Community Partners – Page 17 – School Information System

Verona Superintendent Explains Gang Warning

Verona school leaders are standing by their warning of potential retaliatory gang violence at the high school or Hometown Days this weekend.
The warning the Verona Area School District issued Wednesday night comes about six weeks after the fatal shooting of Antonio Perez on Madison’s East Side. Madison police have said they believe the slaying was gang-related.
Police in Madison, Middleton and Verona have been on alert for potential gang retaliation since Perez was killed in April 28. Authorities said the threat of violence between the Clanton 14 gang and the Carnales gang has been on their radar.
Verona Area School District Superintendent Dean Gorrell explained Thursday that it was his decision, and not by direction of law enforcement, that a warning on the threat of violence was announced Wednesday night.

Education by Chance

Jeannette Catsoulis:

With a little tweaking “The Lottery” would fit nicely into the marketing materials for the Harlem Success Academy, a public charter school founded by Eva Moskowitz, a former New York City councilwoman. On one level, this heart-tugging documentary recounts the experiences of four children competing in the academy’s annual intake lottery. On another, it’s a passionate positioning of charter schools as the saviors of public education.
Though infinitely classier — and easier on the eyes — than “Cartel,” the recent documentary exploring public education, this latest charter-school commercial is no less one-sided. Virtually relinquishing the floor to Ms. Moskowitz (who delights in vilifying the “thuggish” tactics of the United Federation of Teachers) and her supporters, the director, Madeleine Sackler, captures a smidgen of naysayers in mostly unflattering lights. Ignoring critical issues like financial transparency, Ms. Sackler sells her viewpoint with four admirable, striving families, each of whose tots could charm the fleas off a junkyard dog.

Seattle Police Chief Candidates and Public Schools

Melissa Westbrook:

The Mayor’s office was kind enough to allow me to go to the media interviews with the 3 candidates for police chief.
First up was Interim Chief John Diaz. Low-key is definitely the by-word here (maybe even anemic). There is no doubting his sincerity and commitment to SPD. However, when I asked him about his thoughts on policing in the school district or programs to curb youth violence, I got a whole lotta nothing. I followed up, thinking maybe he didn’t understand me, but it was just a lot of blah, blah, blah about working with the district. For my narrow perspective, it was disappointing.

Don Severson & Vicki McKenna Discuss The Madison School District’s 2010-2011 Budget

35mp mp3 audio file.

Detroit’s Struggle with Mayoral Control

Maddy Joseph:

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing announced that he is ready to take control of Detroit’s failing schools. He endorsed petition efforts underway to put mayoral control on the November ballot, but evidence suggests that the effort might be an uphill electoral battle.
Detroit’s schools suffer a litany of challenges. Its students have the lowest NAEP scores of any urban district. There has been a precipitous decline in enrollment over the last decade and a budget deficit in the hundreds of millions prompted Governor Granholm to appoint “emergency financial manager” Robert Bobb in March 2009 to command control of the district’s cash.
Despite these pressing issues, only 4% of Detroit residents feel that the schools are the biggest problem facing the city, a statistic that, though disheartening, is fairly unsurprising considering that the city was named one of the ten most dangerous in the world by CNN this year and that unemployment hovers somewhere around 25%. Voters have other things on their minds, but getting their attention won’t be the biggest obstacle to mayoral control. History will.

Verona Schools Message on School Safety

Following is a message from the Superintendent and VAHS Administration. Please address any inquiries to VAHS Administration or Dr. Gorrell.
Through our contacts with the Dane County Gang Task Force we have recieved information that indicates in the coming days the VAHS campus or Verona Hometown Days are possible locations for an altercation between two rival gangs. These gangs are the Clanton 14 gang and the Carnales gang. These are the two gangs alleged to have connections with the murder of Antonio Perez last month.
Given this information the following security measures will be put in place immediately:
Tomorrow and Friday we will have an additional VPD Officer stationed on campus working with Officer Truscott. Also, regular VPD patrol officers will be in the area patrolling both the VAHS campus and the neighboring residential area in their squad cars.
Members of the administrative team will also be out patrolling the interior and exterior of the buildings throughout the day. Special attention will be paid to monitoring the two designated K-Wing and two designated main building entrances. All other entrances are to be kept closed and locked. This too will be monitored by the VPD and HS administration.
Given current information the Administrative team, in consultation with our partners in law enforcement, believes that these are prudent preventative steps. If additional information becomes available we will alter this plan accordingly. We ask all staff members to do their usual stellar job of remaining vigilant and reporting anything of concern to the Administrative Team at once.
Keeping staff informed is a priority and more information will be provided if and when it becomes available.
Thank You,
Dr. Gorrell
Ms. Hammen
Ms. Williams
Mr. Murphy
Mr. Boehm

You Wouldn’t Inhibit Amazon, Why Education?

Douglas Crets:

This is the second in a series of interviews with thought leaders in education reform. Today we interview former West Virginia Governor Bob Wise about personalized learning, equity and policy changes that will enable a better system for our students.
What is the vision for personalized learning?
For personalized learning, it’s delivering high-quality content to children and students wherever they live. I mean, whatever their conditions, their life situations, their educaiton surroundings. It’s being able to customize education so that we engage each student where they want to be, and make it as relevant as possible to them.
Personalization to me is the sense of making sure there is a personal graduation plan for every student, making sure a direct relationship bteween at least one adult in the building and one student.
Even if you are using data…there is data that immediately is picking up whether they are increasing absences, etc…and someone is charged with intervening. How do we take what is a largely impersonal experience, to using technology that is actually helping education become a more personal experience.

Black leaders leaving DISD along with students

Tawnell Hobbs:

As the number of black children in Dallas ISD declined over the last decade, the number of black activists closely observing school board meetings has dwindled to a few in the audience.
And some leaders of a civil rights group that once battled for equal education in Dallas schools are now urging black parents to send their kids elsewhere. Some say the rising attention to the needs of children learning English is overshadowing the needs of black students.
As their focus wanes from Dallas ISD, some fear a powerful lobby for the interests of the district’s minority students could be lost.
“It’s not a surprise to anybody that blacks are leaving DISD,” said Juanita Wallace, president of the Dallas NAACP. “We know that Hispanics are really taking over the school district. The whites are completely gone, and now blacks are going.”

Charter Vultures Circle the Public Schools

Alan Singer:

We our now entering the second round of “Race to the Top.” State legislatures are busy worshiping at the alter of “charter schools” in order to establish their eligibility.
The radio, television, and print ads show a very unlikely and powerful coalition supporting the demand for new charter schools – Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, JP Morgan, assorted hedge funds, Michael “Moneybags” Bloomberg, Joel “Clueless” Klein, and Reverend Al Sharpton. The impression they are trying to give is that everybody whose opinion we trust thinks it is a good idea and that the teachers and their evil union want to block reform that will benefit our children.
On May 27, 2010, JP Morgan Chase ran a full-page advertisement in The New York Times with the headline The Way Forward, Investing in Our Children’s Future. It cost the bank approximately $180,000. This is the same JP Morgan Chase that received a $25 billion bailout from Congress as part of the federal Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Just because the bank can’t manage its own affairs, does not mean it shouldn’t manage ours.

“The Lottery” Film Screens Tonight @ 7:30 “The Problem is a System that Protects Academic Failure”

Screening locations can be seen here (including Madison’s Eastgate Theatre [Map]), via a kind reader:

The Lottery is a feature-length documentary that explores the struggles and dreams of four families from Harlem and the Bronx in the months leading up to the lottery for Harlem Success Academy, one of the most successful charter schools in New York. The four families cast their lots in a high-stakes draw, where only a small majority of children emerge with a chance at a better future. The vast majority of hopefuls will be turned away.
By interlacing the families’ stories with the emotional and highly politicized battle over the future of American education, The Lottery is a call to action to avert a catastrophe in the education of American children. With heart, humor and hope, The Lottery makes the case that any child, given the right educational circumstances, can succeed.

Watch the trailer.
Madison has not exactly provided a welcoming charter environment.

Entry may tighten for Boston exam schools

James Vaznis:

Boston school officials this week will unveil a more stringent residency policy for students applying to the city’s three exam schools, responding to growing concerns that out-of-towners are improperly gaining admission.
The proposed policy, which officials will present to the School Committee on Wednesday, would allow only city residents to apply to Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy, and the John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Science.
Currently, nonresidents can take the entrance exam for those schools; they must establish residency shortly before admission decisions are made.
“It’s a fairly significant change,” said Rachel Skerritt, chief of staff for Superintendent Carol R. Johnson. “We want to make sure students who have access to the stellar education at the exam schools live in the city.”

Online Help for Parents Who Volunteer

Pui-wing Tam:

It takes a lot to organize a classroom of 20 children. It can take even more to organize the kids’ busy parents–and that often means turning to technology to get everyone on the same page.
Over the past nine months, my first-grader’s school has seen that in spades. Like many elementary schools, ours relies on parent volunteers to help out with one-on-one reading with students and math exercises. In my 6-year-old’s class, at least two parent volunteers are needed a day. In the past, volunteers were organized the old-fashioned way on paper, with parents signing up for their preferred time slots for the month on a calendar sent home with their children.
But in recent years as more schools and families have gone digital, parents are opting for an online solution to organizing volunteer class time. And a host of volunteering and calendar services have popped up on the Web to oblige them. When I asked our school’s room parent which online sites people were using to organize volunteering, he blasted out an email to poll his network of room parents. The informal survey yielded one conclusion: Each classroom was using different services, each with their own perks and drawbacks. Among the hodge-podge of choices were well-known applications such as Yahoo Inc.’s Yahoo Groups and Google Inc.’s Calendar, as well as less familiar names including VolunteerSpot Inc.’s VolunteerSpot and Doodle AG’s Doodle.com.

I agree, it’s time the Vancouver, Canada school board grew up

Jon Ferry:

You can say what you like about B.C. comptroller-general Cheryl Wenezenki-Yolland, at least if you can pronounce her name. But she sure knows how to shake things up.
Last fall, this steely mother of two blasted bloated management at TransLink and excessive executive compensation at B.C. Ferries, drawing cries of outrage from high-priced boss David Hahn.
Now, Wenezenki-Yolland has drawn equal if not greater howls of indignation by ripping into the Vancouver School Board. And the report she released Friday on the trustees’ management ability, or lack of it, has had board chairwoman Patti Bacchus on the verge of tears.

Racial composition of Dallas – Fort Worth school districts

Dallas Morning News:

Total enrollment in North Texas public schools increased for every major ethnic group from 2000 to 2010 – but the gains are anything but uniform across the region. This interactive map shows enrollment gains and losses, by ethnic group, at local public schools with more than 100 students over the past decade.
Use the box below to select a school district and a racial category. Click the Submit button to see the results.

Obama to high school grads: ‘Don’t make excuses’

Erica Werner:

President Barack Obama is telling high school graduates in Michigan not to make excuses, and to take responsibility for failures as well as successes.
In excerpts of remarks to be delivered later Monday at Kalamazoo Central High School, Obama says that it’s easy to blame others when problems arise. “We see it every day out in Washington, with folks calling each other names and making all sorts of accusations on TV,” the president says.
He says the high school kids can and have done better than that.
The 1,700-student high school in southwest Michigan landed Obama as its commencement speaker after winning the national Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge.

Early Lessons

Emily Hanford:

The Perry Preschool was the idea of a man named David Weikart. He was a school system administrator in the small city of Ypsilanti, Michigan back in the late 1950s. When he took the job, he was shocked to discover how many poor African-American children were doing badly in school. A lot of them were being assigned to special education classes, getting held back, and failing to graduate from high school.
Weikart wanted to do something about it, but school officials did not share his enthusiasm. They didn’t want him changing things, messing around in their schools.
So rather than change the schools, Weikart decided to invent a new kind of school – a pre-school for 3- and 4-year-olds. His hope was that preschool could boost children’s IQs.
This was a radical notion. Most people believed everyone was born with a certain amount of intelligence, a quotient, and it never changed. They had faith in IQ tests to measure intelligence. And they thought intelligence mattered a lot, that it was the key to success in school, and life.

Two Cities: Importing the KIPP Model

Jennifer Guerra & Sarah Hulett:

It’s 7:15 on a chilly spring morning kids from all over New Orleans are coming in by the bus load to KIPP Central City Academy and Primary. A group of sixth graders is hanging outside, waiting for the bell to ring. So I ask them what they think about their school. Three of the boys say they like it just fine. The fourth one, Troy Picard, is not a fan.
“No, their rules are just too strict for me,” says Picard, prompting a quick rebuttal from his friend Carl Lacoste.
“Troy, I disagree what you said about strict rules,” Lacoste says. “The only rules we have are work hard and be nice.”
“But a lot of other rules fall under that category,” Picard says.
Students aren’t the only ones with rules. Jonathan Bertch, who runs the business side of things at KIPP Central City, says adults at the school have rules, too. The main one is “no excuses.” As in: All those excuses you hear about why inner city kids can’t succeed? Out the window.

Black Parents vs. the Teachers’ Union: Union intransigence hits a low point

Nat Hentoff:

In Harlem–as elsewhere in this city, state, and nation–there is a sharply rising struggle between teachers’ unions and black parents.
That dispute is over parental choice of schools, especially in regards to publicly financed charter schools which can, and usually do, refuse to recognize teachers’ unions. Geoffrey Canada, whose Harlem Children’s Zone is nationally known for making charter schools a working part of the community, recently sent out a rallying cry to black parents everywhere when he said, “Nobody’s coming. Nobody is going to save our children. You have to save your own children.”
In Harlem, where thousands of parents apply for charter schools on civil rights grounds, State Senator Bill Perkins–whose civil liberties record I’ve previously praised in this column–is in danger of losing his seat because of his fierce opposition to charter schools. The UFT contributes to his campaigns. His opponent, Basil Smikle–who has worked for Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Bill Clinton Foundation, and, unfortunately, Michael Bloomberg–says: “Education has galvanized the community.”

Kalamazoo has long been a leader in education and education reform. Here are some of the area’s accomplishments in education.

mlive.com:

1833: Founding of Kalamazoo College, Michigan’s oldest college campus.
1874: Kalamazoo paves the way for tax-funded education in Michigan when the state Supreme Court affirms Kalamazoo’s right to levy taxes to operate a public high school.
1896: Kalamazoo Public Library is among the first 10 in the country, and the second in Michigan after Detroit, to create a children’s section with its own librarian.
1903: Founding of Western Michigan University, now one of the 50 largest universities in the country.
1906: Kalamazoo Central High School creates state’s first high school marching band.
1920: Kalamazoo Central becomes the country’s second high school with a drama class and opens Chenery Auditorium, one of the largest high school auditoriums of that era.
1958: Kalamazoo College creates its study-abroad program, one of the first in the country.

Why should education be exempt from recession budgeting?

George Will:

Jay Gould, a 19th-century railroad tycoon and unrepentant rapscallion, said he was a Democrat when in Democratic districts and a Republican when in Republican districts but that he was always for the Erie Railroad. Gould, emblematic of Gilded Age rapaciousness, was called a robber baron. What should we call people whose defining constancy is that they are always for unionized public employees? Call them Democrats.
This week, when Congress returns from its Memorial Day recess, many Democrats, having gone an eternity — more than a week — without spending billions of their constituents’ money, will try to make up for lost time by sending another $23 billion to states to prevent teachers from being laid off. The alternative to this “desperately” needed bailout, says Education Secretary Arne Duncan, is “catastrophe.” Amazing. Just 16 months ago, in the stimulus legislation, Congress shoveled about $100 billion to education, including $48 billion in direct aid to states. According to a University of Washington study, this saved more than 342,000 teaching and school staff positions — about 5.5 percent of all the positions in America’s 15,000 school systems.
The federal component of education spending on kindergarten through 12th grade, the quintessential state and local responsibility, has doubled since 2000, to 15 percent. Now the supposed emergency, and states’ dependency, may be becoming routine and perpetual.

HSBC Chairman Stephen Green calls on schools to teach children about money

Joy Lo Dico:

Mr Green, speaking at the Hay Festival on the Welsh borders on Saturday, said it would be of particular relevance to those who would grow up to become part of the sub-prime market.
“Part of the answer lies in financial literacy education in schools,” said Mr Green, promoting his 2009 book Good Value: Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World.
“I really don’t think it’s wise in the circumstances of modern life to have people come out of the school system into working life or, sadly, often not working life, without the very basics of financial literacy.”
Mr Green, who has been chairman of HSBC since 2005, and is also an ordained priest, was keen to stress that there was a social imperative for banking services to be open to those on lower incomes.
However, he said some forms of lending were unacceptable, citing 110pc mortgages, and said those at the bottom end of the market may not have had proper understanding or access to information when taking out such loans.

Parent volunteers help lift San Jose schools

Caille Millner:

The face of California public education soon will look a lot like Alum Rock Union Elementary School District in San Jose.
Almost 78 percent of the district’s 13,816 students are of Hispanic or Latino origin. About 54 percent of them are English-language learners. The district, which sprawls over the foothills in east San Jose, is more working class than middle class.
It’s tempting to view a district like Alum Rock as indicative of the challenges California will face in educating the next generation of children, but it might be better to view it as an opportunity. California’s educational system desperately needs to adapt to both a 21st century economy and the state’s shifting demographics. We can’t afford to fail the next generation of students. So how will California’s educational system adapt to meet their needs?

Storming the School Barricades

Bari Weiss:

‘What’s funny,” says Madeleine Sackler, “is that I’m not really a political person.” Yet the petite 27-year-old is the force behind “The Lottery“–an explosive new documentary about the battle over the future of public education opening nationwide this Tuesday.
In the spring of 2008, Ms. Sackler, then a freelance film editor, caught a segment on the local news about New York’s biggest lottery. It wasn’t the Powerball. It was a chance for 475 lucky kids to get into one of the city’s best charter schools (publicly funded schools that aren’t subject to union rules).
“I was blown away by the number of parents that were there,” Ms. Sackler tells me over coffee on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, recalling the thousands of people packed into the Harlem Armory that day for the drawing. “I wanted to know why so many parents were entering their kids into the lottery and what it would mean for them.” And so Ms. Sackler did what any aspiring filmmaker would do: She grabbed her camera.
Her initial aim was simple. “Going into the film I was excited just to tell a story,” she says. “A vérité film, a really beautiful, independent story about four families that you wouldn’t know otherwise” in the months leading up to the lottery for the Harlem Success Academy.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Black Flight Hits Detroit

Alex Kellogg:

This shrinking city needs to hang on to people like Johnette Barham: taxpaying, middle-class professionals who invest in local real estate, work and play downtown, and make their home here.
Ms. Barham just left. And she’s not coming back.
In seven years as a homeowner in Detroit, she endured more than 10 burglaries and break-ins at her house and a nearby rental property she owned. Still, she defied friends’ pleas to leave as she fortified her home with locks, bars, alarms and a dog.
Then, a week before Christmas, someone torched the house and destroyed almost everything she owned.
In March, police arrested a suspect in connection with the case, someone who turned out to be remarkably easy to find. For Ms. Barham, the arrest came one crime too late. “I was constantly being targeted in a way I couldn’t predict, in a way that couldn’t be controlled by the police,” she says. “I couldn’t take it anymore.”

Each new graduate has teachers to thank

Phil Haslanger:

Like so many parents at this time of year, we stood watching and cheering as our daughter walked across the stage at graduation.
For Julia, it was graduation from college in mid-May. For others, it will be graduation from high school. But whatever the setting, Julia and her fellow graduates take an awful lot of people across the stage with them — many of them teachers.
Not that we have any particular bias as her parents, you understand. We think Julia is incredibly smart, poised, inquisitive, a leader in her group. But we also know that step by step through her days in school, it was teachers who helped shape her into the graduate we applauded on that Saturday in May.
As a society we say we value education. We are sure a whole lot more ambivalent about teachers as a group. You heard that ambivalence in the Madison area as the School Board wrestled with a very tough budget for the coming year. You hear that at the national level as President Obama’s education policies are demanding more accountability from teachers.
My point is not that teachers ought not be asked to share in the financial burden of tough times nor that there ought not be ways to hold them accountable. My point is that in looking at ways to strengthen our education system, we ought to remember that the teachers are the ones giving of themselves day after day to prepare our sons and daughters for the future. It does no one any good to be bashing them.
Is every teacher terrific? Of course not. But at least in the Madison schools, with four kids who have been educated by something like 150 teachers over the years (to say nothing of another vast array of teachers at the college level), I have developed a deep admiration for the work they do.

Madison School District Global Academy Resolution

236K PDF:

A consortium of school districts including: Belleville, Middelton Cross Plains, Mt. Horeb, Oregon, McFarland, Verona Area, Madison and Wisconsin Heights are actively and energetically seeking partnerships with business, academic and manufacturing sectors in the Dane County region in an effort to create and staff what is referred to as The Global Academy. The Global Academy will be a hybrid secondary / post-secondary learning environment designed primarily for high school juniors and seniors from the consortium districts. The Global Academy will provide specialized and advanced training in the following areas that culminate in two year or four year degrees: Architecture and Construction, HealthScience, InformationTechnology, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
Rationale:
Regional, national and global need for specialized and advanced skills, along with growing competition for jobs that require those skills from advanced and developing countries is changing the curriculum landscape for high schools in the United States. In Wisconsin, public high schools are making valiant efforts to respond to this need, but struggle to do so given revenue caps and shrinking budgets. Neighboring school districts produce similar programs that are barely sustainable and represent an inefficient duplication of programs and services. A consortium of school districts providing specialized and advanced programs, pooling resources, talent and students is a much more viable and sustainable method ofproviding educational programs that prepare students for 21st Century career opportunities. Additionally, partnering with business, manufacturing and academic sectors will add expertise, latest trend information and greatly increased opportunities for obtaining certifications, advanced standing and credits in institutions of higher learning.

Madison Metropolitan School District Student Conduct and Discipline Plan Part II:

1MB PDF:

The district has developed over time a very detailed Student Code of Conduct that clearly outlines student misbehavior and prescribes suspension and expulsion as the specific responses for some misbehavior. While the current code is clear regarding which misbehaviors require suspension and a recommendation for expulsion, it does not offer administrators a sufficient array of options that can be used to intervene in order to support behavior change in students when suspension and expulsion are not an appropriate consequence.
Current research shows that a reactive model in the absence of positive, proactive strategies is ineffective. As an evidence-based national model that has recently been adopted at the state level in Wisconsin, Positive Behavior Supports (PBS) provides the mechanism for schools to shift to data driven decision making and practices grounded in a tiered approach that emphasizes teaching, modeling and reinforcing pro-social skills and behavior. Many districts across the country are developing Codes of Conduct that align with the PBS Model.
As all elementary, middle and high schools move toward full implementation of Positive Behavior Supports (PBS), it is important that the Code of Conduct is aligned with the PBS model which is grounded in teaching appropriate behaviors to students and acknowledging students for learning and exhibiting positive behavior. PBS provides a framework for defining and teaching in positive terms what is expected from students as behavior expectations that are defined only by
Appendix LLL-12-11 June 14,2010
III.
rules and “what not to do” provide an inadequate understanding for students and families.
The proposed Code o f Conduct represents a step toward improved alignment with the PBS model and reflects a shift in thinking from an approach that relies heavily on rules, consequences and reactive practices to an approach that provides a multi-tiered, progressive continuum of interventions to address a wide range of student behavior. While the current code is used primarily by administrators to determine which misbehaviors are appropriate for suspension and expulsion, the proposed code would also be used by teachers and other staff to determine which behaviors they are expected to handle in the classroom and which behaviors should be referred to the administrator or designee. It will provide all staff with multiple options in three (3) categories of intervention: Education, Restoration and Restriction (see details in attached chart). In addition, the proposed code presented in ‘chart form’ would be used as a teaching tool to give students a visual picture o f the increasing severity o f behaviors and the increasing intensity of interventions and consequences that result from engaging in inappropriate behaviors.

The District has developed overtime, an extensive and very clear expulsion process, that is compliant with state and federal law, that focuses on procedure and is based on zero tolerance for some behaviors, In the 2007/08 school year, 198 students were recommended for expulsion with 64 actually being expelled. In the 2008/09, 182 students were recommended for expulsion with 44 actually being expelled.
Students are expelled from two to three semesters depending on the violation with an option to apply for early readmission after one semester if conditions are met. Approximately 72% of the students meet early readmission conditions and retum after one semester. Currently, no services are provided to regular education students who are expelled, Expelled special education students are entitled to receive Disciplinary Free Appropriate Public Education services.
Concems have been raised by members of the Board of Education, MMSD staff and community about the zero tolerance model, lack of services to expelled students and the significant disruption caused in the lives of these students, families and neighborhoods when students are expelled.
Approval is being sought for the implementation of an abeyance option, the Phoenix Program, including the budget, to be implemented at the beginning of the 2010/11 school year,

Madison High School REal Grant Report to the School Board

Madison School District [4.6MB PDF]:

District administration, along with school leadership and school staff; have examined the research that shows thatfundamental change in education can only be accomplished by creating the opportunity for teachers to talk with one another regarding their instructional practice. The central theme and approach for REaL has heen to improve and enhance instructional practice through collaboration in order to increase student achievement. Special attention has been paid to ensure the work is done in a cross – district, interdepartmental and collaborative manner. Central to the work, are district and school based discussions focused on what skills and knowledge students need to know and be able to do, in order to be prepared for post-secondary education and work. Systemized discussions regarding curriculum aligmnent, course offerings, assessment systems, behavioral expectations and 21 st century skills are occurring across all four high schools and at the district level.
Collaborative professional development has been established to ensure that the work capitalizes on the expertise of current staff, furthers best practices that are already occurring within the MMSD high school classrooms, and enhances the skills of individuals at all levels from administration to classroom teachers needed. Our work to date has laid the foundation for further and more in-depth work to occur.
Since March of 2010, MMSD district and school staff has completed the following work to move the goals of the REaL Grant forward. Specific accomplishments aligning to REaL grant goals are listed below.
REaL Grant Goal 1: Improve Student Achievement for all students

Accomplishment I: Completed year 2 of professional development for Department Chairpersons to become instructional leaders. The work will continue this summer with the first ever Department Chairperson and Assistant Principal Summer Institute to focus on leading and fostering teacher collaboration in order to improve student achievement.
Accomplishment 2: Continued with planning for implementing the ACT Career and College Readiness Standards and the EP AS system. Visited with area districts to see the
impact of effective implementation the EP AS system in order to ensure successful implementation within MMSD.

Accomplishment 3: Piloted the implementation of the EXPLORE test at Memorial, Sherman and with 9th grade AVID students at all four comprehensive high schools.
Accomplishment 4: This summer, in partnership with Monona Grove High School and Association of Wisconsin School Administrators (AWSA), MMSD will host the Aligned by Design: Aligning High School and Middle School English, Science, Math and Social Studies Courses to College/Career Readiness Skills. To be attended by teams of MMSD high school and middle school staff in July of 2010.
Accomplishment 5: Continued focused planning and development of a master communication system for the possible implementation of early release Professional Collaboration Time at MMSD High Schools. Schools have developed plans for effective teaming structures and accountability measures.
Accomplishment 6: District English leadership team developed recommendations for essential understandings in the areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening for 9th and 10th grades. Following this successful model, similar work will occur in Math, Science and Social studies.

Related: Small Learning Community and English 10.
Bruce King, who evaluated the West High’s English 9 (one English class for all students) approach offers observations on the REal program beginning on page 20 of the PDF file.

Race to Sanity

David Brooks:

First, Obama and the education secretary, Arne Duncan, set up a contest. They put down $4.5 billion in Race to the Top money. They issued some general guidelines about what kind of reforms states would have to adopt to get the money. And then they fired the starting gun.
Reformers in at least 23 states have passed reform laws in hopes of getting some of the dough. Some of the state laws represent incremental progress and some represent substantial change. The administration has hung tough, demanding real reform in exchange for dollars. Over all, there’s been a tremendous amount of movement in a brief time.
This is not heavy-handed Washington command-and-control. This is Washington energizing diverse communities of reformers, locality by locality, and giving them more leverage in their struggles against the defenders of the status quo.
Second, the Obama administration used the power of the presidency to break through partisan gridlock. Over the past decade, teacher unions and their allies have become proficient in beating back Republican demands for more charters, accountability and choice. But Obama has swung behind a series of bipartisan reformers who are also confronting union rigidity.
In Rhode Island, the Central Falls superintendent, Frances Gallo, fired all the teachers at one failing school. The unions fought back. Obama sided with Gallo, sending shock waves nationwide. If the president had the guts to confront a sacred Democratic interest group in order to jolt a failing school, then change was truly in the air. Gallo got the concessions she needed to try to improve that school.

US court weighs school discipline for Web posts

MaryClaire Dale:

A U.S. appeals court heard arguments Thursday over whether school officials can discipline students for making lewd, harassing or juvenile Internet postings from off-campus computers.
Two students from two different Pennsylvania school districts are fighting suspensions they received for posting derisive profiles of their principals on MySpace from home computers. The American Civil Liberties Union argued that school officials infringe on student’s free speech rights when they reach beyond school grounds in such cases to impose discipline.
“While children are in school, they are under the custody and tutelage of the school,” ACLU lawyer Witold Walczak argued Thursday in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “Once they leave the schoolhouse gate, you’ve got parents that come into play.”

A Study on How Florida Tax-Credit Scholarship program impacts public schools

David Figlio and Cassandra Hart [340K PDF]:

School choice option including both voucher and neo-voucher options like tuition tax credit funded scholarship programs have become increasingly prevalent in recent years (Howell, Peterson, Wolf and Campbell, 2006). One popular argument for school choice policies is that public schools will improve the education they offer when faced with competition for students. Because state funds are tied to student enrollment, losing students to private schools
constitutes a financial loss to public schools. If schools face the threat of losing students and the state funds attached to those students–to private schools, they should be incentivized to cultivate customer (i.e., parental) satisfaction by operating more efficiently and improving on the outcomes valued by students and parents (Friedman, 1962).
Alternatively, vouchers may have unintended negative effects on public schools if they draw away the most involved families from public schools and the monitoring of those schools diminishes, allowing schools to reduce effort put into educating students (McMillan, 2004).1
It is notoriously difficult to gauge the competitive effects of private schools on public
school performance because private school supply and public school performance affect each other dynamically (Dee, 1998; McEwan, 2000). In cross-section, the relationship between private school supply and public school performance could plausibly be either upward-biased or downward-biased. On the one hand, private schools may disproportionately locate in communities with low-quality public schools. In such a case, the estimated relationship between private school penetration and public school performance would be downward-biased. On the other hand, if private schools locate in areas with high valuation of educational quality, then the

Jay Greene has more.

Parents plow hopes and savings into new school for children with autism

Shawn Doherty via a kind reader’s email:

It started out as the dreaming of a lonely mother overwhelmed and held captive by the challenges of raising twin toddlers with autism, each of whom required up to 43 hours a week of intensive in-home therapy. There should be a refuge where she and others struggling with the devastating developmental disorder could find respite, company, play groups and therapy, Jackie Moen thought. As her boys grew, so did her dreams. Why couldn’t schools build curriculum around these children’s unique talents and needs, rather than forcing many of them to fall short of the rigid classroom norms?
And so Jackie and her husband Ken, joined by a passionate group of other parents, teachers and therapists, have set out to create such a place themselves. In 2007, they bought an old brick schoolhouse in McFarland and poured their savings and a pool of grants and contributions into renovating it into a homey space with donated couches, sunlit classrooms and gleaming wood floors. As soon as the Common Threads Family Resource Center opened in 2007, director of operations Ellen Egen recalls, “the phone calls just kept coming.” Hundreds of children and desperate family members flocked to the cheerful schoolhouse for an array of activities not available elsewhere, including play groups, teen therapy sessions, respite care and mental health counseling. “It grew like magic,” Moen, now the center’s director, recalls.

Documentary on farming at Detroit school gets recognition as subject might move

David Runk:

A documentary from a pair of Dutch filmmakers about urban farming at a Detroit school for pregnant teens and young mothers is getting wider recognition as the school’s program faces the prospect of being uprooted.
Mascha and Manfred Poppenk made “Grown in Detroit” first for Dutch public television and began screening it last year. It focuses on the Catherine Ferguson Academy for Young Women, which has its own working farm.
“This is really a film Americans should see,” Mascha Poppenk said. “They need to see there are good things going on in Detroit.”
The building that houses Catherine Ferguson could be closed in June and its program moved to another one about a mile away. It’s part of a plan announced in March by district emergency financial manager Robert Bobb to close 44 schools.
Detroit Public Schools, which is fighting years of declining enrolment and a $219 million budget deficit, closed 29 schools before the start of classes last fall and shuttered 35 buildings about three years ago.

Comments on the Madison School District’s Budget

Susan Troller:

Madison’s public school budget process is lurching to a preliminary close tonight — final numbers will be available in October after the state revenue picture is clear and district enrollment will be set. Tonight there’s a public meeting at 5 p.m. at the Doyle Building for last minute pleas and entreaties, 545 West Dayton St., followed by a School Board workshop session, which is likely to include some additional budget amendments from board members. Current projections suggest there will be an increase of about $225 property tax increase on the average $250,000 home.
It’s been a particularly painful process this time around, as illustrated by a recent e-mail I got. It came from one of my favorite teachers and said that due to some of the recent budget amendments, the Madison school district’s elementary school health offices would no longer be able to provide band-aids for teachers to use in their classrooms. Instead, children would be required to bring them from home with other supplies, like tissues or crayons.

Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman spoke to the Madison Rotary Club on “What Wisconsin’s Public Education Model Needs to Learn from General Motors Before it is too late.” 7MB mp3 audio (the audio quality is not great, but you can hear the talk if you turn up the volume!).
Zimman’s talk ranged far and wide. He discussed Wisconsin’s K-12 funding formula (it is important to remember that school spending increases annually (from 1987 to 2005, spending grew by 5.10% annually in Wisconsin and 5.25% in the Madison School District), though perhaps not in areas some would prefer.
“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).
Zimman noted that the most recent State of Wisconsin Budget removed the requirement that arbitrators take into consideration revenue limits (a district’s financial condition @17:30) when considering a District’s ability to afford union negotiated compensation packages. The budget also added the amount of teacher preparation time to the list of items that must be negotiated….. “we need to breakthrough the concept that public schools are an expense, not an investment” and at the same time, we must stop looking at schools as a place for adults to work and start treating schools as a place for children to learn.”

No magic bullet for education America keeps looking for one simple solution for its education shortcomings. There isn’t one.

Los Angeles Times:

The “unschooling” movement of the 1970s featured open classrooms, in which children studied what they were most interested in, when they felt ready. That was followed by today’s back-to-basics, early-start model, in which students complete math worksheets in kindergarten and are supposed to take algebra by eighth grade at the latest. Under the “whole language” philosophy of the 1980s, children were expected to learn to read by having books read to them. By the late 1990s, reading lessons were dominated by phonics, with little time spent on the joys of what reading is all about — unlocking the world of stories and information.
A little more than a decade ago, educators bore no responsibility for their students’ failure; it was considered the fault of the students, their parents and unequal social circumstances. Now schools are held liable for whether students learn, regardless of the students’ lack of effort or previous preparation, and are held solely accountable for reaching unrealistic goals of achievement.
No wonder schools have a chronic case of educational whiplash. If there’s a single aspect of schooling that ought to end, it’s the decades of abrupt and destructive swings from one extreme to another. There is no magic in the magic-bullet approach to learning. Charters are neither evil nor saviors; they can be a useful complement to public schools, but they have not blazed a sure-fire path to student achievement. Decreeing that all students will be proficient in math and reading by 2014 hasn’t moved us dramatically closer to the mark.

Diffused governance, is, in my view, the best way forward. This means that communities should offer a combination of public, private, virtual, charter and voucher options. A diversity of K-12 approaches insures that a one size fits all race to the bottom does not prevail. I was very disappointed to recently learn that Wisconsin’s Democrat Senator Russ Feingold voted to kill the Washington, DC voucher program. No K-12 approach is perfect, but eliminating that option for the poorest members of our society is simply unpalatable.
Somewhat related Lee Bergquist and Erin Richards: Wisconsin Governor Candidate Mark Neumann taps public funds for private schools

Republican businessman Mark Neumann started his first taxpayer-funded school with 49 students, and in eight years enrollment has mushroomed to nearly 1,000 students in four schools.
Neumann, a candidate for governor who preaches smaller government and fiscal conservatism, has used his entrepreneurial skills to tap private and public funds – including federal stimulus dollars – to start schools in poor neighborhoods.
The former member of the U.S. House operates three religious-based schools in Milwaukee, a fourth nonreligious school in Phoenix and has plans to build clusters of schools across the country.
The Nashotah businessman is part of a growing national movement from the private sector that is providing poor neighborhoods an alternative to traditional public schools.
There are signs the schools are achieving one of their primary goals of getting students into post-secondary schools.

A Tale of Two Students In middle school, Ivan and Laura shared a brief romance and a knack for trouble. Then they parted ways. Now he is college-bound and she isn’t. How different schools shaped their paths.

Miriam Jordan:

In middle school, Ivan Cantera ran with a Latino gang; Laura Corro was a spunky teen. At age 13, they shared their first kiss. Both made it a habit to skip class. In high school, they went their separate ways.
This fall, Ivan will enter the University of Oklahoma, armed with a prestigious scholarship. “I want to be the first Hispanic governor of Oklahoma,” declares the clean-cut 18-year-old, standing on the steps of Santa Fe South High School, the charter school in the heart of this city’s Hispanic enclave that he says put him on a new path.
Laura, who is 17, rose to senior class president at Capitol Hill High School, a large public school in the same neighborhood. But after scraping together enough credits to graduate, Laura isn’t sure where she’s headed. She never took college entrance exams.
The divergent paths taken by Laura and Ivan were shaped by many forces, but their schools played a striking role. Capitol Hill and Santa Fe South both serve the same poor, Hispanic population. Both comply with federal guidelines and meet state requirements for standardized exams and curriculum. Santa Fe South enrolls about 490 high school students, while Capitol Hill has nearly 900.
At Santa Fe South, the school day is 45 minutes longer; graduation requirements are more rigorous (four years of math, science and social studies compared with three at public schools); and there is a tough attendance

No, We Don’t Need a Teacher Bailout

Neal McCluskey:

From the recent apocalyptic pronouncements of Education Secretary Arne Duncan and others, you may think our schools are selling their last bits of chalk and playground sand to employ mere skeleton crews of teachers and staff. The truth is “apocalypse not.”
Yes, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten last week warned that, without a huge infusion of federal cash, public schools face “draconian cuts.” And the American Association of School Administrators declared a few weeks ago that without a bailout, job losses “would deal a devastating blow to public education.”
Then there’s Duncan’s warning, while making the TV-news rounds last week, of educational “catastrophe” if a federal rescue isn’t forthcoming. And now the National Education Association has launched something called “Speak Up for Education & Kids” — a campaign to get people to call their congressmen and demand a handout for education.
The scaremongering is producing results. House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wisc.) is planning to put $23 billion to save education jobs in a supplemental spending package. The move appears to have widespread Democratic support.

In Defense of Teachers What charter schools really tell us about education reform

Raina Kelley:

I think it’s fair to say that most people know we’re in the midst of an educational emergency. Just this week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told CNN, “There isn’t one urban school district in the country–Chicago, L.A., New York, D.C., Philly, Baltimore–there’s not one urban system yet where the dropout rate is low enough and the graduation rate is high enough.” And for those people who work in the school system, no issue has come to represent the struggle to save public education more than the fight over charter schools. For the sake of clarity, let me just note that a charter school is one which uses public funds to run a school that is managed privately, thus giving them the freedom to experiment as well as hire nonunion teachers. Charters such as the Harlem Children’s Zone HCZ in New York have longer school days (and a longer school year) with kids often required to come in Saturdays to work with tutors. The most successful charter schools (and they are not all the same in either quality or mission) have produced stunning results. At the Harlem Success Academy, 100 percent of third graders passed their state math exam and 95 percent passed the state English exam.

Eisman of ‘Big Short’ Says Sell Education Stocks

Daniel Golden & John Hechinger:

Steven Eisman, a hedge-fund manager whose bet against the housing market was chronicled in a best- selling book, said he has found the next “big short”: higher education stocks.
The stocks of companies operating for-profit colleges could fall much as 50 percent if the U.S. tightens student-loan rules, said Eisman, manager of the financial-services fund at FrontPoint Partners, a hedge-fund unit of New York-based Morgan Stanley.
An Obama administration proposal to limit student debt would slash earnings of Apollo Group Inc., ITT Educational Services Inc. and Corinthian Colleges Inc. by forcing them to reduce tuition and slow enrollment growth, Eisman said yesterday at a New York investment conference. Without new regulation, students at for-profit colleges will default on $275 billion of loans in the next decade, he said.

Charter School Funding Inequity, or the “Funding Gap”: Milwaukee’s Charter Schools Received 21.6% less than District Schools

Meagan Batdorff, Larry Maloney & Jay May [Complete 2MB PDF Report]:

The Funding Disparity: Now and Then
In 2005, a group of researchers associated with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute examined the comparative funding of charter schools in the broader context of educational finance. The goal of that study, which used data from the 2002- 2002-03 school year, was to determine whether and to what extent there were differences in the financial resources provided to charter schools when compared to public school districts in the same states. These researchers used data from 18 states across the United States, and released their results in the report “Charter School Funding: Inequity’s Next Frontier.” The results of this first study demonstrated a clear pattern of inequity in charter school funding. Across the states included in the study, the per pupil funding gap was $1,801 per pupil, or 21.7 percent of district funding. The funding disparity was most severe in the study’s 27 focus districts, many of them urban, where charter schools received $2,256, or 23.5 percent less funding per pupil compared to the school districts in which they were located. The researchers identified lower local funding as the primary source of this fiscal gap, particularly with respect to capital investment.

Wendy Kopp: Marquette University 2010 Commencement Address

Video @ Marquette University:

Wendy Kopp is founder and chief executive of Teach For America. She proposed the creation of Teach For America in her 1989 undergraduate senior thesis at Princeton University and has spent the past 20 years working to sustain and grow the organization. Today, 7,300 corps members teach in 35 urban and rural regions across the country. The organization expanded to Milwaukee in 2009, and Marquette is one of two area universities that provides course work for corps members.
Kopp gave the Commencement address to Marquette’s Class of 2010 on May 23, 2010 at the Bradley Center. More than 2,000 graduating students, their family and friends, and members of the Marquette community attended.

Clusty Search: Wendy Kopp.

The Way of the Future: Carpe Diem

Matthew Ladner:

Last week I visited the Carpe Diem charter school in Yuma Arizona. Yuma is off the beaten path, in far western Arizona near the borders of California and Mexico.
Carpe Diem is a 6-12 school with 240 students. A value added analysis of test scores found that they have the biggest gains in the state of Arizona. Their math results are really off the chart, with some grades averaging at the 98th percentile on Terra Nova.
Carpe Diem is a hybrid model school, rotating kids between self-paced instruction on the computer and classroom instruction. Their building is laid out with one large computer lab, with classroom space in the back. They had 240 students working on computers when I walked in, and you could have heard a pin drop.
Carpe Diem has successfully substituted technology for labor. With 6 grade levels and 240 students they have only 1 math teacher and one aide who focuses on math. Covering 6-12 and 240 students and getting the best results with a demographically challenging student body = no problem for Carpe Diem. Their founder, Rick Ogston, told me they use less staff than a typical model, and have cash reserves in the bank despite relatively low per pupil funding in AZ. They have never received support from philanthropic foundations, making due with state funding, but their model seems like it could be brought to scale with the right investment.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Easy Money, Hard Truths & Local Maintenance Referendum Audit?

David Einhorn:

Are you worried that we are passing our debt on to future generations? Well, you need not worry.
Before this recession it appeared that absent action, the government’s long-term commitments would become a problem in a few decades. I believe the government response to the recession has created budgetary stress sufficient to bring about the crisis much sooner. Our generation — not our grandchildren’s — will have to deal with the consequences.
According to the Bank for International Settlements, the United States’ structural deficit — the amount of our deficit adjusted for the economic cycle — has increased from 3.1 percent of gross domestic product in 2007 to 9.2 percent in 2010. This does not take into account the very large liabilities the government has taken on by socializing losses in the housing market. We have not seen the bills for bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and even more so the Federal Housing Administration, which is issuing government-guaranteed loans to non-creditworthy borrowers on terms easier than anything offered during the housing bubble. Government accounting is done on a cash basis, so promises to pay in the future — whether Social Security benefits or loan guarantees — do not count in the budget until the money goes out the door.
A good percentage of the structural increase in the deficit is because last year’s “stimulus” was not stimulus in the traditional sense. Rather than a one-time injection of spending to replace a cyclical reduction in private demand, the vast majority of the stimulus has been a permanent increase in the base level of government spending — including spending on federal jobs. How different is the government today from what General Motors was a decade ago? Government employees are expensive and difficult to fire. Bloomberg News reported that from the last peak businesses have let go 8.5 million people, or 7.4 percent of the work force, while local governments have cut only 141,000 workers, or less than 1 percent.

Locally, the Madison School Board meets Tuesday evening, 6/1 to discuss the 2010-2011 budget, which looks like it will raise property taxes at least 10%. A number of issues have arisen around the District’s numbers, including expenditures from the 2005 maintenance referendum.
I’ve not seen any updates on Susan Troller’s April, 12, 2010 question: “Where did the money go?” It would seem that proper resolution of this matter would inform the public with respect to future spending and tax increases.

Seattle Schools Chief Maria Goodloe-Johnson Heads into Board Evaluation on the Heels of Scathing Surveys

Nina Shapiro:

Is Seattle Schools Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson in for a drubbing tomorrow?
The school board will hear a report from a local consulting company that summarizes what individual board members have said about the superintendent in one-on-one interviews, as well as what Goodloe-Johnson has said about herself.
The report will be used for a formal evaluation of the superintendent and will help determine whether she gets a raise and an additional bonus. It will also influence whether her contract, which runs through 2012, is extended.
If the report is anything like a recent community group’s survey, Goodloe-Johnson is in trouble.

Melissa Westbrook has more.

Is the public turning against teachers unions?

Jo-Ann Armao:

Kurt Schmoke, the former mayor of Baltimore who helped broker the contract agreement between D.C. schools and its teachers union, had strong words for those who wanting to improve education. “Stop demonizing the unions,” he told an education roundtable convened Wednesday at the Aspen Institute. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan quickly seconded his message. I couldn’t help wondering if the two had happened to catch Monday night’s final episode of “Law & Order.”
The program, centered on a frantic search to find a blogger threatening to assault a New York City high school, deals with some of the thorny issues of school management and reform. The program’s title, “The Rubber Room,” comes from the real-life temporary reassignment centers where New York City teachers who are facing disciplinary action are sent. For those who are less avid “Law & Order” fans and missed the show, detectives first suspect a deranged student, but it turns out the blogger, called Moot, is a teacher who had been sent to a rubber room after he was falsely accused of molesting a student.

The Swedish module: Overhauling England’s Education System with Privately Run schools

David Turner:

Lesley Surman, a 42-year-old housewife and mother of three – “working class and proud of it” – wants to set up a new secondary school in the west Yorkshire village of Birkenshaw.
Mrs Surman is no fantasist. She is part of a group of about 60 activists trying to establish the school in 2013 because she harbours doubts about the alternatives available to local parents. “We want to get back to core values, pastoral care and a school where you celebrate winning.” Instead of offering “beauty therapy and mechanics” – vocational subjects increasingly offered in the state sector – she would prefer a focus on nine or so academic subjects, including science and history.
The answer to her problems could lie several hundred miles across the North Sea. Tomorrow’s Queen’s Speech, outlining the ruling coalition’s legislative priorities, is expected to use Sweden’s “free schools” as a model for an overhaul of the English education system, making it easier for parents and teachers to create privately run but state-funded primary and secondary schools.
“Free” in the sense of independent, these private establishments were introduced in 1995 to provide greater choice for parents unable to afford the fees for Sweden’s tiny (now even tinier) privately funded sector. Underpinning the policy of the country’s centre-right government was the free-market principle that competition would raise standards in all schools as state institutions were forced to work harder to keep up.
The government has similar hopes for England (Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are responsible for their own education policies) – where, in spite of large numbers of private, fee-charging, schools, 93 per cent of children are state educated.

Related Links: The Guardian’s Editorial.
The Prime Minister’s Office:

“Legislation will be introduced to…give teachers greater freedom over the curriculum and allow new providers to run state schools.”
The purpose of the Bill is to:
Give full effect to the range of programmes envisaged in the Coalition agreement.
The main benefits of the Bill will be:

To give all schools greater freedom over the curriculum
To improve school accountability
To take action to tackle bureaucracy
To improve behaviour in schools

The main elements of the Bill are:

To provide schools with the freedoms to deliver an excellent education in the way they see fit.
To reform Ofsted and other accountability frameworks to ensure that head teachers are held properly accountable for the core educational goals of attainment and closing the gap between rich and poor.
To introduce a slimmer curriculum giving more space for teachers to decide how to teach.
To introduce a reading test for 6 year olds to make sure that young children are learning and to identify problems early.
To give teachers and head teachers the powers to improve behaviour and tackle bullying.
We expect standards across the education sector to rise through the creation of more Academies and giving more freedom to head teachers and teachers. We will also ensure that money follows pupils, and introduce a ‘pupil premium’ so that more money follows the poorest pupils.

Madison School District: Strategic Plan Update Meeting

The Madison School District is holding an update to their Strategic Planning Process this week. A number of documents have been distributed, including:

Seattle School District Files Appeal in “Discovery Math” Lawsuit Loss

Martha McLaren:

The District’s Appeal Brief is in — A link to the appeal is shown on the lower left.
The Seattle School District’s first brief in its appeal of Judge Spector’s decision was filed on Friday. To me, it is not surprising that its arguments are weak. I don’t think we could ever have scored this unprecedented victory had our case not been extremely well founded. Nonetheless, one can’t predict what the appeals panel will rule.
Basically, the brief restates the district’s original contention that, because the specified process was followed, any decision made by the board, (I might add — regardless of how it flouted overwhelming evidence) must stand. Also, the brief misstates and misinterprets many aspects of our case. One of the most egregious examples is the contention that the court overstepped its authority by making a decision on curriculum. Not so – the court simply remanded the board’s decision back to the board on the basis of the lack of evidence to support the decision.
We have 30 days to file our response brief (by June 21), and SPS has 15 days after (by July 6) to file its rebuttal. Our attorney tells me that a hearing will be scheduled after all briefs have been filed.

Much more on the initial, successful rollback of Seattle’s Discovery Math program here

Saturation point: Teachers unions must stop trying to hamstring charter schools

New York Daily News Editorial:

The future of charter schools in New York hangs on negotiations between City Hall and teachers union President Michael Mulgrew. This is perverse.
The United Federation of Teachers is fighting to limit the growth of charters even as the state’s application for as much as $700 million in federal Race to the Top money demands letting the number of schools expand.
Mulgrew’s strategy has been to give the nod to upping the charter cap while trying to make it all but impossible for a sponsor to open one of these privately run, publicly funded academies. For example, by creating barriers to moving a charter into unused space in a public school building.
Although the city’s charter schools have almost universally racked up amazing achievement gains, the UFT resists them because most are not unionized. And the more successful charters have become, the greater the resistance has grown

Houston School District Wants Input on Strategic Direction for the District’s Future

Houston Independent School District:

The Houston Independent School District is in the midst of developing a long-term strategic plan that will provide a road map for the future as the district strives to become the best public school system in the nation. To ensure that all key stakeholders are engaged and involved in this process, HISD is inviting any member of the Houston community to give their input at an open discussion on Monday, May 24, from 6:00-7:30 p.m. at the Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center’s board auditorium (4440 West 18th Street).
To develop a long-term Strategic Direction, HISD is working with the Apollo Consulting Group in a six-month effort that started in February 2010 and will culminate in August with the release of a final plan. The goal is to create a set of core initiatives and key strategies that will allow HISD to build upon the beliefs and visions established by the HISD Board of Education and to provide the children of Houston with the highest quality of primary and secondary education.
Over the past two months, HISD has been gathering input from members of Team HISD, as well as from parents and members of the Houston community, including faith-based groups, non-profit agencies, businesses, and local and state leaders. After analyzing feedback and conducting diagnostic research, a number of core initiatives have emerged. They include placing an effective teacher in every classroom, supporting the principal as the CEO, developing rigorous instructional standards and support, ensuring data driven accountability, and cultivating a culture of trust through action.
“True transformation cannot happen overnight and it cannot happen without the input from everyone at Team HISD and those in our community who hold a stake in the education of Houston’s children,” says Superintendent of Schools Terry B. Grier. “In order for it to be meaningful, we need everyone to lend their voice to the process and help us shape the future direction of HISD.”

Program helps ex-foster youth navigate college

Nanette Asimov:

Sokhom Mao will do something today that few like him ever do: He’ll graduate from college.
Little about Mao appears unusual, except maybe his waist-length black hair. He’s 23, like many students who will walk the stage today at San Francisco State University. He majored in criminal justice, has applied for the usual summer internships and wants to become a politician.
What’s rare about this graduating senior is that he was raised in a group home since age 12. His mother had died, leaving him in the care of abusive relatives. Just 2 percent of foster youth earn a bachelor’s degree, research shows.
Mao is in that small club because of the Guardian Scholars, a program at San Francisco State that mimics, to the extent possible, the role of parents for students who have none.

Madison Police Department expands gang unit: 40 Gangs in Madison

Sandy Cullen:

Police estimate there are now more than 1,100 confirmed gang members in Madison and about 40 gangs, about 12 of which are the main Latino gangs.
The Dane County Enhanced Youth Gang Prevention Task Force recommended in August 2007 that a countywide gang coordinator’s position be considered. That group’s co-chairman, former Madison police Capt. Luis Yudice, who’s also security coordinator for the Madison School District, first called for a “comprehensive strategy so we can all work in unison” to address gang violence in September 2005.
Since then, Yudice said, staff in Madison schools are recognizing more issues involving gangs among students, which he attributes in part to greater awareness and training.
“We have gang-involved kids in probably most of our high schools and middle schools and some of our elementary schools,” he said. Staff do a good job of keeping gang activity out of the schools, he said, and work closely with students, families, police and social workers in an effort to keep students out of gangs.
Locally, the gang issue is not unique to Madison schools. “We’re seeing more gang activity in the suburban school districts,” Yudice said, as well as the emergence of hate groups targeting blacks and Latinos in Madison, Deerfield, Cottage Grove and DeForest.

Some 2009 Email Messages to Comments @ the Madison School District

These two documents [1MB .txt or 2MB PDF] include some email messages sent to “comments@madison.k12.wi.us” from 1/1/2009 through September, 2009.
I requested the messages via an open records request out of concerns expressed to me that public communications to this email address were not always making their way to our elected representatives on the Madison Board of Education. Another email address has since been created for direct public communication to the Board of education: board@madison.k12.wi.us
There has been extensive back and forth on the scope of the District’s response along with the time, effort and expense required to comply with this request. I am thankful for the extensive assistance I received with this request.
I finally am appreciative of Attorney Dan Mallin’s fulfillment (a few items remain to be vetted) and response, included below:

As we last discussed, attached are several hundreds of pages of e-mails (with non-MMSD emails shortened for privacy purposes) that:
(1) Are not SPAM / commercial solicitations / organizational messages directed to “school districts” generally
(2) Are not Pupil Records
(3) Are not auto-generated system messages (out of office; undeliverable, etc.)
(4) Are not inquiries from MMSD employees about how to access their work email via the web when the web site changed (which e-mails typically contained their home email address)
(5) Are not technical web-site related inquiries (e.g., this link is broken, etc.)
(6) Are not random employment inquiries / applications from people who didn’t know to contact the Human Resources department and instead used the comments address (e.g., I’m a teacher and will be moving to Madison, what job’s are open?).
(7) Are not geneology-related inquiries about relatives and/or long-lost friends/teachers/etc.
(8) Are not messages that seek basic and routine information that would be handled clerically(e.g., please tell me where I can find this form; how do I get a flyer approved for distribution; what school is ____ address assigned to; when is summer school enrollment, etc.)
Some of the above may have still slipped in, but the goal was to keep copying costs as low as possible. Once all of the e-mails within your original request were read to determine content, it took over 2 hours to isolate the attached messages electronically from the larger pool that also included obvious pupil records, but you’ve been more than patient with this process and you have made reasonable concessions that saved time for the District in other ways, and there will be no additional copying charge assessed.

It would be good public policy to post all communications sent to the District. Such a simple effort may answer many questions and provide a useful look at our K-12 environment.
I am indebted to Chan Stroman Roll for her never ending assistance on this and other matters.
Related: Vivek Wadhwa: The Open Gov Initiative: Enabling Techies to Solve Government Problems
Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/22/the-open-government-initiative-enabling-techies-to-solve-problems/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29#ixzz0ohshEHIG

While grandma flips through photo albums on her sleek iPad, government agencies (and most corporations) process mission-critical transactions on cumbersome web-based front ends that function by tricking mainframes into thinking that they are connected to CRT terminals. These systems are written in computer languages like Assembler and COBOL, and cost a fortune to maintain. I’ve written about California’s legacy systems and the billions of dollars that are wasted on maintaining these. Given the short tenure of government officials, lobbying by entrenched government contractors, and slow pace of change in the enterprise-computing world, I’m not optimistic that much will change – even in the next decade. But there is hope on another front: the Open Government Initiative. This provides entrepreneurs with the data and with the APIs they need to solve problems themselves. They don’t need to wait for the government to modernize its legacy systems; they can simply build their own apps.

Parent Survey of Seattle’s Superintendent

Melissa Westbrook:

One absolutely great thing that the folks at CPPS did was to include every single comment. There are pages of them so it takes awhile to read. But it is valuable reading because you start seeing a theme to them even as each one differs somewhat in its issue.
What did people say? If I had to sum it up, it would be two things. One, there is almost zero feeling that Dr. Goodloe-Johnson listens to parents. There were several comments that applauded her strong stance (which many others thought autocratic) or the changes she has made in the district . I didn’t see one comment saying she was approachable or was someone who collaborates well with the community.
Two, is the overwhelming sense that she is hurting the district, either through her lack of ability to engage/motivate/inspire and/or the amount of churn that she has caused in the district with not a lot to show for it in terms of results.

Governance Matters

Chad Alderman:

Nevada has recently been considering whether to change the way its state education agency is run. The governor has asked for the state superintendent to be part of the cabinet and for the power to name the state school chief. The legislature has turned down this request with a political argument, arguing the governor would have too much power under such an arrangement.

RI school district agrees to rehire fired teachers

Eric Tucker:

A school district that gained the support of President Barack Obama for promoting accountability after it fired all its teachers from a struggling school announced on Sunday it had reached an agreement with the union to return the current staffers to their jobs.
The two sides said a transformation plan for Central Falls High School for the coming school year would allow the roughly 87 teachers, guidance counselors, librarians and other staffers who were to lose their jobs at the end of this year to return without having to reapply. More than 700 people had already applied for the positions.
The agreement calls for a longer school day, more after-school tutoring and other changes.
“What this means is that they have come to an agreement about a reform effort and that will change the quality” of the education program at Central Falls, said Rhode Island Education Commissioner Deborah Gist, who applauded both sides for working together.

Know Your Madisonian: Richard Scott Retires as minority services coordinator at Madison’s East High School

Ken Singletary:

Richard Scott, 58, has been minority services coordinator at Madison’s East High School for 34 years. He retires in June and will focus more on his artistic endeavors, including playwrighting, performing in musical groups and coordinating a step-dance group.
Will you miss the students?
Absolutely. I’m going to miss their energy. I’m going to miss their spontaneity. I’m going to miss their youthfulness. I receive their energy.
What do students want?
They need attention. They need respect. They need opportunities to express themselves … Not all minority students come from one point of reference. I look at them individually. I tell them ‘I love you all, but I love you all differently.’
You focus a lot on conflict resolution. How do you do that?
I try to initiate a discussion based on commonalities … If you have a conflict with someone, you have a commonality, something to build on. … I try not to solve problems for students but give them the tools by which they can transform conflicts into something positive. I’m not saying ‘You’re going to forget what happened, but you’re going to go beyond what happened.’… A lot of young people are very emotional, very reactive in their processes, and I want them to think about it. … I truly enjoy when students who are very, very angry see a situation differently. If they can be something else, something else than what people have told them they are, then we’ve done our job.

School district adding 5th grade to middle school

Erin Snelgrove:

Itzie Duarte is glad her children are enrolled in the West Valley School District. But she is far from happy with the school board’s decision to move fifth-graders to the middle school this fall.
“A fifth-grader isn’t mentally capable of being in a school where there is no recess,” said Duarte, who will have one child entering kindergarten and another entering third grade. “If we need the space, turn the middle school into an elementary school.”
But district officials say next year’s grade reconfiguration – which includes sending ninth-graders to the old high school – is needed to help with overcrowding.
Much of the growth is in the elementary schools. In the past three years, about 300 additional students – including about 60 this year – have entered the district.
The middle school, officials added, is built to accommodate students traveling throughout the building and is not designed for instructing young children.

“The key impediment to improving public education is not lack of money, but the organizational structure of public schools”

Liv Finne:

As an education policy analyst, I am very concerned about the quality of education our children are receiving. My research has led me to conclude that the key impediment to improving public education is not lack of money, but the organizational structure of public schools. Private schools in Washington and public charter schools in other states are given the advantage of operating free of public education’s centralized and highly regulated superstructure. As a result, private and public charter schools can better direct resources to the classroom, more reliably place effective teachers in every classroom, and offer better life prospects to children through higher-quality education. Cutting central bureaucracies and putting qualified principals in charge of their schools would help make sure that education dollars actually reach the classroom.
Recently, I turned my attention to a restrictive policy that applies to public schools but not to private or public charter schools: mandatory collective bargaining agreements. Here is a link to our full study of Seattle’s current collective bargaining agreement [563K PDF], and below is a summary of our findings.
School district salaries and benefits

Teachers in Seattle receive an average of $70,850 in total salary (base pay and other pay), plus average insurance benefits of $9,855. These figures apply to a ten-month work year.
Teachers in Seattle public schools can earn up to $88,463 in total base and other pay for a ten-month work year, or $98,318 including benefits.
Seattle Schools employ 371 people as “educational staff associates,” who receive an average of $76,339 for a ten-month year, or $86,194 including benefits.
Seattle Schools employs 193 non-teachers, mostly senior administrators, who each receive more than $100,000 in total pay.

Can schools be free and accountable?

Mike Baker:

Welcome to the new age of school autonomy and teacher freedom.
At least that is what has been promised: fewer directives and targets, less guidance and prescription.
However, there are conflicting messages on English education policy from the new coalition government.
They can be summed up by two consecutive sentences in the “coalition agreement”, which has become the working handbook for the new government.
First, it promises that all schools will have “greater freedom over the curriculum”. Then, it adds that all schools will be held “properly accountable”.

‘Everything for the children’

Tatiana Pina:

The moment of truth for Ivan and Olga Rojas came in 2008, when their son Esteban finished his sophomore year at the Blackstone Academy Charter School in Pawtucket and told his parents he wanted to transfer to Central Falls High School. The thought alarmed them. The high school had been under-performing for years, and Esteban’s mother feared there were gangs and drugs at the school.
For Blanca Giraldo the reckoning came in February 2009, when Central Falls High School Principal Elizabeth Legault sent a letter asking her to come to the school. Legault told Giraldo that her daughter Valerie Florez was failing: she was frequently late, skipping class and not doing her work.
For Jackie Wilson, a random act of violence forced her to uproot her daughter Sakira during her junior year at Central Falls High.

Madison School District Online Survey: “Embedded Honors” High School Courses

via a kind reader’s email. The survey is apparently available via the District’s “Infinite Campus” system:

1. The Embedded Honors option provided work that was challenging for my child.
o Strongly disagree
o Disagree
o Neither agree nor disagree
o Agree
o Strongly agree
2. Please provide an explanation to Question 1.
(empty box)
3. The Embedded Honors work allowed my child to go more in-depth into the content of the course.
o Strongly disagree
o Disagree
o Neither agree nor disagree
o Agree
o Strongly agree
4. Please provide an explanation to Question 3.
(empty box)
5. For Embedded Honors, my child had to do more work than other students.
o Strongly disagree
o Disagree
o Neither agree nor disagree
o Agree
o Strongly agree
6. For Embedded Honors, my child had to do more challenging work than other students.
o Strongly disagree
o Disagree
o Neither agree nor disagree
o Agree
o Strongly agree
7. Mark the following learning options that were part of your child’s experience in the Embedded Honors for this corse.
o extension opportunities of class activities
o class discussions and labs to enhance my learning
o flexible pace of instruction
o access to right level of challenge in coursework
o opportunities to focus on my personal interests
o independent work (projects)
o opportunities to demonstrate my knowledge
o opportunities to explore a field of study
o additional reading assignments
o more challenging reading assignments
o additional writing assignments
o helpful teacher feedback on my work
o activities with other Embedded Honors students
o more higher-level thinking, less memorization
8. My child benefited from the Embedded Honors option for the course(s) for which he/she took, compared to courses without Embedded Honors.
o Strongly disagree
o Disagree
o Neither agree nor disagree
o Agree
o Strongly agree

After autism intervention, boy is now gifted student, musician

Susan Troller:

When Christopher Xu turned 2, his mother’s worst fears were confirmed. The other babies at her son’s birthday party babbled, gestured and used simple words as they played and interacted with their parents and each other. But Christopher was different.
“He was locked in his own world,” Sophia Sun recalls. “No eye contact. No pointing. No laughing at cartoons or looking at me when I talk to him.”
In fact, Sun says, she and her husband, Yingchun Xu, both Chinese-born computer engineers who earned their graduate degrees in Vancouver, British Columbia, had never known anyone with this kind of remote, inaccessible child.
The couple were living with their older daughters, Iris and Laura, in a Chicago suburb when Christopher was born. Both girls were interactive, affectionate babies, but Christopher paid little attention to his mother, his family or his surroundings. As a toddler he spent most of his time lining up his favorite toys in order or spinning himself in circles — over and over again. When the Xu family went to an air show, his mother pointed to the planes roaring overhead, saying, “Christopher, look at that! Look up!” but the little boy just spun around and around, oblivious to the noise or the world surrounding him.
Now Christopher is 11, and he will soon graduate from the fifth grade at Madison’s John Muir Elementary to head off to middle school. Thanks to the love and persistence of his family, powerful early training, insightful teachers and accepting classmates, his story has changed dramatically, and his remarkable abilities are increasingly apparent.

Much more on autism here and via Wolfram Alpha.

Unique Schools Serving Unique Students: Charter Schools and Children with Special Needs

Robin Lake, via a Deb Britt email:

The book can be purchased, using a credit card, from the print-on-demand service CreateSpace (an Amazon.com affiliate) or by check or purchase order directly from CRPE.
………………………………………………………..
Unique Schools Serving Unique Students (Robin Lake, editor) offers a pioneering look at the role of charter schools in meeting the needs of special education students. The book addresses choices made at the intersection of two very important policy arenas in education: special education and charter schools.
Drawing lessons from parent surveys and case studies, this volume poses and addresses a number of important questions that have received limited attention to date: How many students with disabilities attend charter schools? How do parents choose schools for their children with special needs and how satisfied are they with their choices? What innovations are coming out of the charter school sector that might be models for public education writ large? Finally, what challenges and opportunities do charter schools bring to special education?

Executive education and the over-55s

The Economist:

“LIFELONG learning” is a phrase beloved by business schools. But not, it seems, by their clients. According to a recent survey by Mannaz, a management-development firm, the number of professionals taking part in formal corporate training drops rapidly after the age of 55. Are these wise, old heads being overlooked?
It is tempting to conclude that older executives are falling victim to age discrimination, as firms focus resources on younger talent. But according to Jorgen Thorsell, Mannaz’s vice-president, this is not the case. Reticence, he says, comes not from the organisations but from the employees themselves.
Mr Thorsell believes that conventional training simply no longer serves their needs. Formal programmes are often seen as a repetition of lessons already learned and become increasingly irrelevant in the light of experience and expertise. The resulting “training fatigue” is resistant to most incentives.

Education Reform in Wisconsin Cannot Penetrate a Thick Padding of Insulation

George Lightbourn:

Thanks largely to the efforts of President Obama, more Americans are paying attention to education reform. In Wisconsin, many people were forced out of their comfort zone (we are pleased about ranking either #1 or #2 in ACT scores) when the Obama administration snubbed our request for federal “Race to the Top” money.
Just as the public is coming to understand the vulnerability of the Wisconsin economy, they are beginning to see the vulnerability of our K-12 school system. Dropouts are up, test scores are down, and we have never spent more on education. Increasingly, people are beginning to demand more performance from their education dollar.
In education, like so many aspects of our lives, we look for success stories. Today’s rock star of education reform is the diminutive head of the Washington D.C. schools, Michelle Rhee. She is shaking up the world of education based on her passion around one simple concept; performance. Enabled by changes in federal and city laws, Rhee has put in place a teacher evaluation system, 50% of which is based on teachers’ impact on student learning. Using this tool, Rhee laid off dozens of teachers. If they were not performing, they were gone.

Don’t lose sight of why we have public schools

Marj Passman:

The need to succeed at teaching children is at the basic core of everything we do in Madison schools.
So why did the very society that depends on us to educate their most precious beings, their children, come to be so apprehensive about us? How did this happen? When did our state Legislature and many of our fellow citizens decide that an increase and/or a change in public financing of education was not in their interest?
Perhaps we all need to calm down and ask ourselves the very basic question of why we have public schools. The following tenets are a good start:
1. To provide universal access to free education.
2. To guarantee equal opportunities for all children.
3. To unify a diverse population.
4. To prepare people for citizenship in a democratic society.
5. To prepare people to become economically self-sufficient.
6. To improve social conditions.
7. To pass knowledge from one generation to the next.
8. To share the accumulated wisdom of the ages.
9. To instill in our young people a love for a lifetime of learning.
10. To bring a richness and depth to life.
Many Americans have either forgotten, disregard, or no longer view public schools as needed to achieve the above. Some, not all, view the public schools in a much more narrow and self-indulgent way — “What are the public schools going to do for me and my child?” — and do not look at what the schools so richly provide for everyone in a democratic society.

There are many reasons that public education institutions face credibility challenges, including:

An increasing focus on “adult employment” vs educating the children – via Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman’s recent speech to the Madison Rotary Club.
Ideology in certain spaces such as Reading Recovery, regardless of results.
Poor communication and a lack of transparency on financial matters and safety matters.
The ongoing question of whether more money makes a difference.

Having said that, there are certainly some remarkable people teaching our children, in many cases resisting curriculum reduction schemes and going the extra mile. In my view, our vital public school climate would be far richer and, overall, more effective with less bureaucracy, more charters (diffused governance) and a more open collaborative approach with nearby education institutions.
Madison taxpayers have long supported spending policies far above those of many other communities. The current economic situation requires a hard look at all expenditures, particularly those that cannot be seen as effective for the core school mission: educating our children. Reading scores would be a great place to start.
The two Madison School Board seats occupied by Marj Passman and Ed Hughes are up for election in April, 2011. Interested parties should contact the Madison City Clerk’s office for nomination paper deadlines.

New Madison School Board Governance: Maya Cole is President & Beth Moss Vice President

Monday evening’s Madison School Board meeting included a shifting of the chairs as Maya Cole succeeds Arlene Silveira as President and Beth Moss steps in for Lucy Mathiak as Vice President. Best wishes.

DCTS Speak Out & Two Sisters

Via a Judy Reed email:

“We have failed our African American kids, and hence we have failed our schools and all our kids… efforts at reform have been a joke. Its time for outrage”. – Neil Heinen Editorial –
March 30, 2010
Hello,
Dane County Transition School is sponsoring a Speak Out, the invitation is attached [PDF]. We are hoping those (students, parents, community members, educators…) who are passionate use this opportunity to voice their thoughts, ideas, and/or concerns for the need for more educational alternatives.
We are having the television stations, and the newspapers cover the Speak Out.
We are asking anyone who would like to speak to RSVP so we can order enough t-shirts, and plan the time accordingly.
Looking forward to seeing you at the Speak Out!
Judy & DCTS Community
* We have also attached a true story about two sisters; one who attends DCTS, and the other who…

Sisters-Two Different Journeys… One Given the Opportunity to Succeed…One Not…
A student approached me and said that she had a sudden revelation the evening before. She could not discuss this revelation in a public space, and requested that we talk in private. Her brows were slightly furrowed, but she had energy about her; like she had discovered her dream career, or that she had fallen in love with the boy next door. When we sat down in a small classroom, alone, I realized that she was not going to tell me about the love of her life, or that she wanted to travel the world to discover her spirituality; no, she was going to tell me something bad.
The dark side of a teacher’s career is getting to know the bad things about kids. In many circumstances, these bad things aren’t pleasant; they make us feel uncomfortable, angry, sad, or depressed. Nevertheless, it is our duty to not just instruct students on mathematics and science, but to be role models; or, individuals who understand and listen to other people. What may have been a revelation to this student, or a sudden explanation for so many things that have gone wrong in her life, was not parallel to my own feelings on the matter. Hearing the news that this student, Sara, remembered that she had been sexually abused as a child by a close family member, was completely disheartening. Her younger sister, Teresa, was also a victim of this heinous act.
According to the American Psychological Association Commission on Violence and Youth, “children and youths suffer more victimization than do adults in virtually every category, including physical abuse, sibling assault, bullying, sexual abuse, and rape.” In addition to this statistic, “long term effects of child abuse include fear, anxiety, depression, anger, hostility, inappropriate sexual behavior, poor self esteem, tendency toward substance abuse and difficulty with close relationships.” (Browne & Finkelhor).
Despite Sara’s realization that many of her troubles in life may be results of being a victim of sexual abuse as a child, she has made a lot of progress. Sara was given the opportunity to attend an alternative school, DCTS, for 2.5 years. During her time at DCTS, Sara has learned a variety of skills, from academics to social and emotional growth. She is now employed at a nursing home, is planning on earning her C.N.A license, and is taking the steps to enroll in college. Her sister, on the other hand, is in a different place. Teresa has been expelled from her home district 3 times; each expulsion occurred for different reasons. Teresa is currently not going to school, and her district has refused her access to the alternative school of her choice. Both Sara and Teresa have struggled with self-esteem issues (that at times were self-destructive), drug and alcohol abuse, cutting, and have experienced bouts of psychological symptoms related to depression. The difference between these girls is that there is no difference. Both were brought up in the same home, and experienced the same trauma. Both endured hardships related to their childhood. The difference lies in the system; Teresa has been denied the right to be educated in an environment deemed safe by her. Teresa deserves to learn, grow, and become a productive person; she deserves the right to attend an alternative school like DCTS. While Sara has learned to grow from trauma, Teresa is being pushed further into a dark, desolate hole.
It is shameful that our society forgets to place an emphasis on the needs of students; we say that we do, but when it comes down to it, we don’t. We don’t allow our students to learn from their mistakes, to learn how to be strong people, to learn how to advocate for themselves. The educational system has victimized Teresa in the same way that she was victimized as a child; she does not have a choice, does not have a voice, and her opinion is stifled. The miraculous thing about Teresa is that she has hope, a personality, and motivation. She is fighting the district to give her the school placement she deserves. The devastating factor is that Teresa has to keep fighting for something that our country perceives as a given right: an education.

Pennsylvania Kids Deserve School Choice

Anthony Hardy Williams:

Under President Obama’s new $4.35 billion Race to the Top program, states can compete for funds by creating programs that improve the quality of their schools. The idea of rewarding school reform initiatives is good, but one-time grants from the federal government will not improve our public education system by itself.
Why? Because the $400 million grant Pennsylvania now seeks represents less than half of 1% of the $23 billion spent annually in my state’s public school system. Given the thousands of dollars already being spent per student, an additional $56 per child will be insignificant–unless it is accompanied by comprehensive school-choice reform.
Pennsylvania should adopt reform based on the same premise as the Race to the Top initiative: that competition for taxpayer dollars improves the quality of education.

Mr. Williams is a state senator from Pennsylvania and a candidate in the May 18 Democratic primary for governor.

Madison School District Should “Stop Stonewalling”

Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

The public has a right to know if Ivan Mateo-Lozenzo, 21, attended West High School or any other Madison schools and for how long.
School district officials are stubbornly refusing to say.
Nor will they disclose if the district followed its own policies for screening new students when (or if) Mateo-Lozenzo enrolled at West using a fake name and age.
Police say Mateo-Lozenzo pulled the trigger in the shooting death of gang rival Antonio Perez, 19, on Madison’s East Side late last month.
Mateo-Lozenzo was an illegal immigrant from Mexico. But that’s not the central issue here because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that school districts can’t withhold public education because of immigration status.
The real issue here is school safety.

Teacher Evaluation And Improvement Plan: Frequently Asked Questions

Leo Casey:

On May 11, the UFT, NYSUT and the State Education Department reached a new agreement — subject to legislative approval — to create a teacher evaluation and improvement plan. Under the new agreement, which would take effect in September 2011, the evaluation process will be more objective, be based mostly on qualitative measures and limit the role of test scores.
How will the teacher evaluation system change?
The current evaluation system doesn’t work for us as a profession. It is totally subjective and too dependent on the whims of administrators. The new system, which would move us forward as a profession, will establish specific criteria that incorporate multiple measures of evaluating teacher performance. The new system embeds professional development in the evaluation system. Teacher evaluation was never meant to be a gotcha system. It was supposed to allow teachers to grow and develop professionally throughout their careers.
How will teachers be judged under the new system?

Pennsylvania Kids Deserve School Choice

Anthony Hardy Williams:

Under President Obama’s new $4.35 billion Race to the Top program, states can compete for funds by creating programs that improve the quality of their schools. The idea of rewarding school reform initiatives is good, but one-time grants from the federal government will not improve our public education system by itself.
Why? Because the $400 million grant Pennsylvania now seeks represents less than half of 1% of the $23 billion spent annually in my state’s public school system. Given the thousands of dollars already being spent per student, an additional $56 per child will be insignificant–unless it is accompanied by comprehensive school-choice reform.
Pennsylvania should adopt reform based on the same premise as the Race to the Top initiative: that competition for taxpayer dollars improves the quality of education.

School to Parents: Volunteer or Else!

Katharine Miexzkowski:

Students are not the only ones at Adelante Dual Language Academy in San Jose who are graded on their classroom participation. Parents are, too.
Parents of children attending the public elementary school receive a check, plus or minus based on how much they volunteer in class. If mom and dad slack off they even might get a call from the principal.
Inspired by Adelante, now San Jose’s Alum Rock Union Elementary School District is at work on a proposal to require the families of all its 13,000 students to do 30 hours of volunteering per school year. Many of the schools in the district, where 88 percent of the students are poor, do not even have a Parent-Teachers Association.
“We are trying to create a culture of strong parent-guardian-family participation,” trustee Gustavo Gonzalez, whose children attend Adelante, told The San Jose Mercury News.

Republicans Sell Out Chicago Schoolkids

William McGurn:

In the 19th century, Illinois was the land of Lincoln. In the 20th, it was the birthplace of Ronald Reagan. In the 21st, Illinois has given us a new breed of Republican: Roger Eddy.
Mr. Eddy is what they call a downstater, an assemblyman who serves an east-central Illinois district hugging the Indiana border. His day job turns out to be in government as well, as a public schools superintendent.
Last week Mr. Eddy became the face of the Republican failure to get a voucher bill through the Illinois assembly. The bill had passed the Senate. Yet despite being pushed by a remarkable coalition involving fellow Republicans, a free-market state think tank, and a prominent African-American leader, only 25 Republicans in the House voted yes. That was 12 votes short. Mr. Eddy was one of 23 Republicans who killed it by voting no.
“Last week was a missed opportunity for children in Chicago’s worst and most overcrowded schools, and it was a missed opportunity for Republicans,” says Collin Hitt, who handles education issues for the Illinois Policy Institute. “It’s not often that a minority Republican party has the chance to advance cornerstone policy with key African-American support. The good news is that the legislation remains alive, and this bill has another chance.”

Middleton, WI Superintendent Message to Parents & Guardians on Enrollment Policies (in light of a recent Student’s arrest on murder charges)

via a kind reader:

Dear Parents and Guardians,
Last week we informed you of the heightened security measure at Middleton High School due to the gang-related homicide in Madison. The Middleton High School student involved in the incident was last seen in Texas and police do not believe he will return to the Madison area. As a result, security will be back to normal at the high school on Monday.
You have also likely seen the news in the media regarding the true identity and age of the student involved in the incident. The individual attending Middleton High School as Arain Gutierrez was later identified by police as 21-year old Ivan Mateo-Lozenzo. Once we were made aware of the suspect’s identity and age we immediately began to investigate how he was enrolled at Middleton High School. Federal privacy laws prevent us from releasing the specific information or documents that are provided for an individual student. It does appear that our enrollment policies and procedures were correctly followed for his admission to our school district. To enroll in our school district the following must be provided for the student:
– A completed enrollment form
– Proof of residency in our district, such as a MGE or Alliant Energy bill, a signed apartment lease or accepted offer to purchase a home
– Proof of age is asked for but only required for children entering kindergarten
– Immunization record, if available
– Transfer of records request from the previous school district, if applicable
We also rely on information in the Wisconsin Student Locator system. This is a database with information on every student who has attended public school in Wisconsin. Arain Gutierrez was in this system as he previously attended Madison West High School before coming to Middleton. School districts throughout the state use this database to transfer student information from one district to another for thousands of students. There would be no reason to question the legitimacy of a student name or date of birth. We also have no record of an adult ever falsifying documents to gain entrance in our school district as a minor.
As a result of this incident, we are reviewing our current policies and procedures to determine what, if any, changes will be made to our enrollment process. We also continue to work with law enforcement to assess the impact this student may have had on others in the school district. The security of our schools is our highest priority. We will continue to take all measures to ensure the safety of our students and staff.
Sincerely,
Dr. Don Johnson
Superintendent

I’ve not seen any additional comments from the Madison School District beyond this brief statement from Superintendent Dan Nerad:

Still, Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad said the district will review its enrollment policies.
“I cannot tell you where this will lead, but we will have conversations about it,” Nerad said.

Bathroom Fire at Madison West High School

via a kind reader:

At 12:03:50 on 05/10/10 firefighters were dispatched for fire alarm at West high school.
On location, students had evacuated. Staff directed firefighters to a bathroom on the 3rd floor of the building where rolls of toilet paper had been burned.
Strobes were operating; alarm had been silenced. Firefighters found a moderate haze of smoke in the area and there was an odor of burned plastics. The fire was out, the toilet roll dispenser was smoldering and melted.
A fan was used from Engine 4 to start clearing the smoke.
The fire had been reported to a staff member by a student. The staff member used an extinguisher to put the fire out. Another student had been attempting to extinguish the fire with water from the sink.
The scene was turned over to a fire investigator.

Several readers noted that there have been a number of recent incidents in and around West High School:

April 26
1 Block Ash St.
Identifier: 201000110451
Time: 15:00
Battery (under general heading “Assault”)
The fight outside the school last week was:
April 28
Chadbourne Av and Ash St
Identifier: 201000112346
Time: 12:47 (lunchtime)
Fight Call (under general heading “Disorder”)
—————-
April 20
1 Block Ash St. (looks like this one was in the school)
Identifier: 201000104558
Time: 13:31
Battery (Assault)
April 28
Chadbourne and Allen
Identifier: 201000112447
Time: 14:35
Battery (Assault)
April 22
2100 Block Regent
Identifier: 201000106686
Time: 15:11
Battery (Assault)

User’s may wish to search local high school addresses on the crimereports.com website. The site supports date range searching. You must enter an address and enter a date range (see below) as the site only links to zip code area searches. The data is provided by the City of Madison, UW-Madison and the Madison Police Department. I don’t know if all incidents are provided to this site.
Madison East High
2222 E. Washington Ave.
Madison WI 53704
Madison Edgewood High School
2219 Monroe Street
Madison, WI 53711-1999
Madison LaFollette High School
702 Pflaum Rd.
Madison WI 53716
Madison Memorial High School
201 S. Gammon Rd
Madison, WI 53717
Madison West High School
30 Ash Street
Madison, WI 53726

14 Quirky College Donations (and the Strings Attached)

Ethan Trex:

For most of us, college donations entail little more than occasionally dropping a small check in the mail after receiving repeated pleas for cash from our alma maters. Some people, though, tend to be a bit more individualistic with their generosity. Let’s take a look at some of the quirkier donations schools have received:
1. Bequest Puts Jocks on the Ropes
swarthmoreIn 1907, fledgling Swarthmore College received a bequest that was estimated to be worth somewhere between $1 and $3 million. If the school wanted the cash, though, it would have to stop participating in intercollegiate sports. Swarthmore badly needed the cash–its entire endowment was only in the $1 million range–but in the end, the school turned down the gift and the sports survived.

Success or just smoke and mirrors?
Expert says it is misleading to say HISD school has turned around

Ericka Mellon:

The reform efforts at Sam Houston High School, once the worst-ranked campus in Texas, have drawn high-profile praise, from Gov. Rick Perry to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
“Sam Houston is proof that positive change is possible,” Perry said at a celebratory news conference in October. “After six years of underperformance, this school has not only met state standards, it is now a recognized campus.”
Perry is correct: Sam Houston last year did break its streak of “academically unacceptable” ratings from the state, but that is only part of the statistical picture. Duncan’s visit last month to Sam Houston — where he applauded the turnaround efforts — has reignited debate about the high school’s transformation: Is it the success story that Houston ISD and elected officials claim?
The answer is complicated. But in the final analysis, one thing is clear: Despite an improvement in student test scores, Sam Houston benefited from the state’s easier rating system last year.
In the summer of 2008, the Houston Independent School District was under orders from Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott to make major changes at Sam Houston, which was the longest-running unacceptable school in the state. State guidelines required HISD to replace the principal and rename the school. In addition, at least 75 percent of the teaching staff had to be replaced, and half the students were supposed to be new.

Charter Schools’ New Cheerleaders: Financiers

Trip Gabriel & Jennifer Medina:

When Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo wanted to meet certain members of the hedge fund crowd, seeking donors for his all-but-certain run for governor, what he heard was this: Talk to Joe.
That would be Joe Williams, executive director of a political action committee that advances what has become a favorite cause of many of the wealthy founders of New York hedge funds: charter schools.
Wall Street has always put its money where its interests and beliefs lie. But it is far less common that so many financial heavyweights would adopt a social cause like charter schools and advance it with a laserlike focus in the political realm.

Congratulations to Jill Jokela

Madison School District:

Anyone who has worked with Jill Jokela during her fifteen years as a parent of children in the Madison schools would agree that this Distinguished Service Award is long overdue. Administrators, teachers, parents and fellow concerned citizens hold Jill Jokela in the highest regard for her deep and altruistic commitment to our public schools.
Since 1995 when her first child entered kindergarten, Jill has been a generous PTO leader at Mendota Elementary, Black Hawk Middle and East High Schools. Her ability to ask very tough questions, closely examine data and work constructively through challenging issues such as school equity, boundary changes, funding and curriculum have demonstrated, time and time again, the invaluable role of the effective parent activist in a great school district.

Crossing Guard: New York City

Crossing Guard New York City by Jim Zellmer zmetro.com

Winona School Board’s Budget Reductions

Jerome Christenson:

The district faced a $3 million revenue shortfall for the coming fiscal year when it began. The board elected to cover the shortage by taking $2 million out of the district’s $5.5 million fund balance and the remaining $1 million through spending cuts.
“Every decision at this point is tougher than the last,” superintendent Paul Durand told the board as it began weighing the fate of historically popular and successful programs and student activities.
Most of the cuts came $2,000 or $3,000 at a time from a list of programs prepared by district administrators.
Challenged to find a way to reduce the music budget without doing away with fourth-grade orchestra, music department staff and district principals managed to trim more than $13,000 by cutting travel and other expenses from the marching and pep band programs. The savings still put the marching bands on the street for local parades and the Minnesota State Fair and puts the pep band in the stands for sporting events.

Duncan Orders Study of Restrictive Transfer Policies

The Chronicle:

Arne Duncan, the U.S. secretary of education, has asked the National Center for Education Statistics and the Office of Postsecondary Education to conduct a study of “restrictive” policies that make it more difficult for students to transfer credits from one institution to another. Higher-education experts have argued that loosening such policies would help the nation reach President Obama’s goal of increasing the number of college graduates.

Ann Arbor school district ends controversial program only open to black students

David Jesse:

The Ann Arbor school district has ended a controversial black-student only program at Dicken Elementary School.
“Lunch Bunch is no longer,” district spokeswoman Liz Margolis said in an e-mail to AnnArbor.com. “It will be discussed among staff and some parents and be reworked. It has a valuable goal of assisting children who are not performing well on the MEAP, and this effort will continue.”
Dicken Principal Mike Madison drew criticism from parents following his decision last week to take members of the African-American Lunch Bunch on a field trip to hear a black rocket scientist at the University of Michigan speak. Only black students were invited on the trip.
After the trip, classmates who were excluded booed those who went. Madison went into the class, and parents have complained he berated the students. District officials have said he was just having a “passionate” discussion about race issues.

Bloody Urban Landscapes

Bob Herbert:

Driving through some of this city’s neighborhoods is like driving through an alternate, horrifying universe, a place where no one thinks it’s safe to be a child.
You follow a map in which the coordinates are laid out in blood. Over there, in front of that convenience store, is where Fred Couch, 16, was shot to death last December. The Couch boy went to the same school, Christian Fenger Academy, as Derrion Albert, an honor student who was beaten with wooden planks and kicked to death three months earlier in a broad daylight attack that was recorded on a cellphone by an onlooker.
Right there, on South Manistee Avenue, is where a 7-year-old girl riding her scooter was shot in the head and critically injured a few weeks ago.
And here, on East 92nd Street, is where a toddler, just 20 months old, was shot in the head and killed in the back seat of her father’s car.

Socioeconomics Replacing Race in School Assignments

Mary Ann Zehr:

A growing number of school districts are trying to break up concentrations of poverty on their campuses by taking students’ family income into consideration in school assignments.
Some of the districts replaced race with socioeconomic status as a determining indicator after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that using race as the primary factor in assigning students to schools violates the Constitution. Other districts that take family income into account never included race as a factor.

New era for Madison’s Edgewood High: Enrollment climbs during Judd Schemmel’s tenure

Susan Troller:

The recession has not been kind to many private schools.
Nationally, public school enrollment is rising as the recession has forced many parents to pull their kids from private schools. In Wisconsin, the number of students enrolled in private schools fell more than 2 percent from 2007 to 2009, according to the state Department of Public Instruction.
But Edgewood High School of the Sacred Heart, under the leadership of President Judd Schemmel, seems to be bucking the trend. Enrollment at the nearly 130-year-old school during Schemmel’s five-year tenure has risen a little over 5 percent, from 626 to 660 this year; Schemmel has his eye on an optimal enrollment of between 700 and 725 students.
The school, not traditionally known as an academic powerhouse, has also seen improved academic performance under Schemmel; elite universities from Harvard to Stanford and Princeton to Yale accepted Edgewood students from the class of 2009. It is also on more stable financial footing than it was five years ago, with its debt shrinking from just under $1 million to about $335,000 today, despite a number of building improvements and classroom renovations.

Harvard study gives Race to Top winners bad grades on academic standards

Valerie Strauss:

One of the two states chosen by Education Secretary Arne Duncan as a winner in the first round of the $4 billion Race to the Top competition has academic standards that earned the grade of ‘F’ in a new study by Harvard University researchers, while the other state got a ‘C minus.’

The Education Next report by researchers Paul E. Peterson and Carlos Xabel Lastra-Anadón also shows that standards in most states remain far below the proficiency standard set by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. NAEP is known as the nation’s report card because it tests students across the country by the same measure and is considered the testing gold standard. States have their own individual student assessments designed to test students’ knowledge of state academic standards, which are all different.

This study, available on the Education Next website, comes on the heels of another analysis done by the Washington D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, which concluded that the two first-round winning states, Tennessee and Delaware, were chosen through “arbitrary criteria” rather than through a rigorous scientific process.

Kaplan University: A For-Profit Take On Education

NPR Staff:

The Washington Post Co. announced Wednesday that it’s putting Newsweek up for sale. The magazine is losing money, and its paid weekly subscriptions have dropped below 2 million.
But although the Washington Post Co.’s flagship newspaper is also losing money, the company is surprisingly profitable because of a shrewd acquisition it made more than 20 years ago in a growing sector of the economy: for-profit higher education.
What Is Kaplan University?
In 1984, Stanley Kaplan – who pioneered standardized test prep courses — sold his business to The Washington Post Co. In 2000, Kaplan Higher Education bought a company called Quest. One of Quest’s properties was Hagerstown Business College in Hagerstown, Md., which then became Kaplan College and later part of Kaplan University.

Redesigning Education: Why Can’t We Be in Kindergarten for Life?

Trung Le:

The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind–creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers. These people–artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers–will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.” –Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind
I remember when my twins entered kindergarten at our community public school. All of the parents were invited to the school for an introductory presentation on the teachers’ goals for learning in the upcoming year. Everything sounded wonderful. The 25 children in the classroom would be organized into small groups. Creating art would introduce them to science and math concepts. They would be exposed to different cultures by learning songs in different languages. Time would be allotted for daily storytelling followed by discussion. The teachers described an interdisciplinary, imaginative and stimulating year ahead, complete with field trips and physical, active play.
While listening to the teachers’ presentation at my twins’ school, I had a moment of clarity: The kindergarten classroom is the design studio. All of the learning activities that take place inside the kindergarten classroom are freakishly similar to the everyday environment of my design studio in the “real world.” In an architectural design studio, we work as an interdisciplinary global team to solve the complex problems of the built environment in a variety of different cultural contexts. We do this most effectively through storytelling–sharing personal experiences–with the support of digital media and tools. A variety of activities–reflective and collaborative, right-brain and left-brain–happen simultaneously in an open environment. Like the design studio, the kindergarten environment places human interaction above all else.

Teachers union should shift focus

Jay Lassman:

To show good faith, teachers throughout New Jersey needed to agree to a wage freeze as proposed by Gov. Chris Christie. It’s time the New Jersey Education Association started functioning less like a labor union and more like a professional organization committed to partnering with school districts to improve the quality of education and reduce wasteful spending.
However, teachers are only part of the education system. As someone who has worked with numerous school administrators and board of education members, I know many have big egos and lack the qualifications to fulfill the requirements of their respective positions.

Why Charter Schools Fail the Test

Charles Murray:

THE latest evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the oldest and most extensive system of vouchers and charter schools in America, came out last month, and most advocates of school choice were disheartened by the results.
The evaluation by the School Choice Demonstration Project, a national research group that matched more than 3,000 students from the choice program and from regular public schools, found that pupils in the choice program generally had “achievement growth rates that are comparable” to similar Milwaukee public-school students. This is just one of several evaluations of school choice programs that have failed to show major improvements in test scores, but the size and age of the Milwaukee program, combined with the rigor of the study, make these results hard to explain away.
So let’s not try to explain them away. Why not instead finally acknowledge that standardized test scores are a terrible way to decide whether one school is better than another? This is true whether the reform in question is vouchers, charter schools, increased school accountability, smaller class sizes, better pay for all teachers, bonuses for good teachers, firing of bad teachers — measured by changes in test scores, each has failed to live up to its hype.

Jay Greene:

Murray wants to be clear that he still favors choice, but not to improve test scores. Instead, he favors choice because it satisfies the diversity of preferences about how schools teach and what they teach. Standardized test scores impose a uniform concept of higher achievement on students, and so cannot capture the improved satisfaction of the diversity of tastes that choice can more efficiently satisfy.
There is a kernel of truth in Murray’s argument. We should support school choice simply because it allows us the liberty of providing our children with the kind of education that we prefer.

Field trip for black students sparks controversy at Ann Arbor elementary school

David Jesse:

An Ann Arbor elementary school principal used a letter home to parents tonight to defend a field trip for black students as part of his school’s efforts to close the achievement gap between white and black students.
Dicken Elementary School Principal Mike Madison wrote the letter to parents following several days of controversy at the school after a field trip last week in which black students got to hear a rocket scientist.
“In hindsight, this field trip could have been approached and arranged in a better way,” Madison wrote. “But as I reflect upon the look of excitement, enthusiasm and energy that I saw in these children’s eyes as they stood in the presence of a renowned African American rocket scientist in a very successful position, it gave the kids an opportunity to see this type of achievement is possible for even them.
“It was not a wasted venture for I know one day they might want to aspire to be the first astronaut or scientist standing on the Planet Mars.
“I also think it’s important that you know that I have talked to the children who did not go on the field trip, and I think they have a better understanding of the purpose of the AA Lunch Bunch now, as I hope you do. I’m sorry if any kids were upset by the field trip or my discussion afterwards with them, and I have let them know that.

Speak Out for Dane County Transitional High School

via a Judy Reed email:

Dear Alternative Supporters,
Although DCTS is an option, we need more alternative programs! DCTS is only one RESOURCE that works for students’ at-promise. With 700 to 900 dropouts a year in Dane County, we need to do something. Because of all those students whose needs are not being met by the traditional school, we are holding a SPEAK OUT. The Speak Out will be held in Madison at the top of State Street on the Capitol steps to give everyone the opportunity to voice their thoughts. All who would like to speak will be given 2 to 5 minutes.
We are very excited to have this opportunity to voice our concerns about the direction our schools have taken and continue to take. Please share this event with others who are concerned too.
Place: The STEPS of the CAPITOL – STATE Street Corner
Time: 12:00
Date: Saturday, May 15, 2010
RSVP: please email us at: www.dctsalternative@gmail.com
Check in will be at the STATE Street Corner. We will start the speaker list at 11:30 EVEN if you have RSVP’d! You will receive a t-shirt and number upon signing up.
Every 26 seconds, a student in our nation drops out of school. Let’s change this number by getting active and taking a stand for non-traditional education.
Please send all interests, inquiries and responses to dctsalternative@gmail.com. Also, check out our blog at http://dctseducation.blogspot.com/, and our website, dctseducation.com.
Sincerely,
DCTS Students and Staff

School Reform: What Jaime Escalante Taught Us That Hollywood Left Out

Heather Kirn Lanier, via a kind reader’s email:

“Serious reform like Escalante’s cannot be accomplished single-handedly in one isolated classroom; it requires change throughout a department and even in neighboring schools.”
In real life, though, Escalante didn’t teach the calculus course until his fifth year. In his first attempt, five students completed the course and two passed the AP test. A critic might write “just five students” or “only two,” though anyone familiar with both the difficulty of the exam and the extent of math deficiencies in an underperforming school recognizes this as a laudable feat.
Still, it took Escalante eight years to build the math program that achieved what “Stand and Deliver” shows: a class of 18 who pass with flying colors. During this time, he convinced the principal, Henry Gradillas, to raise the school’s math requirements; he designed a pipeline of courses to prepare Garfield’s students for AP calculus; he became department head and hand-selected top teachers for his feeder courses; he and Gradillas even influenced the area junior high schools to offer algebra. In other words, to achieve his AP students’ success, he transformed the school’s math department. Escalante himself emphasized in interviews that no student went the way of the film’s Angel: from basic math in one year to AP calculus in the next.

Madison School board votes to save jobs, but doesn’t finalize budget yet; $250,000 home to see a $224.46 increase in property taxes, above the $2186.35 paid in 2009 (roughly 10%)

Gayle Worland:

The owner of a $250,000 Madison home would pay $224.46 more in school property taxes next winter under a budget still under discussion by the Madison School Board.
In what many — including three board members — thought would be a wrap-up Tuesday night of the board’s two-month process to close an initial $30 million budget gap, the board voted to save most of the district jobs still on the chopping block, largely with the help of $794,491 in employee health insurance savings.
But it left several items on the table until a final vote on the preliminary budget June 1, including:

A Madison home assessed at $257,000 paid 2186.35 in Madison School District taxes last year. A $224.46 increase is about 10%……
Much more on the 2010-2011 budget here.
The next school board election is in April, 2011, when the seats currently occupied by Ed Hughes and Marj Passman will be on the ballot.
November, 2010 elections that affect K-12 taxes & spending include the governor and assembly races.

Verona Superintendent’s Incident Notification: Student Charged with Murder

via a kind reader:

Following is a message from the Superintendent of VASD, Dean Gorrell. Any inquiries should be directed to Superintendent Gorrell.
Dear Verona Area School District Parents,
A Verona Area High School student has been charged today with First Degree Intentional Homicide – Party to a crime in connection with the murder of Antonio Perez. The student, Victor Prado-Velasquez, is currently incarcerated in the Dane County jail. While we have no information of potential issues with students at the Verona Area High school, we have taken and will continue to take measures to increase security and surveillance. This includes:
Working with the Verona Police Department (VPD) and our VPD Police School Liaison to increase patrols in and around campus throughout the school day.
Having members of the VAHS administrative team increase their presence outside the school building during the school day.
Working with VAHS staff to make sure that they are vigilant and report any suspicious activities at once to the Administration and the VPD Police School Liaison.
Again, we have no reason to believe any Verona Area High School student was or is at risk related to this incident. We will continue these measures until such time as all suspects have been apprehended or until we receive notification from the Police that we can discontinue these measures.
We are providing you this information so that you are informed. If you have any questions regarding this, please contact me by email at gorrelld@verona.k12.wi.us or by phone at 608-845-4310.
Most Sincerely,
Dean Gorrell
Superintendent

Gifted students shortchanged as schools push low achievers

Jill Tucker

As California’s public schools have increasingly poured attention and resources into the state’s struggling students, high academic learners – the so-called gifted students – have been getting the short shrift, a policy decision that some worry could leave the United States at a competitive disadvantage.
Critics see courses tailored for exceptional students as elitist and not much of an issue when compared with the vast number of students who are lagging grades behind their peers or dropping out of school. But a growing chorus of parents and advocates is asking the contentious question: What about the smart kids?
“We have countries like India, Singapore, China, and they realize the future productivity of their country is an investment in their intellectual and creative resources,” said gifted education expert Joseph Renzulli.

FARM FEUD

Caryolyn Lochhead:

Slow food stirs up battle in heartland.
Agricultural establishment fighting back at movement.
From Pennsylvania church ladies to Iowa dairymen, the locavore, small-is-good, organic food movement born in Northern California has penetrated America’s heartland, where it is waging a pitchfork rebellion, much of it on the Internet, against the agricultural establishment.
After long dismissing the new food movement as a San Francisco annoyance, the establishment is fighting back.
“Alice should drown in her own waters,” said High Plains Journal’s Larry Dreiling of Berkeley food guru Alice Waters.