All posts by Jim Zellmer

Autism Debate Strains a Family and Its Charity

Jane Gross & Stephanie Strom:

The Wrights’ venture was also an effort to end the internecine warfare in the world of autism — where some are convinced that the disorder is genetic and best treated with intensive therapy, and others blame preservatives in vaccinations and swear by supplements and diet to cleanse the body of heavy metals.
With its high-powered board, world-class scientific advisers and celebrity fund-raisers like Jerry Seinfeld and Paul Simon, the charity was a powerful voice, especially in Washington. It also made strides toward its goal of unity by merging with three existing autism organizations and raising millions of dollars for research into all potential causes and treatments. The Wrights call it the “big tent” approach.
But now the fissures in the autism community have made their way into the Wright family, where father and daughter are not speaking after a public battle over themes familiar to thousands of families with autistic children.

Autism Speaks

Madison School Board Drops Vang Pao Elementary’s Name

Channel3000.com:

Originally named for Hmong Gen. Vang Pao, the board reconsidered the name because of Pao’s arrest on charges that he was part of an effort to overthrow the Laotian government.
School Board President Arlene Silviera said before the meeting that she doesn’t think the board will make any final decision on a name on Monday night, but would vote on whether to change the current name and how they might select a new one, WISC-TV reported.

SIS links and notes on Vang Pao Elementary.

Madison School Board’s “Final Exam”

Susan Troller:

Even smart, hardworking students sometimes blow an exam or forget to do their homework, and the results usually show up on their report cards. The same perhaps could be said for the Madison School Board, which essentially finishes its term tonight.
The board has one more big test as it closes out the school year with a bang. Members will be discussing whether to remove the controversial name of Gen. Vang Pao from the district’s newest elementary school now being built on the far west side. In addition, they will be voting on a new two-year contract between the teachers union and the distict. The tentative contract was ratified by the union late last week.
Those two issues represent opposite ends of the broad spectrum of board business. The school naming is primarily symbolic, but it packs a huge emotional wallop; the contract vote gets less general attention, but holds the details critically important to the district’s financial health.

Violin students traveling to Costa Rica

Jacob Stockinger:

Nineteen middle school and high school violin students from the Madison area will tour Costa Rica, where they will perform for a week, starting Monday.
The Sonora Strings, an advanced touring group of a private Suzuki string school in the city, will be led by Maria Rosa Germain, a classically trained violinist who earned a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with Vartan Manoogian and Tyrone Greive, who is also the concertmaster of the Madison Symphony Orchestra.
The MSO is a major co-sponsor of the tour and, according to orchestra officials, will continue to collaborate with the National Orchestra in Costa Rica’s capital San Juan, perhaps with the goal of one day becoming a “sister” orchestra. Later this summer, MSO maestro John DeMain will conduct the National Orchestra in San Juan and will waive his fee to help the National Institute of Music.

La Follette grads set off on life’s roads

Kristin Czubkowski:

While a packed house at the Kohl Center was a far way off, more than a thousand friends and family were in attendance as 370 seniors graduated from La Follette High School Friday night.
La Follette’s ceremony was one of four being held for Madison high schools this weekend, with East High School’s preceding it Friday evening, and Memorial and West’s graduation ceremonies scheduled for Sunday afternoon.
After Kelly Lynaugh, the principal for La Follette’s senior class, gave an introductory speech, two class speakers spoke on the challenges and opportunities their class has been through and will face.
“Today, amidst the celebrations, I am reminded that the world we inherit is a dynamic place, replete with challenges and rewards, and it would be wrong of us to grasp the latter without reflecting on the former,” said class speaker Emily Latorraca.

Long Reviled, Merit Pay Gains Among Teachers

Sam Dillon:

For years, the unionized teaching profession opposed few ideas more vehemently than merit pay, but those objections appear to be eroding as school districts in dozens of states experiment with plans that compensate teachers partly based on classroom performance.
Here in Minneapolis, for instance, the teachers’ union is cooperating with Minnesota’s Republican governor on a plan in which teachers in some schools work with mentors to improve their instruction and get bonuses for raising student achievement. John Roper-Batker, a science teacher here, said his first reaction was dismay when he heard his school was considering participating in the plan in 2004.
“I wanted to get involved just to make sure it wouldn’t happen,” he said.
But after learning more, Mr. Roper-Batker said, “I became a salesman for it.” He and his colleagues have voted in favor of the plan twice by large margins.

The Madison School Board votes on the proposed Madison Teachers, Inc. agreement this evening.

Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater’s Presentation on the Proposed High School Redesign and Small Learning Community Grant

hs6112007.jpg

hsrdv.jpg

June 11, 2007

35 Minute Video | MP3 Audio

Background Links:

A few general questions about this initiative:

  1. Does it make sense to spend any time on this now, given that the MMSD will have a new Superintendent in 2008?
  2. If the problem is preparation, then should the focus not be on elementary and middle schools?
  3. The committee’s composition (this link includes quite a bit of discussion) does not inspire much confidence with respect to community, teacher and student involvement.

Two page MMSD “feedback worksheet” 259K PDF.

The Power of Teaching

Kathleen Murphy:

I had a history teacher in high school who thought I should be on a different track. He got together with a couple of other teachers and put me in all advanced-placement classes. As a result, I graduated first in my high school class and was able to graduate from college in three years and save a year’s tuition.
A few years ago, he sent a note through the general e-mail of our company’s Web site. He had seen my name and wanted to know if I was the Kathleen Murphy he had taught 20 years ago. He just wanted to say hello and know how I was doing. He had taken such a personal interest in me. Teachers can change the face of a nation.

Beware a “Broader Definition of Rigor”

Debra Saunders:

WHEN educrats call for “a broader definition of rigor,” beware. What they really want is to broaden the definition of rigor until it includes dumbed-down drivel.
National Education Association President Reg Weaver used those words in March when he spoke to Congress as it sets out to reauthorize President Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation. The NEA’s idea of rigor, of course, is to make it harder to tell if schools are failing students. How? By going after standardized tests, because Weaver regurgitated, their scores “reflect little more than a student’s ability to regurgitate facts.”
As Don Soifer, education analyst for the Lexington Institute noted, such talk harbors “a worse case scenario for the American public — all of the money for NCLB and none of the accountability.”

Assessment of the Madison School District’s TAG Program in 1992

A look at the MMSD’s TAG program in 1992.
Dr. Susanne Richert (Consultant) [9.5MB PDF]:

I was requested to conduct an evaluation. However, very little quantitative data on student outcomes were available and, given the time-frame, none could be gathered. I, therefore prefer to call this a qualitative criterion-referenced assessment. However, more than sufficient quantitative formative (as opposed to summative) data and extensive qualitative data were gathered. This qualitative criterion-referenced assessment is based on criteria generated by the literature on the education of the gifted. These are included in the appended list of references; most especially, in this order of priority: Richert, Cox, Van Tassel-Baska, Renzulli, Roeper, Kaplan and Tannenbaurn.

Clusty Search: Dr. Susan Richert.

The Regrets of a School Dropout: Half of Black Males Fail to Graduate With Their Class

Avis Thomas-Lester:

Just walking into Largo High School left Larue Campbell feeling the most profound loss.
Fliers about the school’s upcoming prom reminded him that he never attended his own. Posters announcing commencement ceremonies left him wondering what it would have been like to stroll across the stage in a cap and gown as his loved ones cheered.
But instead of taking part in prom and graduation, Campbell was at Largo for night school classes to prepare for the GED exam. Last spring, he dropped out of high school, one of hundreds of Washington area African American males to do so each year.
“If I hadn’t dropped out, I wouldn’t have to go through this now,” said Campbell of his attempt to earn a high school equivalency diploma. “I thought about going back after I left” school, “but I thought I would be too old. I was kind of embarrassed.”

School Choice Strategy

Howard Rich:

The flattened borders of the 21st century have made networking faster, global trade freer and competition more rigorous — meaning the premium we place on educating future generations is higher than ever before. Yet the nation’s monopolistic approach to education remains a millstone around our children’s necks, with America consistently lagging behind its industrialized peers in academic achievement.
The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman understood the central role school choice must play in revitalizing American education. “Empowering parents would generate a competitive education market, which would lead to a burst of innovation and improvement, as competition has done in so many other areas,” he said in December 2005. “There’s nothing that would do so much to ensure a skilled and educated work force.”
By any objective measure, Friedman was right. The success of school choice as a method of empowering parents, raising student achievement and improving public education systems in those markets where it has been implemented is indisputable. The question now becomes how to achieve meaningful school choice for the benefit of all parents, not just a select few?
After this year’s compelling school-choice victory in Utah, the methodology for successfully advancing parental options against the well-funded phalanxes of institutional opposition is crystallizing. Specifically, Utah’s success has proven the efficacy of advocating universal choice initiatives as opposed to limited, means-tested pilot program

Parents in Charge Foundation.

Madison Schools MTI Teacher Contract Roundup

Conversation regarding the recent MMSD / MTI collective bargaining agreement continues:

  • Andy Hall wrote a useful summary, along with some budget numbers (this agreementi s56% of the MMSD’s $339.6M budget):

    District negotiators headed by Superintendent Art Rainwater had sought to free up money for starting teachers’ salaries by persuading the union to drop Wisconsin Physicians Service, a health-care provider that offers open access to medical treatment with no need for referrals.
    The district wanted MTI members to choose from among three health-maintenance organizations that limit coverage to specific providers in return for lower costs.
    But the union kept the current mix — WPS plus one HMO, Group Health Cooperative — after members in a survey indicated support for maintaining those options.
    Matthews is a paid member of the Wisconsin Physicians Service board of directors — an arrangement he defends as a means of advocating for members and the district. Critics contend it represents a conflict of interest.
    “Our plan is cheaper than almost any in town,” said Matthews, referring to a union comparison of Wisconsin Physicians Service coverage, used by half of the members, to coverage offered to employees of state and local governments.
    “The teachers were willing to pay more, they were willing to move money from wages to health insurance, in order to preserve those kinds of rights.”
    Among the new costs facing teachers: A $75 co-pay for emergency room visits and a $10 co-pay for office visits.
    Premiums for WPS, which is favored by many members with a serious illness in the family, will cost 10.4 percent more beginning July 1. But the premiums will decrease slightly beginning Jan. 1 as the co-pays take effect. For example, the WPS family premium will cost the district $1,711 per month while the employee’s share will be $190, falling to $187 on Jan. 1.
    The GHC premium will increase by 5.7 percent — to $974 monthly for family coverage, paid entirely by the district — beginning July 1. That amount will decrease to $955 on Jan. 1.

  • Don Severson & Brian Schimming discuss the agreement and the school board: 5MB mp3 audio file.
  • 2005 / 2007 Agreement 528K PDF.
  • The Madison School Board will vote on the Agreement Monday evening, June 18, 2007.
  • Additional links and notes.
  • Don Severson: 3 Simple Things.
  • MMSD / MTI contract negotations beginCarol Carstensen: An alt view on Concessions Before Negotiations.
  • Going to the Mat for WPS
  • What’s the MTI Political Endorsement About?
  • Some MMSD unions have addressed health care costs.

How to Measure Class Gap in Reading?

Carl Bialik:

The potential benefits to citing the questionable numbers are clear: Raise awareness and rally support. The downsides are more subtle. Boiling down research into misleading soundbites risks credibility of the larger argument advocating early reading, and it obscures other indicators that have equal or greater impact on a child’s intellectual development.
Todd Risley, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Alaska and longtime children’s development researcher, argues that the amount and quality of parents’ talking to their young children is more significant.
“In even the ‘best’ of families, ‘shared reading time’ occupies very little of a child’s time,” he says. And income is a weak predictor of parental-child chatter, he adds, “so any statements about middle class and low income might be a little too glib.”

Local students follow different paths to diploma

Susan Troller:

Two years ago, these were the students who didn’t look like they were going to make it.
But Thursday night, 14 graduates of the Madison school district’s Work and Learn program at Brearly Street walked down the aisle at little Bolz Auditorium to the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance,” and the applause from family, friends and supporters was deafening. The students’ smiles could have lit up the evening sky.
Some are married. Some are parents. Some were chronically truant from high school because of family illnesses or crisis, or because they just didn’t care. Some had been expelled or suspended from school, or were in trouble with the law.

An Open Letter from Shwaw Vang on the Vang Pao Elementary School

Former Madison School Board Member Shwaw Vang, via Kristian Knutsen:

The Board of Education will discuss reconsidering its decision to name the new elementary school after General Vang Pao because Vang Pao has been charged with a plot to overthrow a foreign country. Since the fall of the Laos monarchy and democracy in 1975, the government of Laos, one of the most oppressive communist regimes in the world, killed the King of Laos and has murdered and continues to murder thousands of Hmong people and use chemical weapons on them.
Yet the United States government and the United Nations have ignored these murders of former American allies 32 years. While not condoning the charges as stated in the indictment, I want this community to know and to understand the horrors those thousands of Hmong people trapped in Laos face even while we debate this name issue. Hmong Americans cannot leave those who were left behind in Laos to be hunted, murdered, and killed by chemical warfare.
Although Vang Pao has not been convicted, those who opposed the Vang Pao name because of dubious allegations claim they have been vindicated. But the indictment has nothing to do with their original objections. However, now that the Board has been convinced that it needs to reconsider the name, I believe this is a good time to invite the broader community to also consider other MMSD schools named after people who have tainted history.

Shwaw makes some excellent points. Much more on the Vang Pao Elementary School here. Clusty search on Vang Pao. Andrew Burke on Laos “eco-tourism” and a recent abduction. Monica Davey takes a look at Vang Pao’s arrest:

Cy Thao, 35, a Minnesota state representative, one of the few Hmong-Americans serving in a state legislature, said many of the older generation felt confused, even betrayed.
“For them, too, his arrest signals the end of an opportunity for them to ever go home to a free Laos,” Mr. Thao said. “He was their best hope of ever going back so this is sort of the closing of a book.”
Yuepheng Xiong, who owns Hmong ABC, a bookstore on University Avenue in the heart of this city’s Hmong community, which is one of the largest in the country, fought tears as he described the turmoil Gen. Vang Pao’s arrest had stirred.
“He was arrested by the very people that he trusted and who he had been so loyal to — the Americans,” Mr. Xiong said.

What is the price of a good education?

hongkongzmetro2007.jpg
The Economist:

AMONG the most commercial of cities, Hong Kong follows many markets; but none more intently than the trade in debentures tied to admissions to the city’s international primary and secondary schools. These non-interest-bearing bonds are typically issued to pay for construction or other costs. Bought by parents anxious to do the best by their children, or by employers anxious to attract the best staff, they are then traded at prices set by the city’s volatile economic fluctuations.
Recently, slots in international schools have become precious. The economy is booming in China’s tailwind, attracting well-paid expatriates. Prosperous local residents, meanwhile, are deserting local schools because of what is seen as deterioration in English-language teaching since the reversion to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. It is not just the very rich who are worried: early this month a small group of not very well-off South Asian residents marched through central Hong Kong, demanding more schooling in English, arguing their children were suffering from having to attend classes conducted in Chinese.

Learning from Milwaukee: MPS Leads the Way on High School Innovation

Marc Eisen:

The much-reviled Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) could be a surprising role model for the Madison school district as it begins formulating a plan to refashion its high schools for the demands of the 21st century.
MPS, which educates a student body that is overwhelming minority and deeply ensnared in the tentacles of poverty, has a horrid record of academic performance.
But MPS’s very desperation has prompted the state’s largest school district to begin experimenting with small specialty high schools that range from 100 to 400 students. This is an intriguing venture.
The schools’ individualized programs, which promise a shared focus and personalized relationships with staff and families, are startlingly diverse.
How about a high school that uses Montessori instructional methods for an international baccalaureate program? Or one that mixes social justice projects with bilingual instruction? Or how about a four-year heaping of Great Books and Advanced Placement courses? Or a school that stresses visual and performing arts? Or one that couples Maasai-inspired African education with community-service projects? Or another that stresses teaching Chinese and Spanish in the context of international business?

Marc raises many excellent points. Absent changes in the generally monolithic (some might say Frederick Taylor, assembly line) approach taken locally, Milwaukee will certainly have a far richer K-12 environment over the next 20 years than Madison.
Much more on the proposed high school redesign here.
A paradox to the proposed high school redesign scheme is it’s failure to address the preparation issues (pre-k, elementary and middle school).

MMSD and MTI reach tentative contract agreement

Madison Metropolitan School District:

The Madison Metropolitan School District and Madison Teachers Incorporated reached a tentative agreement yesterday on the terms and conditions of a new two-year collective bargaining agreement for MTI’s 2,400 member teacher bargaining unit.
The contract, for the period from July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2009, needs ratification from both the Board of Education and MTI. MTI will hold a ratification meeting on Thursday, June 14 at 7:00 p.m. at the Alliant Energy Center, Dane County Forum. The Board of Education will take up the proposal in a special meeting on Monday, June 18 at 5:00 p.m. The MTI meeting is closed to the public, while the Board’s meeting is open.
Terms of the contract include:
2007-08
Base Salary Raise: 1.00%
Total Raise incl. Benefits: 4.00%
2008-09
Base Salary Raise: 1.00%
Total Raise incl. Benefits: 4.00%

Related Links:

  • Concessions before negotiations.
  • TJ Mertz comments on the agreement.
  • Channel3000
  • WKOWTV:

    Taxpayers will continue to pay 100% of the health care premiums for half of the teachers who choose Group Health, and 90% of the premiums for the other half of teachers who join WPS. WPS teachers pay $190 a month for a family and $72 a month for an individual.
    The union says those costs are too high.
    The district said it tried to introduce two new HMO plans to lower costs, but the union rejected them.

Continue reading MMSD and MTI reach tentative contract agreement

Worn Down by Waves of Change: Bureaucracy, Politics Beat Back Succession of Superintendents and Plans

April Witt:

When a board appointed by Congress seized control of the D.C. public schools in 1996, its members were eager to give the school system a clean break from its troubled past. They fired Superintendent Franklin L. Smith, replaced him with a war hero, retired Army Lt. Gen. Julius W. Becton Jr., and urged Becton not to bother debriefing Smith.
“I finally decided, ‘This is crazy,’ ” said Becton, who arranged a quiet meeting with his predecessor at a downtown office building. The advice Smith gave was ominous.
“I know you are accustomed to giving orders, turning around and saying, ‘Forward march!’ ” Smith recalled telling Becton. “My only advice is that in this job, you turn around and look to see who is following you. Because every time you think people are following you, they are not. And that includes the inside staff.”
A year and a half later, it was the general’s turn to leave town in frustration, blamed for failing to transform the schools.

English Language Instruction Classes

Miriam Jordan:

Yet, already, providers can’t keep up with demand because of a dearth of publicly funded classes. Across the U.S., “the problem is not the unwillingness of immigrants to learn English,” says Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New Immigration Coalition, an advocacy group. “The problem is we don’t provide enough classes.” The cost of attending private language centers is out of reach for most new immigrants.
Since the 1960s, programs that teach English-as-a-second-language (ESL) have been funded through the federal government’s adult-education program, as well as money from states and municipalities. Typically, immigrants attend classes at community centers, libraries and nonprofit organizations that compete for public funds each year.

“Nothing has served me better in my long life than continuous learning”

Charlie Munger’s commencement speech at the USC Law School:

Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty. It’s not something you do just to advance in life. As a corollary to that proposition which is very important, it means that you are hooked for lifetime learning. And without lifetime learning, you people are not going to do very well. You are not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You’re going to advance in life by what you learn after you leave here.
I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.
…so if civilization can progress only with an advanced method of invention, you can progress only when you learn the method of learning.

Munger is Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Clusty search on Charlie.

State / Local Milwaukee Voucher Funding Changes Sought

Alan Borsuk:

Cheaper program, more cost.
Odd as that sounds, it summarizes the situation of Milwaukee taxpayers when it comes to paying for the school voucher program, which is expected to involve more than 18,000 students, at least 120 schools and almost $120 million next year.
It seems counterintuitive that, per student, the voucher program costs city taxpayers more than Milwaukee Public Schools – but it does.
Next year, each voucher will be worth up to $6,610, while the tab for each child in MPS will run to well over $10,000. But under current funding formulas, the state pays a much larger share of the cost of educating an MPS child than a voucher child. As things are projected now, the state will pay $7,500 or more per MPS student next year. Under the current voucher funding law, the state will pay $3,635 for each low-income student using a publicly funded voucher to attend a private school.

Columbus Voters Approve 1 of 3 Referenda

Channel3000:

Columbus voters decided three school district proposals at a special referendum election Tuesday.
Voters approved only one of the three proposals on Tuesday, WISC-TV reported.
Voters approved the first question to set aside $700,000 over 10 years for maintenance costs.
However, voters soundly defeated a proposal to put $200,000 into a 4-year-old kindergarten program for the next three years. That proposal lost by more than 400 votes, WISC-TV reported.
Voters also rejected spending $300,000 over the next five years for technology improvements, including updating district computers.

NCLB Adequate Yearly Progress & Wisconsin Schools

Andy Hall:


The number of Wisconsin schools failing to meet federal No Child Left Behind standards this year grew from 87 to 95 and includes all four Madison high schools and three middle schools in the Madison, Middleton-Cross Plains and Mount Horeb school districts.
None of the Madison high schools attained the goal for reading proficiency, according to annual data released Tuesday by the state Department of Public Instruction.
Thirty-two Wisconsin schools — all in Milwaukee — receive Title I funds to assist low-income students and are subject to sanctions imposed by the No Child Left Behind law because they’ve missed the same goal for two or more consecutive years.

Jamaal Abdul-Alim has more as does WEAC President Stan Johnson.
Susan Troller:

“I don’t see this as a reflection on the effectiveness of our high schools,” Madison School Board President Arlene Silveira said this morning. La Follette, East and Memorial have been rapped in past years, as well as this year, for not reaching proficiency standards in some categories.
“There are problems with the inflexibility of the testing methods applied to every student. It uses just one way to measure everyone and doesn’t actually measure what they are learning,” Silveira said.
For example, she said, testing students who are just learning English with an English-only test or requiring students with disabilities who don’t perform well on standardized tests to be part of the testing process affects the results, especially in big, diverse schools.

Higher starting salaries, more rigorous teacher training for Math & Science

Michael Alison Chandler:

Higher starting salaries, more rigorous teacher training programs and additional support for first year teachers are just a few of the incentives needed to deal with a projected shortfall of more than 280,000 math and science teachers across the country by 2015, according to a group of business, foundation and higher education leaders.
The recommendations were included in a report released yesterday by the Business-Higher Education Forum, a Washington-based group organized to increase U.S. competitiveness. Its release was timed to coincide with the national debate on teacher quality and pay as Congress prepares to reauthorize No Child Left Behind, the Higher Education Act and the budget for the National Science Foundation.

The complete report can be found here.

Wisconsin State Structural Deficit: What Would Our Forebears Say?

Todd Berry:

As the proposed 2007-09 state budget has worked its way through the legislature, it is readily apparent that our elected officials, regardless of title or party, have said little or nothing about the fundamental condition of state finances. By contrast there have been countless press releases focusing on detail—specific tax increases, individual program changes, and so on.
Nevertheless, the people have a right to know. According to Wisconsin’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, or CAFR, the state ended the most recent fiscal year with a $2.15 billion deficit. Unlike state budgets that do not account for all future commitments, thus masking our true financial condition, the CAFR prepared by the state controller’s office must follow generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) from the nation’s Governmental Accounting Standards Board and recognize these obligations.
This explains why state budget officials said the 2006 general fund balance was $49.6 million, while the controller put the deficit at $2.15 billion. Last year, Wisconsin was one of only three states with a GAAP deficit and, relative to population, it had the largest deficit in the nation.

Madison’s Adoption of the Kronenberg “Positive Behavior Support” Principles

Doug Erickson:

A couple of years ago, the students likely would have been suspended. But under a new approach to discipline being tried in the district, the students instead were given the option of coming up with a fix-it plan — something more than just saying, “I’m sorry.”
The students chose to spend all of their recesses over the next two days playing catch with a football, just the two of them.
“They came back and reported that they did much better playing together, and that was the end of it,” said school social worker Mike Behlke.
District employees hope the approach will reduce out-of-school suspensions, which have been slowly rising at some schools and often have little effect other than causing the students to miss class.

Madison Parent has more:

The MMSD has high expectations for Kronenberg (”As a result of this training student behavior will improve leading to greater success in school. Both student behavioral referrals to staff and suspensions will decrease.” [from the 07-08 Aristos Grant description]). The WSJ piece does its part to create the impression that those expectations are well on the way to being achieved. But, as the scientific adage goes, anecdotes do not equal data. Since we’re in the final few days of a school year in which at least a dozen of the district’s elementary schools and at least two of the middle schools have had a year of working and living with this system, data should be available at this point on the actual incidence of classroom disruption, threats and violence as experienced by students and teachers in schools that have implemented Kronenberg, in those that have not, how they compare to each other, and how they compare over time; and that data ought to be made available to the public.

Finding a Good Preschool

Jay Matthews:

And then we come to preschools. They have always struck me as beyond any sensible rating system, which is why I was stunned to find a new Web site, www.savvysource.com, trying to prove me wrong.
I know how my wife and I, and our friends, found preschools when we had children that age. We asked each other if we knew of any good ones. That was not, obviously, a very intelligent approach to the problem. But what else could we do? There wasn’t, and there still isn’t, much information out there, other than the yellow pages. And who has time to call or visit a long list of preschools until you find one you like?
The Savvy Source founder, Stacey Boyd, and her team of mostly young mothers like herself think the Internet could be the solution if they plug into it enough worthwhile information — particularly the views of parents who have had children in the preschools being rated. They are supplying parents and school directors with their survey forms and rating schools on philosophy, teaching quality, discipline, safety, tuition and several other factors.

Secret negotiations with teachers union not in taxpayers’ best interest

Don Huebscher:

One of the principles of our republic – as I understand it, anyway – is that those in government derive their power from the consent of the governed.
For that reason, and because I’m in the business of informing the public about matters important to them (not counting Paris Hilton, et al), I’m bothered by the fact that the most important decisions about the size of our property tax bills are negotiated in secret.
I was reminded of this frustrating reality last week when negotiators from the Eau Claire school district and the local teachers union met to set the “ground rules” for their upcoming negotiations on a two-year teachers contract. Initial proposals weren’t released because the school board needed more time to prepare.
It’s unclear whether the eventual exchange of initial proposals will be done in public, because the ground rules agreed to by both sides say only the first negotiating session is open; “all subsequent sessions will be closed to the public.”

Philadelphia’s School System

Dion Haynes:

The school systems making the largest gains are united by some common threads: Government and school leaders have set aside differences and harnessed their power behind reforms, superintendents have brought an intense, persuasive leadership style to the process, and efforts have concentrated on raising the test scores of the lowest-performing students.
But Philadelphia also illustrates how hard it can be to sustain improvements. The superintendent credited with much of the gain, Paul Vallas, is leaving the city this month as budget projections show a large deficit threatening his reform program.

Madison Math Task Force Meetings Today and Wednesday

Week of June 11, 2007
Tuesday, June 12
9:00 a.m. Math Task Force
1. Introduction of Task Force Members
2. Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) Math Instructional System
3. Next steps on How to Proceed and Timeline
4. Adjournment
Wisconsin Center for Education Research
1025 West Johnson St.
Madison, WI 53706 [map]
13th Floor Conference Room
Wednesday, June 13+
9:00 a.m. Math Task Force
1. Approval of Minutes dated June 12, 2007
2. Next Steps for How to Proceed and Timeline
3. Background Information from the Madison School Board to Address the Charge to the Task Force
4. Assignment of Tasks
5. Schedule of Future Meetings
6. Adjournment
Wisconsin Center for Education Research
1025 West Johnson St.
Madison, WI 53706 [map]
13th Floor Conference Room

Giving Proper Credit To Home-Schooled

Michael Alison Chandler:

In the pursuit of a homemade high school education, Jay Voris played drums in Guinea, Colin Roof restored a 134-year-old sailboat in Ireland, and Rebecca Goldstein wrote a 600-page fantasy novel and took calculus at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.
The independent-minded Maryland students and two dozen others gathered at a Unitarian Universalist Church in Annapolis one afternoon this month for an alternative graduation ceremony that is becoming more common across the country as home schooling expands. Now the movement is gaining ground in a crucial arena: college admissions.

Rating Education Gains

Jay Matthews:

Achievement Gaps, Advanced Placement Exams, Demographic Shifts and Charter Schools: What Do They Add Up To for Students?
We seem to be doing a bit better educating our most disadvantaged students. But many educators think that is not enough.
The numbers displayed in the graphic smorgasbord known as “The Condition of Education 2007,” from the U.S. Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics, reveal the struggles of a generation to make schools work for all children.
Enrollment in publicly funded day care increased significantly from 1991 to 2005. The portion of black children using such services rose from 58 percent to 66 percent. For Hispanic children, the figure rose from 39 percent to 43 percent; for non-Hispanic whites, from 54 percent to 59 percent.
More public day care does not necessarily mean more learning is going on, although the quality of such centers appears to be improving as more states increase support for pre-kindergarten classes and in some cases make them available to all who want them. The relatively low number of Hispanic children in such programs might be a problem, as improving their grasp of English is crucial to the educational success of the largest minority group.

Ed Hughes to run for Madison school board

Marc Eisen:

The next Madison School Board election is ten long months away, but the first candidate to replace retiring board member Carol Carstensen has already emerged.
Attorney Ed Hughes, 54, an east-side parent activist, says he will seek Carstensen’s seat in the spring 2008 election.
“My interest in the school board started with my frustration over its budgeting process,” he says. “Several years ago, I remember attending a strings concert and wondering why cutting strings kept coming up year after year as a budget option.”
Hughes shares the common perception that the Madison schools are hurt by the state’s current formula for funding education. But be also thinks the school board undercuts public understanding of the district’s plight by not being fully transparent in its budget-making. Hughes feels the board can do a better job of explaining its spending decisions to the public.
“The budgetary issues are paramount,” he says. “The quality of the schools won’t be maintained if we have to cut from $5-to$7 million dollars every year. We’ll have to go referendum, but referendums aren’t easy to pass.”

Ed Blume was correct when he said that “it’s never too early to run for the school board”.

A Public-Private Effort to Fill Teacher Vacancies in Math and Science

Howard Blume:

Sherry Lansing retired as head of Paramount Pictures two years ago to head a foundation devoted to education and other causes. What if, she wondered recently, other retirees like her wanted to do the same.
Well, not exactly like her and not precisely the same way. She had in mind a lower-budget, in-the-trenches contribution: namely, becoming a teacher.
That plan blossomed into a media event led by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday heralding a public-private partnership to lure retirees into teaching math and science.
The effort was unveiled at Roosevelt High, where Lansing worked as a long-term substitute teacher in math shortly after graduating from college some 40 years ago.
Math, science and special education teachers are at a premium, and state officials estimate that 100,000 teachers will retire over the next decade, about one-third of the teacher workforce. Over that same period, California’s schools will need more than 33,000 new science and math instructors.

Milwaukee School Violence Data

Madison Parents School Safety Site:

The heading of this post from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s “School Zone” blog reads “MPS data shows spike in violence-related suspensions; 45% of high school students suspended at least once this school year.” But there’s a buried (or at least competing) lede of good news here: first, that the Milwaukee Public Schools’ school board has a dedicated Safety Committee (MMSD does not); second, that the committee has made it a priority to compile, present to the board, and make available to the public current information on suspension statistics and trends; and third, that the district acknowledges publicly that it is “aware we need to do a better job summarizing district incidents and actions.”

OECD: Improving US Primary and Secondary Education

OECD:

Improving primary and secondary education. US school students are outperformed in international tests by their peers in many other countries. Although the causes of this are unclear, a partial explanation is that decentralised standards, curriculum and examinations are undemanding. Federal legislation that aims at addressing such system weaknesses is in general well conceived. However, it could be strengthened, for instance by extending the legislated framework of standards, assessment and accountability through high school. Responsibility for education lies primarily with the states and local authorities, which have to adopt and implement more challenging standards.

Can D.C. Schools Be Fixed?

After decades of reforms, three out of four students fall below math standards. More money is spent running the schools than on teaching. And urgent repair jobs take more than a year . . .
Dan Keating and V. Dion Haynes:

Yet a detailed assessment of the state of the school system, based on extensive public records, suggests that the challenge is enormous: The system is among the highest-spending and worst-performing in the nation. Kelly Miller is one small example of a breakdown in most of the basic functions that are meant to support classroom learning.
Tests show that in reading and math, the District’s public school students score at the bottom among 11 major city school systems, even when poor children are compared only with other poor children. Thirty-three percent of poor fourth-graders across the nation lacked basic skills in math, but in the District, the figure was 62 percent. It was 74 percent for D.C. eighth-graders, compared with 49 percent nationally.
The District spends $12,979 per pupil each year, ranking it third-highest among the 100 largest districts in the nation. But most of that money does not get to the classroom. D.C. schools rank first in the share of the budget spent on administration, last in spending on teachers and instruction.

Virtual High Schools and Innovation in Public Education

Bill Tucker:

There has been no shortage of solutions for improving the nation’s public schools. School leadership, teacher quality, standards, testing, funding, and a host of other issues have crowded reform agendas. But an important trend in public education has gone largely unnoticed in the cacophony of policy proposals: the rise of a completely new class of public schools—”virtual” schools using the Internet to create online classrooms—that is bringing about reforms that have long eluded traditional public schools.
Virtual schools served 700,000 students in the 2005–06 school year, mostly at the high school level. Although that is only a fraction of the nation’s 48 million elementary and secondary students, it is almost double the estimate of students taking online learning courses just three years earlier, and it’s a number that is likely to continue to rise rapidly. In 2006–07, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, and South Dakota became the latest of the two dozen states to establish state-run virtual high school programs. And in Michigan, the legislature went a step further with a mandate requiring students to complete an online learning experience to graduate from high school.

The Class-Consciousness Raiser

Paul Tough:

For the Glynn County Board of Education, Payne’s visit was a big deal. It was back in 2005 that Marjorie Varnadoe, the board’s director of professional development, called to request a presentation from Payne, and this particular Thursday, two years later, was the earliest available date. Principals had ordered Payne’s books and DVDs by the boxload, mostly her ur-text, “A Framework for Understanding Poverty,” and they made the books required reading for their staffs. All over the county, which is on the coast, down near the Florida border, schools held small workshops on class and education, using Payne’s “Framework” as a guide, and teachers sat down together for informal discussions and lunchroom chats about poverty and wealth. When the big day came, the entire school system was given the day off, and by 8 a.m. almost every single teacher and administrator in the county was packed into the Jekyll Island Conference Center, along with the school board, the Chamber of Commerce and various local dignitaries.

Clusty Search: Ruby Payne.

Federal Grant to Support Gradual Charter Rollout

Nelson Hernandez:

Maryland will receive an $18.2 million federal grant to fund the expansion of the state’s nascent charter school program, state education officials announced yesterday.
The grant may allow the state to launch as many as 30 additional charter schools during the next three years, a spokesman for the Maryland State Department of Education said. This would more than double the number of charter schools in Maryland, which began its charter program in 2003 as a way of providing alternative methods of public school instruction.

Teachers union out of touch with average worker

Milwaukee Teacher Steve Paske:

Regardless, I took the time to analyze the union proposal and came away with the same opinion I had before. As a rule, the MTEA uses its membership resources with gross inefficiency when it comes to garnering public support for the teaching profession.
Case in point: Several years ago, the union clashed with the School Board over suggested changes to the medical plan that would require teachers to pay a deductible and co-payment for services. As part of its strategy, it came up with the slogan “Attract and Retain” as the mantra for suggesting that these benefits cuts would not attract or retain quality teachers within the Milwaukee Public Schools.
Never mind that the board’s benefits proposal was still better than 90% of the public’s – those who pay our salary. The union engaged in a public relations disaster by sending members to the picket lines, thus alienating Joe Factory Worker who himself had a $1,000 deductible with 80% coverage despite belonging to a union.
Fast-forward to some of today’s issues: providing a quality teacher in every classroom, eliminating the residency requirement and creating safety in schools. Let’s look at how the union is approaching the issue of school safety.

More on Steve Paske. Joe Williams has more. Michael Rosen offers a different take.

Madison School Board selects a firm for superintendent search

For immediate release: Friday, June 8, 2007 (sent late Friday afternoon)
The Madison Board of Education has selected the firm of Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates of Glenview, ILto conduct the search for the hiring of a new superintendent. HYA was selected from among four businesses which applied for the search contract.
Board President Arlene Silveira said, “We are delighted to reach an agreement with Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates because they are nationally known and very highly respected in the field of superintendent searches. They specialize in working with districts of more than 20,000 students.” The MadisonSchool District’s enrollment is 24,755 students.
Superintendent Art Rainwater has announced that he will retire in June 2008.
Among the early steps in the search process, interviews will be conducted with school district and community representatives in order to develop for the Board a leadership profile of a new superintendent.
The flat fee for the search services to be provided by HYA will be $24,000.
COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS? PLEASE CONTACT:
Madison Metropolitan School District
Public Information Office
545 W. Dayton St.
Madison, WI 53703
608-663-1879

Links:

“The Public Needs to Know What’s Going On”

Madison Parent’s School Safety Site:

Today’s “Watchdog” section of Isthmus has a quick report (at the link, scroll down to the third item, titled “Dangerous work, take 2″) on recent incidents of violence in Madison schools against school staffers. In two of the incidents where staffers were injured, police declined to file criminal charges, citing the lack of criminal intent on the part of the student offenders. According to the item, one of these incidents occurred in early May at LaFollette High School. I was disappointed to find no mention of this (or other school-based incidents) in the latest newsletter from the Madison Police Department East District (whose boundaries includes LaFollette).

Related: Milwaukee Teachers are “Shell Shocked”.

“End the Vang Pao Debacle”

Marc Eisen:

Finally, the Madison school board is showing signs it may back away from its wrongheaded decision to name a new elementary school for Hmong warlord Vang Pao.
To a remarkable degree, the board has stubbornly ignored all evidence of Vang Pao’s bloody past. That’s because Madison’s emergent Hmong community has rallied behind the proposal, and the board, wishing to celebrate Madison’s multicultural makeup, has decided that the Hmong’s time is now, no matter what the objections.
Carol Carstensen has been the lone exception in her willingness to reconsider the naming decision.
Not surprisingly, Bill Keys, the former school board member and perhaps the city’s most arrogant and self-righteous liberal, has been in the frontlines of Vang Pao’s supporters. Disappointingly, several past and present board members who should know better also threw their credibility behind the school naming, despite serious accusations of Vang Pao’s war crimes, drug dealing and suspect fundraising activities.

State School Standards Vary Widely in Study

Tamar Lewin:

What students must learn to be deemed academically proficient varies drastically from state to state, the United States Department of Education said today in a report that, for the first time, showed the specific extent of the differences.
The report supports critics who say the political compromise of the federal No Child Left Behind law, President Bush’s signature education initiative, has led to a patchwork of educational inequities around the country, with no common yardstick to determine whether schoolchildren are learning enough.
The law requires that all students be brought to proficiency by 2014, but lets each state set its own proficiency standards and choose its own tests to measure achievement.

Mapping 2005 State Proficiency Standards Onto the NAEP Scales: 433K PDF File:

Under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), states are required to report the percentages of students achieving proficiency in reading and mathematics for grades 3 through 8. For each subject and grade combination, the percentages vary widely across states. For grades 4 and 8, these percentages can be compared to the estimated percentages of students achieving proficiency with respect to the standard established by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Again, large discrepancies are observed. This variation could derive from differences in both content standards and student academic achievement from state to state, as well as from differences in the stringency of the standards adopted by the states. Unfortunately, there is no way to directly compare state proficiency standards because states are free to select the tests they employ and to establish their own performance standards.

More here.

Democrats for Education Reform

Elizabeth Green:

A money manager recently sent an e-mail to some partners, congratulating them on an investment of $1 million that yielded an estimated $400 million. The reasoning was that $1 million spent on trying to lift a cap on the number of charter schools in New York State yielded a change in the law that will bring $400 million a year in funding to new charter schools.
The money managers who were among the main investors in this law — three Harvard MBAs and a Wharton graduate named Whitney Tilson, Ravenel Boykin Curry IV, Charles Ledley, and John Petry — are moving education-oriented volunteerism beyond championing a single school. They want to shift the political debate by getting the Democratic Party to back innovations such as merit pay for teachers, a longer school day, and charter schools.

Democrats for Education Reform website.

Memorial High Junior Scores Perfect on the ACT

Kristin Czubkowski:

Alex Trevino had a good feeling when he walked out of the ACT testing room on a cold, winter morning this past February.
“I felt good,” he said. “I didn’t know how good at the time, but I knew I did well.”
That confidence, however, did not prevent the jolt that went through the Madison Memorial junior when he opened a letter from CEO Richard Ferguson of the ACT Board eight weeks ago congratulating him on being one of 30 students in the country — and the only one in the state — to have earned a perfect composite score on the test.
“He has a look on his face when he’s really, really excited, and he could not wipe that grin off his face,” Alex’s mother Jackie D’Aoust-Trevino said. “He just said, I got a 36.'”

Troops to Teachers

Jamaal Abdul-Alim:

The military features prominently in Room 412 of the Milwaukee Education Center – a special education classroom that contains some of the school’s most challenging students.
A U.S. Marine flag hangs just beneath the American flag. War books are propped up on a blackboard tray.
The teacher at the front of the class is Stan Loper, 44, a beefy, clean-shaven former U.S. Marine who is built like a tank. He begins the school day in a manner not much different from what you might expect from a drill sergeant, telling his students to use “nice and loud outside voices” as they recite their daily affirmation as members of “Club FAITH” – an acronym for Friendly, Able, Intelligent, Talented and Helpful.
“Who are we?” Loper yells.
“Club FAITH!” the students yell back.
Loper found his way into the classroom through Troops to Teachers, a U.S. Department of Defense-sponsored program that, among other things, offers up to $10,000 to get service members, both active and retired, to serve as teachers in the nation’s neediest schools. About 80 teachers around Wisconsin got their start in the program, which began in 1994.

Scores Up Since ‘No Child’ Was Signed

Amit Paley:

The nation’s students have performed significantly better on state reading and math tests since President Bush signed his landmark education initiative into law five years ago, according to a major independent study released yesterday.
The study’s authors warned that it is difficult to say whether or how much the No Child Left Behind law is driving the achievement gains. But Republican and Democratic supporters of the law said the findings indicate that it has been a success. Some said the findings bolster the odds that Congress will renew the controversial law this year.

There has been some controversy over the quality and rigor of state standards, including Wisconsin’s. Sam Dillon has more. Joanne Jacobs adds a few comments and links to this article.

The Next School Name

A Capital Times Editorial:

The new elementary school on Madison’s far west side will not be named for Hmong Gen. Vang Pao, who has been arrested by federal authorities on charges of masterminding a plot to use money collected from Hmong refugees in the United States to massacre Laotians in a violent coup.
Whether the Madison School Board recognizes that fact immediately or in a few weeks — after what board President Arlene Silveira describes as an investigation into the “nature of the charges” against Vang — there is no way that Madison, or any other city, is going to build a “Vang Pao Elementary School.”
That’s the first reality of the moment.
It is not a judgment regarding the guilt or innocence of Vang. The charges against the general, who for many years during the Vietnam War era did the dirty work of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, are serious. But just as there must always be an assumption of innocence, there should also be a measure of skepticism when it comes to federal claims regarding conspiracies.

Much more on the Vang Pao Elementary School here.

Omaha-Area Districts to Share Revenue, Programs

Christina Samuels:

The new law retains the previous measure’s concept of creating a “learning community” of the 11 districts, located in Douglas and Salpy counties, which educate about 100,000 children.
The goal is for each school to have 35 percent students who are of low socioeconomic status. Students would be able to transfer freely between schools that have space for them, regardless of the district where they live. A paid, 18-member board will oversee specific issues that do not relate to the operations of the individual districts for the learning community.
The state will levy a common tax on the two counties that will be distributed to districts based on enrollment and other needs. Districts will be able to levy their own tax, and another, smaller tax levy will pay for an areawide school construction program.
The plan calls for the creation of “focus schools,” with programs intended to attract students from more than one district. The construction of those boundaryless schools will be part of the duties of the new learning-community board.

Live Chat: Teachers and Performance Pay

via a reader involved in these issues:

WHEN: Wednesday, June 6, 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., Eastern time
WHERE: edweek-chat.org
Submit questions in advance here.
Earlier this spring, a panel of 18 highly accomplished teachers assembled by the Center for Teaching Quality—and known as the TeacherSolutions group— released a report that strongly advocates performance-pay systems for teachers.
Under TeacherSolutions’ recommendations, teachers would be paid more over time as they advance along a career ladder that extends from “novice” to “expert,” but they could also receive extra pay for taking on leadership roles, improving students academic performance, acquiring new knowledge and skills, and working in low-performing schools. According to the report, in Wake County, N.C., for example, novice teachers could make as little at $30,000, while experts could make up to $130,000 per year depending on their performance.
“We have to provide more for those teachers who continually go above and beyond to ensure high academic gains,” Betsy Rogers, a member of TeacherSolutions, wrote in an article for teachermagazine.org. “[TeacherSolutions’] goal is to encourage—even provoke—a deep conversation about quality teaching and how a variegated pay system could support the development of teaching as a profession.”
In this chat, two members of the TeacherSolutions group, Nancy Flanagan and Lori Nazareno, will be online to take your questions about their recomendations, current issues in teacher compensation and career advancement, and the challenges of evaluating teacher performance.
Please join us for the discussion.
Submit questions in advance here.

Thomas back on his mission to bring music to kids

Zoe Mezin:

Elegantly ensconced in an elaborately embroidered armchair at the British ambassador’s residence, Michael Tilson Thomas reveals his recipe for drawing young people to classical music.
“Rosebud,” says the San Francisco Symphony music director, who was in Paris until Monday filming a future installment of the “Keeping Score” documentary series.
“When Charles Foster Kane dies (in the movie “Citizen Kane”), a paperweight falls and he says the word ‘Rosebud.’ ‘Keeping Score’ is like that. It tries to go behind the scenes, into the unconscious of the composers and their world. It builds up from small, seemingly inconsequential things to see what drives them.”
Storytelling is central to the “Keeping Score” series that aired on PBS to 3.5 million viewers in November 2006. In forthcoming episodes, Thomas follows the same formula.

Multiplying Benefits of College for Everyone

Jay Matthews:

Many intelligent people don’t think going to college is so important. They send me emails whenever I vent about the need to prepare more low-income students for higher education. They ask a simple, excellent question: Why should college be for everybody?
They say some kids are not capable of succeeding in college. They say some kids don’t want to go to college. They say if everyone went to college, who would do the important non-college jobs, like plumbing and carpentry and auto repair? They say if everyone went to college, we would have a lot of unemployed college graduates–as has happened in some underdeveloped countries–with neither the skills nor the desire to work with their hands.

West Bend School Board considers seeking $119 million in referendum

Don Behm:

The West Bend School Board will decide Monday whether to ask voters to spend $119 million in a referendum proposal that would, if approved in November, be the largest to pass in state history.
West Bend has not built a new school since the 1969 construction of its twin high schools at the same site, and the growing district needs to replace a few schools and provide more space for students and educational programs, said School Board President Charlie Hillman. The district serves about 7,000 students and is the 19th largest in the state.
The original piece of the district’s oldest school, Jackson Elementary, was built in 1894, and there is no room on the site for further expansion, school officials have said.
“It is time to take care of our problems,” Hillman said. “We will ask the voters if this is worthwhile.”

An Interesting Report on the Financial Condition and Position of the Milwaukee Public Schools

Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance and the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce [330K PDF]:

As will be seen, MPS already has many challenges:

  • Declining student numbers and a host of viable options for K12 students and their families;
  • Rising and, in some cases, difficult to control costs. Though MPS’s finances are similar to other large, diverse districts, its salaries relative to staff experience and its benefit expenditures are relatively high. The size of middle management within schools is also atypical.
  • Highly aided by both the state and federal governments, the Milwaukee district is unusually vulnerable to political decisions and policy made elsewhere. An anticipated decline in federal monies will directly impact MPS’s bottom line. And, any slowdown or reduction in state aid, has a direct property-tax impact in a high-tax city.

WISTAX projections show the future to be even more difficult. All these factors combine to suggest a future where revenue growth will be modest, at best, while costs will grow inexorably. If no further budget adjustments are made—and some have already been implemented—the Milwaukee school district faces a recurring and growing gap between slowing revenues and growing expenditures.
Needless to say, MPS has difficult years in its immediate future. From our work, we know that district, MMAC, and community leaders are passionate about improving education for all Milwaukee’s children. We wish them only the very best.

Alan Borsuk:

A study from the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance includes figures from 2005 placing Milwaukee Public Schools in perspective with statewide figures and with seven districts judged to be closest to comparable to MPS (Beloit, Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Racine, Superior, Wausau).

  • Teacher salaries
    $35,439 average in MPS
    $43,038 median statewide

  • Fringe benefits
    $21,439 average in MPS
    $20,324 median statewide

  • Assistant principals per student
    1:541 in MPS
    1:1,177 average for comparable districts listed above

In the report, Berry writes, “The combined effect of lost market share, district spending choices (particularly in the fringe benefit area), tightening state revenue controls and uncertain federal funding means that the expenditure demands MPS faces will grow faster than available revenues. Annual rounds of budget retrenchment are inevitable.”
Even as spending per student has increased significantly in MPS, the impact of financial belt-tightening has increased, the report says. Rising health care costs and costs for retirees are major reasons.

Education spending has increased annually at the federal, state and local level. Clearly, something different than the usual “same service” or “cost to continue” approach is warranted.
Jay Bullock’s notes and links.

Mission Creep: How Large School Districts Lose Sight of the Objective — Student Learning

Mike Antonucci:

The growth of education bureaucracy constitutes what former Education Secretary William Bennett once called “the education ‘blob.’”
A 1998 study by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution defines “the blob” as nearly 40 Washington-based organizations, with more than 3,000 employees and combined budgets of more than $700 million. They have inter-locking directors, share staffs that move between groups and in and out of the revolving door of government, and generally stand united on every major education issue.
But while this national education establishment is often the subject of critical commentary, left undiscussed is the growth of smaller “mini-blobs” at the local, district level. With class size reduction and school size reduction on the public’s mind, educators are coming to the realization that bigger is not always better – but school district size has not yet made it onto the education policy agenda.
In 1937, there were 119,001 school districts. By 1970, that number had dropped to 17,995. In 1996, there were only 14,841. For decades, Americans have accepted the premise that a large city requires one mammoth school district. But evidence suggests that the larger a school district gets, the more resources it devotes to secondary or even non-essential activities. Schools provide transportation, counseling, meals, child care, health services, security, and soon these “support” functions require support of their own.
In sum, large school districts engage in “mission creep,” building support activities which rapidly lose any connection to the original goal of educating children.

Cramming May Not Be the Best Practice

Washington Post:

Take it from Isabela Guimaraes, a top D.C. high school student who said she has been there and done that: Cramming for an exam is better than not studying at all, but it’s hardly a best practice.
Once, faced with a test in a troublesome trigonometry class, the Georgetown Day School student tried to fill her head with formulas for hours beforehand, only to find that her brain went blank at the critical moment. On her test, she wrote to her teacher:

In Finals, Pressure Seems Unending

Valerie Strauss:

In libraries, classrooms and coffee shops, with books, computers and calculators, students are trying to squeeze in the last bit of studying for final exams that can spell the difference between a good grade and summer school.
Some schools keep buildings open for late-night, middle-of-the-night and early-morning cramming sessions, while others have official “study days,” when the entire campus is focused on that one task.

Our schools are like family and budget cuts are hurting important family values

LaFollette Teacher Sean Storch:

hen the Madison School Board eliminated two high school athletic director positions to meet state-imposed budget restrictions, the La Follette High School family lost a critically valuable teacher, coach, adviser and school leader. Jim Pliner was modest when he said the surplus move “stings a little bit.”
In another sense, Pliner is quite right to be humble. He is not the only excessively dedicated school leader who works 16-hour days and long weekends trying to hold the school community together.
At La Follette High School alone, add the entire administration, teachers who come in two hours early and leave at least two hours late, and all coaches and extracurricular advisers who volunteer countless hours because they thrive on strengthening their community by nurturing future leaders.

Pao Vowed to Lead the Hmong Home

Tony Barboza and Ashley Powers:

Vang Pao, a key figure among those arrested Monday on suspicion of plotting the overthrow of the communist Laotian government, is so well-known in the local Hmong community that his family always keeps fruit, soda and water on the living room coffee table to greet the constant stream of visitors who drop by his Westminster home.
An aging Pao would often regale them with war stories while seated under portraits of the former Laotian king and other royalty — and one of himself in military dress from his younger days.
But in addition to the nationwide image of patriarch and benefactor, Pao also has another reputation — that of a tough leader who worked for the CIA in its “secret war” in Laos during the Vietnam War more than 30 years ago.

Brittany Schoepp and Andy Hall have more, as does Susan Troller.

DC Begins School Audit

David Nakamura:

D.C. government officials will launch an extensive audit of the city’s public schools today designed to pinpoint how the system is spending its $1 billion budget and identify areas of waste and mismanagement.
The audit, scheduled for announcement at a midday news conference, comes as Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) prepares to take control of the 55,000-student school system and is patterned after similar studies in other jurisdictions, including New York, St. Louis and New Orleans. But those studies have not always provided clear answers and, in some cases, resulted in new problems created by the auditors.

Hmong here speak reverently of Gen. Vang Pao

Susan Troller:

Like countless thousands of other Hmong who had been American allies during the Vietnam War and who became hunted enemies in their own country when the United States withdrew from southeast Asia, Chue Thao lived as a refugee, eventually finding his way to the United States in 1987.
And like many in Madison’s Hmong community, he credits Hmong military and civilian leader Gen. Vang Pao with first establishing a proud Hmong ethnic identity and then opening the door for his people to build a new life in America, based on education and hard work.
Harrowing experiences of discrimination, war and violent dislocation are the rule for local Hmong families who escaped to America, and they help explain the fervent passion many feel towards naming a new west-side elementary school honoring Vang Pao.

Much more on Vang Pao Elementary School here.

On Parochial School Busing

Arlene Silveira:

I want to clarify the facts about the Madison School Board’s decision on private school busing.
This is a financial budget change with no hidden agenda. This is not about “us versus them.” This is not about Madison schools being “afraid of diversity.” We embrace diversity. Visit any of our schools and see for yourself. This is not about the board wanting the private school children to bring in $13,000 of additional funds per child (an inaccurate number, by the way). In our deliberations, the School Board never discussed any of these topics.
This is, sadly, a matter of a state budget system that does not allow school districts in Wisconsin to provide adequately for their students … across the board.

Continue reading On Parochial School Busing

When Should a Kid Start Kindergarten?

Elizabeth Weil:

According to the apple-or-coin test, used in the Middle Ages, children should start school when they are mature enough for the delayed gratification and abstract reasoning involved in choosing money over fruit. In 15th- and 16th-century Germany, parents were told to send their children to school when the children started to act “rational.” And in contemporary America, children are deemed eligible to enter kindergarten according to an arbitrary date on the calendar known as the birthday cutoff — that is, when the state, or in some instances the school district, determines they are old enough. The birthday cutoffs span six months, from Indiana, where a child must turn 5 by July 1 of the year he enters kindergarten, to Connecticut, where he must turn 5 by Jan. 1 of his kindergarten year. Children can start school a year late, but in general they cannot start a year early. As a result, when the 22 kindergartners entered Jane Andersen’s class at the Glen Arden Elementary School near Asheville, N.C., one warm April morning, each brought with her or him a snack and a unique set of gifts and challenges, which included for some what’s referred to in education circles as “the gift of time.”

Harvard, Stanford on an iPod near you

Evelyn Shih:

ver want to attend a world-class university like Stanford or Harvard but don’t have the time, opportunity or grades? Now, thanks to the magic of podcasts, all you need is a portable audio player and an Internet connection to enjoy the growing body of online lecture courses provided for free by top colleges.
As the podcast snowball continues rolling – podcast users accounted for 12 percent of the Net’s population in 2006 – universities are beginning to jump on the bandwagon. Now, everyday folks around the world can listen to lectures like “Geography of World Cultures,” “The Historical Jesus” or “European Civilization From the Renaissance to the Present” during a jog or a long commute.

Linguistics: Words in Code

The Economist:

The speakers of tonal and non-tonal languages have genetic differences
FIVE years ago three well-known academics, including Noam Chomsky, wrote that the half-century old “interdisciplinary marriage” between biology and linguistics “has not yet been fully consummated.” That same year other scientists described the molecular evolution of a gene called FOXP2 which, when mutated, seems to cause people severe difficulty with grammar and articulation.
Another genetic condition that could shed light on the biology of linguistics is microcephaly (sometimes rudely called “pin-headedness”). It is linked to six genes, a spanner in the works of any of which leads the human brain to grow to only two-thirds of a pint in adults. That is less than a third of its normal volume. Those genes are alluring objects for studying the evolution of language because brain size has ballooned in people since their line split with that of their closest relatives. Even though birds sing and bees dance, nothing in nature matches a human’s richly complicated system of vocal communication. In short, language makes humans unique and genes active in the developing brain make language possible.

No more romp and circumstance

Amy Hetzner:

Students and their families should enjoy the pomp and circumstance that come with the upcoming graduation season, Milwaukee-area high school officials said.
They just would prefer a little more pomp and a little less circumstance.
So in the interest of preserving the decorum of their graduation proceedings, a number of school districts have drafted agreements with graduating seniors and their guests outlining behavioral expectations.

Schools streamline how math is taught: Same textbooks, same lessons, at the same time

Via a reader, interested in this issue:

Jessica Blanchard:

When Seattle elementary-schoolers open their math textbooks this fall, they’ll all be on the same page — literally.
In an attempt to boost stagnant test scores, elementary teachers will start using the same math textbooks and materials and covering lessons at the same time as their colleagues at other Seattle elementary schools, the School Board decided Wednesday.
“It’s clear to me that the math adoption is long overdue, and Seattle desperately needs a consistent and balanced approach,” board member Brita Butler-Wall said.
Lessons will now be taught using the conceptual “Everyday Math” books, which help students discover algorithms on their own and explore multiple ways to solve problems, and the more traditional “Singapore Math” books, which help hone students’ basic computation skills through repetition and problem solving. Teachers will follow the district’s guidelines for the order the lessons would be taught.

Madison Students Participate in an International Origami Exhibit

Gayle Worland:

There are plenty of pages to turn in a library, though usually it’s between book covers. At the Pinney Branch Library, carefully arranged and locked behind glass, stand adventures in paper of a much different sort: “Origami By Children,” a traveling exhibit of tiny, ingeniously folded works selected in an international competition by the group OrigamiUSA.
Two Madison students have works in the exhibit, which was first assembled in 2005 but only now has arrived in Madison. Each creation is deceptively simple: many are made from a single sheet of paper, yet turned into a fanciful creature or sharp-edged geometric shape by the skilled, young hands of their creators.
“Origami is a very different art than arts that are based on expression, like painting,” says Natalya Thompson, a Madison West High School sophomore whose interlocking paper “Bow-Tie Motif,” made from 48 squares of three-inch-by-three-inch paper, is featured in the exhibit. Most pieces in the small show are based on designs created by published origami masters.

Origami USA website

MMSD Paid Math Consultant on Math Task Force

mmsdmathconsult.jpg
Click to view MMSD Accounting Details.
A number of questions have been raised over the past few years regarding the Madison School District’s math curriculum:

  • West High Math Teachers:

    Moreover, parents of future West High students should take notice: As you read this, our department is under pressure from the administration and the math coordinator’s office to phase out our “accelerated” course offerings beginning next year. Rather than addressing the problems of equity and closing the gap by identifying minority math talent earlier, and fostering minority participation in the accelerated programs, our administration wants to take the cheaper way out by forcing all kids into a one-size-fits-all curriculum.

  • Dick Askey:

    Madison and Wisconsin 8th Grade Math Data

  • Math Forum Video, Notes and Links.

The Madison School Board’s most recent Superintendent evaluation process included the requirement (board minutes) that a math task force be formed to review the District’s curriculum. Details. The Board discussed this requirement on April 16, 2007 (Video and links) (Minutes)
The Task force includes David Griffeath, who, according to this document, provided by a reader, has been a paid math consultant for the Madison School District.

35 members of the UW-Madison Math Department sent an open letter to Madison School Board and Superintendent regarding the District’s math coordinator position.
Related: Take the Math Homework Survey – via Joanne

Milwaukee Schools finding way around budget cap

Alan Borsuk:

A path for getting around a state-imposed cap on how much a school district can spend is allowing Milwaukee Public Schools to add driver’s education programs, fund more arts programs, maintain after-school centers that are losing federal aid and even add a position to the staff of the School Board.
The path means there will be fewer invasive plant species to be seen at two nature preserves owned by MPS.
But it also means property taxes will be going up more than they otherwise would.
In two years, the School Board has raised the amount being collected through what is called its extension fund by almost 60%, which comes to an increase of about $8 for each resident of the city.
The growing interest in using the extension fund to support initiatives in MPS was evident Thursday night and Friday morning as the board approved amendments to the proposed budget for 2007-’08 that added more than $500,000 in spending to the fund.

The Madison School District’s growing use of Fund 80 (expenditures outside the state revenue caps) has been the subject of some controversy.

No Group Discount For Autism Care

Susan DeFord:

Randy and Lynn Gaston received the distressing diagnosis not once but three times.
Their sons, Zachary, Hunter and Nicholas, are triplets, and as the brown-haired boys grew into toddlers, Lynn noticed how oddly they played, how little they babbled, how they cried inconsolably at doctor’s offices and family gatherings.
Two years ago, when the boys were 4, specialists confirmed the Gastons’ suspicions: The boys have varying degrees of autism, a neurological disorder that hampers communication and social interactions and can include obsessive-compulsive behavior.
“It was shocking,” Lynn said, “but in my heart, I knew, yes, somebody finally sees it.”

Isabel Jacobson National Spelling Bee Roundup

  • Audrey Hoffer:

    The silence crackled in a downtown hotel Thursday as Isabel A. Jacobson, an eighth-grader from Madison and the sole Wisconsin entrant to the Scripps National Spelling Bee, enunciated “c-y-a-n-o-p-h-y-t-i-o-n.”
    Ping, the telltale final bell. Shoulders shrugging helplessly. Applause.
    Misspelling the word cyanophycean, Isabel, the last girl in the group of five finalists, dropped out in Round 9, tying for third place. Cyanophycean is a blue-green alga.
    “I feel great but kind of sad because it was my last spelling bee, and I’ll never be up on the stage again,” said Isabel, 14.
    “I’m not shocked that she’s done this well,” said Jeff Kirsch, her tutor. “Luck is a factor, as is skill. But she studied and she’s smart – the last surviving girl.”

  • Gena Kittner:

    he nation now knows what Madison has long understood — Isabel Jacobson can kick some spelling derri?re.
    Isabel, 14, made her prime-time television spelling debut Thursday night at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, correctly spelling the French word epaulement, but later slipping up on cyanophycean and ultimately tying for third.
    Isabel, an eighth-grader at O’Keeffe Middle School, was the only female speller by the end of Round 8 in a competition that went 13 rounds.

  • Elissa Silverman:

    One was only 11 and the oldest topped out at 14, but many of these kids had been here before. They knew the white-hot intensity of the competition, the absurdity of some of the words they were being asked to spell on national television and the warm applause that inevitably burst from the crowd when they got them right.
    Most of the 15 finalists in this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee were a seasoned crew. And that, in the end, might have helped propel Evan M. O’Dorney, 13, who has taken to eating tuna sandwiches from Subway for good luck each of the three times he has been in the finals, to victory last night.
    Evan, an eighth-grader from Walnut Creek, Calif., exuded confidence as he faced the only other contestant still standing, Nate Gartke, 13, of Edmonton, Alberta. First, Evan spelled “Zoilus.” Nate, a musician who is a member of a curling team, countered by correctly spelling “vituline.” The Canadian gave a thumbs-up as a half-dozen of his nation’s flags waved from the audien

  • Google News roundup.
  • Isabel’s words.

2007 National Condition of Education Report Released

US Department of Education:

This website is an integrated collection of the indicators and analyses published in The Condition of Education 2000–2007. Some indicators may have been updated since they appeared in print.

Chad Aldeman:

CES released their annual report this morning on the condition of education in the U.S. They took the opportunity to highlight high school coursetaking trends. More states are requiring more coursework for graduation, and overall, the average number of course credits completed by graduates increased from 21.7 in 1982 to 25.8 in 2004. More students are taking more math, science, and English courses with no declines in art or social studies, but to the detriment of study halls, vocational education, and career training. They’re taking more advanced courses as well. The number of students taking at least one AP exam doubled between 1997 and 2005.
Great news. Bust open the bubbly. Surely additional credit hours in the basics translates to higher test scores, right? That is the assumption behind the drive for the basics, no? Actually, the data suggests there was minor, incremental, or even no change. On NAEP in 1971 in reading, 17 year olds averaged a scale score of 285. On NAEP in 2004 in reading, 17 year olds averaged a scale score of 285. That’s not a typo. During the same time frame, math scores increased from 300 to 307, a 2.3% increase over 33 years. For some comparability, the coursetaking trend discussed above is a 19% increase since 1982. The numbers don’t quite compute.
When asked about this conundrum, Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst, Director of the Institute of Education Sciences, admitted there was a “legitimate concern” that courses had been watered down. He labeled it a top priority to analyze what exactly these courses are teaching, and said data including course syllabi and the textbooks used in the classes exists, but has yet to be fully analyzed. That’s why I left “the condition of education 2007” feeling like I had been bombarded with statistics without much context.

Grade-School Girls, Grown-Up Gossip

Stephanie Rosenbloom:

WHEN Britney Spears shaved off her signature blond locks, Alexis Gursky, 9, found herself wondering not why Ms. Spears picked up a razor in the first place, but why she did not do more with the hair she shaved off.
“I just thought it was a little weird to just do it and not to give it to people who have cancer,” said Alexis, a third grader in Manhattan.
And while scores of people were petitioning Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California to keep Paris Hilton from having to report to jail on June 5, Jessie Urvater, 8, could not muster any sympathy.
“I don’t like Paris,” said Jessie, of Manhattan, who was quick to point out that hotel heiresses are not above the law. “I think she should go to jail.”

NYC Expands School Test Program

Julie Bosman:

Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein announced yesterday that the city school system would spend $80 million over five years on a battery of new standardized tests to begin this fall for most of New York City’s 1.1 million public school students.
The contract awarded to the testing giant CTB/McGraw-Hill will involve a significant expansion of exams, known as periodic tests, which monitor students’ progress and are supposed to help predict how students will perform in the annual state exams. Mr. Klein’s announcement immediately rekindled the debate over whether such testing is emphasized too much or is even a useful tool for teachers.
Pupils in Grades 3 through 8 will be tested five times a year in both reading and math, instead of three times as they are now. High school students, for the first time, will be tested four times a year in each subject. In the next few years, the tests will expand to include science and social studies.

Dayton Charter School Faces Budget Cuts

Bob Driehaus:

The 32 students who graduated from the Dayton Early College Academy on Wednesday evening were mostly from low-income families. Few of their parents went to college.
But every member of the graduating class, the school’s first, will attend college in the fall on the strength of their academic achievements and $2 million in scholarship offers, a remarkable success story in a school district plagued by budget shortfalls and challenges endemic to urban schools.
That success, however, may not be enough to save the experimental public high school. Voters rejected a school tax levy on May 8, forcing the school district to cut $30 million from its budget. That could result in the academy’s reverting to a more traditional model.

Nurturing Student Mothers

Sarah Carr:

This winter, at Northern Star School, Parker found a place where she could finally settle in.
Over the past five years, Northern Star’s leaders have created a vibrant school unique to both Milwaukee and the country: a middle school focused on teenage mothers. Milwaukee’s Lady Pitts also works with pregnant and parenting teens, but at the high school level.
Locally and nationally, the teen birth rate continues to decline and cities are closing alternative high schools for pregnant teens, mainstreaming the young women instead. Yet in Milwaukee, Northern Star’s prominence continues to grow.

An elite education should be open to all who can benefit, not just those who can pay

The Economist:

NO exam question is as perplexing as how to organise schools to suit the huge variety of pupils they serve: rich and poor, clever and dim, early developers and late starters. Every country does it differently. Some try to spot talent early. Others winnow out the academic-minded only at 18. Some believe in parent-power. Others trust the state. Finland has state-run uniform comprehensives; Sweden, another good performer, has vouchers and lots of private schools.
The British system produces some world-class high-flyers, mainly in its private schools and the 164 selective state “grammar” schools that survived the cull in the 1960s and 1970s when the country moved to a non-selective system. But it serves neither its poor children nor its most troublesome ones well. The best state schools, especially the grammar schools, are colonised by the middle classes, and the whole system is disfigured by a long straggling tail of non-achievers.

Continue reading An elite education should be open to all who can benefit, not just those who can pay

Putting His Wealth to Work To Improve Urban Schools

Jay Matthews:

He and his wife, Edythe, have committed more than $250 million to school improvement projects since 1999, and they plan to spend most of the Broad Foundation’s $2.25 billion in assets on education. The Los Angeles couple, along with Bill and Melinda Gates, are widely considered the most influential public education philanthropists in the country.
Broad (rhymes with road) has provided much of the money and advice behind efforts to bring business practices — including freedom from what he considers meddlesome school boards — to New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Now he has turned his attention to the District. His conversations with D.C. officials, Broad watchers say, are likely to bring more money and expertise to efforts to overhaul the school system.

Standardizing the Standards

Ann Hulbert:

“I know you’re restless today, but I need to see you sitting at your desks. Angel, that means you, too!” In the second-grade classroom at the Washington school where I volunteer, the teacher turned to me and said with a sigh, “It’s testing week.” In fact, her class wasn’t suffering through the standardized ordeal, just tiptoeing around while others did. The “adequate yearly progress” (A.Y.P.) assessments mandated by the No Child Left Behind legislation, which was enacted in 2002 with high hopes of closing the achievement gap for minorities, don’t kick in until third grade. But when it comes to tests, N.C.L.B. is fulfilling its inclusive mission all too well: nobody — not even kids too young to be filling in the bubbles yet — escapes the atmosphere of exam-induced edginess.
The president’s signature domestic initiative, now due for its five-year reauthorization, was supposed to be a model of the hardheaded rigor it aims to instill in America’s schools. “No ‘accountability proposals’ without accountability,” a Bush education adviser declared early on. So one of the most glaring legacies of No Child Left Behind is surprising: it has made a muddle of meaningful assessment. Testing has never been more important; inadequate annual progress toward “proficiency” triggers sanctions on schools. Yet testing has never been more suspect, either. The very zeal for accountability is confusing the quest for consistent academic expectations across the country.

Detroit Mayor Advocates Charters

Kwame Kilpatrick:

Imagine what would happen if Detroit’s auto manufacturers decided to build and sell only mid-size sedans. Despite whatever media campaign they might mount to convince consumers a mid-size sedan was what they should buy, there would clearly still be buyers who would want to purchase SUVs or other types of vehicles. Worse, there would be lots of people whose needs would not be met by a mid-size sedan.
This scenario is no different from thinking that all parents will simply accept whatever school assignment Detroit Public Schools has to offer. Parents will choose what is best for their children.

On Good Writing

John Leo:

At my local recycling center, the first bin is labeled “commingled containers.” Whoever dreamed up this term could have taken the easy way out and just written “cans and bottles.” But no, the author opted for a term out of the bureaucrat’s style book. He chose the raised pinky elegance of a phrase distant from normal English. He also added poor spelling (“comingled is spelled two different ways), and pointless redundancy (the concept of “co” is already embedded in the word “mingled”). How did they pack so many writing errors into two words of modern environmental prose?
George Orwell, at the beginning of his essay, “Politics and the English Language,” made clear that he thought the language had become disheveled and decadent. That was in 1946. Intending shock, Orwell offered five examples of sub-literate prose by known writers. But these examples don’t look as ghastly to us as they did to Orwell, because language is so much worse today. If you doubt this, I offer a few examples.

Law lacks direction for gifted students

Amy Hetzner:

What the law doesn’t mandate is how students such as Adam will be educated – even though state legislators have identified programming for students with gifts and talents as one of 20 essential components of public education. The result? A mixed bag of approaches for how Wisconsin students identified as gifted are educated. Some are taught in regular classes with alternative activities to help speed them through lessons. Others are pulled out of class for about an hour a week of special instruction. Some may find a spot in a magnet program with other gifted students. And others get no special instruction at all.
These inconsistencies have led parents and others to sound alarms about the state of gifted education, invoking some of the same civil-rights arguments that spurred landmark legislation in the 1970s for students with disabilities.
They say gifted kids need special attention and programs, too.

Racine Jefferson Lighthouse School’s Gifted Programs:

Jefferson Lighthouse School has the largest pupil-teacher ratio of any public elementary school in Racine.
Parts of its building are more than 100 years old. Its technology is nearly non-existent. Its librarian works half time.
And every year, parents of about 10 times as many children as the school plans to admit in the fall line up in the hallway, hoping for a chance at enrollment.
“It’s like a lottery ticket to get in here,” said Principal Soren Gajewski.
What makes Jefferson Lighthouse desirable to so many parents living in Racine, those connected to it say, is its commitment to teaching students with intellectual gifts and the perception that it has few behavioral problems.
The school is able to meet the needs of many of the district’s gifted students, as well as siblings and others lucky enough to get in on the lottery, without added expense. In fact, given that the school has the second-lowest per-pupil costs of the Racine Unified School District, parents say such a program is a cost-effective way to ensure that gifted pupils get needed attention while the school remains open to educating non-gifted students as well.

Wisconsin DPI: Cracking Down on SAGE Class Size Waivers

Amy Hetzner:

The state Department of Public Instruction gave wide leeway last year to a school district seeking to avoid the strictures of Wisconsin’s class-size reduction program, even as the DPI rolled out its plan to clamp down on such exceptions.
The Chippewa Falls School District was allowed to hold classes with one-third more students than the Student Achievement Guarantee in Education program demanded and still receive $100,000.
But such permissiveness is coming to an end, promised state schools Deputy Superintendent Tony Evers.
Already this year, several school systems that previously received funding while exceeding SAGE’s 15-to-1 class-size requirements have had their requests denied.
Others have quietly dropped their programs after determining that they would not be able to meet the class-size standards and that DPI staff would become more involved in monitoring their programs, Evers said.

Core Classes Not Enough, Report Warns

Jay Matthews:

It’s no secret to most high school students that taking the required courses, getting good grades and receiving a diploma don’t take much work. The average U.S. high school senior donning a cap and gown this spring will have spent an hour a day on homework and at least three hours a day watching TV, playing video games and pursuing other diversions.
This is sometimes a surprise to adults, particularly state legislators and school board members who thought that by requiring a number of courses in English, math, science and social studies they had ensured that students would dig in and learn what they need to succeed in college.
Guess again, says a new study, “Rigor at Risk: Reaffirming Quality in the High School Core Curriculum [350K PDF Report],” by the Iowa City-based testing company ACT Inc. “Students today do not have a reasonable chance of becoming ready for college unless they take a number of additional higher-level” courses beyond the minimum, the report said. Even those who do, it concluded, “are not always likely to be ready for college either.”

More here.

The Culture of Testing: A look at the Assessment Industry

Jay Matthews:

Blank blue computer screens frustrated thousands of Virginia students this month during online state exams in a series of disruptions that underscored vulnerabilities in the educational testing industry. Such episodes, experts said, could prompt changes in how the nation’s schools assess student performance.
Test software malfunctions in several states, coupled with staff shortages and cutthroat competition in the industry, have fueled a growing debate over whether to cut the number of tests taken under the federal No Child Left Behind law or adjust the testing calendar.
“The system has had a lot of pressure put on it,” said Adam J. Newman, a managing vice president of the market research group Eduventures Inc. in Boston.

A Parent in Prison, a Void at Home

Kari Lydersen:

When 12-year-old Heaven Carr wakes up, her mother is not there to make her breakfast. As the school year ends, Heaven is already sad that her mother will not be around to do the back-to-school shopping come August.
Carr’s mother, Elaine, has been behind bars for five years. Her father, Shaun, who was once jailed himself, does his best to pick up the slack, even as he runs a home remodeling business during the day and a cleaning service at night. But Heaven says it’s not the same.
“There are no services for men in this position — none,” Shaun said. “You’d think that if a man decides to stay with his kids, people would embrace you and help you pull through. But it’s the opposite.”
The stakes are high for Heaven and her three siblings. Those who deal regularly with the incarcerated suggest that 50 to 70 percent of children of imprisoned parents will end up behind bars. Such children are also less likely to do well in school, a growing body of research suggests.

The Case Against Homework

Book: The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It:

Does assigning fifty math problems accomplish any more than assigning five? Is memorizing word lists the best way to increase vocabulary—especially when it takes away from reading time? And what is the real purpose behind those devilish dioramas?
The time our children spend doing homework has skyrocketed in recent years. Parents spend countless hours cajoling their kids to complete such assignments—often without considering whether or not they serve any worthwhile purpose. Even many teachers are in the dark: Only one of the hundreds the authors interviewed and surveyed had ever taken a course specifically on homework during training.
The truth, according to Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish, is that there is almost no evidence that homework helps elementary school students achieve academic success and little evidence that it helps older students. Yet the nightly burden is taking a serious toll on America’s families. It robs children of the sleep, play, and exercise time they need for proper physical, emotional, and neurological development. And it is a hidden cause of the childhood obesity epidemic, creating a nation of “homework potatoes.”
In The Case Against Homework, Bennett and Kalish draw on academic research, interviews with educators, parents, and kids, and their own experience as parents and successful homework reformers to offer detailed advice to frustrated parents. You’ll find out which assignments advance learning and which are time-wasters, how to set priorities when your child comes home with an overstuffed backpack, how to talk and write to teachers and school administrators in persuasive, nonconfrontational ways, and how to rally other parents to help restore balance in your children’s lives.

Bennetts’s website. Via Cory Doctorow.

US Per Student Spending, By State

US Census Bureau:

The nation’s public school districts spent an average of $8,701 per student on elementary and secondary education in fiscal year 2005, up 5 percent from $8,287 the previous year, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today.
Findings from Public Education Finances: 2005, show that New York spent $14,119 per student — the highest amount among states and state equivalents. Just behind was neighboring New Jersey at $13,800, the District of Columbia at $12,979, Vermont ($11,835) and Connecticut ($11,572). Seven of the top 10 with the highest per pupil expenditures were in the Northeast.
Utah spent the least per student ($5,257), followed by Arizona ($6,261), Idaho ($6,283), Mississippi ($6,575) and Oklahoma ($6,613). All 10 of the states with the lowest spending per student were in the West or South.
The report and associated data files contain information for all local public school systems in the country. For example, in New York City, the largest school district in the country, per pupil spending was $13,755.
In all, public school systems spent $497 billion, up from $472.3 billion the previous year. Of these expenditures, the largest portions went to instruction ($258.3 billion) and support services such as pupil transportation and school administration ($146.3 billion).

Madison spends $13,684 per student ($333,101,865 2006/2007 citizen’s budget) / 24,342 students

Chinese See Piano as Key to Children’s Success

Robert Turnbull:

Shanghai — NO one paying attention to recent musical trends in Asia can have failed to notice it: The Chinese are crazy about piano playing. Among city dwellers, there’s been nothing like this enthusiasm since the ’80s, when an embrace of the Japanese-originated Suzuki teaching method created a national army of child violinists. According to some estimates, as many as 15 million hopefuls in China — most of them young — are toiling to gain proficiency in this highly competitive skill, and the number is growing. Those unable to make it through the tough entrance exams of the country’s nine overflowing conservatories opt for one of hundreds of private piano schools sprouting all over.
The sheer availability of pianos — one company alone, Pearl River, claims to turn out 280 every day — seems also to have focused many middle-class parents’ aspirations, especially in a country that still enforces a single-child policy. For these people, the incentive to see their kids seated at a keyboard is less about artistry or copying the West than about producing offspring of demonstrable excellence.

Elite Colleges Open New Door to Low-Income Youths

Sara Rimer:

o Mr. Jack, unlike many of his classmates, food stamps are not an abstraction. His family has had to use them in emergencies. His mother raised three children as a single parent and earns $26,000 a year as a school security guard. That is just a little more than half the cost of a year’s tuition, room and board, fees and other expenses at Amherst, which for Mr. Jack’s class was close to $48,000.
So when Mr. Jack, now 22 and a senior, graduates with honors on May 27, he will not just be the first in his family to earn a college degree, but a success story in the effort by Amherst and a growing number of elite colleges to open their doors to talented low-income students.
Concerned that the barriers to elite institutions are being increasingly drawn along class lines, and wanting to maintain some role as engines of social mobility, about two dozen schools–Amherst, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, the University of Virginia, Williams and the University of North Carolina, among them–have pushed in the past few years to diversify economically.

Erin O’Connor has more.