All posts by Jim Zellmer

Comparing Schools

Katherine Boehret:

Education — an issue that affects everyone in some way or another — is an ideal candidate for discussions on the Web. There, parents, students and teachers can ask questions under the cloak of Internet anonymity, which enables conversations about personal topics such as learning disabilities and teacher conflicts.
But the vastness of the Internet can leave many people wondering where to begin, especially when asking sensitive questions about education. And, even in a sea of discussions and forums on education, parents are often hungry for one piece of information above all else: data that helps them select a school for their children.
So this week I tried three education-related Web sites that dedicate some or all of their resources toward providing free school comparisons, including demographics, test results, teacher-to-student ratios, and percentages of students eating free and reduced-price lunches.

UW persuades Minority Student Network to bring offices here

Susan Troller:

Recently, the University of Wisconsin scored a coup over Harvard and Penn when it persuaded the Minority Student Achievement Network to bring its offices from Evanston, Ill., to the Wisconsin Center for Education Research here.
So what, exactly, is the Minority Student Achievement Network (MSAN), and why were prestigious major research universities vying to offer it a home?
The group, whose Wisconsin members include the Madison Metropolitan School District and the Green Bay school system, is a consortium of about 25 high-performing school districts from across the country. They joined forces in 1999 to figure out why their students of color aren’t doing as well in school as their white counterparts.
Besides Green Bay and Madison, other districts that have been part of the group include Ann Arbor, Mich.; Shaker Heights, Ohio; Cambridge, Mass., White Plains, N.Y. and Chapel Hill, N.C.
All are public school districts where education is a well-funded community priority. All have been disappointed that even in their relatively affluent public schools, minority students still lag behind white and Asian students.

Madison Superintendent Candidate Steve Gallon Accepts Plainfield, NJ Position

Bernice Paglia:

The promise of big news was fulfilled Tuesday when the Board of Education approved Steve Gallon III as the next schools superintendent.
Gallon will begin a four-year term July 1 at a salary of $198,000, with other contract details to be negotiated.
Before the vote, three board members who visited the Miami-Dade school district effusively testified that Gallon, the winner among 30 candidates and five finalists, possessed qualities hardly ever seen before in a chief school administrator in Plainfield. The meeting reached a crescendo when Gallon himself was introduced and took the microphone to give the kind of hope that the district has been longing for.
Gallon alluded to being a finalist for another superintendent position, but said he chose Plainfield instead.
“I want to be here,” Gallon said.
Among his credentials, Gallon survived growing up in Liberty City, one of Miami’s toughest neighborhoods, and went on to achieve high recognition as an educator, motivational speaker, author and exemplar of success against all odds.

AP Trends: Tests Soar, Scores Slip

Scott Cech:

While more American public school students are taking Advanced Placement tests, the proportion of tests receiving what is deemed a passing score has dipped, and the mean score is down for the fourth year in a row, an Education Week analysis of newly released data from the College Board shows.
Data released here this week by the New York City-based nonprofit organization that owns the AP brand shows that a greater-than-ever proportion of students overall—more than 15 percent of the public high school class of 2007—scored at least one 3 on an AP test. The tests are graded on a scale of 1 to 5, the highest score.
Yet, as the number of AP exams taken in U.S. public schools has ballooned by almost 25 percent over the four years that the College Board has released its “AP Report to the Nation,” the percentage of exams that received at least a 3—the minimum score that the College Board considers predictive of success in college—has slipped from about 60 percent to 57 percent.
The mean score on the nearly 2 million AP exams taken by students in last year’s U.S. public graduating class was 2.83, down from 2.9 in 2004.
“That happens,” said Jennifer Topiel, a spokeswoman for the College Board. “Any psychometrician can tell you that as participation grows, scores go down.”
Still, Ms. Topiel said the score declines are a major concern for the organization, as are widening score gaps between some racial and ethnic groups, “particularly those among underrepresented students who are not being prepared and not having the same resources.”

Links:

Negative Implications Of No Child Left Behind: As Graduation Rates Go Down, School Ratings Go Up

via a Lauren Rosen Yeazel email:

Texas’ public school accountability system, the model for the national No Child Left Behind Act, directly contributes to lower graduation rates, according to new research. Each year Texas public high schools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation — a disproportionate number of whom are African-American, Latino and English-as-a-second-language students.

Wisconsin Governor Doyle Caps Virtual School Enrollment

Steven Walters:

It will take a new Capitol compromise to keep Wisconsin’s virtual schools open after action Tuesday by the state Senate.
t the request of Gov. Jim Doyle, the Senate voted to cap enrollment for online schools at the current level – now about 3,500 students statewide – while a study is done on virtual learning.
Under the Senate changes, that number of online students could not go up again until the 2011-’12 school year, and then only by about 875 students. Dozens of parents and virtual school students came to the Capitol on Tuesday to fight the enrollment cap.
The 18-15 vote by the Senate – controlled by Democrats – sends the measure to the Assembly, which is run by Republicans.
The Assembly will meet for only a few more days before its scheduled adjournment next month. There might not be time to negotiate a compromise to changes dictated by Doyle, who promised to veto any bill without an enrollment cap.
If the Assembly does not act, virtual schools might not continue. In a ruling that threatened all online schools, the Court of Appeals ruled in December that the 800-student Wisconsin Virtual Academy, operated by the Northern Ozaukee School District, was not eligible for state aid, now $5,845 per student per year.

More on Wisconsin Virtual Schools, along with an update from WisPolitics.

DC Schools Chancellor Wants to Test “Differentiated Learning”

V. Dion Haynes:

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee plans to establish an experimental program that would offer customized lessons for disabled, regular and gifted students in the same classroom, a key component of her strategy to reduce exorbitant special education costs.
Rhee’s proposal would launch a “differentiated learning” laboratory at West Elementary School in Northwest Washington, then replicate it citywide. Under the proposal, which is being met with skepticism from some West teachers and parents, the system would hire a private special-education school to run the program.
The proposal is among several actions Rhee is taking to overhaul special education, which for years has lacked high-quality programs for learning-disabled and physically disabled students. The system spends about $137 million on private school tuition annually for about 2,400 children (out of more than 9,400 disabled students) whom it cannot serve in the public schools.
Since 2006, the D.C. public schools have been under a federal court order to eliminate a backlog of more than 1,000 decisions from hearing officers regarding placement of students in special education programs. The order stemmed from a consent decree that settled a class-action suit filed by parents protesting the system’s long delay in providing services for the students.
Federal law requires schools to practice “inclusion” — putting special education students in regular classrooms whenever possible — a mandate the system has ignored in countless cases, advocates say. Under differentiated learning or differentiated instruction, an approach that has been used in schools in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties and across the nation over the past decade, students are grouped in the same classroom according to their ability levels and learning styles. They get the same lesson but are given different assignments and tasks based on their abilities.
For instance, a third-grade class in St. Louis recently was assigned to report on Martin Luther King Jr., with some students writing a timeline, others illustrating pages and others comparing the era of the slain civil rights leader to today.
Rhee is proposing to go a step further than most other districts using the concept. She wants to treat all students in the differentiated instruction classrooms much like special education students, with each getting an education plan outlining how teachers would address the child’s specific strengths, weaknesses and learning style.
Special education “is about individualization of instruction — that is going to be the overarching theme of these schools. Every kid — gifted kids — need really good individualization,” Rhee said in an interview. “All kids will benefit when we’re operating in that manner.”

New Math Textbooks Irk Some Parents

Ian Shapira:

Greg Barlow, an Air Force officer in the defense secretary’s office at the Pentagon, was helping his 8-year-old son, Christian, one recent night with a vexing problem: What is 674 plus 249?
The Prince William County third-grader did not stack the numbers and carry digits from one column to the next, the way generations have learned. Applying lessons from his school’s new math textbook, “Investigations in Number, Data, and Space,” Christian tried breaking the problem into easier-to-digest numbers.
But after several seconds, he got stumped. He drew lines connecting digits, and his computation amounted to an upside-down pyramid with numbers at the bottom. His father, in a teacherly tone, nudged him toward the old-fashioned method. “How would you do that another way?” Barlow asked.
In Prince William and elsewhere in the country, a math textbook series has fomented upheaval among some parents and teachers who say its methods are convoluted and fail to help children master basic math skills and facts. Educators who favor the series say it helps young students learn math in a deeper way as they prepare for the rigors of algebra.
The debate over “Investigations in Number, Data, and Space,” a Pearson School series used in thousands of elementary classrooms, including some in Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun and Howard counties, is one of the newer fronts in the math wars. Such battles over textbooks and teaching methods are fueled in part by the anxieties of parents who often feel powerless over their children’s education, especially in subjects they know.
The curriculum, introduced in the 1990s and updated in a second edition issued last fall, offers one answer to the nation’s increasingly urgent quest for stronger elementary math education. The nonprofit organization TERC, based in Cambridge, Mass., developed “Investigations” with support from the National Science Foundation.

Related Links:

Cultural diversity courses take root in schools

Erin Richards:

Stoecker never studied diversity issues, at least not directly, in high school. And that’s something at least one Milwaukee-area school district is trying to change: Starting this fall, Muskego High School will offer a cultural diversity class to 11th- and 12th-graders. The elective course will address issues such as white privilege in a community that is at least 97% Caucasian, Associate Principal John LaFleur said.
Meanwhile, area higher education institutions have spent the last several years ramping up multiculturalism course offerings and activities, in some cases requiring that students take diversity courses as part of their general education. More often than not, professors say, students arrive from high school largely ignorant about the four traditionally defined minority groups – African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans and American Indians.
“I think part of why this is attracting attention is that all the metaphors we used to use – melting pot, mosaic – just aren’t working anymore, because they let us skirt the ideas of injustice and equal distribution of goods,” said Christine Krueger, an associate professor of English at Marquette University and the director of core curriculum.

Madison School Board Update on Recruiting Policy and Public Appearances

Susan Troller:

A new policy to clarify rules on recruiting Madison high school students for the military, for post-secondary education opportunities or for potential employment is under review by the Madison School Board, but is not quite ready to pass muster.
At a meeting Monday night, the board sent the recruitment policy back to the administration for additional work and chose to table a discussion about the sales of military ads on school grounds until the recruitment policy changes are complete.
Anti-war activists have argued that the ads constitute recruiting materials and are by current policy banned anywhere except in school guidance offices. In addition, some students have complained that recruiters can be overly aggressive in pursuing students.
“I think we’re pretty close to making a decision on the revised recruitment policy,” Board President Arlene Silveira said in an interview this morning, “but we wanted some additional clarification from the administration, and we wanted to make sure the changes in the rules make sense to the people in the schools who will be working with them.”
She also said the board wanted to ensure the policy was fair and consistent toward all individuals and organizations coming into the schools to recruit students, whether they are promoting military service, employment or educational opportunities.
Issues include how many visits recruiters may make to a school, and whether activities like hanging around the cafeteria during lunch to talk with students would be permitted.
Superintendent Art Rainwater said that while only about one percent of Madison students go into the military, 80 percent go on to post-secondary education. He emphasized that treatment of recruiters, no matter who they represent, must be consistent.

Save the Wisconsin Virtual School Compromise

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Editorial:

On the state Senate’s calendar today is a bill that would keep alive the state’s virtual schools by imposing standards on them and making sure funding for the schools continues. On Monday, various groups were in discussions on what form the final bill would take and whether it would be amended to include such items as a cap on the number of students allowed to enroll in the schools.
The Senate should reject such amendments and any attempt to weaken this bipartisan compromise measure that was carefully crafted by Sen. John Lehman (D-Racine), Rep. Brett Davis (R-Oregon) and Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon). It is backed by the state Department of Public Instruction.
Right now, the state has 12 virtual schools that serve more than 3,000 children, according to the Wisconsin Coalition of Virtual School Families. The future of those schools was put in jeopardy after the state Court of Appeals ruled in December that they were not entitled to state aid. The bill put together by Lehman and others would restore that funding by requiring virtual schools to meet specific standards, among them having the same number of hours of instruction per year as traditional classrooms and using certified, licensed teachers.
Virtual schools are a sound alternative for some children, and it’s clear from state test scores that most kids in virtual schools do well. It’s also clear that their parents care passionately about the schools.

Film raises troubling questions about U.S. students

Greg Toppo:

The brainchild of Memphis businessman Robert Compton, Two Million Minutes takes its title from the amount of time most students spend in high school absorbing, one hopes, enough math, science, literature and history to compete in an increasingly flat, competitive world.
It contrasts Brittany’s and Neil’s easy suburban lives with those of two Indian teenagers and two Chinese teenagers, making the case that the foreign students are just plain hungrier for success.
“You just want to shake America and say, ‘Wake up. We are falling behind daily,’ ” Compton says.
And Two Million Minutes finds plenty to be worried about: not enough study or homework time, not enough parental pressure, not enough focus on math or engineering. American teens, it argues, are preoccupied with sports, after-school jobs and leisure.
The film repeatedly contrasts foreign students’ drive with what seems like American cluelessness: In one scene, Chinese 17-year-old Hu Xiaoyuan diligently practices the violin — then we cut to bone-crunching rock ‘n’ roll and the Friday night lights of Carmel’s top-ranked football team.
In another, an Indian science teacher explains an experiment to students, then snaps, “Why are you standing simply there?”
But the scene that seems to get audiences worked up most shows Brittany and friends watching Grey’s Anatomy as they study.

“The Power of Vouchers”

Alex Tabarrok:

Many studies of education vouchers have looked at the achievement of children who are given vouchers and who transfer to private schools. Generally these studies have found small but meaningful improvements (e.g. here and here). A voucher program, however, is about much more than transferring students from lousy public schools to better private schools it’s about creating incentives to improve the public schools.
Florida’s Opportunity Scholarship Program rated schools. Students at schools that received an F in multiple years became eligible for a voucher that allowed them to attend a private or higher-rated public school. In Feeling the Florida Heat? (ungated version) a paper sponsored by the Urban Institute Rouse et al. look at what happened at failing schools.

Hygiene Hypothesis: A Look at Asthma

Erin Allday:

But pollution is not the main cause of asthma, researchers now say. In fact, asthma rates continued to rise as air pollution improved in the 1990s.
One of the more unusual theories on asthma comes from Dr. Homer Boushey, whose colleagues sometimes roll their eyes when his ideas are mentioned. Boushey, who runs the UCSF asthma lab, says that many cases of asthma can be pinned on a common cold virus that if caught during the first few months after birth upsets the immune system for life, leaving kids vulnerable to allergens that otherwise wouldn’t faze them.
Even Boushey calls himself a borderline heretic. But his research falls into the current prevailing theory of why asthma cases have increased so steadily: the hygiene hypothesis.
Essentially, researchers say, kids are too clean. When children are not exposed to the allergens that they might find on, say, a farm, their immune systems never develop the ability to distinguish safe irritants from unsafe ones. As a result, they become overly sensitive to harmless irritants.
“In most of our history we were exposed to enormous sources of microbes. We had large families, we lived with farm animals, we played in the dirt,” Boushey said. “Now maybe we don’t have enough stimulation of the immune system in our development as infants, and so we’re more vulnerable to things that cause asthma.”
Thinking along those lines, UCSF is running a five-year clinical trial on the relationship between asthma and probiotics, or bacteria that are commonly found in foods like yogurt and that could have health benefits. In the study, babies who have at least one parent with asthma are given daily doses of probiotics; they will be followed for five years to see if they develop asthma.

Kiddie tax bites many families in ’07 – 18-year-olds off hook for now

Ellen Putnam:

If you have a child who turned 18 in 2007, you are in luck, taxwise. But that’s the only bright spot for families burdened by what is called the kiddie tax.
The tax is, in effect, a penalty on parents who saved for their child’s college by putting money into custodial accounts at a time when today’s tax-free education savings vehicles weren’t widely available or used.
“It has ruined wonderful planning people have been doing for years, people who were thinking ahead, who gave their child income-producing assets they would use when the kid went to school,” said Harvey Aaron, senior tax manager at Braver PC in Newton, Mass., and director of tax services at Braver Wealth Management.
Here’s how the kiddie tax works: If a child is under 18, he or she is allowed to have $1,700 in unearned income – nonwage income such as dividends and interest on investments – before the kiddie tax kicks in. (There’s no tax on the child’s income of $850 or less, and the next $850 in income is taxed at the child’s ordinary income tax rate, usually 10 or 15 percent.)
For unearned income over $1,700, the child’s tax is computed at the parent’s tax rate, which can be as high as 35 percent. A child who turned 18 in 2007 isn’t subject to the kiddie tax and will pay 2007 tax at his or her lower rate.

The Most Irritating Education Expert in America

Jay Matthews:

I am breaking the rules of book-reviewing by admitting right away that I like Chester E. “Checker” Finn Jr., whose memoir, “Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik,” just came out. For an education reporter, Finn is a godsend — the most quotable man in his field. But that also means he is funny, irreverent and often as irritating as he can be.
I think that’s good. I don’t know him well personally, other than seeing him in the supermarket occasionally. (A very picky shopper, he is murder on the produce.) We don’t always agree, particularly over a recent column of mine that criticized a report by his Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
But I love the fact that no one is spared his acidic sense of humor. That makes him a first-class writer, and “Troublemaker” may be the best of his many books. It’s $26.95, from Princeton University Press, though you can buy it for less online. The book offers one of the most enjoyable, astute and fair-minded reviews of the topsy-turvy course of our national effort to improve schools. It flavors that complex tale with the story of Checker Finn, a smart kid from Dayton, Ohio, who wisely attached himself to some of the most thoughtful political figures of his era and brought their practical approach to fixing schools to a new generation. Among them were Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who served as a Democratic senator from New York from 1977 to 2001; William J. Bennett, a Reagan administration education secretary; and Lamar Alexander, an education secretary in administration of President George H. W. Bush and now a Republican senator from Tennessee.

Beware The Second Transcript

Donald Downs:

For years now, college students have been busy committing themselves to extracurricular activities. On the whole, such commitment can be constructive. It contributes to civic engagement by the young and helps them to develop personal responsibility and character. Meanwhile, college officials claim that would-be employers are now demanding that colleges provide evidence that graduates are prepared to deal with real world issues and conflicts that will arise in the workplace. Many educators are starting to respond to this concern.
In recent days, the president of the University of Wisconsin system has risen to the occasion by proposing to the Board of Regents that students have two transcripts upon graduation. The first transcript would be the traditional one, which would list the classes the student took, and the grades that he or she received. The second transcript would depict what the Wisconsin State Journal described as “the student’s personal development during college, such as whether the student interned for a company, directed a play, or edited the student newspaper.” The University of Wisconsin system would be the national pioneer in this movement. This effort is supported by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, whose vice president recently said that companies seek graduates who can work “with diverse groups and have a sense of social responsibility and ethics,” according to the State Journal story.
According to Reilly, the university needs to institute this policy because business leaders want “workers who can work with diverse groups and have a sense of social responsibility and ethics,” according to the State Journal story. The second transcript would involve more than a typical resume. It would have to be approved by a faculty member, and show how the student’s experiences outside the classroom represented a meaningful application of the student’s classroom work. “We know when students get to the end of their time with us, employers and graduate school admissions officers want to know what you did besides get and A or B in philosophy,” Reilly told the State Journal. “We think this will capture some of the educational experience.”

via Erin O’Connor.

The Dumbing of America

Susan Jacoby:

“The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.” Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today’s very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble — in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.
This is the last subject that any candidate would dare raise on the long and winding road to the White House. It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an “elitist,” one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just “folks,” a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980. (Just imagine: “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . . and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.”) Such exaltations of ordinariness are among the distinguishing traits of anti-intellectualism in any era.
The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,” was published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country’s democratic impulses in religion and education. But today’s brand of anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood. If Hofstadter (who died of leukemia in 1970 at age 54) had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture.

The End of Literacy? Don’t Stop Reading.

Howard GardnerWhat will happen to reading and writing in our time?
Could the doomsayers be right? Computers, they maintain, are destroying literacy. The signs — students’ declining reading scores, the drop in leisure reading to just minutes a week, the fact that half the adult population reads no books in a year — are all pointing to the day when a literate American culture becomes a distant memory. By contract, optimists foresee the Internet ushering in a new, vibrant participatory culture of words. Will they carry the day?
Maybe neither. Let me suggest a third possibility: Literacy — or an ensemble of literacies — will continue to thrive, but in forms and formats we can’t yet envision.
That’s what has always happened as writing and reading have evolved over the ages. It was less than 100,000 years ago that our human predecessors first made meaningful marks on surfaces, notating the phases of the moon or drawing animals on cave walls. Within the past 5,000 years, societies across the Near East’s Fertile Crescent began to use systems of marks to record important trade exchanges as well as pivotal events in the present and the past. These marks gradually became less pictorial, and a decisive leap occurred when they began to capture certain sounds reliably: U kn red ths sntnz cuz Inglsh feechurs “graphic-phoneme correspondences.”

Chicago’s Turnaround Plans for Failing Schools

Amanda Paulson:

It looks like a typical day at a typical American grammar school: Students proceed in single file down hallways, a class of fourth-graders listens to their teacher read aloud, and students in another class work in small groups on independent projects.
But Andre Cowling, the tall, imposing new principal of Harvard Elementary on Chicago’s South Side, shakes his head in wonder at it all. Last year, he says, “this wouldn’t have been possible.”
Harvard is one of several public schools here to get a top-to-bottom housecleaning in recent years – including replacing the principal and most teachers – in a bid to lift student achievement out of the nation’s academic basement. The drastic approach is known as “turnaround,” and Chicago is embracing it more than any US city, though it’s unproven and is controversial among teachers, many parents, and students.
“It’s risky in that it’s new and has an untested track record,” says Andrew Calkins, senior vice president at Mass Insight, a nonprofit group focused on school reform, and coauthor of a report on turnaround schools. “It’s logical in that the other choice is to keep on doing what’s been tried before, and we know what the results of that will be. What you try to do if you’re Chicago is to minimize the risk and maximize the possibility of a good outcome” by thinking through everything that’s needed to improve the climate for learning at a school.

The Dumbing of America: Call Me a Snob, but Really, We’re a Nation of Dunces

Susan Jacoby:

Despite an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at encouraging babies as young as 6 months to watch videos, there is no evidence that focusing on a screen is anything but bad for infants and toddlers. In a study released last August, University of Washington researchers found that babies between 8 and 16 months recognized an average of six to eight fewer words for every hour spent watching videos.
I cannot prove that reading for hours in a treehouse (which is what I was doing when I was 13) creates more informed citizens than hammering away at a Microsoft Xbox or obsessing about Facebook profiles. But the inability to concentrate for long periods of time — as distinct from brief reading hits for information on the Web — seems to me intimately related to the inability of the public to remember even recent news events. It is not surprising, for example, that less has been heard from the presidential candidates about the Iraq war in the later stages of the primary campaign than in the earlier ones, simply because there have been fewer video reports of violence in Iraq. Candidates, like voters, emphasize the latest news, not necessarily the most important news.
No wonder negative political ads work. “With text, it is even easy to keep track of differing levels of authority behind different pieces of information,” the cultural critic Caleb Crain noted recently in the New Yorker. “A comparison of two video reports, on the other hand, is cumbersome. Forced to choose between conflicting stories on television, the viewer falls back on hunches, or on what he believed before he started watching.”
As video consumers become progressively more impatient with the process of acquiring information through written language, all politicians find themselves under great pressure to deliver their messages as quickly as possible — and quickness today is much quicker than it used to be. Harvard University’s Kiku Adatto found that between 1968 and 1988, the average sound bite on the news for a presidential candidate — featuring the candidate’s own voice — dropped from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds. By 2000, according to another Harvard study, the daily candidate bite was down to just 7.8 seconds.

A teacher friend once mentioned that “if we’re doing such a good job, why do so few people vote?”

Speaking of Report Cards: “So, Is That Like an A?”

Maura Casey:

Time was that a fifth grader’s greatest concern about gym was whether he or she would be picked last for the kickball team. Now, in schools in Hartford, that 10-year-old would-be athlete is being graded on how he or she “establishes and maintains a healthy lifestyle by avoiding risk-taking behavior.” In music class, students are being graded on how they make “connections between music and other disciplines through evaluation and analysis of compositions and performances.” That is pretty far from just trying to sing “Yankee Doodle” on key.
These examples come from a new report card, introduced last November in all of Hartford’s elementary schools. It measures 58 academic, social and behavioral skills and, including other information, can run as long as seven pages.
Not surprisingly, the language was produced by a committee. Some of the wording is clear; anyone can understand “shows courtesy and respect toward others.” But the academic measurements, which are designed to grade areas of student performance that are also measured on state standardized tests, seem more likely to confuse than illuminate.
Christopher Leone, the spokesman for the Hartford school district, said that the goal was to give parents more detailed information about the progress of their children. He says that so far the response from parents has been overwhelmingly positive. The district hasn’t surveyed the teachers, but the report card made me appreciate, as nothing else has ever done, why teachers say they are buried in paperwork.

Much more on Madison’s proposed report card changes here.

Elections create teaching opportunities for students of all ages

Amy Hetzner:

Tuesday is decision day at Genesee Depot’s Magee Elementary School, where a little girl named Hope is running for the Virtualville state senate with the modest proposal “she will do her best,” and where Chloe overreaches a bit with promising “a happy ever after.”
It’s a kinder and gentler primary than the one the students’ parents and others across the state can participate in on the same day. But it’s one that teacher Terry Kaldhusdal said benefits from the presence of a real election being fought at a time when Wisconsin usually is an afterthought.
“It’s always nice when it coincides with an actual election, especially a national election,” said Kaldhusdal, who has made the Virtualville election and government exercise a part of the Kettle Moraine School District for the past decade.
Virtualville’s synthetic state election is just one of the ways enterprising teachers in the Milwaukee area are capitalizing on interest in the Wisconsin primary to teach students about the political process.

Oak Creek launches effort to find jobs for students with disabilities

Laura Thompson:

Oak Creek High School, North Shore Bank, other businesses and the Chamber of Commerce are hosting a “community conversation” on Feb. 20 to help find summer jobs for Oak Creek High School students with disabilities.
Here’s more information from a news release about the effort:
Four out of five Wisconsin high school students with disabilities say they plan to work during summer break. Yet fewer than half that number actually landed a job this past summer. In fact, fewer than 15% of students with the most significant disabilities worked, according to preliminary findings from a University of Wisconsin research study following 375 students with disabilities in 34 Wisconsin high schools.
One of (the group’s) first efforts will be to invite the community to an evening of conversation and free desserts in hopes of gathering great ideas, untapped resources and better connections between schools, local businesses and the greater Oak Creek/Franklin community.

The Knowledge Connection

ED Hirsch, Jr:

Consider the eighth-grade NAEP results from Massachusetts, which are a stunning exception to the nationwide pattern of stagnation and decline. Since 1998, the state has improved significantly in the number of eighth-graders reading at the “proficient” or “advanced” levels: Massachusetts now has the largest percentage of students reading at that higher level, and it is No. 1 in average scores for the eighth grade. That is because Massachusetts decided in 1997 that students (and teachers) should learn certain explicit, substantive things about history, science and literature, and that students should be tested on such knowledge.

E.D. Hirsch Jr. is an author, most recently of “The Knowledge Deficit,” and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation.

Madison Middle School Report Card/Homework Assessment Proposed Changes

Michael Maguire, via email:

I’m interested in gathering more information on this topic, as outlined in a message I received from a neighbor and PTO member. I appreciate more background info, if you have it (or a suggestion of where else I can go/with whom I can speak) to find out more: [“On Wednesday, February 20, at 7 pm Dr. Pam Nash and Lisa Wactel from MMSD will present the new format for middle school report cards. The meeting is in the LMC at Hamilton Middle School [Map].
The district is changing the middle school report cards to the same as the elementary: proficient, at grade level, needs improvement (or whatever those categories are). They will eliminate the letter grades: A, B, C, etc.
Another factor in the report cards is that homework will not count toward the grade. Teachers can still assign homework, but that will not count toward your child’s assessment.”]

Michael Maguire
RugbyMaguires@aol.com
(608) 233-1235
I’ve heard that this model is also intended for the high schools. Related posts by Mary Kay Battaglia, “Can We Talk?

Wisconsin Bill Proposes to Grant Awards to add World Language Instruction in Grades One to Six

Lauren Rosen, via email:

Dear Colleagues,
I am writing to share that Senators Lassa, Schultz and Risser have introduced Senate Bill 466 cosponsored by Representatives Hebl, Musser, Hixson, Sheridan, Berceau, Cullen and Schneider. This bill, currently referred to the Committee on Education, proposes grant awards to school districts to add instruction in world languages other than English in grades one to six. This bill can be viewed at http://www.legis.state.wi.us/2007/data/SB-466.pdf. Please consider reviewing the bill, sharing this proposed legislation with others, and contacting your legislators to share your perspective and assess their position.
=====
I believe this is the golden opportunity for Madison to start keeping up with creating global citzens by supporting a bill that would allow us to request funds to start elementary school language programs. If MMSD doesn’t that too is a message from the school board that they really aren’t so interested in global citizens.
I can only hope that MMSD is willing to act on behalf of the interest of its community members with children in the schools.

The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 2007

UCLA Higher Education Research Institute:

The responses of 272,036 first-time, full-time students at 356 colleges and universities in 2007 (out of 1.4 million such freshmen), reports that only 17.6% of incoming freshmen considered rankings "very important" in influencing their decision to attend a particular college or university — tenth out of fifteen factors:

  1. College has very good academic reputation   63.0%
  2. This college’s graduates get good jobs   51.9%
  3. A visit to the campus   40.4%
  4. I was offered financial assistance    39.4%
  5. Wanted to go to a college this size   38.9%
  6. College has a good reputation for social activities   37.1%
  7. The cost of attending this college   36.8%
  8. Grads get into good grad/professional schools   34.1%
  9. Wanted to live near home   19.2%
  10. Rankings in national magazines   17.6%
  11. Information from a website   17.0%
  12. Parents wanted me to go to this school   13.0%
  13. Admitted early decision and/or early action   11.4%
  14. Could not afford first choice   9.7%
  15. High school counselor advised me   9.0%

The study includes an interesting look at parent involvement.
Via Paul Caron.

LA Charter School Settlement

Howard Blume:

More Los Angeles campuses will have to make room for charter schools, even if some teachers are forced to give up their classrooms and become roving instructors, under a litigation settlement approved by the Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday.
The agreement requires the school district to inventory all properties and work directly with charter schools to find space on or off campus. Charter advocates say finding and paying for facilities is their No. 1 challenge.
The settlement signals “new cooperation” toward serving all students — whether they attend a charter or a traditional school, supporters said.
“We share the pain of overcrowding equally,” said Caprice Young, president of the California Charter Schools Assn., a party to both suits. “We in the charter school movement recognize that the Los Angeles Unified School District has a space crunch, and we all have to work together to create great facilities for all kids.”
Agreeing to the possibility of roving instructors, called “traveling teachers,” was perhaps the major — and most controversial — concession by the school district. Because of classroom shortages, these teachers move from room to room with cartloads of materials throughout the day, an intensely unpopular assignment.
The school district could provide no figures on how many teachers travel, but their numbers have declined dramatically in recent years with the construction of new schools and declining enrollment.

Microsoft Launches Campaign to Teach Teens About Copyright

Thomas Claburn:

Teens appear to be willing to curtail illegal downloading when told they face fines or jail time.
This finding, among many in a survey published by Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) on Wednesday, is the basis for the software company’s new campaign to teach teens respect for intellectual property rights.
“Widespread access to the Internet has amplified the issue of intellectual property rights among children and teens,” said Sherri Erickson, global manager of Microsoft’s Genuine Software Initiative, in a statement. “This survey provides more insight into the disparity between IP awareness and young people today and highlights the opportunity for schools to help prepare their students to be good online citizens.”
Microsoft’s survey found that about half of the teenagers surveyed (49%) said they are not familiar with the rules and guidelines for downloading content from the Internet. Only 11% understood the rules well, and of those, 82% said downloading content illegally merits punishment. Among those unfamiliar with the law, only 57% supported punishment for intellectual property violations.
It’s not clear whether Microsoft’s statement to teen respondents — “When you do not follow these rules you are open to significant fines and possibly jail time” — is entirely accurate, particularly when teens under the age of 18 are involved. Emily Berger, an intellectual property fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is skeptical. “I think it’s being used as a scare tactic,” she said. “It’s a real stretch of the law to say it’s theoretically possible.”

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Fair Use FAQ.

Reading Curriculum Battle in Texas

Gary Scharrer & Jennifer Radcliffe:

The alternative curriculum puts more emphasis on handwriting, grammar, spelling and punctuation. It also includes a suggested reading list, a contentious point among many educators, Bradley said. Texas is revising all of its curricula, the documents that spell out what children are taught.
Up against a tight April deadline for approving the new language arts curriculum, the state asked for help last fall from StandardsWork, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group.
Some board members were dissatisfied with a draft that the group submitted in January.
“I think everybody just groaned,” Bradley said.
He added that this alternative curriculum was nearly adopted in 1997, when conservatives were unhappy with the TEA’s version. There was little they could do then, Bradley said, because then-Gov. George W. Bush and his political director, Karl Rove, “pushed it through because we had to reform education in Texas.”
The principal author of the 1997 document is retired English teacher Donna Garner.
“We don’t need input from a person who retired many years ago and thinks this document that she submitted 10 years ago is still good enough today,” Berlanga said. “They are dictating what to read. They are not even saying, ‘These are some examples.’ They are saying, ‘This is what you are going to read to them.'”

The Natural History of the Only Child

Carl Zimmer:

Modern life means small families. Starting about two centuries ago, families in Western Europe began to shrink, and then — country by country, continent by continent — the rest of the world followed suit. The trend is so big that it may rein in the world population’s exponential growth, perhaps even causing it to stop growing altogether over the next century.
But exactly why families are shrinking is a mystery. Rising living standards seem to have something to do with it. It’s certainly true that as living standards rose in England — as children died less from diseases, as the country overall became richer — the size of the English family shrank. When other countries became wealthier, their families shrank, too. These days, affluent countries tend as a rule to have smaller families than poor ones.
But why should that happen? After all, the biological imperative to have kids is strong, and if people have more resources, you might expect them to have more kids. As a result, some demographers have decided that the link between more wealth and fewer children has nothing to do with biology — rather, that small families are more like fads that sweep through countries when they get richer.
Yet we shouldn’t abandon biology just yet. The idea that wealthy nations have fewer children than poorer ones is something of an illusion. If you look closer within the groups of people who make up those countries, it turns out wealthier people actually do tend to have more children. In one of the most extreme examples, scientists looked at Harvard graduates worth over a million dollars. Even among these highly successful people, the richest of them tended to have bigger families.

San Diego’s New Superintendent Starts Early

Maureen Magee:

Grier called on employees to stop dwelling on the shortcomings of previous superintendents.
“I want us to move away from discussions about yesterday,” Grier said, in reference to the stream of complaints he has heard about Alan Bersin’s heavy-handed management and Carl Cohn’s multiple hires from the Long Beach school district.
“I’m not coming here to try to recreate Guilford County, N.C., West,” he said. “There’s a lot of bright, talented people here.”
Sam Wong, the district’s chief of human resources, was hopeful that Grier could get people to stop reliving the mishaps of Bersin and Cohn.
“You do have to say goodbye to the past to move forward, otherwise you never make progress,” Wong said. “I like what I’m hearing.”
Grier took issue with the district’s so-called 98 percent graduation rate. He suggested that the statistic was misleading, given that there are always thousands more freshmen than seniors.
“That is not acceptable,” he said. “I’m sorry, you don’t have a 98 percent graduation rate.”

Two Denver Public Schools Gain Freedom in Hiring

Nancy Mitchell:

enver Public Schools and its teachers union on Tuesday announced a compromise that will grant historic freedoms in hiring, staffing and scheduling for two city schools that sought to break free of union and district rules.
Bruce Randolph and Manual schools in northeast Denver will be able to post job vacancies and hire at will, among other freedoms outlined in the agreement.
“It was a very positive resolution and came rather quickly after we all sat down together to talk about it,” said Kim Ursetta, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association.
Bruce Randolph Principal Kristin Waters said she was “ecstatic. It’s great for kids, for the teachers, and I think it’s good for the union.”
The news came as the principals of 18 schools in far northeast Denver put the final touches on their own autonomy proposal, which they’ll present to DPS board members Tuesday. Any agreements also must be OK’d by the union governing board.

College eligibility as class policy

Antero Garcia:

Apropos to my recent post on student understanding of college eligibility, a discussion on student grades seemed to be in order.
As students review the syllabus for my classes on day one of school, there is the occasional frown at the third paragraph: “Please be aware that there is a ‘no D’ grading policy in regards to your final grade. As classes receiving a D grade are not recognized by most universities, you will be receiving an A, B, C, or F at the end of the semester.” The actual grading scale remains the same in the class – anything below 70% earns a fail. This being the second year I’ve implemented the policy, I can say I’m happy with the results. I’ve yet to actually fail a student who would have earned a D if the policy was not in place. Many students are comfortable with the idea of doing just enough to pass – they’ve expressed frustration at not being able to get “just a D,” and actually do the required amount to earn a C or better. In this sense, I feel the policy encourages students to work harder than when they were able to use a meager D as a crutch for doing the minimum required (the minimum is now simply 10% more work). I know college may not be for everybody. However, I make every effort to prepare students for and encourage students to consider college as a viable and enticing future. Everyone who passes my class is at least one step closer to being able to make a decision about college. What happens from here is up to them.

English Learners Put High-Tech Blackboards to New Use

Emily Alpert:

Small hands flock into the air, fluttering before the oversized computer screen. Teacher Maria Vazquez picks a first-grader from the crowd. She bounds up to the interactive board, takes the stylus from Vazquez’ outstretched hand, and neatly highlights a few Spanish words, touching the tool to the 6-foot-wide screen. There’s no ink, no paper, no projectors — just the wide, kid-level touch screen, upon which every child’s eyes are fixed.
With that screen, Vazquez can conjure up images from the web, play videos, display textbook pages, give and grade quizzes, craft diagrams and broker chats with kids from afar; she can swap notes and lessons with fellow teachers, track students’ answers and how fast they respond. Hours spent grading are a thing of the past. Kids are rapt before the glowing screen.

Wisconsin’s Budget Deficit Grows to $652,000,000

Jason Stein:

The state’s projected two-year budget shortfall has doubled to a hefty $652.3 million, the Legislature’s budget office reported today.
The potential deficit, up from last month’s estimates of $300 million to $400 million, represents a much greater challenge for lawmakers and Gov. Jim Doyle as they attempt to balance the state’s books in the face of a looming national recession and falling state tax revenues.
The red splashed across the state’s books also increases the chance that officials might have to cut programs, raise taxes or raid other state funds to cover the shortfall.
The state’s January 2008 report on tax collections — which includes key sales from the holiday retail season — and the forecasts for this month point to “further weakness” in tax revenues, the report from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau found.
That means a $586.5 million projected decrease in state collections and a $34.9 million decrease in interest income and other revenue to state agencies, the report found.

2008_02_13_Revenue estimates.pdf 84KThese deficits, along with a number of other issues, make it unlikely that we’ll see meaningful new state redistributed tax dollars for the Madison School District. Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau’s website.
Greg Bump has more.

KIPP: McDonogh 15 School For the Creative Arts

Bob Lefsetz pays a visit (via email):

After breakfast at Mother’s, Marty, Felice and myself took a cab deep into the French Quarter to the McDonogh School, where the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation was presenting the music program with a slew of instruments. That’s what the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation does, grant instruments to school music programs. It was started by Michael Kamen, who composed the music for the movie. He wanted students to have the same opportunity he had, to learn an instrument in school, to be fulfilled, to be enriched. Felice runs the Foundation.
I’d been hearing about all the great work the Foundation had been doing in New Orleans for two years. And on a site visit a couple of months back, Tricia had encountered Kelvin Harrison and his program. She believed they were worthy, they deserved the instruments. The program had started after Katrina with no instruments. Mr. Harrison had taught his students on recorders when the ordered instruments hadn’t arrived. But now he was up and running, he needed more. And that’s why we were there.
The environment in the building was completely different from my educational experience. Instead of sterility, I found vibrancy. Silhouettes graced the cafeteria, with explanations of each. One student said his creation was as big as the 24″ rims on his older brother’s car. That cracked me up. But I loved the banner on the far side of the room: “Climb the mountain to college.” There were aphorisms all over the place. Informing the students to pay attention now, to apply themselves now, to prepare, for otherwise, in the future, they’d be left out.
And after reading the display about Black History Month, learning exactly who Booker T. Washington was, we ascended the stairs to the third floor, where Mr. Harrison was warming up the band. Brass members were playing notes. I prepared myself. This was going to be awful. An endurance test. You know what it’s like being in the vicinity of someone learning an instrument. You want to support them, but the sound is grating, you can’t read, you can’t watch television, you just want the noise to stop.
After quieting everybody down, Mr. Harrison looked at the assembled multitude and said the band was going to play a couple of numbers. They were going to start with “Oye Como Va”.
Oh, I know it wasn’t a Santana original. But that’s where I heard it. Coming out of John “Muddy” Waters’ room in the dorm all of freshman year. I’ve come to love “Abraxas”. I bought it on vinyl. And have a gold CD. I’ve got all the MP3s. I love “Oye Como Va”. I was trepidatiously excited. Then the two players on keys rolled out the intro, the drummers started hitting the accents, the horn players lifted their instruments to their lips and the band started to swing!
I couldn’t believe it! Fifth graders? My high school’s band wasn’t this good. This was good enough for college! The flutes are wailing. I notice the drummer is a girl. And yes, that tiny figure behind the keyboard, she’s hitting every note. Trombone players got up and soloed. Tears started coming to my eyes. This was education! If I could play in a band like this, I’d want to come to school!
And when they finished, there was raucous applause. And then they lit into Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man”. These little kids, they had soul!

Continue reading KIPP: McDonogh 15 School For the Creative Arts

4 Names for Madison’s New Far West Side Elementary School

Susan Troller:

he names of four prominent deceased local citizens have gone to the head of the class as names for Madison’s newest elementary school, slated to open next fall on the far west side. They include Jeffrey Erlanger, Paul J. Olson, Howard Temin and Ilda Thomas.
A 13-member citizen naming committee, chaired by Madison historian David Mollenhoff, will recommend the names to the Madison School Board in a report to be distributed to board members on Thursday. The group has been meeting since early January to consider more than 80 names submitted by the public for the new school.

AP Report to the Nation

College Board [1.5MB PDF]:

More than 15 percent of the public high school class of 2007 achieved at least one AP® Exam grade of 3 or higher1—the score that is predictive of college success. This achievement represents a significant and consistent improvement since the class of 2002 when less than 12 percent of public school graduates attained this goal.
Out of all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, Vermont captured the largest increase in the percentage of high school graduates who scored a 3 or higher on an AP Exam.
In its fourth annual “AP Report to the Nation,” the College Board (the not-for-profit membership association that owns and administers the AP Program), focuses on educators’ quantifiable successes in helping a wider segment of the nation’s students gain access to and achieve success in college-level work. Of the estimated 2.8 million students who graduated from U.S. public schools in 2007, almost 426,000 (15.2 percent) earned an AP Exam grade of at least a 3 on one or more AP Exams during their high school tenure, the report documents. This is up from 14.7 percent in 2006 and 11.7 percent in 2002.
Earning a 3 or higher on an AP Exam is one of “the very best predictors of college performance,”2 with AP students earning higher college grades and graduating from college at higher rates than otherwise similar peers in control groups, according to recent reports from researchers at the University of California at Berkeley,3 the National Center for Educational Accountability,4 and the University of Texas at Austin.5,6
New York, Maryland, Virginia, Florida, Massachusetts and Connecticut all saw more than 20 percent of their students graduate from high school having earned an AP Exam grade of 3 or higher. AP achievements for each state’s class of 2002, class of 2006 and class of 2007 are detailed in the report. (See “The 4th Annual AP Report to the Nation,” Table 1, page 5.)
“Educators and policymakers across the nation should be commended for their sustained commitment to helping students achieve access to and success in AP courses and exams” said College Board President Gaston Caperton. “More students from varied backgrounds are accomplishing their AP goals, but we can’t afford to believe equity has been achieved until the demographics of successful AP participation and performance are identical to the demographics of the overall student population.”
Though 75 percent of U.S. high school graduates enter college,7 dropout rates and the fact that about half of all college freshmen are taking at least one remedial course indicate that secondary schools must dedicate themselves to more than college admission,8 the report asserts.
“Remedial course work in college costs taxpayers an estimated $1 billion a year,”9 Caperton said. “To shrink the gap between those who enter college and those who complete a degree, we must target the divide between high school graduation standards and the skills that all students need to be prepared for the rigors of college. The critical reasoning, subject-matter expertise and study skills students must develop to succeed on the three-hour college-level AP Exams fortify high school graduates for a successful transition into their freshman year at college. This makes providing better readiness for—and access to—AP courses absolutely essential.”

Related: Dane County, WI High School AP Course Comparison. The Madison School District received a grant in 2005 to increase the number of AP classes available to students. Madison High School AP offerings, according to the College Board: East 11, Edgewood 11, LaFollette 10, Memorial 17 and West 5.
Mitchell Landsberg digs into the report here.

Random drug testing at southern Nevada high school working

AP:

A random drug testing program for athletes at the Green Valley High School that began Jan. 28 is working, with students talking about why drugs are bad and about doing the right thing, its principal said.
Athletes who test positive for illegal substances jeopardize their eligibility to play or perform while in Nevada public schools.
“It’s been a great success so far,” said principal Jeff Horn. “We’ve tested over 50 individuals now, and things have gone very smoothly.”
Only one student failed to pass random testing because of prescription medication, he said. The prescription was verified with the parents, and the matter was quickly resolved.

No Child Outside the Classroom

Roxana Popescu:

When No Child Left Behind became law in 2002, teachers suspected there’d be some casualties—they just didn’t think field trips would be one of them. Since the federal government’s landmark overhaul of U.S. schools, class trips have plummeted at some of the country’s traditional hot spots for brown-bag learning. The new emphasis on standardized testing has resulted in “a reluctance to take kids out of the classroom,” says Natalie Bortoli, head of the visual-arts program at the Chicago Children’s Museum, which has lost more than a tenth of its field-trip business since 2005. At Mystic Seaport, a maritime museum on the Connecticut coast, school traffic has slowed more than a quarter since 2005, while Boston’s New England Aquarium has lost nearly the same amount since 2003. Even NASA’s Johnson Space Center has started to see its figures stagnate, says marketing director Roger Bornstein, “and stability is not our goal.”
Teachers blame the bear market in part on No Child Left Behind, which requires schools to get students up to state targets in reading and math by 2014 or face sanctions that could result in school takeovers or closings. “Curriculums are so much tighter than they used to be,” says Susan Lewis, an elementary-school teacher in San Antonio, Texas. Add in rising transportation costs, and field trips are fast becoming history. Compton Avenue Elementary School in Los Angeles has halved its trips in the past three years. “They were all academically based,” says principal Claudia Ross, but they no longer fit a budget focused on test scores, not general enrichment.

Plan Would Nationalize Schools to End Disparities

Scott Simon (NPR):

Matt Miller has a radical but simple proposal to improve the nation’s public schools: federalize funding to eliminate disparities in per-pupil funding between poor and affluent communities. He also proposes a single set of federal standards for math, science and reading, instead of letting each state set its own standards. Scott Simon speaks with Miller, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

A reader forwarded Miller’s proposal earlier in the week.

Walbridge School’s Summer Program

Madison’s Walbridge School:

Walbridge School is unique state wide in teaching children with different learning styles to become successful. With a full-day curriculum, Walbridge School teaches grades one through eight with individualized instruction focusing on strengths rathers than weaknesses. Walbridge School will host a summer school program from July 7 through August 1 offering creative courses in reading, writing, and math. Please call for more details at 608.833.1338, email: walbridge2006@yahoo.com.

Teachers reveal bag of tricks to keep students focused on learning

Jacqueline Reis:

Sixteen-year-old Joel Santos recalls a shouting match between a fellow student and a teacher that started with “Shut up!” and escalated. Other students swear at their teachers. And Kim L. Veth, 16, remembers one fourth-grade classmate who got so bored that he started dancing on a table.
When it comes to being heckled, stand-up comedians have nothing on teachers. Comedians know they were hired to entertain, but teachers have to be part motivator, part counselor and part disciplinarian, all as a means to educate.
So how do they deal with the sass? For Chad Malone, an English teacher at Claremont Academy in Worcester, a public school that partners with Clark University, the keys are keeping rules to a minimum and not blowing his top.
“Crazy behavior problems come from being bored in the classroom,” he said. “The kids have to be engaged in what they’re doing, and that, I think, comes from being planned out and ready to go with the day.”
Joel, who is one of his students, agrees. “Students get bored … because teachers just stand up there and talk in a boring way,” he said.

One Dad’s Campaign to Save America

Jay Matthews:

Bob Compton may be wrong about American students losing out to our hard-working Indian and Chinese competitors, but he is astonishingly sincere in his views. Even if his country doesn’t react to the international threat, he will. He has hired special tutors for his daughters, even though they already have top grades at a premier private school.
Compton, 52, is a high-tech entrepreneur and investor based in Memphis. His documentary film, “Two Million Minutes,” has become a key part of a campaign known as ED in ’08, which aims to push the next president toward big changes in U.S. schools. Compton and the ED in ’08 backers, including billionaire Bill Gates, support the growing movement for more instructional and study time. Compton’s message is that American kids are wasting much of their four years of high school–about 2 million minutes–on sports and jobs and television while Chinese and Indians are studying, studying some more and then checking in with their tutors to see what they still need to study.
I am not friendly to Compton’s argument. I think the Chinese and Indian threat to the American economy is a myth. I have been convinced by economists who argue that the more prosperous they are, the more prosperous we are, since they will have more money to buy our stuff. I also believe that prosperity in previously troubled countries such as China and India promotes democracy and peace.
I do, however, like Compton a lot, and agree with him that our high schools need to be much better–not in order to beat the international competition but to end the shame of having millions of low-income students not getting the education they deserve. I admire a dad who applies his arguments to his own life in ways I never would. He is significantly increasing the amount of time his children are devoting to their studies, whether they like it or not.

Why are we so Obsessed by Time?

Charles Handy:

Then I paused. Why was I so obsessed by time? If I was going to London by air, I would consider 11 hours to be normal. Why should it be different because it was San Francisco? Why, I ask myself, are we always in such a hurry? Why do eager parents want to accelerate their children’s education when life is so much longer now? In business we let the short-term pressures obscure the promise of the longer term. We forget that in nature a full ripening takes time. Push it too hard and you lose too much of the flavor.

A Child’s View of Attention Deficit

Tara Parker-Pope:

What does it feel like to have attention deficit disorder?
The answer to that question can be found in a fascinating new report from the Journal of Pediatric Nursing called “I Have Always Felt Different.’’ The article gives a glimpse into the experience of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D., from a child’s perspective.
Assistant professors Robin Bartlett and Mona M. Shattell, from the School of Nursing at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, interviewed 16 college students who had been diagnosed with A.D.H.D. as children. The investigators talked to them about how the disorder affected life at home, school and friendships.
Like most kids, the students described a life of both conflict with and support from their parents. But in their case, fighting with parents was often triggered by attention-related problems like failing to complete laundry chores or cleaning their rooms.

Sable Flames Annual Second Alarm Scholarship Benefit on Saturday 2/23

via a Johnny Winston, Jr. email

On Saturday, February 23, 2008 at the Edgewater Hotel at 666 Wisconsin Avenue [Map] in Downtown Madison, The Sable Flames, Inc. (African American firefighters for the City of Madison) will present its Fifteenth Annual “Second Alarm Scholarship Benefit” at 8:00 p.m. until 1 a.m.
Entertainment for this year’s event features a disc jockey (DJ Surprise) and dance music; complimentary hors d’oeuvres, door prizes, music, dancing and a cash bar will be provided. A mature audience and dress attire is requested.
Tickets are available from members of The Sable Flames, Inc. or can be purchased at the door. The cost of the event is $25 in advance and $30 at the door. Tickets are tax-deductible and can be purchased as a donation if you cannot attend the event. The Sable Flames, Inc. is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization.
For tickets and additional information, please contact Mahlon Mitchell at 698-2333 or Johnny Winston, Jr. at 347-9715 or johnnywinstonjr@hotmail.com.
Please feel free to send this message to other interested persons, organizations or parties. My apologies for any duplicate messages or cross-postings.

Parents Feel Betrayed by Millionaire Role Models

George Vecsey:

They will attend the Congressional hearings Wednesday, the husband and wife with the sad eyes. They have become part of the steroid circuit, honored with reserved seats near the front, silent witnesses to the plague of the last generation.
Frank and Brenda Marrero will be listening to what Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte have to say. They want to be in the same room as Brian McNamee and Kirk Radomski, two admitted pushers of illegal bodybuilding drugs. The hearings must now be viewed in a more skeptical vein after lawmakers allowed Clemens to work on them individually late last week, roaming the halls like some supersized K Street lobbyist, explaining that a great man like himself would never do such a thing as take steroids, and doing everything but pass out autographed facsimiles of his rookie chewing-gum card.

The Marreros can only try to understand the whole crazy system of millionaire role-model athletes and local suppliers who provided their son Efrain with steroids, before he obediently went off the stuff and killed himself at 19. It all happened so fast.
Now they gravitate to the hearings, not to disrupt but to distribute fliers about the foundation they have started, about the seminars Frank Marrero gives all over the country, warning youngsters to stay off the stuff, that it isn’t worth it.
Frank and Brenda Marrero were present on March 17, 2005, six months after their son died, when Mark McGwire stammered and turned red and said he didn’t want to talk about the past.

“Rainwater’s reign: Retiring school superintendent has made big impact”

Susan Troller on retiring Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater:

Later this month, a new contract between Dr. Daniel Nerad and the Madison Metropolitan School District will signal the end of an era. For over a decade, Art Rainwater has been at the helm of Madison’s public schools, guiding the district during a period of rapid demographic change and increasingly painful budget cutting. Both admirers and critics believe Rainwater has had a profound impact on the district.
Retiring Madison schools superintendent Art Rainwater may have the name of a poet, but his first ambition was to be a high school football coach.
“I grew up loving football — still do — especially the intellectual challenge of the game. I was obsessed with it,” Rainwater explained in a recent interview.
In fact, during his early years as an educator, Rainwater was so consumed by his football duties for a Catholic high school in Texas he eventually switched from coaching to school administration for the sake of his family.
In some ways, Rainwater has been an unusual person to lead Madison’s school district — an assertive personality in a town notorious for talking issues to death. His management style grows out of his coaching background — he’s been willing to make unpopular decisions, takes personal responsibility for success or failure, puts a premium on loyalty and hard work and is not swayed by armchair quarterbacks.

A few related links:

Much more on Art here. Like or loath him, Art certainly poured a huge amount of his life into what is a very difficult job. I was always amazed at the early morning emails, then, later, seeing him at an evening event. Best wishes to Art as he moves on.

Virtual schools lobby to survive

Amy Hetzner:

Following a December appeals court decision that questioned the legality of about a dozen virtual schools in the state, officials with those schools worked hard to convince their students’ families they would remain open until summer.
Now, amid the three-week application period for participation in the state’s open enrollment program, they are trying to convince both current and prospective families that they will be around for at least another year. And they are doing so through a blitz of online open houses, information sessions and advertising hitting all corners of Wisconsin.
“Some of them (parents) are real concerned and some of them don’t seem concerned at all,” said Kurt Bergland, principal of Wisconsin Virtual Academy, a virtual charter school run by the Northern Ozaukee School District. “I guess the proof will be in the pudding when someone actually puts us down on their open enrollment application.”
WIVA is under perhaps more pressure than other virtual charter schools in the state, as the target of a lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin Education Association Council charging it operated in violation of state laws regarding teacher licensure, charter schools and open enrollment. A three-judge panel of the District 2 Court of Appeals in Waukesha issued a decision with statewide implications that sided with WEAC, the state’s largest teachers union.

Minnesota pays to help high schoolers rack up college credits, but CLEP offer slow to catch on

Paul Tosto:

Pass a free exam. Get college credit.
Seems like a sweet deal for Minnesota high school students looking to save money on college. But after operating for more than a year, state education officials are finding a lot fewer takers than they expected for the College-Level Examination Program.
About 900 tests have been taken since the state began paying the exam fee in 2006 – far fewer than the 5,000 initially projected for last year and 7,500 hoped for this year.
Part of the problem, officials say, is that CLEP toils in the shadows of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and other better-known options for high school students trying to get a jump on college credit.
Another issue: While the tests are recognized by some 2,900 schools across the country, including the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities grants credit for only a few of the 34 CLEP exams and sets the bar for passing higher than other schools.
Despite low exam participation to date, officials say they’re buoyed by the jump in student interest last year – particularly from schools in greater Minnesota – and are trying to spread the word to high schools and home-schoolers about the opportunity. This school year, students have until June 30 to take as many as six CLEP exams paid for by the state, with the only cost being an administrative fee that runs about $15 to $25 per test.

“Blue Collar Teacher Contracts Work Against the Students”

Julia Steiny:

“I’m probably the only person in the room who was actually at the negotiating table in the mid-1960s when the first collective bargaining laws were being passed.” So said Ray Spear, former superintendent in Coventry and now a member of the Coventry School Committee, addressing the Board of Regents.
Recently, the Regents held a series of public meetings to hear creative ideas about how to prevent teacher strikes in strike-prone Rhode Island. The hearing I attended was packed to the gills with school administrators, school committee members and union officials.
Spear went on to wholeheartedly endorse “the granting of the initial bargaining rights for teachers.” Later, in an interview, he elaborated. “I was sympathetic with teachers because at the time they were not being paid at a scale comparable to other workers. I personally researched what other B.A.-level workers were being paid. Teachers weren’t even close. And they weren’t getting any benefits, no personal leave, maternity leave….”
But now, this elder statesman of the Rhode Island education community told the Regents, “It is my sincere belief that the teacher negotiation process has worn out its welcome and gone far beyond the purpose and intent which it was to serve.”
Currently, Rhode Island’s teachers’ unions are monolithically powerful forces that “fail to regard the needs of students,” according to Spear. These unions protect bad teachers, make a principal’s job nearly impossible, slow or stop educational reforms, and critically, in this fiscal climate, drive the cost of doing business through the roof.
The current problem is the result of flawed thinking back in the 1960s.
Spear was “just a young kid of a superintendent” in Michigan when that state’s collective-bargaining law passed in 1965. “When I sat down at the bargaining table for the first time, their contract proposal looked more like a General Motors contract than an education contract. They’d gone to the automotive industry for advice. Those are the roots of the situation we’re in now.”

Ballard Visits Madison

Robert Ballard spoke at Saturday’s Friends of UW Hospital & Clinic’s dinner. Ballard provided an interesting look at his work over the decades, which included some interesting education related comments:

  • The joint Woods Hole – MIT Program apparently serves mostly foreign PhD. students (“we are educating our competitors”), which lead to
  • The Jason Project,
  • an attempt to create science and engineering interest in middle school students. Ballard said that if we’ve not generated such interest by the 8th grade, it is too late.

College: How to Pay the Tax-Favored Way

Karen Hube:

ENDLESS CHILDHOOD ISN’T GOOD for the psyche — or parents’ pocketbooks. For the second time in two years, the “kiddie tax,” which subjects a portion of children’s investment income to their parents’ rates, has been expanded; it now applies to offspring as old as 23.
The change first goes into effect for 2008 tax returns, so families should vet adaptive strategies now. The greatest impact likely will be felt by wealthy families who’ve transferred assets into their children’s names to take advantage of their kids’ lower tax brackets. But many will get hit simply because they saved diligently in their children’s names for college, says Ed Slott, a tax adviser in Rockville Centre, N.Y.
The kiddie tax doesn’t apply to 529 plans — tax-free investment accounts earmarked for college savings. But it does apply to custodial accounts, which many set up in their children’s names as college-savings vehicles before 529 plans’ creation in the mid-1990s.
Under kiddie-tax rules, a child’s unearned income of more than $1,800 (up from $1,700) is subject to the parents’ tax rates of up to 35% on interest and short-term capital gains, and 15% on long-term capital gains and most dividends. The first $900 of the child’s unearned income is tax-free; the second $900 is taxed at the child’s rates. Most children are in the 10% or 15% income tax bracket, and they would typically be subject to the lowest capital-gains tax rate, which this year has dropped to 0%, from 5%.

More on college expense tax credits here.

City Rainy Day Funds Diverted to San Francisco Schools

Jill Tucker:

With a stormy financial front headed toward San Francisco schools, Mayor Gavin Newsom offered to help the district Friday with $30.6 million from the city’s rainy day fund.
Facing a $40 million shortfall, district officials were preparing for massive layoffs and program cuts – including cutting more than 500 teachers and staff.
“This is perilous,” the mayor said of the potential impact. “This is ominous. This is simply not acceptable.”
Newsom’s proposal must be approved by the Board of Supervisors.
In 2003, city voters passed Proposition G, which required the city save excess revenue during good economic times.
The account now holds about $122 million, with the school district eligible for up to 25 percent of the total if two conditions are met: The school district must be getting less money per pupil from the state when adjusted for inflation, and must be facing significant teacher layoffs.

Catching Up To the Boys, In the Good And the Bad
Teen Girls’ Alcohol, Drug Use on the Rise

Lori Aratani:

She lost count of the vodka shots. It was New Year’s Eve 2005, and for this high school freshman, it was time to party. She figured she’d be able to sleep it off — she’d done it before. But by the time she got home the next day, her head was still pounding, her mouth was dry, and she couldn’t focus. This time, the symptoms were obvious even to her parents.
After that night, she realized the weekend buzzes had gone from being a maybe to a must.
“Before, it was a novelty,” the Silver Spring teen said. “It went from, ‘Well, maybe . . .’ to ‘Oh, I know I’m going to drink this weekend.’ ”
A generation of parents and educators have pushed to ensure that girls have the same opportunities as their male counterparts, with notable results. In 2007, for example, it was girls who dominated the national math and science competition sponsored by Siemens. But a growing number of reports show that the message of equality might have a downside.
Teenage girls now equal or outpace teenage boys in alcohol consumption, drug use and smoking, national surveys show. The number of girls entering the juvenile justice system has risen steadily over the past few years. A 2006 study that examined accident rates among young drivers noted that although boys get into more car accidents, girls are slowly beginning to close the gap.

On Madison’s New Superintendent

Jason Shephard:

After a round of “meet and greets” with the three finalists for the job of Madison schools superintendent, insiders were divided on two favorites. Leaders who’ve pushed for greater educational reforms spoke highly of Miami’s Steve Gallon, while key institutional players favored Green Bay’s Dan Nerad.
Nerad, 56, the most battle-tested of the finalists, delivered a solid introductory speech that struck the right notes. He stressed his consensus-building record, cautioned against embracing reform for its own sake, and drew applause by blasting state revenue controls.
In contrast, Gallon seemed bolder but less experienced. He ventured into dangerous territory by saying inadequate funding shouldn’t be used as an excuse for educational failures. A 38-year-old black single father, Gallon attended the same Miami public school system where he now runs alternative programs, and many saw his potential as a visionary leader.
In the end, picking a replacement for Art Rainwater, who is retiring in June after eight years in the top job, was not hard to do. The night before school board deliberations, Gallon dropped out after finding a job on the East Coast. The Madison board unanimously made an offer to Nerad, Green Bay’s school superintendent since 2001.
Those who lobbied for Gallon behind the scenes say privately they’re over any disappointment they initially felt. And school board members say they’re excited — if not relieved — to find someone like Nerad. “It feels right. It feels good,” says board president Arlene Silveira.

Much more on Dan Nerad here

Analysis of Governor’s 2008-09 California School Budget

EdSource:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget for 2008–09 has sent shock waves through the education community. He has recommended a $4.8 billion cut for K-14 education, on top of a $400 million reduction for education in the current year. The net effect is about $750 less per student than K-12 education would normally receive or about $18,750 per classroom.
On Jan. 10, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger released a proposed budget for 2008–09 that includes cuts for most state programs, but hits education particularly hard. His proposal calls for the suspension of Proposition 98—the state’s minimum funding guarantee for public schools and community colleges—in order to help address a $14.5 billion state budget shortfall. The proposed cuts are the largest ever contemplated for public schools in California. Along with the budget release, the governor declared a fiscal emergency that will affect funding in the current year. Consistent with new regulations approved by voters in Proposition 58, the Legislature is required to act quickly to address the current budget problem.
This brief describes the governor’s proposal and outlines the immediate impacts it is expected to have on California school districts as they complete this school year and plan for the next.

The Debate to Lead Los Angeles Teachers

Howard Blume:

It somehow escaped CNN, but United Teachers Los Angeles, the L.A. teachers union, held the second of three candidate forums Thursday night at union headquarters in the Wilshire district.
The election has ramifications far beyond the union because UTLA, with more than 40,000 members, is a major local political player. And its members are inevitably at the center of any school-improvement effort.
Ballots, mailed to teachers, will be retrieved from the postal service on Feb. 21.
Those who can’t get enough can read candidate statements and watch candidate videos at UTLA.net. There’s an election tab in the upper left-hand corner. There’s also another forum on Monday at 6 p.m. at White Middle School in Carson.
So what did the candidates for president have to say?
The incumbent is A.J. Duffy, a longtime union activist who surprised many when he unseated predecessor John Perez.
One challenger is Becki Robinson, a longtime union officer who could be a long shot because of her self-funded, low-budget campaign. She lost a hard-fought campaign for president to Perez. These days, Robinson helps run district programs that take place outside of school hours. And she’s the union rep for UTLA members who work in the district’s downtown headquarters.
Robinson challenged Duffy’s record on some high-profile matters. Her criticisms were frequently echoed by fellow challenger and longtime union officer Linda Guthrie.
Among their issues: Duffy supported school board candidate Christopher Arellano without a complete background check. The media later uncovered that Arellano, a UTLA staff member, had a criminal record and had exaggerated his education credentials. Arellano was trounced on election day after the union had spent more than $200,000 in his behalf.

A School Tax Case To Watch

NY Sun Editorial:

Oh, ye of little faith — and here we are speaking of those who doubt that some day a solution will be found to the problem of school choice — we say behold what is happening among the judges who ride the 9th circuit of the United States Court of Appeals. There, our Josh Gerstein reports from the Coast, three judges are hearing a case that could force the Internal Revenue Service to explain why it has secretly allowed members of the Church of Scientology to take a tax deduction for religious education.
The case was brought by a Jewish couple, Michael and Marla Sklar, who had taken deductions for part of the costs of the tuition for the education of their children for afterschool classes in Judaism. They are seeking to view an agreement the Internal Revenue Service reached with the Church of Scientology in 1993 as part of a settlement in a long-running dispute. The church, Mr. Gerstein reports, paid $12.5 million, while the IRS, as Mr. Gerstein characterizes it in his story on page one, “agreed to drop arguments that Scientology was not a bona fide religion.” And the IRS agreed to allow Scientologists to deduct at least 80% of fees paid for “religious training and services.”

Paul Caron has more.

Plan for Massachusetts Education “Czar” Threatens Reforms

Charles Glenn:

Education reform is often stifled by the vested interests that resist accountability and new models like charter and pilot schools. In Massachusetts, the independence of the state Board of Education provided the continuity that allowed reform to be successfully implemented year after year.
The board was responsible for the initiatives that were the heart and soul of reform, like the MCAS exam, teacher testing, and academically rigorous curriculum frameworks. It was the board that followed a prudent course by creating rigorous charter school approval and closure processes.
Each of these reforms was the target of substantial resistance from a powerful and change-averse education establishment. Only an independent Board of Education, insulated from politics, could have made them a reality.
Despite these unparalleled successes, all we have achieved is now at risk. A proposal to eliminate the Board of Education’s independence seems to be breezing through the Legislature. The proposal would make the board just another part of Governor Patrick’s administration and thus politicize an institution that has been insulated from politics since 1837, when Horace Mann was its first leader.

Miami Expands Magnet Access

Kathleen McGrory:

Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Rudy Crew rolled out a proposal Thursday to provide students throughout the county with greater access to specialty programs such as magnet schools, International Baccalaureate programs and K-8 Centers.
The proposed plan, dubbed the Equity & Access Plan, will create rigorous, specialized academic programs in areas that don’t yet have them, Crew said. It would run for three years, beginning in 2008, and cost about $6 million.
”When you look at the map, what you’ll essentially see is that the distribution [of programs] here has been at best, or possibly at worst, random,” Crew said. “This conversation was based largely on the need to change that map so you have more children having access to high-demand programs.”
Currently, most K-8 centers are clustered in the southern half of the county or near Aventura. Many urban neighborhoods, other than downtown Miami, do not have magnet programs nearby.
And the lone specialty school for math and science, the Maritime and Science Technology Academy, is tucked away on Key Biscayne.
Among Crew’s recommendations:

  • Develop 10 new International Baccalaureate programs, to join the 14 existing programs. Hialeah-Miami Lakes Senior, Miami Carol City Senior, and Miami Beach Senior would be among the host schools.
  • Open two new mathematics and science senior high school programs. One would be a senior high school for medical technologies at the former Homestead Hospital. The other would be in northwest Miami-Dade County.
  • Develop six new magnet programs, four of which would be housed in schools in the southern part of the county.

While Crew said he is prepared to raise money to fund future projects, likely through federal and state grants, he said his initial goal was to take a strategic look at the placement of academic programs.

One of the three finalists for the Madison Superintendent position, Steve Gallon, hailed from Miami-Dade.

In Support of Wisconsin Virtual Schools

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Editorial:

The future of the state’s 12 virtual schools was unclear after the state Court of Appeals ruled in December that they were not entitled to state aid. This bipartisan bill, which is moving through both houses of the Legislature, would impose new standards and ensure that funding continues.
But with Wisconsin schools knee-deep in the open enrollment process and legislative time at a premium, Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker (D-Weston) and Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch (R-West Salem) must make this bill a priority.
And the state teachers union, which brought the lawsuit that led to the Court of Appeals decision, should resist the impulse to try to force changes to the legislation or derail it.
The bill has not been scheduled for action yet, but the legislators who negotiated the compromise – state Sen. John Lehman (D-Racine), Rep. Brett Davis (R-Oregon) and Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon) – want the measure to be considered as soon as possible.
Among the bill’s provisions: Virtual schools must have the same number of hours of instruction per year as traditional classrooms; must use only certified, licensed teachers to develop lesson plans and to grade assignments; and must make all records available under the state open records law. In addition, the state Department of Public Instruction, which backs the bill, could operate an online academy to advise districts that want to start their own online schools.

Madison hosts all-city Scrabble tournament

Emily Mills:

Break out the dictionaries and the little wooden squares because it’s time for a Madtown Scrabble smackdown!
A citywide Scrabble tournament, organized by Madison Family Literacy, aims to help raise funds for reading and education programs for adults and children in the city. The tournament runs from February 23-24 at the Hilldale Shopping Center, and kicks off with a challenge game between Mayor Dave and whoever makes the highest bid for the honor of schooling him at wordplay.
Started in 1999 as part of the federal Even Start program, Madison Family Literacy (MFL) grew out of a need to restructure and move ahead when federal funds began to dry up for the various original branches of the organization. The programs provide adult education courses in English literacy, high school equivalency, employment readiness, childhood development and other essential skills to various at-risk and lower income families throughout Madison. They also provide daily early childhood classes for up to 50 children. And though many local and national groups, including Attic Angels, Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and the Barbara Bush Foundation have chipped in to help keep the program afloat, finances remain tight.
Patti La Cross, the current coordinator, explains: “In the past four years, several things have happened: The federal budget for Even Start was reduced by about 70% and in succession the two other Madison Even Start grants were reaching the end of their four-year cycles. So, we voluntarily merged, eventually becoming One Grant — Madison Family Literacy — and serve the city’s least educated, lowest income families on just over 1/3 of the original funds. And our success at meeting or exceeding all our performance indicators still went up!”
In addition to those families it was already serving, the program took on over 30 Hmong refugee families who began moving into subsidized housing in Madison back in July of 2004. Despite less money coming in and being told to cut back, MFL actually added services for these and other ethnic groups in the area.

Parents producing ‘battery-farmed’ children who never play outside, says minister

Laura Clark:

Parents who refuse to let their children out to play are producing a “battery-farmed” generation, says a minister.
Kevin Brennan warned that these youngsters would never become resilient and would be unable to cope with risk.
The Families Minister cited figures showing that more than a third of children are never let out to play.
Launching a child safety action plan, he said that primary pupils should be allowed to walk or cycle to school and the public should accept that young people have a right to gather in groups on the street.
He added: “We can all sometimes as parents get a little bit focused on wrapping our children in cotton wool and it’s not good for them to do that all the time. We have to educate people about the real risks they face.”
He gave the example of a girl he met who cycles to primary school in Battersea, South London, every day.

School boundaries get a second look

Susan Troller:

Madison parents in the Valley Ridge subdivision who objected to seeing their neighborhood split and some of their children moving to Falk Elementary may be pleased with the latest developments in planning for new west side school boundaries.
Likewise, parents who expressed concern about proposed school pairing plans that would join Falk and Stephens, or Falk and Crestwood schools, may also be breathing easier.
Those potential boundary plans might be off the table following the School Board’s long-range planning committee on Monday.
Carol Carstensen, chairwoman of the board’s planning committee, said the administration was asked this week to refine what’s become known as Plan B, which keeps more children in their current schools than previous plans. As part of Plan B, children in areas surrounding Channel 3 on the city’s western fringe may be moved to Falk Elementary, which is in a contiguous neighborhood, Carstensen said.
The boundary changes are necessary because of the need to balance student enrollments at west side elementary schools in anticipation of opening a new far west side elementary school next fall. The new school, located west of Highway M, is now under construction.
School boundary changes try to balance the use and capacity of school buildings with the distance and cost of transporting students. In addition, there is an effort to provide an economic mix of students, Carstensen said.

Background: boundary changes.

ACT required at Monona Grove

Gena Kittner:

College-bound or not, all juniors at Monona Grove High School will spend more than four hours this spring filling in tiny bubbles as part of a mandatory ACT test.
District administrators say the school will be the first in the state to administer the college preparatory test to all juniors, and will foot the $11,000 bill.
Although not a novel idea — five states require the test of all juniors — the idea of using the ACT to better judge proficiency in areas such as reading, math and science appeals to other area districts.
“All students need to have college-readiness skills in areas like reading and math no matter what they plan to do after high school, ” said Bill Breisch, curriculum director for Monona Grove School District. “Graduating with college-readiness skills is no longer just for some of our high school students. ”
By requiring the test of juniors, the district is also offering college-bound students a year to get on track if their scores show them weak in a certain area, Breisch said. That way, seniors aren ‘t blindsided when they take the ACT and find out they have to take remedial math in college, he said.

Case Studies of Higher-Performing Middle Schools

SUNY-Albany:

Case studies are produced as part of a larger study of middle schools conducted during the 2006-07 school year. Research teams investigated ten consistently higher-performing and six consistently average-performing middle schools based on student performance on New York State Assessments of 8th-grade English Language Arts and Mathematics.
Research teams used site-based interviews of teachers and administrators, as well as analysis of supportive documentation, to determine differences in practices between higher- and average-performing schools in the sample.

High School Teaches Thoreau in the Woods

Larry Abramson:

Teachers across the country offer to take the class outside when the weather is nice, but one program offered by a high school in northern Vermont holds classes outdoors all year long.
The Walden Project is an alternative program focused on environmental studies and on the teachings of Henry David Thoreau, who did some of his best thinking outdoors at Walden Pond.

Just why do students drop out?

Kelly Grysho:

Thousands of Arizona high-school students drop out of school annually. Many of these children are too old to go to bed early and too young to drive, yet they abandon Arizona schools at the rate of about 28,400 each year.
Faced with the overwhelming task of finding a job in an increasingly complex and challenging society, why would a student leave high school before graduating?
A team of Arizona State University students believes it may have some answers.
The students are Rodel Community Scholars, an elite group of highly motivated undergraduates attending ASU’s West campus and majoring in a variety of disciplines. They work alongside school administrators to identify and address key issues affecting Arizona’s education system.

Tin-eared and Wrong-headed

TJ Mertz:

At the Board of Education meeting Monday (2/4/2008) a proposal was put forth to enact new limits on public testimony. This proposal and the way it was introduced and discussed showed some on the Board at their worst, both tin-eared and wrong-headed. These are overlapping criticisms, because with the interactions between elected officials and the public, perceptions (tin-eared) and realities (wrong-headed) are inseparable.
Before I go further a caveat is in order. I did not attend the meeting on Monday and only watched the last 45 minutes or so at home. Still, I’m pretty confident in what I have to say.

New Thoughts On Language Acquisition: Toddlers As Data Miners

Science Daily:

Indiana University researchers are studying a ground-breaking theory that young children are able to learn large groups of words rapidly by data-mining.
Their theory, which they have explored with 12- and 14-month-olds, takes a radically different approach to the accepted view that young children learn words one at a time — something they do remarkably well by the age of 2 but not so well before that.
Data mining, usually computer-assisted, involves analyzing and sorting through massive amounts of raw data to find relationships, correlations and ultimately useful information. It often is used and thought of in a business context or used by financial analysts, and more recently, a wide range of research fields, such as biology and chemistry. IU cognitive science experts Linda Smith and Chen Yu are investigating whether the human brain accumulates large amounts of data minute by minute, day by day, and handles this data processing automatically. They are studying whether this phenomenon contributes to a “system” approach to language learning that helps explain the ease by which 2- and 3-year-olds can learn one word at a time.
“This new discovery changes completely how we understand children’s word learning,” Smith said. “It’s very exciting.”

The Trans-Classroom Teacher

Susan Lowes:

Online and face-to-face courses are often viewed and studied as two distinct worlds, but the social field of the teacher who teaches them may well include both, and both the teacher and the courses he or she teaches may be transformed by the movement from one environment to the other. Susan Lowes explores this two-way interaction between face-to-face and online teaching, addressing two important questions: Do teachers who move between face-to-face and online classrooms transfer ideas, strategies, and practices from one to the other? If so, which strategies and practices do they transfer? Particularly, Lowes focuses on the constraints and affordances of the online environment itself and how these affect face-to-face classroom practice.

Charters’ competitive edge

Eli Broad:

Charter schools — public schools that have been exempted from selected state and local regulations — are changing the competitive landscape of American elementary, middle and high schools. Some have had a rocky track record; some have been plagued by mismanagement and poor performance. But overall, the exchange of greater autonomy for greater accountability has worked. Those that have failed to perform have been shut down.
In Los Angeles, which has more charter schools than anywhere in the nation, charters are the key to raising the performance of all public schools. And they offer a lesson that can be applied elsewhere.
Consider the stark reality of the Los Angeles Unified School District: Of the more than 700,000 students in the nation’s second-largest district, only 44% graduate in four years. For Latino students, that number drops to 41%.
Now look at the graduation rates of high-performing charter schools, which usually replace lower-performing public ones: Green Dot Public Schools, which operates 12 charter schools in Los Angeles, has an 80% graduation rate. Of those students, nearly all go on to college, and two-thirds attend four-year universities. In the next five years, Green Dot will expand to serve a remarkable 8% of all high school students in Los Angeles.

Md. Moves to Recruit 1,000 Foster Parents by 2010

Ovetta Wiggins:

Maryland has launched an aggressive campaign to increase the number of foster families, aiming to recruit at least 1,000 foster parents by 2010.
More than 10,000 children in Maryland are in out-of-home placements, and about 20 percent are in group homes.
“That’s too many,” said Norris West, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Human Resources, which places children in foster homes and group homes. “One thousand by 10 is a way to come up with a better balance.”
Maryland has 2,800 foster families, and the campaign seeks to increase that number by 35 percent in two years.
Department Secretary Brenda Donald said Maryland is trying to reverse an alarming trend: One thousand foster parents were lost from 2003 to 2007.

Breaking the Education Truce

Andrew Wolf:

Quite a debate among advocates of school choice has been ignited by Sol Stern’s article on school choice in the current number of City Journal.
Mr. Stern is a longtime advocate of school choice, whose book “Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice” is a bible to many in the voucher movement.
Now Mr. Stern, in “School Choice Isn’t Enough,” suggests that for choice to work, close attention must be paid to how and what children are taught in the classroom. Without such attention, Mr. Stern argues, the choice movement is doomed and may already be failing, as evidenced by results in Milwaukee, the largest venue where a voucher system exists, and in New York City where a grab-bag of incentivist proposals has been put in place by Mayor Bloomberg.
Mr. Stern contrasts these results with those in Massachusetts, where choice has not taken hold but where a tough curriculum, a testing regimen for both students and teachers, and rigorous academic standards have been put into place.
On the recently released NAEP tests, Massachusetts topped the list on fourth and eighth grade math and fourth and eighth grade reading. This has been peripherally touched on in the presidential campaign, as Mitt Romney raises these impressive results on the campaign trail. Pitted against Mr. Stern and his fellow “instructionists” is another Manhattan Institute heavyweight, Senior Fellow Jay Greene of the University of Arkansas. Mr. Greene, the pure incentivist, has lashed out at Mr. Stern in a reply just posted on the City Journal Web site.

Anxious parents propel boom in tutoring

Julie Henry:

Private tutoring of children has reached “epidemic proportions” as competition intensifies for entry to the best schools, according to a leading education guide.
Parents are paying up to £60 an hour to prepare children for entrance exams to leading independent and grammar schools.
Experts say the trend is being driven by parents who have been priced out of private education for their primary-school-age children and are using a mixture of state schooling and private tutoring to help win a place in an independent school at 11.
Others are paying tutors to help their children with GCSEs and other exams.
The Good Schools Guide, which will be published next week, has for the first time included a chapter on the booming private tuition industry.
Sue Fieldman, the guide’s regional editor, said: “We interview up to 10,000 parents for each edition to ask them about the best schools, and the noticeable trend this year is the use of tutors.
“The traditional route from prep school to senior school is being rejected by an increasing number of families. We cover schools everywhere, from the South of England through to Wales and Scotland, and we have seen this phenomenon throughout the country.”

“Online Gap” Widens Divide Between Parents and Children

Science Daily:

A new Tel Aviv University research study has found that, despite what parents might believe, there is an enormous gap between what they think their children are doing online and what is really happening.
In her study, Prof. Dafna Lemish from the Department of Communication at Tel Aviv University surveyed parents and their children about the children’s activities on the Internet. “The data tell us that parents don’t know what their kids are doing,” says Prof. Lemish. Her study was unique in that parents and children from the same family were surveyed.
Strange Encounters
In one part of the study, Prof. Lemish surveyed over 500 Jewish and Arab children from a variety of ages and socio-economic backgrounds, asking them if they gave out personal information online. Seventy-three percent said that they do. The parents of the same children believed that only 4 percent of their children did so.
The same children were also asked if they had been exposed to pornography while surfing, or if they had made face-to-face contact with strangers that they had met online. Thirty-six percent from the high school group admitted to meeting with a stranger they had met online. Nearly 40% of these children admitted to speaking with strangers regularly (within the past week).

The child-man

Kay Hymowitz:

Today’s single young men hang out in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood.
It’s 1965, and you’re a 26-year-old white guy. You have a factory job, or maybe you work for an insurance broker. Either way, you’re married, probably have been for a few years now; you met your wife in high school, where she was in your sister’s class. You’ve already got one kid, with another on the way. For now, you’re renting an apartment in your parents’ two-family house, but you’re saving up for a three-bedroom ranch house in the next town. Yup, you’re an adult!
Now meet the 21st-century you, also 26. You’ve finished college and work in a cubicle in a large Chicago financial-services firm. You live in an apartment with a few single guy friends. In your spare time, you play basketball with your buddies, download the latest indie songs from iTunes, have some fun with the Xbox 360, take a leisurely shower, massage some product into your hair and face – and then it’s off to bars and parties, where you meet, and often bed, girls of widely varied hues and sizes. Wife? Kids? House? Are you kidding?
Not so long ago, the average mid-twentysomething had achieved most of adulthood’s milestones – high school degree, financial independence, marriage and children. These days, he lingers – happily – in a new hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. Decades in unfolding, this limbo may not seem like news to many, but in fact it is to the early 21st century what adolescence was to the early 20th: a momentous sociological development of profound economic and cultural import.

Helicopter Parents & Other Exaggerations

Kevin Carey:

In a refreshing anti-bogus trend story, Eric Hoover reports the following($) in The Chronicle of Higher Education about the alleged growth of “helicopter parents” who supposedly can’t let go of their darling children and hover over them in college, thus spoiling them into adulthood and beyond. This meme has grown so prevalent that it was the topic of a week-long series of Tank McNamara, and there is of course no more reliable filter and promoter of bland conventional wisdom than the daily comics.

Proposed bill OKs guns in schools

Matthew Benson:

ndividuals with a concealed-weapons permit would be allowed to bring their guns onto school grounds under a measure introduced Friday at the Arizona Legislature.
The proposal, Senate Bill 1214, would exempt concealed-carry permit holders from a state law that bars individuals from knowingly carrying deadly weapons onto school property. If it becomes law, the measure would allow teachers and anyone else with a valid permit to carry their weapon onto the grounds of any public or private K-12 school, college or university in the state.
Supporters say the measure would provide an additional ring of security on campuses hit with a string of shootings in recent years. The most recent of which was last year’s at Virginia Tech, which left 33 dead. The shootings have come in spite of heightened campus security and policies that are increasingly aimed at scrubbing any and all weapons from school grounds.

Race out as reason to deny Madison school transfers

Susan Troller:

Madison School Board members voted Monday night to halt the practice of using race as a reason to deny transfers by white students to other school districts for the current open enrollment period, which began Monday and continues through Feb. 22. [About open enrollment: Part and Full Time]
The decision was made by unanimous vote during the board’s regular meeting, following a closed-door session with district superintendent Art Rainwater and the district’s legal staff.
Last year, the portion of the district’s open enrollment policy focusing on achieving racial balance in district schools affected about 120 students whose requests for transfer were denied, Rainwater said in a short interview following the meeting.
He said he had no idea how many students might be affected during the current enrollment period.
He also said that the Madison district has been closely following state statute regarding open enrollment, although it is the only district in the state to have denied transfers based on race.
“We take the laws of the state of Wisconsin very seriously,” Rainwater said. “I guess I’d question why in the past the other districts weren’t following the law as it’s written.”

Background: Madison Schools’ Using race to deny white student transfers to be topic for the School Board by Andy Hall

School Programs Hope Babies in the Classroom Will Reduce Bullying

Nick Wingfield:

It’s just Nolan Winecka’s second time teaching a class of fifth graders at Emerald Park Elementary School in this Seattle suburb, and it shows as he stares nervously at the two dozen kids surrounding him.
He burps. And the class erupts in giggles.
Nolan is 6 months old and hasn’t had any formal pedagogical training. But to the group that put him in the classroom, he has everything he needs to help teach children an unconventional subject. A Canadian nonprofit group, Roots of Empathy, is now bringing to the U.S. a decade-old program designed to reduce bullying by exposing classrooms to “empathy babies” for a whole school year.
Nolan is one of 10 babies in a test of this latest education craze in Seattle-area schools. In all, more than 2,000 empathy babies are cooing, crawling and crying in classrooms in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. The idea is that children — typically from kindergarten to eighth grade — can learn by observing the emotional connection between the babies and their parents, who volunteer for the program and who are with them in the classroom. It’s part of a wave of programs aimed at boosting the “emotional literacy” of youngsters in schools by getting them to recognize and talk about their feelings rather than act out aggressively.

Group to Monitor the Milwaukee Public Schools

Alan Borsuk:

An impressive group of what Sister Joel Read called “good, critical friends” came together Monday to announce that it was launching an effort aimed at providing both support and pressure for Milwaukee Public Schools to meet the ambitious goals of its new strategic plan.
Representatives of the business community, labor, education institutions, community groups and the state and local political worlds took part in the session at the new downtown headquarters of Manpower International, led by Read, the retired president of Alverno College.
“You’ve got a buy-in here,” said Mayor Tom Barrett, who will be a member of the committee, known as the Accountability and Support Group. “We all know what’s at stake here – the future of the city.”
Jeff Joerres, chief executive officer of Manpower, told the group that life needs to be put into the strategic plan because the future of the economy of the city depends on education and commitment to success. There is no option about whether to make sure there is momentum in improving education, he said.
The group will meet quarterly to look at how things are going in MPS, beginning in May, Read said. She said she expected the meetings to be demanding and detailed.
“We’ll do the things that good, critical friends do,” she said.
Circuit Judge Carl Ashley, a member of the group, said this is a time of necessity and opportunity for MPS – necessity because of the importance of improving educational results, and opportunity because “there is a coordinated community response” to what is going on.

Related editorial:

A new citizens’ committee reviewing plans for improving instruction must insist that MPS reach its high goals.

Can Education Research Save Us?

Jay Matthews:

So here comes Columbia University political scientist Jeffrey R. Henig, in a new book, saying I should keep trying but strive to do better. He insists that education researchers, journalists and policy makers can learn to communicate well and that readers will benefit.
Henig is professor of political science and education at Teachers College of Columbia University. He interviewed many education researchers and journalists, including me, for the book, “Spin Cycle: How Research Gets Used in Policy Debates, The Case of Charter Schools,” 288 pages, $21.45 on amazon.com. It is well-written, and makes good use of its central case study–how the educational research community got into a spectacular shouting match over an Aug. 17, 2004, story in The New York Times by Diana Jean Schemo, “Charter Schools Trail in Results, U.S. Data Reveals.”
At the time I thought Schemo’s story was interesting, and the harsh words exchanged by various scholars seemed to be just more of what I had been seeing for years when journalists, myself included, write stories that seem to favor one side over the other. Henig’s account of the controversy brings all that out, but then he points out many new approaches that could have turned the charter school data into something that raised understanding, rather than sowed confusion.
Among his suggestions, five have potential, if you believe that research and journalism operate under Darwinist laws in which the most productive of our practices gradually replace less sensible routines. He thinks we would do better if the federal government gave up on education policy, if researchers were encouraged to focus more on subjects that interested journalists, if scholars stopped wishing for the killer study that changes everything, if we had an education journal with the quality and prestige of the New England Journal of Medicine and if we had more faith in our readers’ interest in research findings without any immediate relevance to the latest hot issues.
Expecting the feds to butt out of education debates, forget about No Child Left Behind and let states carry the load seems somewhat unrealistic, but consider: When is the last time you heard any presidential candidate spend more than a minute discussing education in any debate? Henig notes that once issues like charter schools acquire a state-level focus, they become more concrete and more likely to inspire discussion that actually produces better schools.

Why our kids’ love for reading fades

Betsy Hammond:

When Iris Liu was in elementary school, she’d check out a half-dozen library books at a time and plow through them one after another, like candy. Looking back, it strikes her as nerdy, but at the time, it was pure delight. She’d read 100 or more books a year just for fun.
Flash forward to eighth grade at Lake Oswego Junior High. Halfway through the school year, Iris has finished one book — one — beyond those assigned at school.
She hasn’t lost her love of reading, she says. It’s just that she is so busy — primarily with hours of homework every night, plus daily play rehearsals, family dinner hour and stolen moments spent texting friends.

High school students test their sales skills

Pamela Cotant:

These days, students practicing their selling skills in DECA use merchandise such as cell phones, iPods and digital cameras.
But that ‘s not only change in the organization. DECA, which once stood for Distributive Education Clubs of America but now goes only by the shortened name, has expanded its original retail focus.
“Now it is a focus in marketing of which retail is a part, ” said Marie Burbach, executive director of Professional Partners of Wisconsin DECA in Madison.
At the recent District 3 Career Development Conference at Oregon High School, 15 different careers were represented in areas as diverse as automotive services, apparel and accessories and sports and entertainment.

Sophia counters the downward spiral — one girl at a time

Julia Steiny:

The Sophia Academy intervenes in the lives of low-income girls who are “most at risk of repeating the cycle of poverty,” according to the school’s fact sheet. Not an easy mission.
This private, nonparochial school is housed in the old St. Edward’s School in Providence, almost at the North Providence border. Each grade, 5 through 8, has 15 girls from the greater Providence area, who are being prepared for a future few other local schools make possible.
To give me the unvarnished version of what Sophia is all about, Gigi DiBello, head of school, asked students to volunteer to answer questions. Without staff present, six forthright girls from different grades gathered in a conference room where they told me about their education experience, before Sophia and now.
Bright-eyed Jazlyn, an eighth grader, raised her hand, lurched forward and insisted she tell her story first. “At the school I went to [an urban public school], everybody just didn’t care. If you didn’t do your work, whatever. So I got used to putting my name on the top of a paper and handing it in. The teachers never said anything, so why should I do my work? I just talked with my friends. So when my mother applied to this school, I cried — hard. I was sure the other school was really helping me, you know, socially.”
The other girls laughed. Jazlyn smiled and shrugged.

The Sophia Academy Providence

Wisconsin Charter Schools Qualify for Grants

Amy Hetzner:

Ten new and 40 existing charter schools will share $5.8 million in federal funding awarded by the state Department of Public Instruction after new scrutiny over whether the schools meet federal requirements for what constitutes a charter school.
Omitted from the list of grantees, which the agency plans to release today, is the Waukesha School District’s latest charter school, the Waukesha Engineering Preparatory Academy.
Among those that have received charter school grants are Milwaukee Business High School, Academia de Lenguaje y Bellas Artes (ALBA), Hmong Peace Academy and Humboldt Park Charter School in Milwaukee; Tosa School of Health, Science and Technology in Wauwatosa; and Academy of Learning, 21st Century Skills Model, in West Allis.

Criminals in school? Who knows?

Erin Calandriello:

lgin School District U46 officials say they’re usually in the dark when it comes to students’ criminal backgrounds.
“I don’t know what kids are out there and have what,” said Pat Broncato, Elgin School District U46’s chief legal officer. “They (students) may be under investigation for something, but that may never come to fruition; or they may not have done what they’re under investigation for. So we’re not made aware of who they are.”
Law enforcement and judicial entities across the nation — including the Elgin Police Department, the Kane County and Cook County state’s attorney’s offices and the Kane County Child Advocacy Center — don’t release students’ juvenile records because of stringent laws regarding a minor’s right to privacy, according to Douglas Thomas, a research associate at the National Center for Juvenile Justice.
The nonprofit center acts as the research division of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, based in Pittsburgh, Pa.
“There’s a fairly strict universal code of not sharing juvenile court records, seeing that confidentiality is one of the founding principles of the juvenile justice system,” Thomas said.
An exception is “if a juvenile has been adjudicated and is sentenced; then the sentencing order can be turned over to an education system that has him as a pupil,” said Steve Beckett, a professor and director of trial advocacy at the College of Law at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Schools embracing powers for police
New law allows districts to authorize officers, set policies and obtain law enforcement training

Andy Gammill:

Half a dozen Indiana school boards are considering whether to take on the new responsibility of authorizing police officers.
The move could create a minefield of issues from issuing badges to setting policies. So far, Pike Township Schools may be the only district to use a new law that allows school boards to appoint officers.
Previously, school districts could not grant police powers, although several have long said they have “police departments” that derive authority from a local sheriff or police chief.
In districts that convert, students will see little difference. A badge or uniform may change, but few officers will change duties.
The change affects school boards, which will have greater responsibility for making police policy regarding training, firearms use, police chases and various protocols.
Any school police policy entrusted to mayors and sheriffs would rest with school boards, too.
Pike Township Schools became the first school district to launch its own police department in July. Brownsburg, Center Grove and Indianapolis Public Schools are among those considering the change.

Related: Gangs & School Violence Forum audio / video.

“Touting an Asset: Voucher Schools”

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial:

The debate on school choice in Milwaukee is often punctuated with a whole lot of fingers poking the air and decibels assaulting the eardrums. The two sides are that far apart on the merits of the program, which allows parents of the city’s low-income students to opt into private education if they believe public schools aren’t serving their children’s needs.
A promotional campaign on television, radio and in print over the next four months will not settle the issue. We hope, however, that it enlightens policy-makers, particularly those in Madison, that this is a program that enjoys broad support locally and contains an abundance of success stories.
Yes, the same can be said of students and schools in the Milwaukee Public Schools system. That’s the point. Both deserve enthusiastic support. This should not be an either/or proposition. We’re way past that.
At least we should be. The fear from those behind this campaign is that the program is still vulnerable – that it might not be some bold legislation that undoes it but a death of a thousand cuts, legislatively speaking.
The fear is not unreasonable. The reaction to a memo sent by Rep. Fred Kessler (D-Milwaukee) to the governor was overblown. The proposals to diminish choice contained therein were meant as starting points for a discussion with the governor. Still, it’s understandable that the choice community would react the way it did given that the discussion even would start at some of those points. And Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker (D-Weston) has been a foe of school choice.

“A Modest Proposal for the Schools:”
Eliminate local control

A provocative title for a must read. It addresses a number of issues, from local outsize influence on school boards to Wisconsin’s low state standards:

Congress erred big-time when NCLB assigned each state to set its own standards and devise and score its own tests … this study underscores the folly of a big modern nation, worried about its global competitiveness, nodding with approval as Wisconsin sets its eighth-grade reading passing level at the 14th percentile while South Carolina sets its at the 71st percentile.

Matt Miller via a kind reader’s email:

It wasn’t just the slate and pencil on every desk, or the absence of daily beatings. As Horace Mann sat in a Leipzig classroom in the summer of 1843, it was the entire Prussian system of schools that impressed him. Mann was six years into the work as Massachusetts secretary of education that would earn him lasting fame as the “father of public education.” He had sailed from Boston to England several weeks earlier with his new wife, combining a European honeymoon with educational fact-finding. In England, the couple had been startled by the luxury and refinement of the upper classes, which exceeded anything they had seen in America and stood in stark contrast to the poverty and ignorance of the masses. If the United States was to avoid this awful chasm and the social upheaval it seemed sure to create, he thought, education was the answer. Now he was seeing firsthand the Prussian schools that were the talk of reformers on both sides of the Atlantic.
In Massachusetts, Mann’s vision of “common schools,” publicly funded and attended by all, represented an inspiring democratic advance over the state’s hodgepodge of privately funded and charity schools. But beyond using the bully pulpit, Mann had little power to make his vision a reality. Prussia, by contrast, had a system designed from the center. School attendance was compulsory. Teachers were trained at national institutes with the same care that went into training military officers. Their enthusiasm for their subjects was contagious, and their devotion to students evoked reciprocal affection and respect, making Boston’s routine resort to classroom whippings seem barbaric.
Mann also admired Prussia’s rigorous national curriculum and tests. The results spoke for themselves: illiteracy had been vanquished. To be sure, Prussian schools sought to create obedient subjects of the kaiser—hardly Mann’s aim. Yet the lessons were undeniable, and Mann returned home determined to share what he had seen. In the seventh of his legendary “Annual Reports” on education to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, he touted the benefits of a national system and cautioned against the “calamities which result … from leaving this most important of all the functions of a government to chance.”
Mann’s epiphany that summer put him on the wrong side of America’s tradition of radical localism when it came to schools. And although his efforts in the years that followed made Massachusetts a model for taxpayer-funded schools and state-sponsored teacher training, the obsession with local control—not incidentally, an almost uniquely American obsession—still dominates U.S. education to this day. For much of the 150 or so years between Mann’s era and now, the system served us adequately: during that time, we extended more schooling to more people than any nation had before and rose to superpower status. But let’s look at what local control gives us today, in the “flat” world in which our students will have to compete.
The United States spends more than nearly every other nation on schools, but out of 29 developed countries in a 2003 assessment, we ranked 24th in math and in problem-solving, 18th in science, and 15th in reading. Half of all black and Latino students in the U.S. don’t graduate on time (or ever) from high school. As of 2005, about 70 percent of eighth-graders were not proficient in reading. By the end of eighth grade, what passes for a math curriculum in America is two years behind that of other countries.
Dismal fact after dismal fact; by now, they are hardly news. But in the 25 years since the landmark report A Nation at Risk sounded the alarm about our educational mediocrity, America’s response has been scattershot and ineffective, orchestrated mainly by some 15,000 school districts acting alone, with help more recently from the states. It’s as if after Pearl Harbor, FDR had suggested we prepare for war through the uncoordinated efforts of thousands of small factories; they’d know what kinds of planes and tanks were needed, right?
When you look at what local control of education has wrought, the conclusion is inescapable: we must carry Mann’s insights to their logical end and nationalize our schools, to some degree. But before delving into the details of why and how, let’s back up for a moment and consider what brought us to this pass.

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