Jim Zellmer – Page 491 – School Information System

Narrowing the Field

Elite athletes now dominate many high school teams. As other sports opportunities shrink, average kids lose out.
Shari Roan:

THE long, sweaty summer practices are over. The pep rallies have begun. Fall sports are underway around the nation.
Cory Harkey, 16, is part of the action. The 6-foot-5, 220-pound junior at Chino Hills High School is symbolic of the elite athlete who has come to dominate interscholastic high school sports. He practices to the point of exhaustion almost daily and plays on private club teams to maintain his star status in several sports. He dreams of a college scholarship in basketball or football, and college scouts undoubtedly will scrutinize his potential during the coming year.
Sara Nael, 17, is not part of any team. A senior at the same school, she won’t go near a volleyball game this fall, having failed to make the team as a freshman. She considered trying out for something else but eventually concluded that playing in high school sports “doesn’t look fun.”
The two students represent what is both positive — and distressing — about the state of youth sports today. High school athletes are fitter, more skilled and better trained than ever before. But these top-notch athletes, say many health and fitness experts, have become the singular focus of the youth sports system — while teenagers of average or low ability no longer warrant attention.

Drumroll Starts for a Yes Vote

Susan Troller:

With Election Day just a month off, the discussion over Madison’s $23.5 million dollar school referendum has been remarkably quiet.
But that changes today and referendum supporters say they are optimistic that this time voters will give a thumbs-up to district building projects.
A grassroots citizen group will start today to assemble and distribute yard signs supporting the referendum. In the next two weeks, the school district will hold four informational sessions at Sennett, Cherokee, Sherman and Jefferson middle schools.
At issue is the three-part question that school district voters will be asked to approve or reject Nov. 7.

Much more, here.

A Profile of the UW’s William Reese

Susan Troller:

When publications like the New York Times want an expert to comment on the big issues facing public schools like testing or immigration, it’s a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor they’re likely to call.
Relatively unknown in his adopted hometown, history and educational policy studies professor William Reese is able offer a long view on these kinds of perennial hot-button issues that resonate across the country, and provoke local debate, too.
In one recent New York Times story about schools cutting back on other subjects to concentrate on math and reading so their students will perform better on nationally mandated testing, Reese explained that President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act has leveraged one of the most abrupt instructional shifts in education history.
…….
But when asked to apply his knowledge to how our Madison schools work, and how the public responds to them, he shrugs off the questions, saying he is only an outside observer. He and his wife, Carol, do not have children; he says any knowledge he has about local school affairs comes only from living in the city and having friends who are teachers in the Madison Metropolitan School District.
“I suspect Madison can be seen as a microcosm of what is going on throughout the rest of the country,” Reese said in a recent interview in his book-lined Bascom Hill office. “There are many extraordinarily well educated people here, and they have very high expectations of what kind of education their children are receiving.”

Reese’s website.

Study says no video games on school nights

Eric Bangeman:

s parents of two children, the older of which is in the first grade, one of the decisions we’ve had to make is how much screen time—TV and computer—the kids get. A new study appearing in the October 2006 issue of Pediatrics suggests that any amount of video gaming and TV is too much, if it happens on a school night.
The results come from a survey of 4,500 midle-school students in New Hampshire and Vermont. Researchers asked the students to rate their own performance in school on a scale ranging from “below average” to “excellent,” instead of looking directly at their grades or other metrics of academic performance. The study also took different parenting styles into account, but did not look at specific household rules covering homework, gaming, and watching TV.

Lessons from Charter Schools

Chester Finn, Jr:

Charter schools have taught us much. Since Minnesota enacted America’s first charter law in 1991, 39 states have followed suit and eager school reformers have created some 4,000 of these independent public schools. About 3,600 are still operating today, enrolling approximately a million kids, 2 percent of all U.S. elementary and secondary pupils. More than a dozen cities–including Detroit, Cleveland, and Milwaukee–now have charter sectors that serve at least one in every six children. These numbers rise annually–and would balloon if the market were able to operate freely, unconstrained by legislative compromises, funding and facilities shortfalls, and local pushback from the school establishment and its political allies.
The first lesson is that the demand for alternative school options for children is intense–and plenty of people and organizations are eager to meet it wherever policy and politics allow them to. In Dayton, Ohio, today, more than a quarter of all kids attend charter schools; in New Orleans (a special case, to be sure) it’s seven out of ten children. Many schools across the nation have waiting lists.
Lesson Two: Though critics warned that charters would “cream” the best-parented, ablest, and most fortunate youngsters, actual enrollments are dominated by poor and minority kids, ex-dropouts, and others with huge education deficits unmet by regular school systems–most often the urban school systems whose residents most urgently need decent alternatives.

A Seattle Summit to Raise Black Achievement Standards and Close Gaps

Seattle Alliance of Black Educators:

To help African American students experience success in school districts and meet the challenges of the state graduation requirements, Seattle Alliance of Black School Educators in partnership with Seattle Public Schools, Pearson Scott Foreman, National Urban Publishing Companies, and other community organizations will host an Educational Summit on October 13 & 14, 2006 at Mercer Middle School in Seattle.
Many African American students have been left behind in the public education system in the state of Washington, and a transformed education system is needed that honors all students in a holistic manner—accounting for their various worldviews, languages, learning styles, cultural heritages, and multiple intelligences. Therefore, it is critical that our parents and communities must partner with schools, churches and other service providers to maximize resources and to improve student learning outcomes.

Seattle School District Does the Math on Surplus Properties

Kathy Mulady:

Preschoolers walk in wiggly, giggly lines through the wide halls of the old Crown Hill Elementary School. They clamber on playground equipment, building up appetites for lunch being prepared in the kitchen.
The Seattle School District closed the doors more than 25 years ago, but these days it has found new life.
As the Small Faces Childhood Development Center, about 180 youngsters duck through the doors during the week for preschool, before- and after-school care and summer programs. There’s ballet and a children’s flamenco class. Community meetings are held in the newly painted classrooms. Basketballs bounce in the gymnasium.
But as the district proposes closing as many as 10 more buildings next year, it also is considering what to do with about two dozen surplus properties it owns, including seven former schools now leased to day care and community-center operators at a discounted rate of $37,000 to more than $60,000 a year.

Better Luck this Time?

Jason Shephard:

On Nov. 7, residents in the Madison Metropolitan School District will vote on a referendum that includes building a new school on the far west side. The total package would hike taxes on an average home by about $29.
Although a similar referendum was defeated in May 2005, this year’s ballot initiative may be the best solution to the growth and school-boundary issues that have dogged the district for more than five years.
Already, several Madison schools, notably Leopold elementary, are severely overcrowded. And city planners expect west-side growth to add 13,000 new dwelling units, twice as many as in the city of Middleton, over the next two decades.
…..
“The referendum is not only about the space issue. It’s sort of about how this community supports the school district,” he says. “The district needs to know from a planning perspective whether the community will help the district meet its bottom line.”
There’s no question that boundary and growth issues have consumed Madison school officials, at the expense of issues regarding achievement, accountability and curriculum. November’s referendum gives citizens the chance to move forward the agenda.

Interesting comments from Carol regarding substantive changes in the Madison School Board’s discussions. Much more on the 11/7/2006 referendum here.
Shephard’s last paragraph succinctly sums up my views on the November question.

For Afghan Girls, Learning Goes on in the Shadows

UW Grad Thomas Barnett:

“For Afghan Girls, Learning Goes On, In the Shadows: Home classes proliferate as insurgents attack schools,” schools,” by Pamela Constable, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 2-8 October 2006, p. 17. 17.

It all starts with educating young girls, the one great predictor of development.
Naturally, in Afghanistan, it is the great consistent target of the Taliban, who have “targeted dozens of schools in the past year, especially those teaching girls.”
The resurrection of schooling, especially that for girls, was heralded as the great advance in post-Taliban Afghanistan. From nowhere, five million kids were in school. Now that tide is receding in areas threatened by the Taliban and across much of the rest of the country–just too dangerous:

Bush: No Child Left Behind Closing Achievement Gap

Theola Labbe:

President Bush said today that the No Child Left Behind education requirements he signed into law four years ago have helped to close the achievement gap and he proposed several changes to the law aimed at assisting teachers and giving parents more school choice.
Speaking at Friendship-Woodridge Elementary and Middle School in Northeast Washington, Bush said that the federal law has been successful because the annual testing in reading and math hold schools accountable for how they teach and what students learn. The law, which is scheduled to be reauthorized next year, requires all students, including special education and learning disabled populations, to be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

The Beginnings of Teach for America

Gillian Gillers:

Kopp didn’t listen. Traveling around the county that summer, she met with potential funders, nonprofit leaders, and school system officials. After securing a seed grant from Exxon Mobil and office space from Morgan Stanley, Kopp hired nearly 20 recent college graduates to help run the program and recruit teachers. By the spring of 1990, the team had selected 500 college seniors and convinced six school districts to hire them. Then Texas billionaire Ross Perot offered Kopp a challenge grant of $500,000, which she had to match three to one. The grant gave Teach For America credibility, and other donors soon emerged with the remaining $1.5 million. The organization trained and placed its first corps class by the fall of 1990.
Today, Teach For America has grown into a hugely successful non-profit organization. This fall, they won a “Social Capitalist Award” sponsored by Fast Company magazine and the Monitor Group. The annual award honors 25 non-profits that use creativity and business smarts to solve social problems.

How the Torrent of Anti-Americanism Affects Teenagers

Jeff Zaslow:

Knowing that America is hated in many corners of the world, some of our best high-school students have a few requests.
Their school curricula require them to study the French Revolution, which began in 1789. Why, they ask, aren’t they also learning about the Iranian Revolution of 1979?
They’re taught foreign languages — lots of verbs and nouns — but not enough about the cultures where these languages flourish. Why, they ask, are they not given more insight into the politics and religions of those countries?
I learned of these and other concerns last week, when I interviewed about 70 students taking advanced-placement government and international-affairs courses at two suburban Detroit schools. These juniors and seniors — they were the 11- and 12-year-olds of Sept. 11, 2001 — had a good sense of the issues threatening the nation they will inherit. Aware that many of their contemporaries overseas are being taught to hate the U.S., they wonder what confrontations lie ahead when their generation reaches adulthood.

Deal is a Lesson in Education Politics

Bob Sipchen:

Six weeks ago, Deshawn Hill and I walked into Pacific Dining Car and caught a glimpse of democracy in action: A.J. Duffy and Robin Kramer having a late evening chat.
Duffy’s the charmingly cocky boss of Southern California’s biggest teachers union. Kramer is the mayor’s charmingly clever chief of staff. I’ll remind you who Hill is later. For now, let’s stick to the boss and the chief.
Kramer tells me the meeting was a coincidental bump-into-each-other thing. But seeing those two together at the city’s power-broker steak palace resonated with a hunch I’d been harboring: All those months of teachers union squawking about Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s plans to take over the Los Angeles Unified School District were mainly for show.
Because he’s a teacher, though, his motives conflict.
Like you, I think good teachers are heroes who deserve more money and respect and smaller classes and more control over what they teach. I understand why many people have a hard time accepting that their kids’ teachers’ interests don’t always overlap with students’ interests. In protecting a teacher’s interests, a union often adds to the bureaucratic bloat.
Since I began reporting this column in January (and in the 17 years I’ve followed my children through L.A. Unified schools) the most righteously frustrated people I’ve met have tended to lash out at two villains: the district bureaucracy and the union to whom so many board members and bureaucrats are beholden.
Even many teachers say privately that they’re disgusted that unions erect barricades against merit pay, charter schools and administrators’ ability to move experienced teachers to the schools at which they’re most needed. Hear enough stories about just how hard it is to fire an utterly incompetent teacher, and you begin to wonder why the public tolerates unelected union power brokers in their children’s lives at all.

Mike Antonucci has much more, including notes from Racine here.

NYC Considers Plan to Let Outsiders Run Schools

David M. Herszenhorn:

In what would be the biggest change yet to the way New York City’s school system is administered, officials are considering plans to hire private groups at taxpayer expense to manage scores of public schools.
The money paid to the private groups would replace millions of dollars in grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which supported dozens of these groups in opening more than 180 small schools in the city since 2003.
The four-year grants, typically worth $100,000 a year per school, will run out for more than 50 schools in June.
The move would further Chancellor Joel I. Klein’s earlier efforts to tear apart the traditional bureaucracy of the nation’s largest school system, giving principals greater autonomy and increasing the role of the private sector. It could put private entities like the College Board, the Urban Assembly and Expeditionary Learning-Outward Bound on contract to manage networks of schools as soon as the 2007-8 school year.

Demoting Advanced Placement

Joe Berger:

This town’s public high school, well known for turning out some of the nation’s finest college prospects, is contemplating a step that would seem to betray its competitive reputation: eliminating Advanced Placement courses.
Scarsdale High School is a place where 70 percent of the 1,500 students take an A.P. course, and many take five and six to impress college admissions officers with their willingness to challenge themselves. But like a few private schools, Scarsdale is concluding that the A.P. pile-on is helping turn the teenage years into a rat race where learning becomes a calculated means to an end rather than a chance for in-depth investigation, imagination, even some fun to go along with all that amassing of knowledge.
“People nationwide are recognizing what an inhuman obstacle course college admission is, and a big element of that is A.P.,” said Bruce Hammond, director of college counseling at Sandia Preparatory School in Albuquerque, which dropped A.P. courses a few years ago.

11/7/2006 Referendum Notes & Links

We’re closing in on the 11/7/2006 election, including the Madison School District’s Referendum. Kristian Knutsen notes that a petition was circulated at Tuesday evening’s Madison City Council meeting regarding the referendum. Johnny Winston, Jr. posted a few words on the referendum over at the daily page forum.
This will be an interesting election. Nancy and I support the referendum question (and hope that we see progress on some curriculum issues such as math and West’s one size fits all English 10, among others). However, as Phil M points out, there are a number of good questions that taxpayers will ask as they prepare to vote. I previously outlined what might be on voter’s minds this November.

“Anyone Being Educated on the Upcoming Referendum?”

The Daily Page Forum, where Stuart Levitan announced that Art Rainwater and Johnny Winston, Jr. will be on Madison City Cable Channel 12 October 11 from 7 to 8:00p.m.:

It’s not a debate on the referendum, it’s a report on the state of the school system. The referendum will be one of the topics. So, no, not planning on inviting any referendum opponents. But they are welcome, nay, encouraged, to call.

I asked what “Might be on voter’s minds” a few months ago as they consider the 11/7/2006 referendum. Inevitably, voters will take their views on our $332M+ 24,490 student school district with them to the ballot “box”. These views, I think, are generally positive but for math , report cards and some of the other issues I mentioned in August.

Art Rainwater’s Memo on School Violence

Madison School District Superintendent Art Rainwater:

By now, I’m sure you know that last Friday a 15 year old boy entered Weston School in Cazenovia (Sauk County) and allegedly shot and killed the principal. This incident has stirred in all of us the uneasy realization that this can happen anywhere, at anytime. We mourn the loss of the principal and empathize with the staff, students, families and community members of that school district. We also feel tremendous responsibility for our own students and staff. Last week, our entire staff spent a day talking about the crucial nature that relationships play in our schools. While the primary focus was on issues of race and equity, we also know that we were talking about any student who doesn’t feel connected to the school and valued by an adult. Last Friday after we heard about what happened at Weston High School, we sent to our staff the following reminders:

Notes & Links:

Channel3000
Clusty News | Google News | Microsoft Live | Yahoo News
Rafael Gomez organized a Gangs & School Violence Forum last September [Audio / video / Notes], attended by all Madison High School Principals and local law enforcement representatives. East High grad Luis Yudice also participated. Yudice is the Madison School District’s coordinator of safety and security.
Many more links
Johnny Winston, Jr.:

Message from Johnny Winston, Jr., President of the Madison Board of Education
On behalf of the Madison Board of Education, we send our heartfelt condolences to the Klang family, Weston School district and Cazenovia community.
In response to this tragedy as well as recent incidents in Green Bay and Colorado, Superintendent Art Rainwater has sent a message to all employees of the Madison Metropolitan School District outlining strategies and effective communication tools between students and adults. He wrote, “The most effective tool we have for preventing violent behaviors at school is building and maintaining a climate of trusting relationships and communication between and among students and adults.” He has also indicated that the Madison Police will increase their presence at our schools for the next week.
We know that the Madison community joins our school board in support of the Klang family, Weston School district and Cazenovia community. Our thoughts and prayers are with them during this difficult period.

(more…)

Ten Ways to Get A’s in College

Jay Matthews:

Getting A’s was not high on my to-do list. To this day I don’t believe getting good grades in college is as important as getting good grades in high school. High school, for most people these days, is about getting ready for college. You cannot do that if you do not apply yourself to your studies. College, on the other hand, is about getting ready for life. Unless you have your heart set on med school or law school or some other form of grad-school trauma, your extracurricular activities in college are often more important than your courses.
But getting A’s is better than getting B’s, B’s are better than C’s, and so on. For those who want to get the best grades they can in the time they have allotted for study, a new book, “Professors’ Guide to Getting Good Grades in College,” provides wonderfully useful and easily digestible wisdom.

At the Head of Some Classes, Desks Dismissed

Jay Matthews:

“I just never figured out how on earth to teach sitting down,” said Dorman, 58, a veteran teacher at Kenmore Middle School in Arlington County. She calls herself “a walker and a stalker.” She carries what she needs in her pockets and keeps students in what she considers a useful state of alertness because they are never quite sure where she is going to be.
Here and there, a small but growing number of teachers is following Dorman’s example, educators say, abandoning the traditional classroom power center. To them, a desk is really a ball and chain, distancing them from students.

“I Teach to the Test”

Matthew Matera:

Like most K-12 teachers in America, I work in a world of standardized tests these days. I analyze state standards and study breakdowns of my students’ test performance. I think about the expectations of the state as I plan lessons, and I spend time explicitly teaching test-taking strategies.
So, yes, I admit it. I teach to the test.
The more important question then becomes, is that a problem?
I don’t think it is, but the issue is hardly uncontroversial.
Michael Winerip, the former New York Times education columnist, registered a typical complaint recently about the No Child Left Behind Act: “Because teachers’ judgment and standards are supposedly not reliable, the law substitutes a battery of state tests that are supposed to tell the real truth about children’s academic progress.” Jonathan Kozol, a best-selling writer, sent a mass e-mail earlier this year calling on educators “to resist the testing mania.”

Remaking the New Orleans School System

Larry Abramson:

Today, there are only about one-third as many students attending the New Orleans public school system as there were before Hurricane Katrina. The system is recovering from the storm, and from a state takeover to address years of failing test scores. As a result, it has been completely remade, and is now being run by a patchwork of charter school organizers, and state and local administrators.

Study: Weekday TV viewing harms class performance

Carla Johnson:

Parents now have science to back them up when they say, “Turn off the TV. It’s a school night.”
Middle school students who watch TV or play video games during the week do worse in school, a new study finds, but weekend viewing and gaming does not affect school performance much.
“On weekdays, the more they watched, the worse they did,” said study co-author Dr. Iman Sharif of Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx. “They could watch a lot on weekends, and it didn’t seem to correlate with doing worse in school.”
Children whose parents allowed them to watch R-rated movies also did worse in class, and for boys, that effect was especially strong. The findings are based on a survey of 4,500 students in 15 New Hampshire and Vermont middle schools. The study appears in the October issue of Pediatrics.

Looking Behind Bad Decisions

Q & A with Max Bazerman:

Why is it that the U.S. federal government allows local communities to give tax dollars to wealthy sports team owners rather than to create better benefits for citizens? Why are organ-donor programs constrained to the point where thousands of Americans die needlessly each year? Why did the South African government take a stand against an effective AIDS treatment drug?
The inability of government to make wise tradeoffs—give up small losses for much larger gain—has been investigated by HBS professor Max Bazerman and his research colleagues for years. Much of this work used economic science and political science to explain drivers behind the crafting of public policy. Now Bazerman and coauthors Jonathan Baron and Katherine Shonk are looking into the psychology of decision making to provide a fuller explanation. Their paper, “Enlarging the Societal Pie through Wise Legislation: A Psychological Perspective,” has been accepted for publication in Perspectives on Psychological Science later this year.
What they found was that psychological science does indeed help explain how governmental decision making is influenced by such forces as parochialism, nationalism, and dysfunctional competition, while also providing tools that foster rational decision making.

One in Ten

Richard Edelman:

“Did you know that one in ten teenage girls in Washington, D.C. are HIV-positive? Did you know that one in twenty adults in the District of Columbia have AIDS? It is an outrage. Those are Third World types of incidence rates and it is happening in our nation’s capital. All of the attention being given to the AIDS epidemic overseas is long overdue but what about the crisis we have at home?”
I probed her [Sheila Johnson] for an explanation. She suggested three main factors:

A Macho Male Culture and Lack of Female Ego — Young girls feel obliged to have sexual relations with their partners. Girls lack the confidence to say no or to insist on the use of a condom.
A Cycle of Despair — The poor economic prospects, the large number of single parent families, the prevalence of drugs and tottering school system give little hope even to an ambitious child. Some young girls want to bear a child as a sign of being “grown-up.”
Lack of Information –The basics of sex education do not seem to be getting through to the target audience.

I asked Ms. Johnson what could be done to ameliorate the situation. Here were a few of her thoughts:

Reality Check 2006: How Principals and Superintendents See Public Education Today

Jean Johnson, Ana Maria Arumi and Amber Ott [350K PDF]:

It’s probably natural for leaders of organizations to be upbeat about their institutions, and the nation’s school children might not be well-served by superintendents and principals who see public schools as places of disappointment, failure and ineptitude. Even so, the positive, almost buoyant outlook of school leaders nationwide captured in this fourth installment of Reality Check 2006 may come as something of a surprise to reformers and critics, including regulators enforcing No Child Left Behind. In many respects, local school leaders seem to operate on a very different wavelength from many of those aiming to reform public schools. The two groups have different assumptions about how much change today’s public schools really need. Even when they see the same problems, they often seem to strive for different solutions.
To most public school superintendents – and principals to a lesser extent – local schools are already in pretty good shape. In fact, more than half of the nation’s superintendents consider local schools to be “excellent.” Most superintendents (77 percent) and principals (79 percent) say low academic standards are not a serious problem where they work. Superintendents are substantially less likely than classroom teachers to believe that too many students get passed through the system without learning. While 62 percent of teachers say this is a “very” or “somewhat serious” problem in local schools, just 27 percent of superintendents say the same.

Some highlights:

93% of superintendents, and 80% of principals, think public schools offer a better education than in the past, and most (86% and 82%) think the material is harder.
Despite the call from the business community for a great focus on science/math, 59% of superintendents and 66% say that the statement “kids are not taught enough science and math” is not a serious problem in their schools.
77% of superintendents and 79% of principals say that the statement “academic standards are too low, and kids are not expected to learn enough” is not a serious problem in their schools.
51% of superintendents say that local schools are excellent; 43% say they are good.
Only 27% of superintendents, compared with 62% of teachers, say it’s a serious problem that too many students get passed through the system without learning.
76% of superintendents and 59% of principals, compared with 33% of high school teachers, say that students graduating from middle school have the reading, writing, and math skills needed to succeed in high school.

Via Brett.

Kindergarten Prep: When Parents Keep Kids Home an Extra Year

Janine DeFao:

When other kids their age started kindergarten last month, 5-year-old Caitlin and Jackson Pilisuk just waited on the sidelines.
The Oakland twins were eligible, but their parents and preschool teachers decided they weren’t ready “emotionally to deal with the rigors of kindergarten,” said their mother, Philippa Barron. So the twins will stay in preschool and start kindergarten at age 6.
Evan Swihart, on the other hand, is happily plugging away in his Walnut Creek kindergarten class at age 4.
“After a few days, we got the sense that he’s in the right spot after a whole year of worrying and fretting about it,” said his mother, Christine.

The Education Issue

Michael Grunwald:

To some extent, the controversy over Reading First reflects an older controversy over reading, pitting “phonics” advocates such as Doherty against “whole language” practitioners such as Johnson.
The administration believes in phonics, which emphasizes repetitive drills that teach children to sound out words. Johnson and other phonics skeptics try to teach the meaning and context of words as well. Reading First money has been steered toward states and local districts that go the phonics route, largely because the Reading First panels that oversaw state applications were stacked with department officials and other phonics fans. “Stack the panel?” Doherty joked in one e-mail. “I have never *heard* of such a thing . . . .” When Reid Lyon, who designed Reading First, complained that a whole-language proponent had received an invitation to participate on an evaluation panel, a top department official replied: “We can’t un-invite her. Just make sure she is on a panel with one of our barracuda types.”
Doherty bragged to Lyon about pressuring Maine, Mississippi and New Jersey to reverse decisions to allow whole-language programs in their schools: “This is for your FYI, as I think this program-bashing is best done off or under the major radar screens.” Massachusetts and North Dakota were also told to drop whole-language programs such as Rigby Literacy, and districts that didn’t do so lost funding. “Ha, ha–Rigby as a CORE program?” Doherty wrote in one internal e-mail. “When pigs fly!”
Said Bruce Hunter, a lobbyist for the American Association of School Administrators: “It’s been obvious all along that the administration knew exactly what it wanted.”
But it wasn’t just about phonics.
Success for All is the phonics program with the strongest record of scientifically proved results, backed by 31 studies rated “conclusive” by the American Institutes for Research. And it has been shut out of Reading First. The nonprofit Success for All Foundation has shed 60 percent of its staff since Reading First began; the program had been growing rapidly, but now 300 schools have dropped it. Betsy Ammons, a principal in North Carolina, watched Success for All improve reading scores at her school, but state officials made her switch to traditional textbooks to qualify for the new grants.

No Child Left Behind Votes: Congress 381 Ayes, 41 Noes 12 NV (Tammy Baldwin voted Aye) | Senate 87 Yea, 10 Nay, 3 Not voting (Feingold Nay, Kohl Yea)

Boulder’s $296.8M Maintenance Referendum

Amy Bounds:

Supporters of Boulder Valley’s measure say the hefty price tag is the result of cuts to the district’s maintenance budget, along with an average building age of 43 years. The combination, they say, has led to schools that are in bad shape.
“We have a lot of old buildings,” school board member Ken Roberge said. “We’ve put our money into the classrooms. We’ve made the trade-off. At some point, you have to do renovation.”
But opponents are skeptical.
Fred Gluck, a school volunteer whose children went through Boulder Valley schools, said he’s campaigning against the measure because he no longer trusts the district to keep its promises.
“I support the schools, the teachers and the kids, but I do not support the district administration,” he said. “It’s a lack of accountability, lack of clear oversight and a lot of money.”
The last Boulder Valley bond issue totaled $63.7 million and was approved in 1998. Voters also approved an $89 million bond issue in 1994 and a $45 million bond issue in 1989.
In the past few years, voters also have said “yes” to a $15 million-a-year tax increase to boost the district’s operating revenue and a transportation tax increase that frees up money for new computers.

Boulder Valley School District links & information.

‘Special education’ label covers wide variety of students

Karen Rivedal:

Madison educators said people must be careful not to label all special education students as violent just because the suspect in Friday’s shooting of a rural Wisconsin principal was in special education classes
Special education is broadly defined, they noted. It can be any kind of mental or physical disability that affects a student’s learning, from mild to severe, including speech and language problems, autism and emotional disturbances.
“Just because a child is a behavioral problem doesn’t mean that child is going to commit this kind of incident at all,” said Art Rainwater, superintendent of the Madison School District.
“There are thousands of children throughout the U.S. who have behavioral problems who don’t resort to violence.”

The End of Literacy

Bill McCoy:

In a comment on my post Does Reading Really Matter?, bowerbird challenged me to name names on who’s arguing the position that “the end of literacy is nigh, and that’s OK”.

Well William Crossman for one is practically exuberant about post-literacy:

By 2020, electronically-developed countries will be well on their way to becoming oral cultures… Reading, writing, spelling, alphabets, pictographic written languages, written grammar rules, and all other written notational systems will be rapidly exiting the scene

More Clout Sought for Social Studies Curriculum

Ian Shapira:

This week, the Virginia Consortium of Social Studies Specialists and College Educators launched a campaign here to get its educational niche a more prominent place in the law as Congress begins to consider revisions in the coming year. The group aims to include social studies test scores in federal formulas used to rate schools.
As the law now stands, the group said Tuesday, subjects such as history, government and geography sometimes get short shrift while schools increase time spent on reading and math.

Kudos To Harris For Taking School Back

Jenni Gile:

As a former East High School student who lived through four years of closed campus for lunch, and a parent of current East High students — one a freshman, the other a junior — I applaud East High Principal Alan Harris.
I think next year he should be brazen and close campus for lunch for all students, unless they are involved in an off-site program. Ease the hectic lunch schedule of the upperclassmen and set an example for the rest of the city.
Talk about taking back the school! This principal is the best one we have seen since Milt McPike. We are cheering for him in our home.

Wanted: Strong Crop of School Candidates

Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

Madison was treated to two lively and competitive races for School Board last spring.
Voters deserve more of the same next spring.
But that will require another strong group of candidates to step forward.
At least one seat on the board will be open because board member Ruth Robarts is retiring after a decade of service. Board president Johnny Winston Jr. has announced he’ll seek re-election. Member Shwaw Vang has not yet said if he’ll seek another term.

Montessori students outperform traditionally taught students academically and socially

Erin Richards:

A study of Milwaukee schoolchildren published today in the journal Science underscores what proponents of Montessori education have believed for decades: that Montessori students might be better prepared academically and socially than students in traditional classrooms.
Among the findings: 5-year-old Montessori students had better reading, math and social skills than 5-year-old non-Montessori children, and 12-year-old Montessori students wrote essays that were more creative and sophisticated than those by 12-year-old non-Montessori students. The study tested two groups of Milwaukee Public Schools students: those who by luck of a lottery got into Craig Montessori on the city’s northwest side, and those who didn’t.
It reaffirms the benefits of a system started by Maria Montessori 100 years ago, local administrators said, while also boosting the reputation of a city that has increasingly made public school Montessori options available to a poor, urban population.

Meet the New Principal

Jason Shepherd:

Good principals must satisfy interest groups and carry out the goals of policymakers. They must master the bureaucracy, feed their teachers’ energy, inspire students and families. They must blend nimbleness with strategic planning, instant pragmatism with sustained idealism.
“The quality of a principal is the single most important factor in a school’s success,” says Superintendent Art Rainwater.
Talk about pressure.
Patrick Delmore, the former principal at O’Keeffe Middle School, knows how hard it can be.
“You might intellectually know the many facets of the job,” he says. “But even if you work pretty efficiently, you find out quickly how important it is to work those extra hours.”

Dissecting the Dollars: MMSD Referendum Nears

WKOW-TV:

The five-minute video, available on MMSD’s Web site, explains why there is a referendum, and how a yes-vote impacts taxpayers’ wallets. Board member Carol Carstensen said it’s intended to be shown at various meetings. “In parent groups, neighborhood groups, service organizations, anyone who wants to find out the facts about the referendum question,” she said.
Since tax dollars produced it, Carstensen said the video is simply factual, not promotional. In places, she said the numbers are quite exact. For instance, Carstensen said when it shows the impact on the average home, the dollar amounts include an extra 60-percent the district has pay to help fund poor school districts in the state. “That includes the negative aid, the way in which the state finances work,” she said.
Watching the district’s finances, and the video closely, will be Don Severson. He heads the group Active Citizens for Education, which doesn’t take a position on the referendum, but seeks to clarify information for voters. Severson will questions other dollar amounts, like the lump sum $23 million being advertised on the district’s Web site. “What they aren’t saying is the other extra 60-percent which amounts then to $37 million,” he said.
Severson said he’ll spend the next six weeks dissecting similar numbers in this video. “Trying to make sure it’s as complete as possible and as accurate as possible.” He said voters should still watch out for the district’s official enrollement numbers for the year, which were taken last Friday. Severson said voters will need that information, since two of the three parts of the question concern overcrowding.

Much more here.

Kindergarten Prep: The Academic Push — How Early is Too Early?

Ilene Lelchuk:

When Dylan and Matthew Goode bounded into the Score Educational Center in Alameda, Dylan, 6, asked for a turn with the ladybug-shaped computer mouse. And Matthew, 4, wanted to know when he could shoot hoops, the reward for finishing each hourlong lesson.
Once in front of computer screens with headphones on, they slumped in their chairs, swung their legs and talked back at animated math and phonics sessions.
The academic push now starts before kindergarten. Parents worried about the rigors of elementary school enroll their tots in tutoring programs and academic preschools or sit them in front of videos that promise to teach children as young as 15 months their ABC basics in a few short weeks.

Proficient

Joanne Jacobs:

AB 2975 would have labeled California students “proficient” if they were on track to pass the state’s graduation exam, which requires partial mastery of 7th and 8th grade math and 9th and 10th grade English by the end of 12th grade. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s veto message was succinct.

Redefining the level of academic achievement necessary to designate students as ‘proficient’ does not make the students proficient.”

Not unless the word means “no more than four years below grade level.”

There’s been some local discussion regarding the redefinition of success here and here.

Seattle’s School “Choice” & Transportation Costs

Jessica Blanchard:

The district’s current “open choice” enrollment policy allows students to attend virtually any public school in the city. Students who live near their school are expected to get there on their own, while free busing is provided for all other middle and high school students, and for elementary school students who attend a school within the large geographic “cluster” in which they live.
It’s a popular plan with many parents, but it’s more complex than those of neighboring districts, and more expensive: The district annually spends an average of $560.86 per student, far more than other large districts in the state. About half the district’s roughly $25 million annual student transportation cost is paid by the state; local property-tax money covers most of the rest.
With Seattle schools facing a multimillion-dollar structural deficit, officials have said they can’t afford to maintain the status quo for much longer. By scaling back the system and offering parents fewer choices of where to send their child to school, the district could see major financial savings — as much as a couple of million dollars a year.

Extending the Class Day

Ledyard King:

Demands for more tests and more academic rigor are spurring schools to consider something that makes most students shudder: more time in class.
Massachusetts is paying for longer days at 10 schools this year. Minnesota is considering whether to add five weeks to the school calendar. A smattering of schools nationwide, including schools in Iowa, North Carolina and California, already have increased the time some students spend in class.
The argument that students should spend more time in school isn’t new.
“A Nation at Risk,” the landmark 1983 report dissecting America’s education challenges, recommended that schools run seven hours (up from about six today) and 200 to 220 days (up from a current average of 180) to accommodate more rigorous instruction. KIPP charter schools, started in 1994, rely on longer days and Saturday school to teach students.
But the argument is gaining support as increased math and English testing required by the federal No Child Left Behind law has forced schools to focus on the basics at the expense of the arts, physical education and recess.

Hospital, Schools Develop Curriculum

Michael Alison Chandler:

Loudoun County School Superintendent Edgar B. Hatrick III announced a partnership this week between the school system and Inova Loudoun Hospital to develop courses that will give more high school students hands-on training in medical professions.
The Claude Moore Charitable Foundation has given the venture a push with a $150,000 donation, which was presented to the partners before Hatrick’s “State of Education” address at a Chamber of Commerce meeting Tuesday morning.
The training programs could offer a solution to staffing shortages at hospitals and become a national model, said J. Hamilton Lambert, executive director of the Fairfax County-based foundation.

“Robarts Served a Valuable Role”

Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

The taxpayers of Madison owe Ruth Robarts a big thank you.
Robarts has served on the Madison School Board for a decade, asking pesky questions about how tax dollars are spent and how Madison children are educated.
What she lacked in tact she made up for in candor and an unflinching commitment to changing a school system that, while strong, is too often thin-skinned and resistant to scrutiny.

Perhaps a bit early for the eulogy, but well said. Much more on Ruth here and here

2 Bushes on No Child Left Behind

Sam Dillon:

Over the years since, Governor Bush has mostly held his tongue about the president’s very different law, even as detractors of all stripes have attacked it.
But in recent weeks — perhaps seeking to cement his legacy as a school-policy expert as he prepares to leave office — Governor Bush has been speaking out about the federal law, mixing dollops of praise with measured criticisms — and taking an occasional potshot. He has been caustic, for instance, about the requirement that 100 percent of the nation’s students be proficient in reading and math by 2014.
“I mean perfection is not going to happen,” Mr. Bush said Sept. 12 at a news conference in Orlando, arguing that achievement targets are important but that unrealistic ones discourage educators. “We’re all imperfect under God’s watchful eye, and it’s impossible to achieve it.”

Top-flight colleges fail civics, study says

Tanya Schevitz:

Seniors at UC Berkeley, the nation’s premier public university, got an F in their basic knowledge of American history, government and politics in a new national survey, and students at Stanford University didn’t do much better, getting a D.
Out of 50 schools surveyed, Cal ranked 49th and Stanford 31st in how well they are increasing student knowledge about American history and civics between the freshman and senior years. And they’re not alone among major universities in being fitted for a civics dunce cap.
Other poor performers in the study were Yale, Duke, Brown and Cornell universities. Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore was the tail-ender behind Cal, ranking 50th. The No. 1 ranking went to unpretentious Rhodes College in Memphis.

Full report can be found at www.americancivicliteracy.org

My high school government teacher, a Vietnam vet, drilled (drilled!) our government’s structure, mechanics and history into my brain.

Public Schools Open Their Doors To Autism

Kathleen Carroll:

The growing number of children identified as autistic — and the steep cost of educating them — is fueling a boom in public school programs.
In Bergenfield, a dozen preschool students are attending the inaugural class of the TriValley Academy, a collaborative effort with New Milford and Dumont. Districts including Leonia and West Paterson also opened new autism classrooms this month.
Existing programs are growing quickly. Hawthorne, Paterson and Teaneck have added classes. A two-year-old program for teenagers run by the Bergen County Special Services School District grew 50 percent this fall.
Public awareness of the disorder is at an all-time high, and more children are being classified as autistic under special-education rules. Plus, the state’s stellar reputation for autism programs has attracted families from all over the country, creating demand for more services.

Madison Kindergarten Student Walks Away From School

WKOW-TV:

A five year old kindergarten student at Lowell Elementary School failed to board his school bus at dismissal and was discovered by the staff of a nearby youth center.
“I don’t feel comfortable that children don’t get on their transportation, ” Atwood Youth Center staff member Kristin Bartell told 27 News.
Bartell told 27 News a staff member discovered the boy had joined children from the Center’s after school program as those children were escorted from the school to the center.
“The child indicated he didn’t want to jump the bus and he didn’t want to go home,” Bartell said.
The distance between the school and the center includes a busy, commercial stretch of Atwood Avenue with steady traffic.

Students Aren’t Interchangeable

Patrick Welsh (A high school english teacher):

One of the biggest concerns of parents for the new school year is this: What kind of kids are in my child’s classroom? The answer to this question is particularly difficult for parents of average students, the most forgotten group today.
All parents want their children to be with the nice kids, the bright and well-behaved types who will pull classes up, rather than with kids who will drag them down. In big, economically and ethnically diverse high schools such as mine, T.C. Williams in Alexandria, Va., where there is enormous variation in academic abilities, average kids run the risk of ending up in one of two tracks: in classes full of students with weak skills and lousy attitudes or in so-called advanced courses where they find themselves in over their heads.
A major part of the problem is the anti-tracking movement, which began in the mid-1980s. Since then, tracking has become to education what abortion and gay marriage are to politics — an incendiary topic with fanatics on both sides. So-called progressive teachers and administrators, whose mantra is “every child can learn,” want to do away with tracking.
Good teachers, and fancy sounding course labels such as Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate, are supposed to raise the level of all students no matter how varied their skills or abilities. In truth, social engineering — mixing of races and ethnic groups in classes — is what many administrators really prize, while giving lip service to academic rigor.
On the other end of the tracking wars are fanatical parents — usually white, in my experience — who think their kids are geniuses, who must be protected from less talented kids and who are entitled to every advantage and resource the school system has to offer.

Joanne has more.

Reading First Curriculum Review

Reading First, subject to a scathing economic/lobbying audit recently was also just reviewed in this report from the Center for Education Policy [Kathleen Kennedy Manzo] [Full Report 176K PDF]:

“Participating schools and districts have made many changes in reading curriculum, instruction, assessment, and scheduling,” the report by the Washington-based Center on Education Policy says. “Many districts have expanded Reading First instructional programs and assessment systems to non-Reading First schools.”
Titled “Keeping Watch on Reading First,” the Sept. 20 report by the research and advocacy group is based on a 2005 survey of all 50 states and a nationally representative sample of some 300 school districts in the federal Title I program, as well as case studies of 38 of those districts and selected schools.
Some 1,700 districts and more than 5,600 schools receive grants under Reading First, which was authorized by the No Child Left Behind Act.
While hard data, such as test-score comparisons, are still not available, the survey results show that “with scientifically based research, strict requirements [for following research findings], and substantial funding, you can bring about results,” said CEP President Jack Jennings.

Rotherham has more.

So Many Grading Scales, What’s an Admissions Director to Do?

Valerie Strauss:

Admissions director Richard Martinez faces a mishmash of grading systems every time he sits down to review freshman applications at Ohio’s College of Wooster.
He sees transcripts with grade-point averages based on a scale where an A is worth 4 points and others where an A is 4.3 points or 7 — or more — depending on the supposed difficulty of a course. One high school has five grading scales.
“We have found that it is incredibly difficult to find out what a GPA really means,” said Martinez, a former high school teacher. “That’s one reason that we travel to high schools to learn the differences in what an A means at each. We have to know.”

What Role Colleges Play in Career Success Stirs Debate

Carol Hymowitz:

ven some educators who have headed small schools concede the Ivies, with their large endowments, have an edge. Dr. William Hamm, president of the Foundation for Independent Higher Education in Washington, D.C., and former president of Waldorf College in Iowa, writes, “If a student asked me whether to enroll at Wisconsin, Waldorf or Harvard, I’d tell him or her they’d be foolish to pass up the opportunity for Harvard.”
But Scott Albert, a New Jersey educational consultant, says that after 20 years as an educator, he has “long believed that the college admission process is one of the great lies perpetuated by educators. It dangles a motivational worm in front of young people as a way to get them to work harder, but not necessarily learn more.” In the end, he says, “it breeds fear and rejection into a majority of young people while offering a false sense of security to the few who are accepted.”
David Curran believes in another key to success altogether. “In my own experience with several Fortune 500 companies,” he writes, “I have found the best leaders (versus managers) are individuals who have had to deal with some form of adversity (no money, single parent situations, etc.) and have developed mechanisms to transform those challenges into opportunities — regardless of what school they attended.”

Audio: Education Secretary Margaret Spellings

National Press Club.

Pro November 7 Referendum Madison CAST website is live.

www.madisoncast.org. I’ve also added it to the election page.

“They’re All Federal Educators Now”

Interesting words from the Cato Institute:

For decades, conservatives stood against big-government intrusions into American education. They defended local control of schooling, championed parental choice, and pushed to abolish the federal Department of Education. But then, tragedy struck: Republicans took power in Washington, and conservatives suddenly learned to love big government. Indeed, some are now so enamored of it that they are proposing what was once unthinkable: having the federal government set curricular standards for every …

Panel Calls for College Database

Morning Edition:

A commission assembled by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings finds that college is too expensive. The panel says students and parents would benefit from a common database that explains what different schools offer.

One day, I hope that a similar searchable database is available for parents seeking K-12 information locally.

Madison School Board HR Committee: Health Care Costs Discussion

Ruth Robarts, Chair of the Madison School Board’s HR Committee held a meeting last night to discuss health care costs.

Watch the proceedings, or listen [mp3 audio]

Robert Butler’s article is well worth reading “How Can This Continue: Negotating Health Insurance Changes“

Parent KJ Jakobson’s remarks, notes and links related to health care costs followed the May, 2005 referenda where two out of three initiatives lost. Local voters will determine the fate of one referendum question this November 7, 2006 (in three parts). Much more on health care here.

No Teacher Left Behind

Opinion Journal:

Schools of education have gotten bad grades before. Yet there are some truly shocking statistics about teacher training in this week’s report from the Education Schools Project. According to “Educating School Teachers,” three-quarters of the country’s 1,206 university-level schools of education don’t have the capacity to produce excellent teachers. More than half of teachers are educated in programs with the lowest admission standards (often accepting 100% of applicants) and with “the least accomplished professors.” When school principals were asked to rate the skills and preparedness of new teachers, only 40% on average thought education schools were doing even a moderately good job.
The Education Schools Project was begun in 2001, with foundation funding, to analyze how America trains its educators and to offer constructive criticism. Its report card this week is significant for two reasons. First, it is based on four years of broad and methodical research, including surveys of school principals and of the deans, faculty members and graduates of education schools. In addition, researchers studied programs and practices at 28 institutions. No matter how many establishment feathers get ruffled by the results of these inquiries, miffed educators can’t easily brush off the basic findings: There are glaring flaws and gaps in our teacher-training system.
The report’s most stunning revelation–to outsiders at least–is that nobody knows what makes a good teacher today. Mr. Levine compares the training universe to “Dodge City.” There is an “unruly” mix of approaches, chiefly because there is no consensus on how long teachers should study, for instance, or whether they should concentrate on teaching theory or mastering subject matter. Wide variations in curricula, and fads–like the one that produced the now-discredited “fuzzy math”–make things worse. Compare such chaos with the training for professions such as law or medicine, where, Mr. Levine reminds us, nobody is unleashed on the public without meeting a universally acknowledged requisite body of knowledge and set of skills.

Notes & Links on Reading First

Andrew Rotherham:

Title I Monitor is all over it here. Quick reax: First, this is going to walk on the message the Secretary was hoping to get out next week in her big speech. Second, harder to argue that Jack Jennings is in the tank for Democrats now, here is his recent evaluation praising Reading First! Finally, politically, this could set the issue of good reading instruction back a good bit, and that’s seriously a real shame.

Joanne has more. Local notes & links.

The Ballad of Big Mike

Michael Lewis:

When he did this, Mitchell opened the book for him. She didn’t care much about football, but she fairly quickly became attached to Michael. There was just something about him that made you want to help him. He tried so hard and for so little return. “One night it wasn’t going so well, and I got frustrated,” Mitchell says, “and he said to me, ‘Miss Sue, you have to remember I’ve only been going to school for two years.”’
His senior year he made all A’s and B’s. It nearly killed him, but he did it. The Briarcrest academic marathon, in which Michael started out a distant last and had instantly fallen farther behind, came to a surprising end: in a class of 157 students, he finished 154th. He had caught up to and passed three of his classmates. When Sean saw the final report card, he turned to Michael with a straight face and said, “You didn’t lose; you just ran out of time.”

From Lewis’s new book: The Blind Side.
Jason Kottke has more.

Baraboo Referendum Loss (2nd Round) Notes

Christina Beam:

Supporters of a five-year, $7.5 million school referendum — who appeared to have made no headway in their campaign since the same referendum question failed six months ago — were devastated by Tuesday night’s defeat.
When the same referendum was on the ballot April 4, voters rejected it by 64 votes, or 1 percent. Last week, with only 11 fewer voters weighing in, the measure failed by about 2 percent, or 135 votes.
“Obviously, we need to be doing something different than what we are because we’re not connecting with people we need to connect with,” School Board President Kevin Vodak said.

Links:

People in Support of Students [Pro] | Clusty search | No home page
Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility [Con] | Clusty search | Home page
Baraboo School District

The Madison School District has a three part (one question) referendum on this November’s ballot (11/7).

Hands-on Science Brings Deforest Teacher Kudos

Ellen Williams-Masson:

The mock forensics exercise is one of many hands-on approaches that fifth-grade science teacher Anne Tredinnick uses to illustrate the scientific method and share a love of science with her pupils.
Tredinnick has been named the Middle School Teacher of the Year by the Department of Public Instruction and is under consideration to be Wisconsin’s representative in the National Teacher of the Year program.
A state selection committee picks four educators from a pool of 86 Herb Kohl Education Foundation teacher fellows for the Teacher of the Year awards, choosing representatives from elementary school, middle school, high school and special services. The other three teachers selected are Terry Kaldhusdal of Oconomowoc for the elementary level, Carl Hader of Grafton for the high school level, and Rebecca Marine of Menomonie for special services.

Hope after Katrina: New Orleans Public Schools

Kathryn Newmark & Veronique De Rugy:

According to the plan’s “educational network model,” the school system would include a mix of charter, contract, and system-run schools, organized in small “networks” of similar schools. The Algiers Charter School Association, for example, could be one network within the larger school system.
All schools will have considerable autonomy—including control over staffing, the authority to set their own budgets, and the freedom to offer extended school days or longer school years—but will be held accountable for results, and funds will follow students as they choose the schools that best meet their needs. A network manager will provide support and accountability for each network of schools. A “lean” district office will focus on policymaking instead of top-down operational decisions, including a small “strategy group” that will set learning standards and ensure the equitable allocation of resources, but will not mandate teaching methods or control school spending. The other major component of the district organization will be a new central support-services office that will provide optional assistance to help schools obtain services such as food preparation and transportation. One superintendent will direct the network managers, strategy group, and services office and report to the school board, whose role will be oversight, not execution.
The plan explicitly rejects an all-charter-school system, but preserves many of the advantages of such a system, such as flexibility and decentralization. The plan also provides enough structure and support to help school leaders be successful without impinging on their autonomy. In fact, it seems that, within this framework, even the system-run schools will be indistinguishable from charter schools.

Joanne has more.

Schoolmates Made Fun Of Boys Charged in Plot

Kari Lydersen:

Shawn R. Sturtz and William C. Cornell were inseparable, according to friends and acquaintances at Green Bay East High School. They ate lunch together, played with Yu-Gi-Oh game cards during class and played video games after school.
They shared some other things: At 300 pounds each, the two 17-year-old boys felt the verbal barbs and bullying of classmates, and, according to police, each had a fascination with the 1999 attack at Columbine High School near Denver.
Authorities here say that over the past two years, the pair plotted in secret to carry out their own version of the Columbine attack. They stockpiled guns and ammunition and mixed homemade explosives and napalm in Cornell’s large, yellow Victorian house in a leafy neighborhood a few blocks from the high school.
Last week, Sturtz proposed carrying out the plan, which involved shooting guns and setting off explosives in the school while blocking the exits with burning napalm, according to John P. Zakowski, Brown County district attorney.

More here.

Schools fight cheaters who use tech tools

Sharon Noguchi:

The Advanced Placement government assignment over the summer was to read and analyze political commentator Chris Matthews’ book “Hardball.” So four friends at American High School in Fremont did what they say everyone else was doing: divvied up the 13 questions about the book and exchanged answers via e-mail. They each altered the text slightly, then handed in their individual papers.
The students call it collaboration. The teachers call it cheating.
As technology makes it easier than ever to cheat, educators are combating the intractable problem on at least three fronts: setting clear standards, using technology to fight back, and talking with students and parents about ethics and pressure.
Many students use e-mail to share work and program iPods and cell phones to cheat in class in new ways. On the flip side, schools can hire services that use computers to scan essays for plagiarism; one leading service claims its business is doubling every year.
Throughout the South Bay and across the Peninsula, schools are banning electronic devices and stiffening penalties. Turning around attitudes is more challenging.

Maria Glod posts a related article: “Students Rebel Against Database Designed to Thwart Plagiarists”.

Robarts Confirms She Won’t Seek Re-Election

Andy Hall (who’s been busy this week):

Madison School Board member Ruth Robarts confirmed Friday that she won’t seek re-election, ending her sometimes-stormy tenure that over the past decade earned her praise for being a watchdog but also the label of “public enemy No. 1.”
“It is primarily for personal reasons. A decade is a long time to meet every single Monday night,” Robarts said.
Also, she said, governments benefit from the energy of newcomers.

Ruth announced her intention to not seek re-election in Jason Shephard’s spring 2006 article: “The Fate of the Schools“. Ruth has done a tremendous service for the community via her strong, independent voice on the Board. She will be missed. Ruth was instrumental in getting this site rolling.
Johnny Winston, Jr. confirmed that “he’ll be in their swinging” next April. Check out these video interviews of Ruth, Johnny and others in the April, 2004 election.

6 city students get perfect ACT score

Andy Hall:

They began by seeking balance, and wound up finding perfection.
An unprecedented six Madison School District students attained a perfect score on recent ACT college entrance exams, district officials said Friday.
Just 11 Wisconsin students received a score of 36, the top possible mark, out of 45,500 tested in April and June.
During that period, 178 of 837,000 students nationwide received a perfect composite score in the assessment of English, mathematics, reading and science skills.
“I want to start by saying, ‘Wow!’ ” Pam Nash, the assistant superintendent overseeing Madison’s middle and high schools, told the students, their parents and educators Friday at a celebration at West High School.

More on the ACT scores here and here.
The Badger Herald has more:

Though Nash argued the quality of Madison’s public high schools contributed to the scores, she added natural talent, intelligence and hard work from the six students was also crucial to their success.
“Reading is important, and Madison emphasizes that,” Nash said. “But the kids themselves … chose the academic route.”
But Poppe, a Madison West senior surprised with the outcome of the test, attributes his perfect score to a healthy breakfast and a little practice.
“I did one of the practice tests and made sure to get a good breakfast,” he said. “I think a lot of the classes I took earlier in high school helped, but I think some people are more comfortable in a testing environment.”

Freshman Closed Campus: Praise & Scorn at East

Andy Hall:

Chiengkham Thao says it’s working.
Anna Toman and Moises Diaz think it’s got problems.
They and the 420 or so members of their Madison East High School freshman class find themselves part of a grand experiment — the first Madison high school in at least a dozen years to close its campus.
The school’s 1,400 older students still are allowed to lounge outside during their 30-minute lunch break.
Better yet, they’re able to jump into cars for a dash from 2222 E. Washington Ave. to Burger King, McDonald’s or Taco Bell.
But for East’s freshmen, there’s one choice for lunch — the cafeteria — as school officials attempt to reduce the school’s truancy rate.

Accountant pays district for Audit Error

Mike Johnson & Kay Nolan:

By the time Virchow Krause & Co.’s accounting error was discovered, the mistake had been repeated and the deficit had ballooned to $2.7 million in fall 2004, prompting a downgrading of the district’s bond rating and budget freezes, district officials said.
The firm discovered the error during a 2004 audit and reported it to the district. After about 1 1/2 years of negotiations, Virchow Krause agreed to pay the district $275,000 and to forgive $15,476 owed to the firm by the district. The School Board approved the settlement agreement late Tuesday.

“MBA Students Likely to Cheat”

Sharda Prashad:

Who says cheaters never prosper?
MBA students in Canada and the United States are more likely to cheat than students in other disciplines because they believe it is how the business world operates — and because they believe their peers cheat, according to a new study.
The study found that 56 per cent of graduate business students admitted to cheating in the last year, compared with 47 per cent of non-business students. More than 5,000 MBA students from 11 graduate business schools in Canada and 21 schools in the U.S. took part.
Jim Fisher, vice-dean of MBA programs at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, said he wasn’t surprised by the results, since MBA students are highly competitive and have a high need for achievement. “There is a propensity for those types of behaviour.”

Wingra School Receives Anonymous Donation up to $5M

Susan Troller:

Anonymous donors have pledged up to $5 million to a private school group to purchase and preserve Dudgeon School on Monroe Street.
The plan initially gives $1 million to Wingra School to purchase and begin renovations on the building it has rented for 34 years. The building is owned by the city of Madison, and its sale price is $750,000.
Up to $4 million more would be available as part of a matching contribution program spanning 10 years, and is designed to help preserve and upgrade the building for its continued use as an education center in the neighborhood.
The gift comes with a set of conditions that must be fulfilled to help preserve the building’s historic presence and personality. Those conditions include keeping the former public school as a neighborhood polling place and ensuring that the grounds in front of and behind the building remain open to the public as a neighborhood athletic field and playground.

More from Dean Mosiman, Channel3000 and NBC15.

DPI’s Burmaster Proposes Teacher Bonuses

Alan Borsuk:

State schools Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster proposed Thursday that Wisconsin provide $5,000 annual bonuses to highly qualified teachers to teach in high-needs schools such as most of those in the Milwaukee Public Schools.
Burmaster also said the next state budget should include $1.6 million for pilot projects in Milwaukee schools that want to extend the school year beyond the conventional 180 days a year; $1 million in grants for arts programs in MPS schools; and significant property tax relief for city of Milwaukee residents through changes in how the voucher school program is funded.
In unveiling her proposals for the two-year state budget that will take effect July 1, Burmaster said Wisconsin should stick to funding two-thirds of the cost of general operation of schools throughout the state, a step that would require an additional $588 million over the two-year period. The state is providing about $5.9 billion in local school aid this year; continuing at the two-thirds level would present a major challenge to an already-stressed budget

Major Changes Needed to Boost K-8 Science Achievement

The National Academies:

Improving science education in kindergarten through eighth grade will require major changes in how science is taught in America’s classrooms, as well as shifts in commonly held views of what young children know and how they learn, says a new report from the National Research Council. After decades of education reform efforts that have produced only modest gains in science performance, the need for change is clear. And the issue takes on even greater significance with the looming mandate of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which says that states must measure students’ annual progress in science beginning in 2007.
Being proficient in science means that students must both understand scientific ideas and demonstrate a firm grasp of scientific practices. The report emphasizes that doing science entails much more than reciting facts or being able to design experiments. In addition, the next generation of science standards and curricula at the national and state levels should be centered on a few core ideas and should expand on them each year, at increasing levels of complexity, across grades K-8. Today’s standards are still too broad, resulting in superficial coverage of science that fails to link concepts or develop them over successive grades, the report says. Teachers also need more opportunities to learn how to teach science as an integrated whole — and to diverse student populations.

Alberta’s Booming Schools

The Economist:

Many educators acknowledge that over the past 30 years Alberta has quietly built the finest public education system in Canada. The curriculum has been revised, stressing core subjects (English, science, mathematics), school facilities and the training of teachers have been improved, clear achievement goals have been set and a rigorous province-wide testing programme for grades three (aged 7-8), six (10-11), nine (13-14) and twelve (16-17) has been established to ensure they are met.
It is all paying off. Alberta’s students regularly outshine those from other Canadian provinces: in 2004 national tests, Alberta’s 13- and 16-year-olds ranked first in mathematics and science, and third in writing. And in international tests they rank alongside the best in the world: in the OECD’s 2003 PISA study, the province’s 15-year-olds scored among the top four of 40 countries in mathematics, reading and science (see table).

Notes & Links on MTI – WEAC Relations

A reader involved in these issues sent this link [strong language warning] [Mike Antonucci’s website]:

WEAC felt MTI had overstepped its authority and, in an effort to punish MTI, unilaterally terminated the 1978 affiliation agreement. MTI claimed WEAC could not take such action, and sought arbitration. WEAC resisted, and MTI sued WEAC to compel arbitration. After losing in county court, MTI won its point in state and federal appeals courts.
From July 18-20, 2006 – more than five years after the SCEA incident – attorneys for MTI and WEAC crossed swords in front of arbitrator Peter Feuille of the University of Illinois. EIA has obtained a copy of the transcript, and the proceedings not only provided a detailed and enlightening look at the history and internal politics of WEAC, but supplied yet more evidence that the bonds of unionism are sometimes composed of dollar bills, and little else.

MTI’s website | WEAC. Alan Borsuk has more.

Yale University to post courses on Web for free

Reuters:

Yale University said on Wednesday it will offer digital videos of some courses on the Internet for free, along with transcripts in several languages, in an effort to make the elite private school more accessible.
While Princeton University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and others already offer course material online without charge, Yale is the first to focus on free video lectures, the New Haven, Connecticut-based school said.
The 18-month pilot project will provide videos, syllabi and transcripts for seven courses beginning in the 2007 academic year. They include “Introduction to the Old Testament,” “Fundamentals of Physics” and “Introduction to Political Philosophy.”

Issue Data On School Incidents, Report Says

Lori Aratani & Ernesto Londono:

In a 77-page report [5.2MB PDF]commissioned by the Montgomery County Council, the Office of Legislative Oversight examined the school system’s method for tracking fights, bomb threats and other serious incidents. It found that although the district has tracked the incidents since 1973, the figures are not released publicly and the information is not detailed enough to allow school officials to identify trends or even the number of times a student has been in trouble.
The report also said that by November, the school system, police department and state’s attorney’s office should develop guidelines for what types of incidents school officials must report to authorities.
Police officers and prosecutors are seeking the guidelines because they believe principals sometimes deal with criminal activity internally. But negotiations over the guidelines have been contentious, and reaching an agreement has been difficult, said council member Phil Andrews (D-Gaithersburg-Rockville), chairman of the council’s public safety committee.

Markets in everything: unhealthy school dinners

New Economist:

he parents claim they are taking action because pupils are turning up their noses at what they describe as “overpriced, low-fat rubbish”.
Four of them are using a supermarket trolley to make daily runs with fish and chips, pies, burgers, sandwiches and fizzy drinks from local takeaways.
Staff at Rawmarsh Comprehensive School, near Rotherham, South Yorkshire, have called in environmental health and education officials. They are looking into whether the women are allowed to sell food without an operating licence and whether they are covered by food hygiene regulations.

Madison School District Fall Referendum Video

Watch this brief video.

Much more on the November 7 election and referendum here.

Artists Working in Education

Molly Snyder Edler:

Artists Working in Education (AWE) presents “A Celebration of Children’s Art,” a collection of work created this summer by kids who participated in AWE’s Truck Studio Program.
“A Celebration of Children’s Art” hangs in the Milwaukee City Hall Rotunda, Sept. 19 through Oct. 6. There is an opening reception on Tuesday, Sept. 19 from 5 to 7 p.m. at City Hall, 200 E. Wells St.
The exhibit features paintings, collages, plaster casts and fiber arts pieces made by four to 14-year-olds who were instructed by professional artists, art teachers and college-level art students through the Truck Studio Program.
“All of the work is created by children in Milwaukee’s most challenged neighborhoods,” says Sally Salkowski Witte, AWE executive director. “To me, it’s entirely appropriate that their artwork is positioned, at least for a short time, where those who have a great deal of power to make a difference will pass by every day.”

Artists Working in Education website.

Five truths I’ve learned from five weeks of teaching

Elliot H (a 4th grade teacher in Phoenix):

Since I finally have a moment to pause and reflect, I thought I would use one of my infrequent posts to put down some of the things I’ve discovered thus far. In no particular order…
1. The achievement gap is very, very real. Most of my fourth graders don’t know the meaning of simple words like “show” and “pair.” Most can’t do their 2s times-tables. Most read at least a grade level behind. Most have writing skills that could charitably be called atrocious. It’s a miracle that so many of them can find Arizona on a map, because they certainly can’t find anything else (but, to be fair, 7th graders were placing “Europe” in Oregon and “Greenland” in Montana).
Then there’s the one non-special ed. nine-year-old who I last week taught to read the word “the.”
It’s not that they can’t do it. My kids are a bright, energetic, inquistive bunch. Nor is it that they have no prior knowledge — it’s just floating around in shards, unconnected to anything meaningful. I have to ask this question, though: If thirty students have gone through 4 years of many different schools and understand so little, isn’t that a sign that something has gone horribly wrong?

Madison Schools Equity Task Force Discussion [audio / video]

Watch or listen to most of the discussion: Video | 32MB mp3 audio

Susan Troller has more.

“In Many Classrooms, Honors in Name Only”

Jay Matthews:

During a visit in March to an honors sophomore English class in an impoverished area of Connecticut, Robyn R. Jackson heard the teacher declare proudly that her students were reading difficult texts. But Jackson noticed that their only review of those books was a set of work sheets that required little thought or analysis.
Jackson, an educational consultant and former Gaithersburg High School English teacher, sought an explanation from a school district official. He sighed and told her, “We have a lot of work to do to help teachers understand what true rigor is.”
In an American education system full of plans for better high schools, more and more courses have impressive labels, such as “honors,” “advanced,” “college prep” and “Advanced Placement.” But many researchers and educators say the teaching often does not match the title.

Brett has more:

One of the biggest misperceptions among the public is that NCLB sets high academic standards for students and schools, and punishes those who do not meet them. In reality, NCLB does not set any standards, nor does it specify which tests are used to measure student outcomes against those standards. Rather, it only tells the states that they must set their own academic standards, and that they must select the tests used to measure student achievement. (See here for a good overview of the law.)

“Like Lambs to the Slaughter…”

Zachary Norris:

Like the teacher on the show, I was greeted by a dysfunctional buzzer upon arrival at my school. A fitting symbol of the system’s disarray, they were desperately in need of teachers and couldn’t let me in once I got there. Many of my peers in the program were “surplussed,” bouncing around from school to school until the district administrators decided where our services could be put to best use. Upon arrival at my school, I was placed in a classroom that had not been cleaned by the previous year’s teacher, who I later learned was a first-year teacher that had quit in February. It is common in Baltimore for rookie teachers to quit during the school year. In fact, in my first year in Baltimore, only two out of the six first-years who started the year at my school actually finished. The result of this trend was a staff crunch, and my classroom role swelled at times to above forty students (ranging in age form 3rd to 6th grade, with up to 16 IEP students). It is criminal.
Speaking of criminal, how much of the City’s budget is spent on pointless professional development programs like the one shown on The Wire’s season premiere? Educational consultants with six-figure salaries rattle off clever acronyms like IALAC (I Am Loved And Competent) in steamy August auditoriums and cafeterias. I mean really, how many teachers actually use that stuff? I know I never did. As the frustration of the teachers builds to a crescendo, the professional development meeting devolves into a gripe session about the student population and the hopelessness of their situation. This in itself is destructive, perpetuating negative stereotypes of students and lending to the apathy of teachers. So in the end, the good intentions of administrative policies turn into a completely destructive activity. Welcome to education in Baltimore.

Matthew Yglesias adds:

But what would it mean — what could it mean — to close the achievement gap between high- and low-SES students in American schools? For a whole variety of reasons, this just doesn’t seem like it’s going to be possible. At the outer limit, more prosperous parents are always going to be able to re-open the gap by investing even more resources in their kids’ education. An education and child development arms race to the top might not be a bad thing, but it wouldn’t close any socioeconomic gaps. To do that, you actually need to tackle inequality itself. In the context of a reasonably egalitarian society, a well-functioning school system shouldn’t exhibit massive achievement gaps, but in the context of a wildly inegalitarian one there’s no way the school system can singlehandedly set everything back to zero.

Math Organization Attempts to Bring Focus to Subject

Sean Cavanagh:

More than 15 years after its publication of influential national standards in mathematics, a leading professional organization has unveiled new, more focused guidelines that describe the crucial skills and content students should master in that subject in elementary and middle school.
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics last week released “Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten Through Grade 8 Mathematics,” a document that supporters hope will encourage the polyglot factions of state and local school officials, textbook publishers, and teachers to set clearer, more common goals for math learning.
While the report is being published by the NCTM, it was reviewed by numerous math experts from across the country, some of whom have strongly disagreed with the organization’s past positions on essential skills. The new document reflects an attempt to overcome those conflicts and focus on a number of crucial, agreed-upon concepts.
“I would hope that this has a large impact, because I believe it gets it right,” said R. James Milgram, a Stanford University mathematics professor and a critic of the math organization’s previously issued national standards. He was one of 14 individuals who provided an outside, formal review of the document. “I would like to hope that this represents a new era of cooperation,” he added. “I hope that what this represents is an end to the math wars.”

Much more here and here.

Equity Policy Discussions

Susan Troller:

Deciding which schools should get how many staff members and other resources is a hot topic, and Madison School Board members are tussling over it now.
A majority of board members asked on Monday night to continue the discussion at next week’s meeting, despite board President Johnny Winston Jr.’s reluctance to put the issue on the Sept. 25 agenda.
Winston said the equity issue, which has to do with the fair allocation of resources to students and schools, was too broad to be hurried into discussion. He also said it has the potential to be very divisive. When equity formulas are put in place, some schools gain and some schools lose resources, based on the unique needs of their students.
“It’s a very complex issue,” Winston said.
He is concerned that the board could make hasty changes in how the district’s existing policy is applied, creating “ramifications we don’t fully understand,” he said in an interview today. The district and its financial situation were very different more than a decade ago when the current equity policy was put in place, he said.

Discussion audio and video are available here.

Civic Involvement Tied to Education

Amy Goldstein:

High school dropouts are significantly less likely than better-educated Americans to vote, trust government, do volunteer work, or go to church, according to a new report that reveals a widening gap in “civic health” between the nation’s upper and lower classes.
The report, a portrait of civic life in the United States, finds that Americans’ disengagement from their communities during the past few decades has been particularly dramatic among adults who have the least education. Among people who lack a high school diploma, the percentage who have voted plummeted from 1976 to 2004 to 31 percent — half the 62 percent of college graduates who voted in 2004.
The class divide is the most striking finding of the report, prepared by leading social scientists and released yesterday by the National Conference on Citizenship, a nonprofit organization created by Congress. “High school dropouts are . . . nearly voiceless in a system that fails them,” said John Bridgeland, a former domestic policy adviser to President Bush who is chief executive officer of Civic Enterprises and leads the conference’s advisory board.

Full Report: [630K PDF]

“State School Spending is Above Average”

Channel3000:

A new report by the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance found that Wisconsin’s schools spend about 11 percent more per student than the national average.
The report finds the state spends about $9,000 per student, which puts Wisconsin 12th highest nationwide based on 2004 census data. The national average was is about $1,000 less.

Paul Soglin adds a few comments here.

Teaching Math, Singapore Style

NY Times Editorial:

The countries that outperform the United States in math and science education have some things in common. They set national priorities for what public school children should learn and when. They also spend a lot of energy ensuring that every school has a high-quality curriculum that is harnessed to clearly articulated national goals. This country, by contrast, has a wildly uneven system of standards and tests that varies from place to place. We are also notoriously susceptible to educational fads.
One of the most infamous fads took root in the late 1980’s, when many schools moved away from traditional mathematics instruction, which required drills and problem solving. The new system, sometimes derided as “fuzzy math,’’ allowed children to wander through problems in a random way without ever learning basic multiplication or division. As a result, mastery of high-level math and science was unlikely. The new math curriculum was a mile wide and an inch deep, as the saying goes, touching on dozens of topics each year.

Much more, here.

“Teacher Education Is Out of Step with Realities of Classrooms”

Arthur Levine:

most education schools are engaged in a “pursuit of irrelevance,” with curriculums in disarray and faculty disconnected from classrooms and colleagues. These schools have “not kept pace with changing demographics, technology, global competition, and pressures to raise student achievement,” the study says.
A majority of teacher education alumni (61 percent) reported that schools of education did not prepare graduates well to cope with the realities of today’s classrooms, according to a national survey conducted for the study. School principals also gave teacher education programs low grades, with fewer than one-third of those surveyed reporting that schools of education prepare teachers very well or moderately well to address the needs of students with disabilities (30 percent), a diverse cultural background (28 percent) or limited English proficiency (16 percent).

Full Report. Joanne has more.

Should for-profit companies run public schools? An entrepreneur and a principal weigh in.

Steven Wilson & George Wood:

Steven F. Wilson
Senior fellow, Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government; founder and former CEO of Advantage Schools
George Wood
Principal, Federal Hocking High School, Stewart, Ohio; director, the Forum for Education and Democracy

UW System Campus Admission Advice

Megan Twohey:

Tuesday’s meeting also included campus-specific admissions advice:

Madison: For the second year, applicants must take and submit the writing portion of the ACT. Postponed applicants – those who are neither admitted nor denied admission in the initial review process – should submit the supplemental application. The university expects to use its waiting list more often because it is finding it increasingly difficult to predict whether accepted students will enroll.
Eau Claire: Space is tight in the nursing program, so students should make sure to apply on time. Decisions aren’t made on a case-by-case basis. Students in the nursing program must meet or exceed the minimum requirements, including having taken high school chemistry and biology.

November 7, 2006 Referendum & Election Page Update

I’ve updated the election page with information and links regarding the November 7, 2006 selection.
Links include the Madison School District’s information page, boundary changes and the open government complaint documents (and District Attorney Brian Blanchard’s recent response) related to the School Board’s closed meetings over the Linden Park land purchase. A motion to make the deal public (before the final Board vote) failed on a 3-3 vote – Shwaw Vang was absent (Shwaw’s seat is up for election in April, 2007). Supporting open government were Carol Carstensen, Lawrie Kobza and Ruth Robarts (Ruth’s seat is up for election in April, 2007. She is not seeking re-election).
Supporting a closed approach (and prevailing) were Bill Keys (did not seek re-election, replaced by Arlene Silveira who defeated Maya Cole by 70 out of 33,000+ votes in one of the closest local elections in years – having said that, Arlene, in the words of a friend “has been a good addition to the board”), Juan Jose Lopez (defeated by Lucy Mathiak) and Johnny Winston, Jr. (Johnny’s seat is up in April, 2007. I assume he’s running, but if Mayor Dave seeks the County Executive seat, perhaps Johnny will give that position a run and face former School Board member Ray Allen?). Art Rainwater is correct when he said that education is inherently political.

Opting Out of Private School

Nancy Keates:

It’s the lurking fear of every private-school parent: The kid next door is getting just as good an education at the public school — free of charge.
Ben and Courtney Nields of Norwalk, Conn., agonized over the issue last year when they moved their daughter Annie from the New Canaan Country School, set on a 72-acre campus, to a public school for first grade. The move was primarily economic — they have twins entering kindergarten this year and faced tuition bills of $22,500 per child.
“It was like taking your child out of the Garden of Eden,” says Mrs. Nields. But Annie thrived at the school. Her confidence grew and the teacher, say the Nieldses, was phenomenal.
Across the country, some schools and education professionals report a growing movement from private to public. Among the possible reasons: Private-school tuition has grown sharply, while some colleges are boosting the number of students they take from public schools. New studies have suggested that public-school students often tested as well or better than their private school peers. And increasingly, public schools are enriching their programs by holding the same kinds of fund-raisers often associated with private schools, such as auctions and capital campaigns.
“But lately there’s strong anecdotal evidence of frequent movement from private schools to public schools. There are more choices for parents now.”
Some public schools are actively recruiting private-school students. At Torrey Pines Elementary in La Jolla, Calif., Principal Jim Solo began holding monthly tours and meetings for private-school families four years ago. Many students had left for private or charter schools. While he says it was not a main motivator, having students return to the school increased state funding, as the district is paid on a per-pupil basis.

Locally, I’ve seen movement both ways. A number of parents have left over curriculum and climate issues while others have jumped back in because the public schools offer services or curriculum not available in the private school world. Homeschooling is another growing factor.

“Promoting the End of Social Promotion”

Jay Greene and Marcus Winters:

Should the grade-level a student is in be based entirely on how old he is or at least partially on how skilled he is? This is the fundamental question underlying the debate over social promotion — the practice of moving students to the next grade regardless of whether they have acquired the minimal skills covered in the previous grade. Advocates of social promotion suggest that it is best to group students by age rather than by skill. Students who are held back a grade are separated from their age-peers and, the argument goes, this social disruption harms them academically. Opponents of social promotion favor requiring students to demonstrate minimal skills on a standardized test before they receive automatic promotion to the next grade.
Until now the bulk of the research favored social promotion. Most studies found that students who were retained tended to fare less well academically than demographically similar students who were promoted. The problem with this previous research is that it was never entirely clear whether retained students did worse because they were retained or because whatever caused them to be retained led to worse outcomes. This is especially a problem because these previous studies examined retention based on educator discretion. If teachers decide that one student should be retained while another demographically similar student should be promoted, they probably know something about those students that suggests that the promoted student has better prospects than the retained student. When researchers match students on recorded demographic factors they cannot observe or control statistically for what a teacher saw that led that teacher to promote one student while retaining the other.

The complete report is available here.

Technology: “It Can Do More Harm Than Good”

Ryan Boots:

I’ve been something of a cheerleader on the use of new media in the classroom, principally in the form of digital textbooks. But similar to what we’ve already seen with the calculator, such technology has the potential to inflict damage in the classroom.

Exhibit A: Right Wing Prof flipped his lid a couple of days ago over a math lesson titled "Making Money from Lemons" (produced by Microsoft no less–oh, the irony). Just one problem: the lesson didn’t actually involve any, you know, math. Just a bunch of mouse clicks that an orangutan could be trained to perform.

Exhibit B: Educomputer vendor Steve Hargadon did an interview with author Larry Cuban on his 2001 book "Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom". I highly recommend all of Hargadon’s post, but I find this paragraph particularly important:

Studio School Update

Susan Troller:

The backers of the Studio School were given permission by the Madison school board last year to pursue the planning grant.
Donahue said the proposed Studio School will focus on providing a school-wide, arts rich curriculum for elementary school students. It would be chartered with the Madison school district in a way similar to the district’s very successful dual immersion Spanish language school, Nuestro Mundo Inc., or its other charter school, Wright Middle School. Both schools focus on issues of multi-culturalism and integrating social action into the curriculum.

North Carolina & Math Standards

Todd Silberman:

Despite North Carolina students’ steady improvement in reading and math, their performance on state end-of-grade tests has been far better than on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In fact, North Carolina stands out because of the wide gap between results on the state and national tests.
In 2005, about 84 percent of North Carolina eighth-graders earned proficient or better scores on state math tests; 32 percent were proficient or advanced on the national math test. Only West Virginia showed a sharper difference.
“When you see the huge disparity that you do between proficiency levels [on state and national tests], at least part of it is about rigor,” said Ross Weiner, policy director for the Education Trust, a Washington group that advocates for poor and minority students. “North Carolina has a bigger difference than most other states. That raises questions about expectations and whether North Carolina’s standards are high enough to demonstrate that students are learning what they need to know.”

More on “how states inflate their progress under No Child Left Behind“.

The End of Cupcake Days

Eric Zorn:

There were some two dozen of us in the 4th grade classroom at parent orientation night this week, and not one of us looked the least bit disappointed when the teacher, Mrs. Rand, announced “absolutely no cupcakes this year!”
She’d done the math. Naturally. And she figured that if every child had a little birthday party — where a parent brings in treats, drinks, maybe goodie bags — she’d lose roughly 10 hours of total classroom instruction time over the course of the year.
Parents have done the math too. The one responsible for buying the treats (usually the mother and usually cupcakes) and making sure they get to school at the right time and that kids with dietary restrictions are provided with edible options also loses an hour or so.

All Kindergartners Need to Know….

Kate Grossman:

The state laid out Tuesday what it wants every kindergarten student to know, an exhaustive list that includes everything from writing letters and identifying shapes to understanding that hurting others is wrong and the value of a sense of humor.
Illinois has had broad learning goals for all students since 1997 but until now hadn’t specified what that meant for kindergarten students. Specific goals for clusters of other grades and preschoolers already have been established.
The 172 new “benchmarks,” or skills, cover language arts, math, science, social science, physical development and health, fine arts, foreign language and social/emotional developme