilded ceiling. “Make ’em go to bed at a reasonable time! Keep ’em off the streets! Give ’em some breakfast! Come on! Can I get an amen here?”

Madison School Board Detailed Agenda Posted Online – Including a Proposed Wisconsin Center for Education Research Contract

A reader’s email mentioned that the Madison School Board has begun posting more detailed agenda items on their meeting web page. Monday, March 3’s full agenda includes Superintedent Art Rainwater’s discussion of the proposed Middle School report card changes along with a recommendation to approve an agreement with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (1.5MB PDF):

The focus of this project is to develop a value-added system for the Madison Metropolitan School District and produce value-added reports using assessment data from November 2005 to November 2007. Since the data from the November 2007 assessment will not be available until March 2008, WCER will first develop a value-added system based on two years of state assessment data (November 2005 and November 2006). After the 2007 data becomes available (about Ma r c h 1 2008), WCER will extend the value-added system so that it incorporates all three years of data. Below, we list the tasks for this project and a project timeline.
Task 1. Specify features o f MMSD value-added model
Task 2. Develop value-added model using 2005 and 2006 assessment dat a
Task 3. Produce value-added reports using 2005 and 2006 assessment data
Task 4. Develop value-added model using 2005, 2006, and 2007 assessment
Task 5. Produce value-added reports using 2005-2007 assessment data

August, 2007 presentation to the Madison School Board’s Performance & Achievement Committee on “Value Added Assessment”.

Immersion Presents: Monterey Bay Live Broadcasts

Location: Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary
Dates: Sunday, March 2 – Friday, March 7
Times (EST): 11 am, 12 am, 1 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm
Program Length: 30 minutes
Immersion Presents:

How do you get kids to say “I want to be a scientist when I grow up?” Dr. Robert Ballard, known for discovering the Titanic among other scientific breakthroughs, may have the answer. The renowned oceanographer’s latest quest is not to discover underwater secrets, but to inspire the next generation of ocean explorers by introducing kids to the thrill of discovery and encouraging them to pursue the science and environmental careers so critical for the health of the planet.
From March 2–7, 2008, Immersion Presents Monterey Bay, a cutting-edge, interactive educational program led by Dr. Ballard and a team of scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other institutions, will use telepresence technology – a combination of satellite and Internet connections – to transport young people live to a scientific expedition in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
Students will explore in real-time one of the planet’s most spectacular and most important biodiversity hotspots where they will experience majestic 100-foot-tall kelp forests, take a day trip out to the deep sea in NOAA’s research vessel R/V Fulmar, and study endangered marine mammals like the grey or blue whale and the threatened California sea otter.
“When kids see scientists in action, whether diving a kelp forest, exploring with an ROV, or getting up close to a whale, they immediately discover that being a scientist means much more than wearing a white coat in a lab,” said Dr. Ballard, founder of Immersion Presents. “With everyone talking about ‘going green,’ now more than ever we need kids to get excited about the environmentally focused careers that will help protect the planet. Immersion expeditions show kids that science is not only far from boring or nerdy, it is absolutely essential to preserve one of our most threatened resources, the oceans.”
“Many of our kids only know what a jellyfish is from watching Sponge Bob on television,” said Hector Perez, club director of the Chicago’s Union League Boys & Girls Club, which participates in the program. “It’s hard for kids to imagine being part of something that they’ve never seen before. Immersion Presents’ virtual science expeditions open their minds, transporting them to a whole new world of ocean discoveries, new technology, and exciting career opportunities.”

Judge orders homeschoolers into government education

Bob Unruh:

A California court has ruled that several children in one homeschool family must be enrolled in a public school or “legally qualified” private school, and must attend, sending ripples of shock into the nation’s homeschooling advocates as the family reviews its options for appeal.
The ruling came in a case brought against Phillip and Mary Long over the education being provided to two of their eight children. They are considering an appeal to the state Supreme Court, because they have homeschooled all of their children, the oldest now 29, because of various anti-Christian influences in California’s public schools.
The decision from the 2nd Appellate Court in Los Angeles granted a special petition brought by lawyers appointed to represent the two youngest children after the family’s homeschooling was brought to the attention of child advocates.

Wisconsin Legislature Still Split on Virtual Schools, Autism

Patrick Marley:

As the Legislature heads into the last days of its session, Democrats and Republicans remain far apart on bills that would protect virtual schools and expand health coverage for children with autism.
With the clock running out, nothing may happen this year on those issues. Then again, in the final frantic moments of legislative sessions, surprise compromises can arise, just as one did Thursday on ending the pay of fired Milwaukee police officers charged with serious crimes. Now, those officers continue to receive pay until they exhaust their appeals, which can take years.
The legislative session ends March 13, but lawmakers have not announced any meetings past next week.
The Assembly’s latest meeting – which adjourned just before 5 a.m. Friday – bogged down over the autism bill. Democrats delayed a vote on the bill until Wednesday after Republicans who control the house rewrote it.
The version Senate Democrats passed Tuesday would require insurance companies to cover treatment for autism. Assembly Republicans changed the bill Friday to drop the insurance mandate and instead plow $6 million in state taxpayer money into a state autism program.

Another kind of teaching

Andy Hall:


In the Lone Rock classroom of elementary teacher Lisa Bowen, hand puppets were all the rage last week. Study them. Borrow six from a library. Write a play. Perform.
The scene was quite different in another elementary classroom in the River Valley School District, where teacher Mike McDermott placed homemade yellow Post-it checklists on students ‘ assignments to help them assess the fluency of their writing. Oh, and the room in Plain Elementary contained a lean-to of 12-foot trees — a representation of a scene in a novel being read by students.
In River Valley High School in Spring Green, echoes of the Holocaust and warnings that it could happen again filled a line of display cases — a project that brought together regular and special education students from several classes throughout the school.
“Overall, we ‘re just really lucky, ” sophomore Rakelle Noble said as she and five classmates reflected upon recent examinations of the Holocaust and teenage health issues such as eating disorders and self-cutting.
“We have a lot of things other kids don ‘t get to experience. “

Suggested Characteristics of a New Waukesha Superintendent

Waukesha Taxpayer’s League:

The WTL was asked by the Waukesha School District what three criteria we would be looking for in a new superintendent. Here is our response.
1. Strong fiscally conservative background with a desire to be creative in finding solutions to budget woes other than referendums and new fees. Stability is a must to protect the children and deliver a high quality of education.
2. Knowledge and belief in charter and virtual schools including but not limited to “IQ academies”. These are great tools to address different learning styles, abilities and interests of children so they can succeed.
3. Belief in high academic standards in the core subjects to be competitive not only locally but worldwide. We have a worldwide economy and thus must deliver an education that will allow our children to compete worldwide.

Virginia considers leaving federal education act (NCLB) behind

Richard Quinn:

The General Assembly is flirting with abandoning a landmark federal law that governs schools in the United States.
The decision could make Virginia the first state to set a deadline – summer 2009 – for planning a pullout from the No Child Left Behind Act, which ties billions of dollars to federally mandated testing standards in public schools.
State politicians have balked at some of those standards in the past few years. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has signed bills asking the U.S. Department of Education to waive parts of the federal law.
Most of those exemptions were granted, but the notable ones that have not been approved frustrate educators and annoy legislators.
This year, some politicians want to up the ante.
Both the Senate and the House of Delegates are working with bills that say that if the state’s waiver requests aren’t granted, Virginia’s Board of Education would develop a plan to withdraw from NCLB by July 2009. Delegates have approved the bills, even adding language to one seeking to recoup federal tax money if the state withdraws.

Clusty Search: No Child Left Behind.

LVM Dreams Big

Susan Troller:

First it was the doors to the classroom that swung open for kids in wheelchairs. Now it’s access to the playground, especially at Elvehjem Elementary School, where there’s boundless enthusiasm for the Boundless Playground project.
The project aims to get students with disabilities playing side by side with the rest of the kids, Shelly Trowbridge, one of the parent organizers of LVM Dreams Big said in a recent interview.
On Friday, local supporters of the project held a chili dinner at the school. It included ceramic bowls made by students and a silent auction with artwork by students and community members. It was the latest in an ambitious series of family-oriented fundraisers that are aimed at building a community as well as a playground.
The nonprofit group (www.playgroundsupport.com) has raised over $81,000 in cash and in-kind contributions toward a goal of $200,000 to build the state’s first barrier-free Boundless Playground next summer on the Elvehjem School grounds. There are about 100 such play structures nationwide, but none in Wisconsin.

www.playgroundsupport.com

Does Curriculum Constrain Teachers?

Diane Ravitch:

Words are slippery things.
Take the idea of “constructivism.” Yes, I agree with you that we all “construct” knowledge as we encounter new ideas. We try to make sense of new ideas by fitting them to what we already know, using the vocabulary and experiences that we have already accumulated. If we have a meager vocabulary—or none at all, as when we visit a foreign country and are unfamiliar with the language—and if we have no experiences that are connected to the new ideas, then we will not be able to do much constructing of knowledge.
So the job of the school becomes one of conscientiously, purposefully building the vocabulary and background knowledge of students so that they can use them dynamically to understand new ideas and enlarge their knowledge.
There is another sort of constructivism in which students are busily discovering whatever they want to discover or trying to figure out through inquiry what the teacher knows but refuses to teach them or sitting around idly because they don’t know what they feel like discovering today. This is not the sort of classroom I admire. I have never much cottoned to the idea of the teacher as a “guide on the side, rather than a sage on the stage.” I tend to like the happy medium: the teacher who has clear aims, who knows what knowledge he or she is trying to convey, and who figures out imaginative, creative, innovative ways to teach it.

Teachers strike back at students’ online pranks

Patrik Jonsson:

Tech-savvy teenagers are increasingly paying a heavy price – including criminal arrest – for parodying their teachers on the Internet.
Tired of fat jokes and false accusations of teacher-lounge partying or worse, teachers and principals are fighting back against digital ridicule and slander by their students – often with civil lawsuits and long-term suspensions or permanent expulsions.
A National School Boards Association (NSBA) study says that as many as one-third of American teens regularly post inappropriate language or manipulated images on the Web. Most online pranks deride other students. But a NSBA November 2006 survey reported 26 percent of teachers and principals being targeted.
“Kids have been pulling pranks on teachers and principals since there have been schools in the US, but now there’s an edge to it – the tone and tenor of some of these attacks cross the line,” says Nora Carr, a spokeswoman for Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools in North Carolina.
In the growing backlash against these cybergoofs, however, real-world norms of propriety are being pitted against the uncertain jurisdictions of the Digital Age. A new test may be emerging on how far online lampooning can go, say First Amendment experts – and to what extent schools can control off-campus pranks.

Former Waunakee educational assistant wasn’t reported by the Madison Schools

Doug Erickson & Andy Hall:


A former Waunakee educator now facing sexual assault and child pornography charges was allowed to quietly resign from the Madison School District in 2006 after a female student accused him of inappropriately touching her leg, according to interviews and public records.
And a May 2006 agreement forbade Madison officials from notifying the state Department of Public Instruction of the girl ‘s accusations against Anthony Hirsch, who was a special education assistant at La Follette High School.
Hirsch, 32, of DeForest, was charged last month with possessing child pornography he allegedly bought and downloaded from Web sites and with having a sexual relationship with a student about five years ago while working at La Follette.
The charges — one count each of repeated sexual assault of a child and possession of child pornography — carry a maximum sentence of 85 years in prison and extended supervision.
Hirsch was an educational assistant for special education students at Waunakee Middle School until he submitted his resignation on Jan. 9 after he was arrested, Waunakee Superintendent Chuck Pursell has said. Hirsch worked at La Follette from 1998 until April 2006.

Teaching Boys & Girls Separately

Elizabeth Weil:

On an unseasonably cold day last November in Foley, Ala., Colby Royster and Michael Peterson, two students in William Bender’s fourth-grade public-school class, informed me that the class corn snake could eat a rat faster than the class boa constrictor. Bender teaches 26 fourth graders, all boys. Down the hall and around the corner, Michelle Gay teaches 26 fourth-grade girls. The boys like being on their own, they say, because girls don’t appreciate their jokes and think boys are too messy, and are also scared of snakes. The walls of the boys’ classroom are painted blue, the light bulbs emit a cool white light and the thermostat is set to 69 degrees. In the girls’ room, by contrast, the walls are yellow, the light bulbs emit a warm yellow light and the temperature is kept six degrees warmer, as per the instructions of Leonard Sax, a family physician turned author and advocate who this May will quit his medical practice to devote himself full time to promoting single-sex public education.
Foley Intermediate School began offering separate classes for boys and girls a few years ago, after the school’s principal, Lee Mansell, read a book by Michael Gurian called “Boys and Girls Learn Differently!” After that, she read a magazine article by Sax and thought that his insights would help improve the test scores of Foley’s lowest-achieving cohort, minority boys. Sax went on to publish those ideas in “Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences.” Both books feature conversion stories of children, particularly boys, failing and on Ritalin in coeducational settings and then pulling themselves together in single-sex schools. Sax’s book and lectures also include neurological diagrams and scores of citations of obscure scientific studies, like one by a Swedish researcher who found, in a study of 96 adults, that males and females have different emotional and cognitive responses to different kinds of light. Sax refers to a few other studies that he says show that girls and boys draw differently, including one from a group of Japanese researchers who found girls’ drawings typically depict still lifes of people, pets or flowers, using 10 or more crayons, favoring warm colors like red, green, beige and brown; boys, on the other hand, draw action, using 6 or fewer colors, mostly cool hues like gray, blue, silver and black. This apparent difference, which Sax argues is hard-wired, causes teachers to praise girls’ artwork and make boys feel that they’re drawing incorrectly. Under Sax’s leadership, teachers learn to say things like, “Damien, take your green crayon and draw some sparks and take your black crayon and draw some black lines coming out from the back of the vehicle, to make it look like it’s going faster.” “Now Damien feels encouraged,” Sax explained to me when I first met him last spring in San Francisco. “To say: ‘Why don’t you use more colors? Why don’t you put someone in the vehicle?’ is as discouraging as if you say to Emily, ‘Well, this is nice, but why don’t you have one of them kick the other one — give us some action.’ ”
During the fall of 2003, Principal Mansell asked her entire faculty to read “Boys and Girls Learn Differently!” and, in the spring of 2004, to attend a one-day seminar led by Sax at the school, explaining boys’ and girls’ innate differences and how to teach to them. She also invited all Foley Intermediate School parents to a meeting extolling the virtues of single-sex public education. Enough parents were impressed that when Foley Intermediate, a school of 322 fourth and fifth graders, reopened after summer recess, the school had four single-sex classrooms: a girls’ and a boys’ class in both the fourth and fifth grades. Four classrooms in each grade remained coed.
Separating schoolboys from schoolgirls has long been a staple of private and parochial education. But the idea is now gaining traction in American public schools, in response to both the desire of parents to have more choice in their children’s public education and the separate education crises girls and boys have been widely reported to experience. The girls’ crisis was cited in the 1990s, when the American Association of University Women published “Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America,” which described how girls’ self-esteem plummets during puberty and how girls are subtly discouraged from careers in math and science. More recently, in what Sara Mead, an education expert at the New America Foundation, calls a “man bites dog” sensation, public and parental concerns have shifted to boys. Boys are currently behind their sisters in high-school and college graduation rates. School, the boy-crisis argument goes, is shaped by females to match the abilities of girls (or, as Sax puts it, is taught “by soft-spoken women who bore” boys). In 2006, Doug Anglin, a 17-year-old in Milton, Mass., filed a civil rights complaint with the United States Department of Education, claiming that his high school — where there are twice as many girls on the honor roll as there are boys — discriminated against males. His case did not prevail in the courts, but his sentiment found support in the Legislature and the press. That same year, as part of No Child Left Behind, the federal law that authorizes programs aimed at improving accountability and test scores in public schools, the Department of Education passed new regulations making it easier for districts to create single-sex classrooms and schools.

What Makes Finnish Kids so Smart?
Finland’s teens score extraordinarily high on an international test. American educators are trying to figure out why.

Ellen Gamerman:

High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don’t start school until age 7.
Yet by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world. They earned some of the top scores by 15-year-old students who were tested in 57 countries. American teens finished among the world’s C students even as U.S. educators piled on more homework, standards and rules. Finnish youth, like their U.S. counterparts, also waste hours online. They dye their hair, love sarcasm and listen to rap and heavy metal. But by ninth grade they’re way ahead in math, science and reading — on track to keeping Finns among the world’s most productive workers.
The Finns won attention with their performances in triennial tests sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group funded by 30 countries that monitors social and economic trends. In the most recent test, which focused on science, Finland’s students placed first in science and near the top in math and reading, according to results released late last year. An unofficial tally of Finland’s combined scores puts it in first place overall, says Andreas Schleicher, who directs the OECD’s test, known as the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA. The U.S. placed in the middle of the pack in math and science; its reading scores were tossed because of a glitch. About 400,000 students around the world answered multiple-choice questions and essays on the test that measured critical thinking and the application of knowledge. A typical subject: Discuss the artistic value of graffiti.

More:

The Norssi School is run like a teaching hospital, with about 800 teacher trainees each year. Graduate students work with kids while instructors evaluate from the sidelines. Teachers must hold master’s degrees, and the profession is highly competitive: More than 40 people may apply for a single job. Their salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers, but they generally have more freedom.
Finnish teachers pick books and customize lessons as they shape students to national standards. “In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs,” says Mr. Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD, which began the international student test in 2000.
innish high-school senior Elina Lamponen saw the differences firsthand. She spent a year at Colon High School in Colon, Mich., where strict rules didn’t translate into tougher lessons or dedicated students, Ms. Lamponen says. She would ask students whether they did their homework. They would reply: ” ‘Nah. So what’d you do last night?'” she recalls. History tests were often multiple choice. The rare essay question, she says, allowed very little space in which to write. In-class projects were largely “glue this to the poster for an hour,” she says. Her Finnish high school forced Ms. Lamponen, a spiky-haired 19-year-old, to repeat the year when she returned.
Lloyd Kirby, superintendent of Colon Community Schools in southern Michigan, says foreign students are told to ask for extra work if they find classes too easy. He says he is trying to make his schools more rigorous by asking parents to demand more from their children.

MPS chief sees voucher inequities

Alan Borsuk:

The rising number of special education students in Milwaukee Public Schools is having a growing financial impact and should be given greater recognition in any comparison of MPS and private schools in the voucher program in the city, MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos said in a statement Wednesday.
Andrekopoulos was reacting to research about voucher schools released Monday.
He said concerns about the impact of the voucher program on property taxes in Milwaukee had been verified by the research.
Researchers based at the University of Arkansas said that city property taxes go up for each student who uses a voucher, compared to what would be the case if that student went to MPS, while state income taxes go down, as do property taxes in most of the rest of the state.

Related editorial.

An overhaul addresses how kids learn, not what courses they take.

Jennifer Brown:

Loveland High School used to offer watered-down math for students flunking geometry and algebra.
Then the geometry and construction teachers created a course that’s all the rage at Loveland High — a house-building class where students learn the slope of a line by determining the pitch of a roof.
The school started with two classes last year and now has six. Enrolled students have outperformed their classmates on state tests. And now Thompson School District is creating an algebra course where students will convert a gas-guzzling car to an electric one.
That creative course design is an illustration of what Gov. Bill Ritter envisions under his new education initiative — a revamping of curricula from preschool to college to produce courses focused more on content than titles.
Details of the governor’s initiative are still sketchy, though a 28-page draft of the legislation is likely to become official this week.

Nevada Charter School Tension
State, local moratoriums on new applications have education officials, lawmakers butting heads

Emily Richmond:

Nevada parents want the option of sending their children to charter schools.
State and local education officials say they won’t approve charter schools unless they can ensure the schools meet standards.
That’s all good, right? Well, it has educators and lawmakers in the bureaucratic equivalent of a schoolyard shoving match.
Following the Clark County School District’s lead, the State Board of Education in November said it was suspending approval of new charter school applications. The education officials said they did not have the staff to handle the workload. So, they said, until they can handle new charter schools properly, they aren’t going to handle them at all.
There were some tense exchanges among state board members and lawmakers in the days leading up to and following the moratorium vote.
Some lawmakers were infuriated, alleging the motives had more to do with turf protection than logistical challenges. A few legislators suggested the vote had violated the state’s open meeting law.

Kids & Steriods

Shaun Powell:

This is about the kids, they said, over and over, trying harder than Roger Clemens to sound convincing. The members of the House committee looking into steroid use in baseball pounded that theme into our brain last week at the hearing. Kids are getting bad messages about performance-enhancing drugs. Kids are being betrayed by ballplayers. Kids are being wrongly influenced by the superstars.
Well, sure, no problem there. Let’s look out for all kids – yours, mine, everyone’s.
But don’t tell me kids are being suckered by star athletes on steroids and then condone, through silence, drug use by entertainers.
Don’t send the media moral police chasing Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire, then release the Entertainment Tonight poodles on Sylvester Stallone.
Don’t spend thousands of dollars examining steroid use in baseball, then feel it’s not worth spending two cents checking out 50 Cent.
And please, don’t suggest that kids admire pro athletes more than they do actors and singers and rappers. These entertainers impact the way our kids walk, talk, dress and behave. Yet marijuana and cocaine somehow give them credibility with a young audience bent on rebellion. And with regard to the drug of the moment, there was no outcry from Congress or the media when dozens of A-list entertainers recently were linked to getting steroids through a Long Island chiropractor.

As driving deaths mount, some teens ask for tighter restrictions

AP:

Sami Wilson has attended the funerals of seven friends in the past two years. She’s 17 years old.
Wilson is a senior at Princeton High School, which has been particularly hard hit by traffic deaths involving teenagers.
”You kind of just get used to the feeling of a funeral around here,” Wilson told the Star Tribune.
But it’s not just a problem in this one Minnesota city. No state in the country has a higher percentage of teenagers behind the wheel in deadly crashes than Minnesota.
Teens were driving in 18.4 percent of Minnesota’s fatal traffic accidents from 2004 to 2006, according to figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The national average was 14.3 percent.
Roughly every five days, a Minnesota teen dies in a traffic crash. Already this month, a 17-year-old died without a seat belt in a head-on crash in Winona County, while another 17-year-old crossed the center line and collided head-on with a bus in southeastern Morrison county, killing a 53-year-old driver.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recently gave Minnesota and nine other states a marginal grade because they don’t limit teenage riders and night driving.
Many states, including Wisconsin, prohibit 16-year-olds from carrying more than one passenger or driving after midnight. In the last year, legislatures in Illinois, Ohio and Idaho tightened night driving or passenger laws for teen drivers.

Survey Finds Teenagers Ignorant on Basic History and Literature Questions

Sam Dillon:

Fewer than half of American teenagers who were asked basic history and literature questions in a phone survey knew when the Civil War was fought, and one in four said Columbus sailed to the New World some time after 1750, not in 1492.
The survey results, released on Tuesday, demonstrate that a significant proportion of teenagers live in “stunning ignorance” of history and literature, said the group that commissioned it, Common Core.
The organization describes itself as a new research and advocacy organization that will press for more teaching of the liberal arts in public schools.
The group says President Bush’s education law, No Child Left Behind, has impoverished public school curriculums by holding schools accountable for student scores on annual tests in reading and mathematics, but in no other subjects.
Politically, the group’s leaders are strange bedfellows. Its founding board includes Antonia Cortese, executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, a union that is a powerful force in the Democratic Party, and Diane Ravitch, an education professor at New York University who was assistant education secretary under the first President George Bush.

Program at Masconomet High helps blaze college path for urban minority teens

David Cogger:

Decked out in a red Ecko Unlimited T-shirt, baggy jeans, and a pair of Jordans, Adam Farward drops one shot after another from outside the paint through the basketball hoop. As he runs off the gym floor at Masconomet Regional High School, he boasts: “You’re looking at the future of the NBA.”
Farward is one of five minority students attending high school in Topsfield as part of A Better Chance, a residential program for academically talented youth from underserved communities often plagued by drugs and violence. At many other high schools, Farward and his fellow ABC classmates would blend right in, but Masco is not exactly the United Nations.
ABC plucks some of the best and brightest from urban areas and offers them a chance to live in places such as Topsfield and enroll in college preparatory high schools and boarding schools. Masco has been involved with ABC since 1973 and has graduated 60 students, all male because of housing limitations. It is the only public school in the northern suburbs involved in the program.
Kenneth Karas is a typical, high-achieving Masco senior. He’s a standout on the school’s varsity wrestling team, an award-winning artist, and he has dreams that include becoming a doctor. Karas is in the midst of that nervous time waiting for offers of admission to college. He has his heart set on attending Northeastern.

A falloff in visits to the nation’s parks offers further evidence of “nature deficit disorder”

Adam Voiland:

In the oft-quoted “Birches,” Robert Frost muses about a boy who lives too far from town to learn baseball so instead spends time in the woods swinging in the trees. “He always kept his poise / to the top branches, climbing carefully / with the same pains you use to fill a cup / up to the brim, and even above the brim,” Frost writes. “Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, / kicking his way down through the air to the ground.” This sort of unstructured, imaginative play is increasingly lacking in an indoor, scheduled world—to children’s great detriment, argues Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, a book that explores research linking the absence of nature in children’s lives to rising rates of obesity, attention disorders, and depression. New evidence of the lack: a recent study that shows visits to national parks are down by as much as 25 percent since 1987. U.S. News spoke with Louv about the study and the emergence of “nature deficit disorder.” Excerpts:
The new study points to about a 1 to 1.3 percent yearly decline in national park visits in America. Why do you think this is happening?
I looked at the decline in national park usage in my book, and the most important reason for it is the growing break between the young and nature. Our constant use of television, video games, the Internet, iPods is part of what’s driving this. For example, a recent study from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that kids between the ages of 8 and 18 spend an average of 6.5 hours a day with electronic media. But time and fear are also big factors. Many parents feel that if they don’t have their kids in every organized activity, they will fall behind in the race for Harvard. And we are scared to death as parents now of “stranger danger” and letting kids roam free.

Peeking Inside the Mind of the Boy Dating Your Daughter

Tara Parker-Hope:

THE image of the testosterone-fueled teenage boy is a familiar one. It has been reinforced by movies such as “Porky’s,” “American Pie” and “Superbad,” which chronicle the escapades of high school boys determined to lose their virginity.
But are boys that age really defined primarily by their sexual urges? Or does the stereotype fall short, telling us less about teenage males and more about a culture that seems to have consistently low expectations of its boys?
A new report in The Journal of Adolescence this month suggests that when it comes to sex, girls and dating, boys are more complex than we typically give them credit for. While hormonal urges are no doubt an important part of a teenage boy’s life, they aren’t necessarily the defining trait influencing a boy’s relationships with girls.
Psychology researchers from the State University of New York at Oswego recently examined data collected from 105 10th-grade boys, average age 16, who answered questions about a number of health behaviors. In questions put to them about girls (most of the boys self-identified as heterosexual), the teenagers were asked to note their reasons for pursuing a relationship. The top answer, marked by 80 percent of the boys? “I really liked the person.”

BEST U.S. FACTORY JOBS IN RISING JEOPARDY

Mark Trumbull:

A new round of cutbacks by Detroit’s automakers carries a larger message – that America’s manufacturing workers are under new pressure in jobs where labor unions had once been able to command middle-class wages for assembly-line jobs.
The point was punctuated this week as General Motors announced the largest ever annual loss by a maker of automobiles. In a bid to restore profitability, GM said it would offer incentives to convince older, highly paid assembly workers to retire early. Ford and Chrysler are pursuing similar worker buyouts.
The moves signal what some analysts say is an accelerating effort to trim wages and workforces. Essentially, the old Big Three are becoming a much smaller three. The pressures facing Detroit fit a larger pattern. Many US manufacturers are facing rising pressure from foreign rivals. The good news is that US factories are becoming more competitive. The bad news is that the needed streamlining is coming at the expense of American workers.
“Those jobs are going and they’re not coming back,” says Gary Chaison, a labor expert at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. In part, he says, manufacturers see moves such as the job buyouts as “a path for them to become low-cost producers by eliminating the high costs of American labor.”

Madison School Board Candidates Discuss Why They Are Running

Take Home Test, Week 1 by Marc Eisen:

Why is The Daily Page wasting precious pixels by questioning two Madison school board candidates who are running unopposed on the April 1 ballot?
Because the success of the public schools is absolutely essential to Madison’s future. And by questioning Marjorie Passman, the lone candidate for Seat 6, and Ed Hughes, the lone candidate for Seat 7, we hope to further the discussion of education in Madison.
So for the next five weeks we will revive Take Home Test, asking the candidates large and small questions each week. Their responses to our questions follow.
THE DAILY PAGE: WHAT IN YOUR BACKGROUND PREPARES YOU TO SET POLICY FOR A SCHOOL DISTRICT OF ALMOST 25,000 STUDENTS WITH A $340 MILLION BUDGET AND 3,700 EMPLOYEES? PLEASE DISCUSS YOUR PERTINENT TRAITS AND EXPERIENCES.

Via a couple of emails, including Ed Hughes, who urges us to look forward!
Ed’s website includes an interesting set of Questions and Answers, including those from Madison Teachers, Inc..

Looking Back With Retiring Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater

Neil Heinen:

Before he leaves his post as head of the Madison Metropolitan School District, Art Rainwater reflects on the past, present and future of public education for all in a city and a school system that look and feel very different than the ones he was introduced to a decade-and-a-half ago
For an Arkansas native who grew up professionally in Kansas City–and who still looks like he’d be right at home on a Southern high-school football field–it’s hard to imagine Madison schools without Art Rainwater at the helm. The guy’s right up there with Soglin and Alvarez: They hail from somewhere else but if you didn’t know it you’d think they’ve been Madisonians all along.
But just as our collective recollection of his predecessor Cheryl Wilhoyte’s tumultuous term as schools superintendent has faded, so too will our familiarity with the large and at times imposing personality of Rainwater, sixty-five, after he retires in June. What will fade more slowly is the impact he has had on the Madison school district.
While it remains one of the best school districts in America, MMSD faces profound challenges that the next superintendent will inherit from Rainwater, who arrived in Madison almost fourteen years ago to design and implement the district’s first magnet school. He came from the Kansas City, Missouri School District, where he started as a principal in 1987 and finished as special assistant to the superintendent, the number-two position in the district. If Rainwater has seemed comfortable in the eye of the storm, it’s because his career matured amid the extremely difficult and sometimes ugly stress of one of America’s most bitter desegregation battles–a battle that in 1994 looked like it might flare anew.

Fewer Youths Jump Behind the Wheel at 16

Mary Chapman & Micheline Maynard:

For generations, driver’s licenses have been tickets to freedom for America’s 16-year-olds, prompting many to line up at motor vehicle offices the day they were eligible to apply.
No longer. In the last decade, the proportion of 16-year-olds nationwide who hold driver’s licenses has dropped from nearly half to less than one-third, according to statistics from the Federal Highway Administration.
Reasons vary, including tighter state laws governing when teenagers can drive, higher insurance costs and a shift from school-run driver education to expensive private driving academies.
To that mix, experts also add parents who are willing to chauffeur their children to activities, and pastimes like surfing the Web that keep them indoors and glued to computers.
Jaclyn Frederick, 17, of suburban Detroit, is a year past the age when she could get a Michigan license. She said she planned to apply for one eventually, but sees no rush.
“Oh, I guess I just haven’t done it yet, you know?” said Jaclyn, a senior at Ferndale High School, in Ferndale, Mich.
“I get rides and stuff, so I’m not worried about it. I’ll get around to it, maybe this summer sometime.”

Introduction to a standards-based educational system #2

MMSD Department of Teaching & Learning:

The Madison School District is making the full transition to a standards-based educational system. Here is the second in a series of articles about a standards-based system, with this one focusing on curriculum.
Introduction to a standards-based system: curriculum
The Wisconsin Model Academic Standards (WMAS) articulate what students should know and be able to do in each curricular area. Community leaders and staff in the MMSD elaborated upon these state standards to frame district curriculum and instruction.
This article focuses on curriculum, which can be thought of as the planned educational experiences taught in each subject area at each grade level. No matter what specific materials or experiences a student has, he/she should always have the opportunity to learn fundamental ideas and develop skills as identified by the standards. Curriculum is then considered to be “standards-based”.
The remainder of this article will use science as an example of a content area to show how the curriculum in the MMSD is standards-based.

Via MMSD Today, which includes an article on teacher board certification

Getting Teens To Take Deep Thoughts Offline

Hillary Rhodes:

It’s OK to hate Taylor, or to think that Seth only told you he liked Allison so that you would tell Courtney, or to wish that your mom would disappear.
Teenagers have a right to gripe. But they should do it in their personal journals, not online for the world to see, says award-winning writer Meg Cabot.
The author of “The Princess Diaries” has teamed up with the American Library Association to hold events across the country for young people who want to learn more about airing their thoughts in writing the traditional way: with a pen.

Thinking about the Next Few Decades: “Let Us Light A Candle While We Walk, Lest We Fear What Lies Ahead”

Fabius Maximus:

Many people look to the future with fear. We see this fear throughout the web. Right-wing sites describe the imminent end of America: overrun by foreigners, victim of cultural and financial collapse. Left-wing sites describe “die-off” scenarios due to Peak Oil, climate change, and ecological collapse – as the American dream dies from takeover by theocrats and fascists.
Most of this is nonsense, but not the prospect of massive changes in our world. But need we fear the future?
The past should give us confidence when we look ahead. Consider Dodge City in 1877. Bat Masterson is sheriff, maintaining some semblance of law in the Wild West. Life in Dodge is materially only slightly better from that in an English village of a century before. But social and technological evolution has accelerated to a dizzying pace, and Bat cannot imagine what lies ahead.

Well worth reading as Madison prepares for a new Superintendent and two new school board members.

PTOs’ aid not just in bake sales anymore

Amanda Keim & Andrea Natekar:

Faced with belt-tightening from state and local coffers, Arizona’s public schools are relying more and more on parent-teacher groups to pay for items they say they need, but can’t afford.
No longer content to simply hold bake sales and stand on the sidelines, these parents are taking the lead in raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for items that can directly impact classroom instruction.
Computers and other classroom technology. Rock-climbing walls. Mandarin Chinese lessons. Playground shade structures.
While at some East Valley schools, primarily those in lower-income neighborhoods, principals struggle to even get PTOs off the ground, parents at other more well-off schools use sharp business acumen to help fund what they say are needed educational tools.
“The money just isn’t there. When you look at the way the schools are funded compared to 48 other states in the country, they just don’t have the money,” said Marjorie Desmond, PTO president at Scottsdale’s Cheyenne Traditional School, which raises more than $60,000 annually. “Legislation moves very slowly and the kids grow up very quickly. The parents want to have what’s best for their own kids, and that’s how they make an impact most quickly, is getting involved at the grass-roots level.”

Madison School Board PA Committee Credit for Courses Taken Outside the District Discussion



Watch the public appearances (including a discussion about the proposed report card changes) along with the Committee’s discussion on this matter. Janet Mertz’s latest post can be read here, along with a number of related links.

Madison West High Drama Benefit

via a Cyndie Spencer email:

Once again, excuse the duplicates… this is another great cause for West High School. Denny and i are planning to attend….
Please join Friends of West High Drama Friday March 7, 2008 at 7 PM at the Madison Club for a fundraiser to upgrade the sound system in the West High Auditorium. (see attached invite). We’ve planned a fun, welcoming and relaxing evening to celebrate the amazing student talent at West. We very much hope you can attend!
Meet the cast of West’s spring musical “A Chorus Line”. Hear them sing selections from the show as well as entertain you with some of the best “Singing Valentines” from West’s celebration of Valentine’s Day.
Enjoy delicious appetizers/dessert & bid on a few select auction items (condo in Myrtle Beach; theater tickets & dinner). Cash bar available.
Tickets are $35/person ($25 tax deductible). While tickets will be available at the door, your advance purchase helps us enormously in our planning. If you cannot attend but would like to contribute, please send your contribution made out to FMPS-Friends of West High Drama to Kay Plantes, 3432 Sunset Dr, Madison WI 53705.
We thank you in advance for your support. Your attendance and/or contribution are very much needed to improve the quality of life at West H.S. for all students.
Questions or to unsubscribe from this email, please reply to the address above or call Ruth Saecker (608-233-6943).

Despite IB Growth, College Credit is Elusive

Jay Matthews:

Across the Washington area, International Baccalaureate is booming, with more than two dozen high schools offering the college-level program and more signing up all the time. College admissions officers say they love seeing IB courses on transcripts. Students say the IB writing instruction and five-hour, end-of-course exams prepare them well for higher education.
But there’s a catch: Students usually can’t get college credit for one-year IB courses, even though they are similar to one-year Advanced Placement courses, which are eligible for credit. In another complication, students can get credit for passing tests after two-year IB courses, but that credit is equivalent to one year in AP.
Most university officials say they can’t explain these discrepancies. In many local high schools, bewilderment and frustration are growing among students and teachers over college policies about IB that seem at odds with the colleges’ oft-stated support for more challenging high school curricula.
“Imagine the consternation of these students who are getting the very best scores possible and are not seeing any recognition at most colleges,” said Marilyn Leeb, IB coordinator at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington County.
“I feel like we were being cheated,” said Chad King, a 2007 graduate of Mount Vernon High School in Fairfax County who received no credit for one-year IB courses from Ohio Dominican University in Columbus. “IB puts a lot of stress and pressure on its students, and for us not to get credit just because it is not AP is unfair.”

Home-School Support: Parents advocate bill on leaving public school

Colin Poitras:

Anita Formichella is tired of hiding like a criminal.
“The sound of the doorbell literally strikes terror in my heart,” said Formichella, a bespectacled, middle-aged former school volunteer from Redding in her testimony to members of the legislature’s select committee on children on Tuesday.
For the past two years, Formichella said she has hidden in her house, shouting through the door when people knock because she fears the person on the other side might be a state social worker coming to take her children away.
Formichella isn’t a child abuser. She has never been cited for child neglect. She is a teacher. A home-school teacher. And therein lies the rub.
Within weeks of pulling her children from the public school system in 2006, Formichella received a letter from the local school superintendent requiring her to sign a form and submit more evidence that her children were being properly schooled. If she didn’t, Formichella said, she would risk a neglect investigation by the state Department of Children and Families. Formichella was frightened at first, then incensed.
“That’s a heinous, heinous thing to threaten a parent,” Formichella said outside the hearing room Tuesday. “And [the school superintendent] knew me!”

Say Cheese and Now Say Airbrush!

Jessica Bennett:

We’ve all looked back on grade-school photos and wondered, “What in God’s name was I thinking?” For me it started with buckteeth and hair-sprayed bangs-a true child of the ’80s. Then came the braces, stringy hair and oversize Kurt Cobain T-shirt, the tween years of Seattle grunge. High school wasn’t actually that long ago, but I’m sure whatever it was I wore will be grossly unfashionable by the time my 10-year reunion hits.
The grade-school class portrait is a time capsule of sorts-a bittersweet reminder of forgotten cowlicks, blemishes and crooked teeth. Awkward, at least in retrospect, is awfully cute. So it’s sad to think those mortifying school snapshots might soon be a thing of the past. A growing number of photo agencies and a horde of Web sites now offer retouching for kids to wipe their every imperfection clean: powdering complexions, whitening teeth, erasing braces or freckles. And parents are signing up their kids at younger and younger ages.
“It surprises me so much when a mom comes in and asks for retouching on a second-grader,” says Danielle Stephens, a production manager for Prestige Portraits, which has studios in nearly every state and starts its service at $6. “I have a 12-year-old, and I’d be afraid that if I asked for retouching she’d think she wasn’t good enough.”

Changing Suburbs: “The Next Slum?”

Christopher Leinberger:

Strange days are upon the residents of many a suburban cul-de-sac. Once-tidy yards have become overgrown, as the houses they front have gone vacant. Signs of physical and social disorder are spreading.
At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son’s bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who’d moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, “I thought I’d bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.”
In the Franklin Reserve neighborhood of Elk Grove, California, south of Sacramento, the houses are nicer than those at Windy Ridge—many once sold for well over $500,000—but the phenomenon is the same. At the height of the boom, 10,000 new homes were built there in just four years. Now many are empty; renters of dubious character occupy others. Graffiti, broken windows, and other markers of decay have multiplied. Susan McDonald, president of the local residents’ association and an executive at a local bank, told the Associated Press, “There’s been gang activity. Things have really been changing, the last few years.”
In the first half of last year, residential burglaries rose by 35 percent and robberies by 58 percent in suburban Lee County, Florida, where one in four houses stands empty. Charlotte’s crime rates have stayed flat overall in recent years—but from 2003 to 2006, in the 10 suburbs of the city that have experienced the highest foreclosure rates, crime rose 33 percent. Civic organizations in some suburbs have begun to mow the lawns around empty houses to keep up the appearance of stability. Police departments are mapping foreclosures in an effort to identify emerging criminal hot spots.

This is an interesting issue to consider, as school districts continue to ponder new edge schools.

Madison School Board Committee Recommends Far West Side Boundary Changes

Susan Troller:

A Madison School Board committee recommended Monday night that students at Madison’s newest elementary school now under construction should attend Toki Middle School, not Jefferson Middle School as originally planned.
Members of the board’s long range planning committee also recommended final boundary Plan F for elementary school students in the Memorial High School attendance area that would send children in the neighborhood around Channel 3 to Falk Elementary School instead of Chavez Elementary or the new school, located west of Highway M.
The full School Board plans to vote on the recommendations March 3 at its regular meeting at the Doyle Administration Building at 7 p.m. There will be an opportunity for public commentary before the vote.
Among some west side parents, the most controversial part of planning the changes to accommodate the new school has been deciding which children and neighborhoods will attend Falk Elementary School, which has the west side’s highest percentage of low income students.
Numbers of low income students in the Memorial area range from 22 percent at Crestwood to 66 percent at Falk. Under the proposed plan, Falk’s low income percentage would drop to 57 percent.

Ten Tips for Picking a Good School

Jay Matthews:

This is the time of year many parents seek advice on how to find a good elementary, middle or high school, public or private, for their children. Usually I send them a Washington Post article I wrote on this subject three years ago. But this is such an important topic to so many families, I decided to update my thoughts. Here are 10 suggestions, in no particular order. As you’ll see in recommendation number 10, your own thoughts and feelings should always be the deciding factor.
1. Buy an expensive house and you can be almost sure that the local school will be good.
This is an admittedly cynical notion, but there is truth in it. Newcomers often say to themselves, “Let’s find a school or school district we like and then find the house.” Yet most school systems in this area are so good, and parental affluence is so closely tied to educational quality, that if you buy a pricey house, the nearest school is almost guaranteed to be what you are looking for.
2. Look at the data.
In my opinion, based on 22 years of visiting schools and looking at data, the two largest school districts in the Washington area, Fairfax and Montgomery counties, are so well run that even their low-income neighborhoods have schools and teachers that compare with the best in the country. I think the same is true for public schools in Arlington, Clarke, Loudoun and Prince William counties, and the cities of Falls Church and Alexandria. (I’m based in Northern Virginia, so I have closer first-hand knowledge of school systems on that side of the Potomac River.) I also think all the D.C. public schools west of Rock Creek Park are as good as those in the suburbs.
My beliefs are influenced by data on how much schools challenge all of their students, even those with average records of achievement, to take college-level courses and tests before they finish high school. I call this the Challenge Index. (For more on the index, see recommendation No. 9 below.) I want to stress that other systems in the area have some fine public schools. Case in point: All four public high schools in Calvert County appear to be pushing students solidly toward college-level work. There are also some good charter schools. But in some places, you have to look more carefully to find them.

Schools Let Sex Abuse Cases Slide

Amy Hsuan, Melissa Navas & Bill Graves:

The charismatic band teacher charmed students and parents alike. He won music competitions and teaching honors. He worked late, coached volleyball and mentored kids.
No one realized Joseph Billera, then 30, was having sex with children.
Yet there were warning signs for years that the popular Salem-Keizer teacher preyed on his Houck Middle School students.
School officials verbally reprimanded Billera after spotting him at a band contest in 2000 with a girl sitting on his lap, a blanket wrapped around them. In 2001, parent Robert Ogan complained to administrators after seeing Billera alone with a female student at a community softball game. Later, Ogan alerted the school’s principal after knocking on the door of Billera’s dark, locked band room one evening to be greeted by a middle school girl.
Three years passed before Billera was arrested and convicted for raping two students and molesting two others. Three of his victims were younger than 14. He assaulted one of them after the 2001 complaints.
Billera is one of 129 Oregon educators disciplined for molesting or having sexual relations with more than 215 public school children over the past 10 years.

Related editorial:

I t’s hard to believe, but Oregon protects teachers who are sexually attracted to children young enough to play with stuffed animals. The state also goes easy on teachers who seduce vulnerable, needy teenagers.
In the wake of the scandals that rocked the Catholic Church, it’s both immoral and willfully irresponsible to go on like this. Public school districts and state leaders should take swift steps to protect children from teachers who have no business remaining in any classroom.
Oregon takes a stunningly casual attitude toward sexual misconduct by teachers toward children, as The Oregonian’s Amy Hsuan, Melissa Navas and Bill Graves reported this week. This is true both of allegations and of substantiated claims. The state is slow to investigate teachers, and districts are reluctant to remove teachers from classrooms — or even to give known molesters a bad reference when they apply for their next job.
Most disturbing is the finding that districts will strike confidential settlement agreements with teachers who’ve admitted abuse. A teacher might promise to resign quietly (and not sue) in exchange for money, health insurance or positive job references.

Relentless Deconstrionism: Consequences for Governance

Terry Heaton:

This concept of relentless deconstruction is a disaster for modern institutions built on “facts” of history and maintained by hierarchical systems of rule, order and especially tradition, for each — deconstructionists teach — is subject to examinations that reveal the subjective nature of humankind and its decisions, big and small.
It is in this light that I wish to state the argument that Bill Keller — and many, if not most people in such positions within the institution of modernist journalism — continue to function as if their access to knowledge is unique and justifies conclusions that can be used to manipulate culture, whether deliberately or otherwise. So deep is this belief, that Keller expresses shock when the Times’ conclusions are challenged.
The problem is that the public now has access to enough information — in most cases — to make up its own mind about issues and events, their causes and results. Moreover, the public now has enough knowledge to rightly question the assumptions and history that shape even the day-to-day decisions of the press, and with that knowledge, they also increasingly have the ability to make up their own minds. This will never return to the way it was, and in fact, will increasingly impact the culture as a whole.
So to me, Keller’s “surprise” is legitimate, but it’s based in the confusion of the era, especially for modernist, institutional thinkers. The public is a lot smarter and better informed than anybody in media gives them credit for being, and they are armed with simple tools to do their own investigating. And every time the curtain is pulled back on the editorial decision-making process within the institutional press, it gets easier and easier to find the natural biases and influences that drive the information gatekeepers of the culture.

A Report on Voucher, Milwaukee Public School Performance

Alan Borsuk:

The first full-force examination since 1995 of Milwaukee’s groundbreaking school voucher program has found that students attending private schools through the program aren’t doing much better or worse than students in Milwaukee Public Schools.
The researchers gave a sample of voucher students the same tests given to public school students in Wisconsin and compared the results to those of a scientifically matched group of MPS students. Overall, they found, fourth-grade voucher students scored “somewhat lower” than MPS students but eighth-grade voucher students scored “somewhat higher.”
At all grades, both MPS and voucher students had overall test scores well below the 50th percentile nationally, and generally around the 33rd percentile, meaning they were generally scoring lower than two-thirds of students.
Results for individual voucher schools were not released as part of the study, despite calls from several legislators and others to see the private school results.
The study was conducted by the School Choice Demonstration Project, part of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. The main researchers included John Witte, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who conducted studies of the Milwaukee voucher program in its early years from 1990 to 1995, before the Legislature dropped the requirement for such studies.

An Interview with Todd McIntyre: About www.AppliedGiftedEd.com

Michael Shaughnessy:

3) What information are most parents and teachers seeking the most?
The first thing that parents want to know once we start talking about their situation with the district is whether or not they are crazy.
Oftentimes the situation the parent describes to me during an initial conversation defies any sort of logic – for example, the 3rd grade child is two or three grades above level in several, perhaps all, his or her courses.
The educational services the gifted child needs are not offered or even discussed with the parent because the district holds a vague concern about some future social experience such as the Senior Prom or driving a car. Parents often aren’t sure how to respond effectively to those sorts of statements.
The second thing parents want to know is what they can do about it. There are many options available, but there is a specific order in which any of the available options should be done.The starting point for the initial conversation is always the same: What are the gifted child’s present levels of educational performance? Phrased another way, the starting question for advocacy is this: How much of the district’s curriculum does the child already know?
At my Intermediate Unit and district-oriented trainings, teachers and administrators want to know about present levels of educational performance testing. Districts tend to make this kind of testing more complicated than it needs to be. Teachers and administrators also want the regulations and requirements explained to them in practical day-to-day terms

www.appliedgifteded

Online Education Takes Off in India

Nandini Laksham:

It’s a Sunday afternoon and class time for 39-year-old IT worker Seema Shetty. Her feet curled under her in a swivel chair, she sits in front of a computer monitor, adjusts a set of headphones, and scribbles in a notebook. Shetty, who works for consulting firm Mastek in Mumbai, is in a virtual classroom in the Vile Parle suburb, where a dozen computers link students to some of India’s elite management institutions. Today’s class is a three-hour general management lecture, part of the online education course conducted by the Xavier Labor Relations Institute in Jamshedpur, in the remote northern Indian state of Jharkhand.
A consultant for various industries from insurance to banking, Shetty signed up for an online certificate course to “learn more about my clients’ business requirements,” she says. By enrolling in the 14-month, six-hour-per-weekend online course, at a cost of $4,600, she can further her education without having to take a two-year career break to get an MBA. Learning online, says Shetty hopefully, “will definitely boost my job prospects.”

Study but don’t cap online schools

Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

An audit to help gauge how virtual schools are performing in Wisconsin is reasonable.
But slapping a cap on how many children can enroll in online schools is unnecessary and potentially harmful.
Gov. Jim Doyle ‘s last-minute demand for a cap threatens to ruin a solid bipartisan deal to keep these interesting schools going.
The governor should drop his veto threat, and the Legislature should give Doyle and the teachers union the audit they want.
That way, a dozen virtual schools in Wisconsin serving 3,500 students can stay open and expand if more parents choose to enroll their children.
Key state lawmakers recently put together compromise legislation to keep virtual schools going after a court ruling threatened to shut them down. A court ruled in December that the Wisconsin Virtual Academy, based in suburban Milwaukee, violates state laws controlling teacher certification, charter schools and open enrollment.

Doyle Defends Plan to Cap Virtual Schools Enrollment

Channel3000:

Gov. Jim Doyle said that he can’t understand why some are upset over his last-minute proposal to cap enrollment in virtual schools.
State lawmakers are trying to keep virtual schools open after a December court ruling said they were violating state law.
Without a change in law, as many as 12 schools that enroll 3,500 students could start closing as early as next school year.
Doyle recently told lawmakers that he would veto any bill that doesn’t cap enrollment while state officials study several issues related to the schools.
Republicans and Democratic Sen. Jon Erpenbach have expressed frustration at Doyle’s demands, which came after they thought they had agreement on a bill.

The Community Network Solution
In reweaving the social fabric of a city or town, relationships trump rank.

Karen Stephenson:

Business leaders are in­creasingly aware that the health of their enterprise is intimately connected with the health of the communities where they operate. As employers, they sometimes find themselves drawn in to help solve local problems. But they are also often frustrated by those efforts, and no wonder. When a community sets out to address complex problems, such as economic stagnation, sprawl, and failing schools, the ef­fort usually ends up going nowhere. Competing agendas surface, members delegate responsibilities to staff, difficult decisions get postponed. Hopes fade and interest flags as the hidden challenges and underlying conflicts become apparent.
The quiet failure of such initiatives is often attributed to human nature, or to some flaw in the process that shaped the effort. But in fact, the problem usually starts when the project organizers compose their first list of proposed participants. The organizers ask themselves: Who are the power brokers around town? Who are the key players? Who from business, government, education, and nonprofits should be involved?
Once the list is compiled, the usual suspects are convened. They assemble with enthusiasm, write a vision statement, sign up for committees, and pledge support. A press release goes out: “Local Leadership Team Sets to Work!”

Madison School Board to Discuss Credit for Non-MMSD Courses Today @ 5:00p.m.

The Performance & Achievement committee meets today at 5:00p.m. [Directions & Map] to discuss a policy on credit for non-MMSD courses. Janet Mertz has been following this issue for years, in an effort to support a “clearly written policy” on such courses. Read Janet’s summary after the most recent discussion of this matter (26 November 2007):

Madison School Board Performance & Achievement Committee Meeting 11/26/2007At the November 26, 2007 meeting of the MMSD BOE’s Performance and Achievement Committee [18MB mp3 audio], the District’s Attorney handed out a draft of a policy for the District’s Youth Options Program dated November 20, 2007. It is a fine working draft. However, it has been written with rules making it as difficult as possible for students to actually take advantage of this State-mandated program. Thus, I urge all families with children who may be affected by this policy now or in the future to request a copy of this document, read it over carefully, and then write within the next couple of weeks to all BOE members, the District’s Attorney, Pam Nash, and Art Rainwater with suggestions for modifications to the draft text. For example, the current draft states that students are not eligible to take a course under the YOP if a comparable course is offered ANYWHERE in the MMSD (i.e., regardless of whether the student has a reasonable method to physically access the District’s comparable course). It also restricts students to taking courses at institutions “located in this State” (i.e., precluding online courses such as ones offered for academically advanced students via Stanford’s EPGY and Northwestern’s CTD).

The Attorney’s memorandum dated November 21, 2007 to this Committee, the BOE, and the Superintendent outlined a BOE policy chapter entitled “Educational Options” that would include, as well, a policy regarding “Credit for Courses Taken Outside the MMSD”. Unfortunately, this memo stated that this latter policy as one “to be developed”. It has now been almost 6 years (!) since Art Rainwater promised us that the District would develop an official policy regarding credit for courses taken outside the MMSD. A working draft available for public comment and BOE approval has yet to appear. In the interim, the “freeze” the BOE unanimously approved, yet again, last winter has been ignored by administrators, some students are leaving the MMSD because of its absence, and chaos continues to rein because there exists no clearly written policy defining the rules by which non-MMSD courses can be taken for high school credit. Can anyone give us a timetable by which an official BOE-approved policy on this topic will finally be in place?

Links:

Meanwhile, online learning options abound, including the news that National Geographic has invested in education startup ePals. Madison, home of a 25,000 student public school system, offers a rich learning environment that includes the University of Wisconsin, MATC and Edgewood among others.

The Marketing of High School Sports

Texas Monthly:

If you think high school sports are too slick, too big-time, or too professional, just wait. When this Ohio transplant has his way—and he will—they’re going to get slicker, bigger, and much more pro. Stephenson, the former president of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football, founded Titus Sports Marketing in 2003. The company’s first major deal came a year later, when it sold naming rights for the Tyler Independent School District’s stadium to Trinity Mother Frances Health System for $1.92 million, the largest such contract for a high school ever. In September 2007 Titus also put together the Clash of Champions, a game televised on ESPNU between the best high school football team in Florida, Miami Northwestern, and the best in Texas, Southlake Carroll. Northwestern won the game (hyped as “the biggest game in the history of high school football”) 29—21, but the real winner may have been Stephenson.
Where did you get the idea for Titus?
I knew high schools were looking at ways of maximizing revenue. A lot of districts are looking to give their stadiums a face-lift—to add parking, double the concessions and restrooms, redo the field house. High schools are where colleges were fifteen years ago, and there’s a lot of lost advertising revenue because there’s nobody there to capture it. We’re pioneers. We work with the school district; we sell the assets that they direct us to sell.

When cheers turn to depression

Stan Grossfeld:

She just wanted six-pack abs. So in the summer of 2003, Dionne Passacantando, a 17-year-old high school cheerleader, gymnast, and vice president of her Allen (Texas) High School class, made a decision she regrets. She bought anabolic steroids from a boy on the school football team.
“Nobody frowned upon it,” she says. “It was easier for me to get those than it probably was to buy beer.”
But after injecting herself with Winstrol every other day for five weeks, she became suicidal.
“I was the last person in the world you’d think would use anabolic steroids,” she says.
Her story is part of a much larger picture. The Mitchell Report, which detailed steroid use in major league baseball, noted that while steroid use among high schoolers seems to be declining, it is still estimated that 3-6 percent of students nationally have tried them. That means that, at a minimum, hundreds of thousands of high school students are using.

On Credentials: Rhee-form

Denis Doyle:

Announced nine months ago by Mayor Adrian Fenty to a mixed chorus of applause and boos, Michelle’s appointment is part of two trends. The first is mayoral control of schools; the second is appointing “uncredentialed” or “unlicensed” leaders to fill the post of superintendent (or in the case of DC and NYC, chancellor).
The nightmare of credentialing is ordinary thought of in terms of teachers, a challenge that reformers like Michelle and Wendy Kopp have taken on in their respective spheres; credentials in their earliest incarnation were meant to be a floor beneath which teachers would not fall. In their modern incarnation they have become a ceiling through which they may not pass. For example, the head of the Washington DC based Sidwell Friends math program, a trained mathematician with 30 years experience of superlative high school teaching couldn’t get a job in a public school. Nor could Einstein.

Washington County 4-H and Madison West Rocket Club Selected for NASA Event

Channel3000:

Four Washington County teens are among 18 groups in the nation invited to display their rocket-building skills to NASA space shuttle engineers this spring.
The challenge for the team, all members of the county’s 4-H rocketry club, was to design and build a reusable rocket. It had to be capable of carrying a science payload to one mile above the surface and returning safely to the ground.
Their 7-foot rocket will be launched in late April at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama as part of NASA’s Student Launch Initiative.
A rocket club from Madison West High School in Madison also was selected this year.

Donald Behm has more:

With spring deadlines looming, four Washington County teens are working weekends to build a high-powered rocket to launch in front of NASA space shuttle engineers.
Their challenge: Design and build a reusable rocket capable of carrying a science payload to one mile above the surface and returning safely to the ground.
The team, all members of the county’s 4-H rocketry club, is one of only 18 groups in the United States invited to display their skills this year as part of NASA’s Student Launch Initiative. Their rocket will be launched in late April at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
“It cannot be wrecked,” said Katlin Wagner, 15, a freshman at Slinger High School and the defending rocketry champ among 4-H youth in the county. “We must be able to put it back together and use it again.”

Maya Cole’s Schoolcast Update

Maya Cole:

Dear friends,
First, I would like to let you know that I have new podcasts and blog posts up on my website! You can get information on how our superintendent search evolved and learn how school districts lobby the legislature at a state level through the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.
I am also happy to report that several of us on the Board have begun to meet (after a long hiatus) as members of the Dane County School Board Consortium. The Madison School Board will be hosting other districts next month at LaFollette High School. We will be discussing how we can engage and listen to the public on boundary changes. We hope to come together in the future and combine our lobbying efforts as representatives of Dane County schools. If you know of any state or local officials who would be interested in joining us to learn more about issues facing school districts, please feel free to send them my e-mail address.
I also have two new podcasts, five minutes in length, that explain all you need to know about No Child Left Behind and its re-authorization this year. I met with Sennett school teacher David Wasserman and promised him I would work on engaging the public on this important issue. Please take a listen and pass it on to your friends.
These past few months I have been working hard on many issues on behalf of the school district. I met many fascinating educators and members of the community that are interested in our schools. Some of the Board highlights include, but are not limited to:

Continue reading Maya Cole’s Schoolcast Update

Milwaukee’s Ongoing Movement toward K-8 Schools

Alan Borsuk:

he dramatic trend toward K-8 schools in Milwaukee is the central factor behind the middle school trend as a whole.
But this week’s flurry of action was started by proposals from board member Michael Bonds to reopen Douglas and Jackie Robinson Middle School, 3245 N. 37th St., which also closed several years ago. Bonds argued that there was a shortage of traditional middle schools on the north side and that reopening the schools could reduce the amount of busing.
Andrekopoulos responded with proposals to close other schools to offset the reopenings. Overall MPS enrollment is expected to decline next year, and financial pressures on the system are sharp.
Finance committee members dropped the idea of reopening Robinson after a lengthy discussion of issues involved in launching the new Booker T. Washington program, such as how to meet the goal of getting at least 500 students, as well as a teaching staff, for a program that does not yet exist and at a time when the assignment process for students and the job transfer process for teachers are already well under way.

Dallas schools teacher ratings sometimes off mark

Kent Fischer:

Seth Johnson teaches Spanish at Madison High School. Yet when he received a district report that rated his performance, he was surprised to see his rating dragged down by two classes of low-scoring French students – classes he didn’t teach, and couldn’t have because he doesn’t speak French.
“They put my name on a class that I never taught,” Mr. Johnson said. He filed a complaint with the district this week.
As the Dallas public schools promote a complex teacher rating system as an impartial way to award bonuses and identify bad teachers, records and interviews indicate that the calculations are not infallible.
In all, 116 teachers challenged the accuracy of their “Classroom Effectiveness Index” reports this year. The CEIs are numerical ratings given to teachers based on gains their students made on classroom and state exams.

Wisconsin “Senate Says Whoa on School Innovation”

Patrick McIlheran:

The best explanation – I mean the funniest – as to why the state Senate put a poison-pill enrollment cap on virtual schools was from state Sen. Russ Decker, the Weston Democrat who helped do it.
The fault lies with the schools, he says. Just too many parents were opting for them. In growth, “some of those virtual schools are pushing the envelope.”
Leave aside that pushing the envelope – inventing a new way to deliver a good education – is the point. On its face, the sentiment that the schools were growing faster than legally proper is nonsense.
Parents choose virtual schools, in which students are taught at home via daily online lessons, by the same law that allows any parent to send her child to any other public school. This open enrollment law has no upper limit and is now used by 23,000 students statewide. As for virtual schools, which account for 3,300 of those, the law did not limit their growth either until two months ago when a lawsuit by the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s dominant teachers union, hit the jackpot. Decker’s envelope exists solely in his head.
So the Senate, on party lines with the exception of one honorable Democrat, installed one – dictating that for two years, virtual schools can grow no larger. They can inch up to 4,500 students by 2014, but senators also set auditors to studying the program. All this was needed, says Decker, because Gov. Jim Doyle wouldn’t agree to let the schools stay open otherwise.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Editorial:

There is still time to save Wisconsin’s virtual schools, but the clock is ticking after a state Senate vote this week that unwisely capped enrollment and blew up a bipartisan compromise.
In a letter to legislators on the eve of the vote, Gov. Jim Doyle called for a cap on enrollment and recommended a study to determine how well virtual schools were serving students and what their fiscal impact was on existing public schools and property taxes.
The request for a study is sensible enough, but the cap is a solution looking for a problem. And now, despite exceptions for siblings of existing students and for students who signed up during the current open enrollment period, some children may be denied the opportunity to learn in an environment that is best suited to their needs.
Legislation was needed after a state Court of Appeals ruled in December that the Wisconsin Virtual Academy, operated by the Northern Ozaukee School District, was not eligible for state aid. That ruling threatened the existence of all 12 online schools in the state, which serve more than 3,000 students.
The compromise plan was a good one that balanced the need to legalize virtual schools while imposing new standards on them. It had the support of the state Department of Public Instruction.
The Senate vote sends the measure back to the Assembly, where Rep. Brett Davis (R-Oregon) said Thursday he would draft new legislation that includes a financial audit but not a cap. He also planned to send a letter to Doyle inviting the governor or his staff to a hearing on Monday to explain why a cap is necessary.

Much more on Wisconsin’s Virtual Schools here.

Across the Bay, on a School Bus Wearing Skis

Susan Saulny:

From a distance, the large red aluminum contraption parked on the frozen shore of Lake Superior here looks like a small houseboat perched on skis. Up closer, as schoolchildren pile in with their backpacks and iPods, it becomes clear that the mystery vehicle, with two large fans on the back, is something else entirely.
For residents of this remote village on an ice-locked island off the tip of mainland Wisconsin, the gliding boatmobile, known here as a windsled, is a kind of school bus.
That’s right: in one of the more unorthodox modes of student travel anywhere in the country, the children of La Pointe, on Madeline Island (full-time population 250, triple that in the summer), actually windsled to class several weeks out of every year. It is the transportation a school district needs when students are separated from class by more than two miles of jigsaw ice blocks coming together to form something that approximates a floating road of shallow depth across a bay.
Everyone here knows the windsled as a homegrown solution to a tricky set of circumstances: Sometimes Lake Superior — the largest, coldest and deepest of the Great Lakes — is too chunky with ice for a ferry but not quite solid enough to make an ice bridge between La Pointe and the mainland town of Bayfield, the location of the upper school.
During those times, the Bayfield School District turns to its windsled, locally designed, built and operated to glide over thin ice.