Jane Shaw:

In spite of all the alarm over rising costs and excessive borrowing for college, one person is confident that college will be far less expensive in just a few years.
In the vision outlined by Vance H. Fried, there will be little need for federally subsidized loans. Many parents will be able to pay for college for their children out of current income.
Fried is no utopian. He is a professor of entrepreneurship at Oklahoma State University who earlier wrote a paper explaining how a full-fledged residential college could operate with tuition less than $8,000 a year.
His new paper, “College 2020,” forecasts what he thinks will happen as online education increases its competitive impact. The paper is published by the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Policy Innovation.
Some commentators worry that tuition-dependent colleges will have to go out of business because they can’t control their costs and low-priced suppliers are going to take away their students. But Fried thinks that colleges and universities can survive, if they act soon.

Laura Waters:

At long last the New Jersey Department of Education has released its “NJ School Performance Reports,” which replace the old School Report Cards. Details on school performance is greatly expanded now includes, according to the Christie Administration’s press release, “brand new data on college and career readiness and provide comparison to “peer schools” in order to provide a more complete picture of school performance for educators and the general public.”
Here’s coverage from the Star-Ledger, The Record, the Courier-Post, Asbury Park Press, Press of Atlantic City, NJ Spotlight, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The state also released the annual Taxpayers’ Guide to Education. Annual per pupil spending in NJ (if you use the state’s algorithm; others say it inflates costs) is $18,045, up 4.2% since last year.
Of course, there’s enormous range within that average. Fairview Boro (Bergen), for example, spends $13,317 per pupil. Asbury Park City spends $30,502. The plush magnet schools in Bergen County spend $35,900.

The Wisconsin DPI…..
April, 2013: Chief among them has been this notion from state superintendent Tony Evers that the state’s new accountability system, known as state report cards, shouldn’t be used to determine which districts get vouchers.
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March, 2013: Evers on report cards: this last year was a pilot year. It’s just not ready for prime time.
June, 2008: “Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum”.

Christian D’Andrea:

On Tuesday, the Department of Public Instruction released the latest round of graduation rate data for Wisconsin. While it showed that more students were earning diplomas in four years in 2012 than they had in 2010 and 2011, there was still a persistent gap in attainment between the state’s white, African American, and Hispanic students. A closer look at that data suggests that this problem is prevalent in the state’s biggest cities – but minimal in Milwaukee.
A survey of 18 Wisconsin districts – all districts that served more than 7,000 students plus Beloit and Superior – showed that double-digit differences in four-year graduation rates persisted in 16 cities. Only Elmbrook, with high matriculation marks across the board, and Superior, which didn’t have enough minority students to comprise a significant sample size, avoided this label. Gaps between African-American students and white students were, on average, 10.1 percent higher than the gaps between Hispanic students and white students in these cities.

Mike Ramsey:

Last month Nakisha Bishop took out a loan to buy a $23,000 Toyota Camry and pay off several thousand dollars still owed on her old car. The key to making it work: she got more than six years–75 months in all–to pay it off.
“I had a new baby on the way, and I was trying to keep my monthly payment a little bit lower to help afford child care,” Ms. Bishop, a 34-year-old sheriff’s deputy in Palm Beach County, Fla., said recently. She pays $480 a month for the 2013 Camry, just $5 a month more than the note on her old car. The car won’t be paid off until her 1-month-old daughter is heading to first grade.
Ms. Bishop’s 75-month loan illustrates two important trends rippling through the U.S. auto industry. Rising new-car prices and competition among lenders to attract borrowers is pushing loans to lengthier terms. In part, banks see the longer terms as a way to attract buyers, by keeping monthly payments under $500 a month.

Related: Math Forum.

Joanna Chiu:

Most parents would probably hesitate about allowing their children to visit a potential war zone.
But the group of Hong Kong high school students who returned on Saturday from an eight-day tour of North Korea will have holiday stories better than anything their friends will have managed in Phuket or Singapore.
Twenty-two students from Chinese International School watched teenagers practise military drills in Pyongyang, took photos with “friendly” soldiers in the demilitarised zone and stayed two days in the region of Kaesong.
Last week, North Korea banned South Korean managers from entering Kaesong’s joint industrial park, striking a blow against the decade-old symbol of inter-Korean co-operation.
But the returning travellers said they noticed little unease among the North Koreans they encountered.

Scott Jaschick:

Conspiracy theories abound when it comes to professors and politics. To hear some conservatives tell it, a liberal-dominated professoriate attempts to brainwash students and to keep out of the faculty club any who challenge leftist orthodoxy. Ph.D. programs in the humanities teach some sort of secret handshake that lets those with politically correct views land the best jobs. To hear some liberals talk about it, there is no such thing as a liberal professoriate. Rather, a well-financed group of conservatives and their foundations use the politics issue to trash higher education. If there aren’t more conservative professors around, it’s because those on the right prefer the world of money to the world of ideas, and flock to Wall Street.
Neil Gross will disappoint most of the conspiracy theorists with his new book, Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?, which is being released today by Harvard University Press.
Gross has spent years conducting research — large-scale national surveys and smaller experiments and focus groups — on professorial politics. And the book combines many of his studies, interviews with players in the debate, and a mix of history and sociology.
From the part of the book title that asks “why are professors liberal,” it’s clear that Gross has no problem saying that faculty members are in fact, on average, to the left of most other Americans. The degree to which this is true may differ by institution and discipline, and there are of course plenty of exceptions. But Gross cites his own past research to show that professors do indeed lean to the left. But that same research shows that most faculty members are not as radical as many believe and that there is a large center-left following in the academy.

Thomas Friedman, via a kind reader’s email:

There was a time when middle-class parents in America could be — and were — content to know that their kids’ public schools were better than those in the next neighborhood over. As the world has shrunk, though, the next neighborhood over is now Shanghai or Helsinki. So, last August, I wrote a column quoting Andreas Schleicher — who runs the global exam that compares how 15-year-olds in public schools around the world do in applied reading, math and science skills — as saying imagine, in a few years, that you could sign on to a Web site and see how your school compares with a similar school anywhere in the world. And then you could take this information to your superintendent and ask: “Why are we not doing as well as schools in China or Finland?”
Well, that day has come, thanks to a successful pilot project involving 105 U.S. schools recently completed by Schleicher’s team at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which coordinates the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA test, and Jon Schnur’s team at America Achieves, which partnered with the O.E.C.D. Starting this fall, any high school in America will be able to benchmark itself against the world’s best schools, using a new tool that schools can register for at www.americaachieves.org. It is comparable to PISA and measures how well students can apply their mastery of reading, math and science to real world problems.
The pilot study was described in an America Achieves report entitled “Middle Class or Middle of the Pack?” that is being released Wednesday. The report compares U.S. middle-class students to their global peers of similar socioeconomic status on the 2009 PISA exams.
The bad news is that U.S. middle-class students are badly lagging their peers globally. “Many assume that poverty in America is pulling down the overall U.S. scores,” the report said, “but when you divide each nation into socioeconomic quarters, you can see that even America’s middle-class students are falling behind not only students of comparable advantage, but also more disadvantaged students in several other countries.”
American students in the second quarter of socioeconomic advantage — mostly higher middle class — were significantly outperformed by 24 countries in math and by 15 countries in science, the study found. In the third quarter of socioeconomic advantage — mostly lower middle class — U.S. students were significantly outperformed by peers in 31 countries or regions in math and 25 in science.

Related: www.wisconsin2.org

Melissa Korn:

When the business school at the University of California, Davis, started its master’s program in accounting last year, administrators expected to attract aspiring accountants from nearby colleges.
What they got instead was a wave of interest from overseas: Roughly two-thirds of the 189 applications received for last fall’s entering class came from Chinese citizens.
“Frankly, we were shocked at the deluge of applications…for what we saw as a program that prepared students for a U.S. credential,” says James Stevens, assistant dean of student affairs.
Davis has plenty of company. Specialized master’s degrees in accounting, finance and other disciplines–generally aimed at students just out of college and lasting one year–have found tremendous popularity in recent years among Chinese nationals seeking a competitive edge and U.S. experience.

Think of the Children:

However, this process yields sheer lunacy, mostly because of the ridiculous ineptitude of every single person involved. I remember specifically the first grant project I helped to evaluate. The local state government was offering up to $2,000,000 for grant proposals which would help the students in grades 6-8 who had failed their end-of-year standardized reading exam (a well-made test, in my opinion, in which failure basically means illiteracy). The specific project I was evaluating had only gotten $800,000 out of the maximum $2m. Its strategy was to purchase the male students iPod Touches, the female students makeovers, manicures, and pedicures at a local beauty parlor, and all students were offered an additional iPod Touch or Makeover, respectively, if they passed the exam at the end of the current year. The grant proposal had specifically listed these actions as being the goal of the proposal. If the iPods and makeovers were purchased, that constituted success.
When I asked the man who was in charge of the project if he really meant that these actions were the ‘strategy’, not the ‘goal’. He expressed confusion; he thought if the male students had iPod Touches, they obviously would get better at reading, and if the girls got makeovers, it would improve their self esteem and they would be more confident and get better at reading, so obviously isn’t the goal of the project to purchase iPods and Makeovers for the students? I explained to him that the goal was to make students, who had previously failed the exam, pass it on their next try. Success would, obviously, be measured in terms of how many students passed the exam. The strategy was whatever actions you took, whereas the goal was what you were trying to achieve. Now that the project was over, I told him that he had to go look at the reading scores and see if they improved. He couldn’t understand why he had needed to do this, and indeed, refused. I asked him how he had identified the students who he needed to give iPods to in the first place. Did he use their reading scores? Did he ask the school for a list of students who had failed the exam? No. He had asked the school for the free-lunch list, which determined which students came from low-income families, and for the bus route list, which determined which students came from low-income areas. He picked out any students who were on both of these lists who were also black. Since black students tend to have low reading scores, and low-income students tend to have low reading scores, those are the students who need the most help, and so are the students he targeted with his project. When I asked the school for the list of students who had failed the reading exam, it turns out that only 25% (14/56) of the students targeted by the program had failed the reading exam in the first place.
When I wrote up my evaluation, I described in rigorous detail everything the man had done wrong, put in a strong recommendation to not award him grant money in the future, and suggested that some sort of corruption investigation be conducted to see if he had committed any crimes (23 iPods + 23 Makeovers does not total to $800,000, after all). When I submitted this to my boss for approval, she was flabbergasted, and explained that the evaluators job was to collude with the grant proposal submitter, so that we got more evaluation jobs from them in the future. Over the next couple days, we had a long conversation, and in the end, she allowed my evaluation to go through.
The next project I evaluated was just as criminally neglectful as my first. And the next. And the next. In fact, for the first three years I worked at the firm, every single project I evaluated listed their ‘process’ and then said that their ‘goal’ was to enact the process. Every single project had used any subsidized lunch lists, bus route data, or demographic data they could get their hands on to decide which students to target; not a single project actually looked at test scores, for deciding either which students to target or figuring out if the project had even succeeded.

$Money first…….. Reading last, apparently

Pat Schneider:

You’ll find Jennifer Cheatham, new superintendent of the Madison School District, at the Capitol Wednesday when local education officials talk about how Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget would hurt Dane County schools.
But don’t expect her to be spending much time making political statements, Cheatham told me and other staff members of the Cap Times Tuesday. Too much focus on politics would distract her from her work in the Madison schools, she said.
“I think my major role is to work on improving schools in Madison. That’s why I was hired and I need to remain focused on that,” Cheatham said. “But I do think there are times it is important for me to voice my opinion on behalf of the school district on state issues.”
That includes the Walker education budget.
Cheatham is scheduled to be on hand at noon Wednesday when School Board members, superintendents, parents and other advocates from around Dane County talk about the impact of Walker’s education proposals in Room 411, the large Senate meeting room.
The Madison School Board has already actively lobbied against the Walker budget, urging local legislators not to support a plan that is “bad for our students, our taxpayers and the future of public education.”
Board members say expanding vouchers into Madison, as Walker has proposed, is a particularly bad idea. They note there’s no consistent evidence that kids using publicly funded vouchers to attend private schools do better academically, and they say that funding vouchers is likely to raise local property taxes.
It’s not just school officials who are weighing in on the highly politicized issue of school vouchers. The Madison City Council passed a resolution last month, sponsored by all 20 members, opposing expansion of vouchers to Madison. The Dane County Board is considering a similar resolution.

Reading has been job one for quite some time, unfortunately.
Right to read lawsuit filed in Michigan.

Steve Wildstrom:

Tech people are very fond of whining about the U.S. educational system, complaining that it is not producing the sort of workers they need. With a few notable exceptions-Bill and Melinda Gates and Dean Kamen come quickly to mind-the are much less good when it comes to doing anything about the problems of schools.
OK, here’s your chance. It won’t even cost you anything-calls for better education seem to die quickly in places like Silicon Valley when the talk turns to taxes-except some leadership.
The Common Core State Standards are the most important school reform to come along in many years. The standards fo mathematics and language arts lay out what we expect students to learn, year by year, from kindergarten through high school. They are not a curriculum, but a set of mileposts for what curriculum should cover, and they inject a badly needed dose of rigor into education. If you have any interest in K-12 education, you should take the time to read them here.
Despite a studied effort by their authors and sponsors at the National Governors’ Association and Council of Chief State School Officers to avoid political pitfalls, the standards have come under increasing attack from both the left and right. CCSS was initially adopted by 48 states and the District of Columbia, but three states have withdrawn their support and their is pressure in many others to do the same.
On the left, opposition to CCSS is closely tied to opposition to standardized testing, based on the assumptions, not necessarily warranted, that the standards will lead to increased testing. The anti-testing advocacy group FiarTest argues:

Katherine Mangu-Ward:

In 2012, education technology firms attracted $1.1 billion from venture capitalists, angel investors, corporations, and private equity–an order of magnitude more than the industry was pulling in 2002. Startups Coursera and Udacity, which offer high-quality online college courses to the masses, have each received more than $20 million from investors. Big corporations are buying their way into the industry, with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. leading the way in 2010 by dropping $360 million to acquire ed-tech firm Wireless Generation and luring education superstar Joel Klein away from his gig as the head of New York City schools.
But will the rush of cash translate into a radically transformed education landscape? When this kind of money flowed into tech companies in other sectors of the economy, we saw radical improvements in everyday transactions, as well as some dramatic booms and busts. Think Amazon instead of the mall, iTunes instead of the record shop, Expedia instead of a travel agent. But also think Pets.com and Full Tilt Poker, where intense competition and bad politics squelched what looked like good bets. There has been a flowering of good ideas in online education, like hybrid learning, in which kids still head off to school every morning but receive the bulk of their instruction from an infinitely patient piece of software instead of a harried, overworked teacher. Yet education, particularly K-12, has remained mostly immune to the improving and empowering forces of the Internet, leaving millions of kids stuck in offline backwaters for six hours a day. Per-pupil spending on public education has more than doubled over the past three decades, while student performance has flatlined.
As the parent of a toddler, I’d love to start banking on my daughter’s virtual elementary school matriculation. I want more choices than just the neighborhood public school or an exorbitantly priced private school offering pretty much the same curriculum in nicer facilities. Personalized learning and highly specific feedback appeal to me as a parent. But while Wall Street’s interest in online education may bode well for entrepreneurs and students, bullish investors and parents would do well to listen to war stories from weary education policy wonks.

Laura Waters:

The Trenton Times is reporting that Princeton High School, one of NJ’s highest-performing high schools, “allowed a ‘significant’ number of students to graduate over a four-year period despite their excessive absences, and in some cases could not provide documentation to justify the waiving of attendance requirements, a state investigation concluded.”
According to the article, the state Department of Education’s Office for Fiscal Accountability and Compliance released a report that shows that during the period of 2008-2012 “district staff altered transcripts by hand to show students earning credits that had been lost because of excessive absences.” In addition, PHS Principal Gary Snyder tried to “dodge a question” related to the alterations.
The Princeton Board of Education has released a statement, which concludes,

David Streitfield:

Several Texas A&M professors know something that generations of teachers could only hope to guess: whether students are reading their textbooks.
They know when students are skipping pages, failing to highlight significant passages, not bothering to take notes — or simply not opening the book at all.
“It’s Big Brother, sort of, but with a good intent,” said Tracy Hurley, the dean of the school of business.
The faculty members here are neither clairvoyant nor peering over shoulders. They, along with colleagues at eight other colleges, are testing technology from a Silicon Valley start-up, CourseSmart, that allows them to track their students’ progress with digital textbooks.
Major publishers in higher education have already been collecting data from millions of students who use their digital materials. But CourseSmart goes further by individually packaging for each professor information on all the students in a class — a bold effort that is already beginning to affect how teachers present material and how students respond to it, even as critics question how well it measures learning. The plan is to introduce the program broadly this fall.

Pamela Cotant:

Orchestra students in the Middleton-Cross Plains School District had their music world expanded with a visit by Chitravina N. Ravikiran, who is known as the “Mozart of Indian Music.”
He is a world-renowned composer, slide instrumentalist and vocalist who visited the orchestra students in fifth through 12th grades last month and was commissioned to create compositions for them to play. The high schoolers have performed their piece, and the middle schoolers will play the one created for them at a concert May 23.
Fifth-graders came to Glacier Creek Middle School, where Ravikiran visited with all of the district’s middle school orchestra students although the younger students won’t play one of Ravikiran’s pieces in a concert.

Bruce Murphy:

Three unions have gone to court to protect the lucrative pension backdrop, whose passage caused a public outcry that led to the ouster of former Milwaukee County Executive F. Thomas Ament and seven county supervisors. The unions have filed suit against the county and its Pension Board, arguing the backdrop is a vested property right that can’t be taken away.
As Urban Milwaukee has reported, more than 1,700 county employees have collected a backdrop benefit, with some 255 getting at least $250,000, 40 getting more than $500,000 and three getting more than $1 million. The complete list of backdrops can be found here.
The benefit grows bigger the longer employees work past the date they are eligible for retirement, so the benefit is growing for many current employees on a monthly basis. As a press release by Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele noted, the county has already paid out $200 million for backdrops and could pay another $100 million, but the reform championed by him could reduce the blow, by freezing the backdrop benefit for employees who are eligible to retire and eliminating it for future retirees who are eligible for the benefit.

Wisconsin State Journal:

Two Madison high school students have won Achievement Scholarship awards through the National Achievement Scholarship Program, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced Wednesday.
Alondra P. Harris and Imani Lewis-Norelle, both from East High School, were among about 800 outstanding black American high school seniors who received the awards. Harris’ probable career field is genetics, while Lewis-Norelle chose “activism.”

Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via a kind email:

The ACLU has filed a civil rights action on behalf of Michigan students who, despite not being proficient in reading, have not received the legally-required intervention intended to bring them to grade level within 12 months. Defendants in the lawsuit include the Highland Park School District, the charter operator to whom responsibility for HPSD was delegated, and other individuals and educational entities at the state and local level.
Under Michigan law, “Excluding special education pupils, pupils having a learning disability, and pupils with extenuating circumstances as determined by school officials, a pupil who does not score satisfactorily on the 4th or 7th grade [MEAP] reading test shall be provided special assistance reasonably expected to enable the pupil to bring his or her reading skills to grade level within 12 months.” [MCL 380.1278(8).]
In 2011-12, only 35% of 4th graders and 25% of 7th graders in HPSD scored proficient or better on the state reading test. According to the complaint, “There is no excuse for the deprivations of educational opportunity described in this Complaint. Consistent with the statutory and constitutional provisions cited, it has been repeatedly recognized that nearly all children can learn to read and achieve literacy skills and knowledge appropriate to their age and development with adequate intervention where necessary. Under the State’s own content standards, all students should be able to read fluently, accurately, and with appropriate intonation and expression by second grade. Education research has demonstrated the effectiveness of structured, systematic, direct and explicit teaching of the English language reading code to all children, including older students who are substantially behind in their reading ability and related skills.”

Read the complaint here [PDF].
Many links, here.
Related: Madison’s disastrous reading results.

Alan Siegel:

Three weeks ago, North America’s pre-eminent quiz bowl organization announced it had discovered scofflaws in its midst. In a blog post, National Academic Quiz Tournaments revealed that four players–MIT’s Joshua Alman, Harvard’s Andy Watkins, Michigan’s Scot Putzig, and a Delaware high schooler–had improperly accessed Web pages containing tournament questions. Though NAQT reported there was “neither direct nor statistical evidence that [three of the players] took advantage of their prior access in game situations,” their behavior still went “against competitors’ expectations of fair play.” (NAQT believes there is statistical evidence that MIT’s Alman used ill-gotten information to improve his tournament performance. He denies the charge, saying in an email, “When I competed in tournaments, I was hearing the questions for the very first time. I did not cheat.”) As a consequence of their actions, all of the players’ schools were stripped of their tournament victories.
Multiple major news outlets pounced as soon as the quiz bowl scandal hit the Web. Predictably, all of the stories focused on Andy Watkins and Harvard, which was forced to vacate the national championships it won in 2009, 2010, and 2011–the quiz bowl equivalent of the 2004 USC football team losing its BCS title. “For me, it’s just amusing at this point how the only time quiz bowl can ever get coverage is the typical ‘Harvard sucks’ or ‘Harvard’s corrupt’ kind of story,” says Ted Gioia, one of Watkins’ Harvard quiz bowl teammates.
But Watkins wasn’t just the media’s main target–the quiz bowl community has focused its rage on him as well. After all, neither Putzig nor Alman did as much damage as Watkins, who helped his team win multiple now-tainted championships. (Putzig did not respond to requests to comment.) Quiz bowler Jarret Greene, a student at Ohio State, puts it simply: “He accomplished the most from his cheating, and therefore his actions hurt quiz bowl the most.”

Naveen Jain:

The field of education is contentious and resistant to innovation or change. There seems to be a growing sense that the problems that education systems face is just too difficult and multifaceted to fix. Most importantly, the focus is on how to “fix education infrastructure” (improve teachers, reduce class size, improve curriculum, develop alternative school models, etc.) rather than to “build better learners” by enhancing each child’s neural capacities and motivation for life-long learning.
Less than two decades ago the concept that you could improve educational outcomes by increasing each person’s neural capacities for learning would have been inconceivable because mainstream medicine and science believed that brain anatomy (and hence learning capacity) was fixed at birth. It is commonly believed that children enter school with differing (genetically endowed) brain capacities and that teachers must just make-do with these individual differences in learning capacity. Recent breakthroughs in the neuroscience of learning have demonstrated that this view is fundamentally wrong.
The US has spent billions of dollars on educating and supporting teachers or developing curricula but no resources are applied to “improving the brain” that a student brings to the classroom. To this end, the educational systems lack an understanding of and do not utilize recent advances in the neurological underpinnings of learning. As such, these systems do not successfully take into account individual differences in brain development, or have tools to optimally address these.

Michael Ford:

In 2010-2011, more than 48,000 Wisconsin students were suspended. The disruptive behavior leading to these suspensions is detrimental to teachers, school cultures, and ultimately, student learning. Reducing suspension rates in Wisconsin school districts with high numbers of disruptive pupils can substantially increase achievement levels in those districts. An analysis of suspension rates in Wisconsin shows that decreasing those rates by five percentage points would yield an almost five percentage point increase in math proficiency, and a three and one-half percentage point increase in reading proficiency on the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam.
In other words, reducing disruptive behavior can yield substantial achievement gains for Wisconsin pupils.
This report reviews existing research on the link between student disruption and academic achievement, reviews current Wisconsin statues and practices regarding student behavior, includes comments from a discussion with teachers from the state’s largest school district, and uses data from both the Department of Public Instruction and from the National Center for Education Statistics to test several hypotheses. The finding that student behavior affects student achievement at the school district level is both intuitive and well-supported by evidence.
The findings are particularly interesting because the other factors that significantly affect achievement in Wisconsin districts, such as the socioeconomic makeup of the student population, cannot be readily addressed in the ways that student behavior can.
Ultimately, this report concludes that Wisconsin must honor its commitment to make a public education available to all of its students, but must not do so at the expense of the vast majority of pupils who do not engage in disruptive behaviors. Similarly, teachers must be supported and allowed to teach in an environment where their focus can be on student learning, not discipline.

Kate Torgovnick:

Freeman Hrabowski was a 9th grader in Birmingham, Alabama, when he heard a dynamic, impassioned speaker at church — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time, King was organizing a march for children, and Hrabowski begged his parents to let him be a part of it.
Freeman Hrabowski: 4 pillars of college success in scienceHrabowski won their blessing to march in the Children’s Crusade, a pivotal moment in the American Civil Rights Movement in 1963. He was taken to jail for participating, even though he was just 12-years-old. In today’s talk, Hrabowski shares the words that King said to him and the others inside the jailhouse: “What you children do this day will have an impact on children who have not been born.”
Today, Hrabowski is the president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), a college that serves students of all backgrounds and that is known for supporting students of color in two areas of study where they are severely underrepresented — science and engineering. The school currently leads the country in graduating African-Americans who go on complete Ph.Ds and MD/Ph.Ds in these fields.

Union Information – Please Read – eepurl.com/xQ3MH

— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) April 8, 2013

Much more on GRUMPS, here.

Matthew DeFour:

Low-income housing provider and former teacher Dean Loumos will join the Madison School Board later this month after his opponent in a very close race conceded Tuesday.
Retired Madison Police Lt. Wayne Strong said the 278-vote margin, or about 0.76 percent of the total vote, was not close enough to justify a recount.
Loumos’ victory margin decreased by one vote from the original total after nearly 200 absentee ballots were counted.
A recent change in state law that allows absentee ballots to come in after Election Day has made it harder to know the winner immediately in close races. There were more than 1,300 absentee ballots that hadn’t come into the Madison City Clerk’s Office by election night, but not all were returned by the Friday deadline.
State law allows a candidate to seek a recount at no cost if the margin is 0.5 percent of the total vote or less. Strong said if the absentee ballots had closed the margin to that level, he might have sought a recount.

Much more on the 2013 Madison School Board election, here.

Ari Daniel Shapiro:

An Oxford University researcher will soon test whether applying an electric current to part of the brain can help children learn math–an effect previously demonstrated in adults. Parents are already lining up for access to the device. But is the technique safe? And is this an ethical way to improve a child’s performance in school?

Jordan Weissman:

Why is private college tuition so astronomically expensive these days?
Ask an administrator, and they’ll likely tell you that it’s because they’re taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. Many schools advertise sky-high tuition rates that only the wealthiest students ever actually pay, while dolling out generous financial aid packages to needier attendees. At Harvard, to pick a famous example, tuition is $37,000, but students from families earning $65,000 or less per year pay zero. In the higher-ed world, this all gets called the “high-tuition, high-aid” model.
But exactly how much of the last decade’s rising tuition has actually been used to cover rising aid?
Quite a bit, it turns out. Over at Education Sector, Andrew Gillen put together this handy chart comparing tuition increases to changes in financial aid at 911 private, non-profit colleges between 1999 and 2010 in nominal dollars. On average, schools spent 60 cents of every new tuition dollar on aid (as shown via the green line). Overall, 58 percent of schools devoted at least half their new tuition money to aid. (Schools above the red line spent spent more than 100% of their tuition hikes boosting aid, while schools below it spent spent less than 100%)

Daniel Willingham:

A great deal has been written about the impact of retrieval practice on memory. That’s because the effect is sizable, it has been replicated many times (Agarwal, Bain & Chamberlain, 2012) and it seems to lead not just to better memory but deeper memory that supports transfer (e.g., McDaniel et al, 2013; Rohrer et al, 2010).
(“Retrieval practice” is less catchy than the initial name–testing effect. It was renamed both to emphasize that it doesn’t matter whether you try to remember for the sake of a test or some other reason and because “testing effect” led some observers to throw up their hands and say “do we really need more tests?”)
Now researchers (Szpunar, Khan, & Schacter, 2013) have reported testing as a potentially powerful ally in online learning. College students frequently report difficulty in maintaining attention during lectures, and that problem seems to be exacerbated when the lecture occurs on video.
In this experiment subjects were asked to learn from a 21 minute video lecture on statistics. They were also told that the lecture would be divided in 4 parts, separated by a break. During the break they would perform math problems for a minute, and then would either do more math problems for two more minutes (“untested group”), they would be quizzed for two minutes on the material they had just learned (“tested group”), or they would review by seeing questions with the answers provided (“restudy group.”)

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Bettner email (PDF):

Since the late 1960’s, MTI members have had the benefit of the best health insurance available. Stressing the importance of having quality health insurance in providing economic security, members have made known that health insurance is their #1 priority via their responses to the Union’s Bargaining Survey. And, the Union not only was able to bargain specific benefits, such as acupuncture and extended mental health coverage, as demanded by MTI members, but due to a 1983 MTI victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, MTI was able to have an equal voice in which insurance company would provide the plan. This is important because varied insurance companies have different interpretations of the same insurance provisions.
Unfortunately, the District Administration took advantage of the increased leverage in negotiations enabled by Governor Walker’s Act 10, and forced concessions in health insurance and other Contract provisions, in exchange for agreeing to Collective Bargaining Agreements for MTI’s five bargaining units through June 2014.
Members who elected Physicians Plus health insurance under the revisions made by the District, will now lose that coverage June 30, 2013. For coverage effective July 1, options available are via Dean Health Plan, Group Health Cooperative and Unity. Each offers an HMO and a Point of Service Plan. The Point of Service enables greater coverage options, but at a higher premium.
Note: The three current carriers enabling a special open enrollment/annual choice to add or change coverage to members of ALL five MTI bargaining units until April 26, 2013. Changes in coverage will be effective July 1, 2013. The deadline for application to change coverage must be received in Human Resources by 5:00 p.m., April 26, 2013. The District has scheduled two health insurance information sessions for those with questions to seek answers from the above-referenced plans.
Health Insurance Information Sessions:
April 8 – La Follette Room C17 – 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. April 9 – Memorial Neighborhood Center – 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.

David Crane:

What if a corporation raised $500 million in a securities offering on the premise that the proceeds would go for operating expenses, then disclosed a few months later that $300 million of this amount would instead be used to service a debt that wasn’t disclosed in the offering document?
This would be false advertising, subject to sanction by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Unfortunately, the SEC doesn’t have jurisdiction over state politicians engaging in the same behavior, and, in the case of California, involving sums that are 100 times bigger.
Last November, California politicians persuaded voters to support a proposed seven-year, $50 billion tax increase, largely on the vow that the money would go to public education. The first five words of the initiative’s title were “Temporary Taxes to Fund Education.”
Now, just four months after the election, the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office has announced that the California State Teachers’ Retirement System requires an extra $4.5 billion a year for 30 years — $135 billion — to cover its unfunded liability for teacher pensions and that the money will have to come from some combination of school districts and the state. To the extent that it comes from the school districts, $4.5 billion a year is 167 percent of the annual amount those districts expected from the tax increase. To the extent that it comes from the state, $4.5 billion is more than 100 percent of the annual amount it expected in new revenue.

Humanreaders.org:

Every year hundreds of thousands of students write essays for large-scale standardized tests. The scores are used in life-changing decisions. Students are accepted into, placed within, and rejected from educational programs. Graduates are hired or not hired. Teachers are qualified, evaluated, promoted, and fired. Learning institutions are compared, accredited, and punished. Yet in a major disservice to all involved, more and more of these essays are scored not by human readers but by machines.
Let’s face the realities of automatic essay scoring. Computers cannot “read.” They cannot measure the essentials of effective written communication: accuracy, reasoning, adequacy of evidence, good sense, ethical stance, convincing argument, meaningful organization, clarity, and veracity, among others. Independent and industry studies show that by its nature computerized essay rating is

Related: Robo Essay Grading

David Brooks:

The best part of the rise of online education is that it forces us to ask: What is a university for?,
Are universities mostly sorting devices to separate smart and hard-working high school students from their less-able fellows so that employers can more easily identify them? Are universities factories for the dissemination of job skills? Are universities mostly boot camps for adulthood, where young people learn how to drink moderately, fornicate meaningfully and hand things in on time?
My own stab at an answer would be that universities are places where young people acquire two sorts of knowledge, what the philosopher Michael Oakeshott called technical knowledge and practical knowledge. Technical knowledge is the sort of knowledge you need to understand a task — the statistical knowledge you need to understand what market researchers do, the biological knowledge you need to grasp the basics of what nurses do.

Paul Barrett:

Harvard has finally retained some adult legal supervision to sort out its cheating-and-e-mail-snooping fiasco. That’s the good news.
The bad news remains that the country’s most closely followed institution of higher education has already done damage to its valuable brand. The university’s clumsy reaction to the mess has made an embarrassing situation worse.
First, the latest headline: As reported by our colleagues at Bloomberg News, University President Drew Faust announced that David Barron, a professor at Harvard Law School, will head a new task force to develop recommendations on campus e-mail policy. Barron, a former journalist who went on to more respectable pursuits, including clerking for former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and serving in the Justice Department during President Obama’s first term, is a noted expert on constitutional and administrative law. Faust said she would also ask Michael Keating, a leading Boston business litigator with the old-line firm Foley Hoag, to help sort out the situation.

Jeramey Jannene:

In November 2000, the Milwaukee County Board approved, on a 20-to-5 vote, a plan with new pension benefits for non-union workers that were particularly lucrative for veteran employees. In February, 2001, the board voted 22-2 to extend similar benefits to union employees.
The plan was passed with no media scrutiny. In October 2001, then MilwaukeeWorld.com editor Bruce Murphy (current editor of UrbanMilwaukee.com) wrote a story detailing the benefits and wrote second story filling in more details. Murphy’s story reported that Milwaukee County Executive F. Thomas Ament, should he serve as planned until 2008, would leave with a “backdrop” lump sum pension payment in excess of $2 million.
The issue received little attention until Murphy did a feature story for Milwaukee Magazine on the issue. This soon prompted the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to report the story on January 6, 2002, the first of a run of front-page stories devoted to the issue, reinforced by considerable coverage by TV and radio news coverage.
The resulting public outrage forced Ament to fire many of his cabinet members, sign a form foregoing his backdrop and eventually resign from office. Seven county supervisors were also recalled from office. Measured by the number of officials thrown out of office, it was the biggest political scandal in Milwaukee history.

Philip Elliott:

Well before the cleanup from Superstorm Sandy was in full swing, students could read about the weather system that slammed the East Coast in their textbooks.
Welcome to the new digital bookcase, where traditional ink-and-paper textbooks have given way to iPads and book bags are getting lighter. Publishers update students’ books almost instantly with the latest events or research. Schools are increasingly looking to the hand-held tablets as a way to sustain students’ interest, reward their achievements and, in some cases, actually keep per-student costs down.
“We must use technology to empower teachers and improve the way students learn,” said Joel Klein, a former New York City schools’ chief who now leads News Corp.’s education tablet program. “At its best, education technology will change the face of education by helping teachers manage the classroom and personalize instruction.”
News Corp. introduced their Amplify tablet during a breakfast Wednesday at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. Priced at $299, the 10-inch unit runs on a school’s wireless Internet system and comes with software for teachers to watch each student’s activities, offer instant polls and provide anonymous quizzes to gauge student understanding.

Dennis Punzel:

Asha Jain will be making her fourth trip to the National Geographic Bee in Washington, D.C., in May. This time she’s going as a participant, rather than a spectator.
Asha, a 12-year-old seventh-grader from Minocqua-Hazelhurst-Lake Tomahawk Elementary School in Minocqua, won the Wisconsin National Geographic Bee competition held Friday at the American Family Insurance national headquarters in Madison by correctly answering all 27 questions she faced.
In doing so she follows in the footsteps of her brother Vansh, who had won three of the previous four state bees and placed second last year in the national bee. Vansh also won the state bee in 2009 and 2010 and went on to place fourth and sixth, respectively, at the national bee.
“We like geography,” Vansh said of his family dynasty. “I’m happy and proud of her. She always lost to me before, so I wanted her to win.”
After being blocked by her big brother the past three years — only one contestant from each school can make it to the state level — Asha was determined to make the most of her opportunity.
“We study a lot,” said Asha, whose family has a world map mural on its living room wall. “We look at a lot of maps and go through the notes over and over.”
All that work paid off as Asha was the only girl to advance to the finals along with nine boys.
One by one, the boys were eliminated as Asha was the only contestant to answer each question correctly through 14 rounds. That brought her to the championship round against Andrew Tai, a seventh-grader from Templeton Middle School in Sussex.
They each answered the three championship-round questions and the first of the tie-breaker round.

Ian Wylie:

Should business school students be made to foot the bill for academic research that no one reads? Not any more, says Larry Zicklin, a former chairman of Wall Street investment firm Neuberger Berman, a clinical professor at New York University’s Stern School and a lecturer on ethics at the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania.
With academic journals under increasing attack from several quarters, Mr Zicklin has upset some colleagues in urging schools to cut tuition fees by making faculty members focus more on teaching and less on publishing research in journals. He points to research that uses the University of Texas at Austin as a case study and says that fees could be halved if 80 per cent of faculty with the lowest teaching loads were to teach only half as much as the 20 per cent with the highest teaching loads. He predicts that the rise of massive open online courses, or Moocs, and other market forces will conspire against schools that fail to act.

Gerald J. Conti, via a kind Rebecca Wallace-Segal email:

It is with the deepest regret that I must retire at the close of this school year, ending my more than twenty-seven years of service at Westhill on June 30, under the provisions of the 2012-15 contract. I assume that I will be eligible for any local or state incentives that may be offered prior to my date of actual retirement and I trust that I may return to the high school at some point as a substitute teacher.
As with Lincoln and Springfield, I have grown from a young to an old man here; my brother died while we were both employed here; my daughter was educated here, and I have been touched by and hope that I have touched hundreds of lives in my time here. I know that I have been fortunate to work with a small core of some of the finest students and educators on the planet.
I came to teaching forty years ago this month and have been lucky enough to work at a small liberal arts college, a major university and this superior secondary school. To me, history has been so very much more than a mere job, it has truly been my life, always driving my travel, guiding all of my reading and even dictating my television and movie viewing. Rarely have I engaged in any of these activities without an eye to my classroom and what I might employ in a lesson, a lecture or a presentation. With regard to my profession, I have truly attempted to live John Dewey’s famous quotation (now likely cliché with me, I’ve used it so very often) that “Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.” This type of total immersion is what I have always referred to as teaching “heavy,” working hard, spending time, researching, attending to details and never feeling satisfied that I knew enough on any topic. I now find that this approach to my profession is not only devalued, but denigrated and perhaps, in some quarters despised. STEM rules the day and “data driven” education seeks only conformity, standardization, testing and a zombie-like adherence to the shallow and generic Common Core, along with a lockstep of oversimplified so-called Essential Learnings. Creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation are being stifled in a misguided effort to fix what is not broken in our system of public education and particularly not at Westhill.

m

E O Wilson:

For many young people who aspire to be scientists, the great bugbear is mathematics. Without advanced math, how can you do serious work in the sciences? Well, I have a professional secret to share: Many of the most successful scientists in the world today are mathematically no more than semiliterate.
During my decades of teaching biology at Harvard, I watched sadly as bright undergraduates turned away from the possibility of a scientific career, fearing that, without strong math skills, they would fail. This mistaken assumption has deprived science of an immeasurable amount of sorely needed talent. It has created a hemorrhage of brain power we need to stanch.
I speak as an authority on this subject because I myself am an extreme case. Having spent my precollege years in relatively poor Southern schools, I didn’t take algebra until my freshman year at the University of Alabama. I finally got around to calculus as a 32-year-old tenured professor at Harvard, where I sat uncomfortably in classes with undergraduate students only a bit more than half my age. A couple of them were students in a course on evolutionary biology I was teaching. I swallowed my pride and learned calculus.
I was never more than a C student while catching up, but I was reassured by the discovery that superior mathematical ability is similar to fluency in foreign languages. I might have become fluent with more effort and sessions talking with the natives, but being swept up with field and laboratory research, I advanced only by a small amount.
Fortunately, exceptional mathematical fluency is required in only a few disciplines, such as particle physics, astrophysics and information theory. Far more important throughout the rest of science is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes by intuition.

Motoko Rich:

Not far off a scruffy boulevard lined with dollar stores and payday loan shops in a neighborhood of run-down brick bungalows, Corning Achievement Elementary School here is a pristine refuge, with gleaming tile floors and signs in classrooms proclaiming “Whatever it takes.”
In this Mississippi River town marked by pockets of entrenched poverty, some of the worst schools in the state are in the midst of a radical experiment in reinventing public education.
Last fall, Tennessee began removing schools with the lowest student test scores and graduation rates from the oversight of local school boards and pooling them in a special state-run district. Memphis, where the vast majority of public school students are black and from poor families, is ground zero: 80 percent of the bottom-ranked schools in the state are here.
Tennessee’s Achievement School District, founded as part of the state’s effort to qualify for the Obama administration’s Race to the Top grant, is one of a small handful of state-run districts intended to rejuvenate chronically struggling schools. Louisiana’s Recovery School District, created in 2003, is the best-known forerunner, and this year Michigan also set up a state district for failing schools. In February, Virginia legislators passed a measure to set up a similar statewide district.
The achievement district is a veritable petri dish of practices favored by data-driven reformers across the country and fiercely criticized by teachers’ unions and some parent groups.
Most of the schools will be run by charter operators. All will emphasize frequent testing and data analysis. Many are instituting performance pay for teachers and longer school days, and about a fifth of the new district’s recruits come from Teach for America, a program in which high-achieving college graduates work in low-income neighborhood schools. And the achievement district will not offer teachers tenure.

Margaret Spellings:

There is a monopoly of mediocrity in American education.
The challenge to New Jersey: Break it.
The great “Wizard of Menlo Park,” Thomas Edison, once said, “The three things that are most essential to achievement are common sense, hard work and stick-to-it-iv-ness.” It is an ethic that has served New Jersey well, helped the state weather many storms, and made it one of the first great centers for innovation in the United States.
Student achievement in New Jersey schools is evidence of hard work and perseverance in the Garden State.
According to the Nation’s Report Card, New Jersey ranks second in the United States in overall fourth- and eighth-grade reading achievement. The state has a four-year high school graduation rate of 86.5 percent.
Good news — but not nearly good enough.

Sabrina Arias:

Rutgers students are starting to become inured to seeing the name of their university associated with some negative story (“Tapes told Rice tale,” April 4). Is it a string of bad luck? Probably not. I think that it is most likely a problem that the university administration has created as a result of its policy choices and the undue attention it has devoted to athletics.
For years, the administration at Rutgers has been trying to develop a national brand for the university as an athletic powerhouse. Doing so, they claim, will increase alumni funding, draw more resources and talented students and faculty, and generally increase the prestige of the university. As a student who does not participate in athletics, I believe my academic opportunities have been short-changed by this misguided policy. Athletes have been more recognized and better supported by the administration than scholars.

Chris Rickert:

Chief among them has been this notion from state superintendent Tony Evers that the state’s new accountability system, known as state report cards, shouldn’t be used to determine which districts get vouchers.
Under Walker’s plan, districts with at least 4,000 students and two or more schools getting a D or an F under a new rating system would be eligible for vouchers. Evers — no fan of vouchers anyway — says the report cards were not intended for such use and need more refinement over several years.
But what was the purpose of spending more than a year working with a diverse group of education and business groups and state elected officials to create the report cards — which replaced the widely panned No Child Left Behind system — if not to use them to make consequential decisions about education?
On Thursday, Department of Public Instruction director of Education Information Services John Johnson called the report cards a “work in progress” that aren’t an appropriate tool for making a “major policy decision.”
Among their current limitations are that they are based on tests that are expected to change two years from now, they can’t show growth in high school student achievement, some schools weren’t rated, and there’s too little data to reliably identify trends in school performance.
Adam Gamoran, director of the UW-Madison-based Wisconsin Center for Education Research and a skeptic on voucher programs, agrees that the tool isn’t perfect and may well change, but “that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use them now” to rate schools.
It’s also not as if DPI itself didn’t expect to use the report cards. Its budget request — which Walker didn’t include in his budget — included about $10.3 million over the next two years to replicate best practices from schools deemed high-performing by the report cards, as well as to help schools deemed low-performing by the report cards get better.

John Nichols appears to support the present DPI approach. Status Quo K-12 vs a Little “Reform” Rhetoric at a Wisconsin Budget Hearing.
Related: The Wisconsin DPI in 2008:
“Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum”.
http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2013/03/wisconsin_educa_14.php
A citizen, parent, voter and taxpayer might ask what the DPI has been
with state and federal taxpayer dollars since 2008?
Meanwhile, Alabama (!), Minnesota, Florida and Massachusetts are
continuing to aim high and compare their students to the world.
http://nces.ed.gov/Timss/benchmark.asp
And, Vietnam is teaching computer science concepts in primary school.
http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2013/03/primary_school_.php

Cal Thomas:

The problem is that a monopoly always protects itself. The teachers’ unions and many Democratic politicians, who receive their campaign contributions, oppose school choice, which would improve not only public schools, but also the chances of poor and minority children to have a better life. The current approach appears to be to keep disadvantaged children in underperforming schools so that underperforming teachers keep their jobs and the politicians they support keep theirs. As long as the monopoly survives, we can expect more cheating and corner-cutting and less real achievement for children who ought to be everyone’s first concern.
Instead, as Atlanta would suggest, public school children are subject to all manner of manipulation and disservice by people charged with educating them. Perhaps if parents had the freedom to send their children to a school they believed would offer them a better shot at true success they would fare better. Could school choice be the answer?
Indiana thinks so. Last week, the state’s Supreme Court upheld a voucher program that gives poor and middle-class families access to tax dollars to help them pay private school tuition. Parents should decide where their children go to school.

David Cohen:

The images in the slideshow above are all pictures that I took at the 2011 and 2012 FIRST Robotics Competiton Silicon Valley Regional. (FIRST stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology”). I’ve taken my sons to this event for four years now, partly to encourage my school and my participating students, and partly because it’s fun watching six robots zooming around and smacking into each other in a race to lift and place large inflatables, or play basketball, balance on a ramp or zoom up a pole.
If I’ve posted this online, then we’re on our way to the San Jose Event Center to watch the first day of this year’s competition, which is called “Ultimate Ascent” – yes, frisbee time! Watch the animated film below to see this year’s game.
But actually, the main reason I keep coming back to this event is that I love watching education in action. On the surface, it’s all fun and games, as long as you’re a kid who understands robotics, computers, engineering, CAD, and a variety of other technical and mechanical skills. If you look at the slideshow above, you can see there are great things happening here among the students, audience, coaches and mentors, referees and event organizers.

Allie Grasgreen:

Most people who are not straight white men would probably smirk at the idea that straight white men feel alienated in the higher education workplace.
Those who smirk, Sandra Miles said here at the annual conference of NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, are hindering meaningful discussion about race.
Miles, whose dissertation on the professional experiences of black women in her field produced an unexpected sub-study about the alienation of straight white men, made this argument to a couple hundred people who turned up to hear more about her research. The ensuing debate was, unsurprisingly, somewhat contentious.
A comment by one white graduate student toward the end of the session summed it up well. He described a recent discussion about privilege in a higher education class, when he was shot down after offering his own thoughts.
“I couldn’t even begin to have that conversation because it was automatically assumed I didn’t understand,” he said. “To go through that experience in a higher education class – which is supposed to be the safest place to talk about that – was just terrifying.”

Steve Hsu:

Some time ago I posted on a striking claim of genetic prediction for autism risk that appeared in Nature Molecular Psychiatry:

Predicting the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder using gene pathway analysis (Nature Molecular Psychiatry)
Abstract
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) depends on a clinical interview with no biomarkers to aid diagnosis. The current investigation interrogated single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of individuals with ASD from the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange (AGRE) database. SNPs were mapped to Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG)-derived pathways to identify affected cellular processes and develop a diagnostic test. This test was then applied to two independent samples from the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) and Wellcome Trust 1958 normal birth cohort (WTBC) for validation. Using AGRE SNP data from a Central European (CEU) cohort, we created a genetic diagnostic classifier consisting of 237 SNPs in 146 genes that correctly predicted ASD diagnosis in 85.6% of CEU cases. This classifier also predicted 84.3% of cases in an ethnically related Tuscan cohort; however, prediction was less accurate (56.4%) in a genetically dissimilar Han Chinese cohort (HAN). Eight SNPs in three genes (KCNMB4, GNAO1, GRM5) had the largest effect in the classifier with some acting as vulnerability SNPs, whereas others were protective. Prediction accuracy diminished as the number of SNPs analyzed in the model was decreased. Our diagnostic classifier correctly predicted ASD diagnosis with an accuracy of 71.7% in CEU individuals from the SFARI (ASD) and WTBC (controls) validation data sets. In conclusion, we have developed an accurate diagnostic test for a genetically homogeneous group to aid in early detection of ASD. While SNPs differ across ethnic groups, our pathway approach identified cellular processes common to ASD across ethnicities. Our results have wide implications for detection, intervention and prevention of ASD.

Stuart Macdonald:

The UK government’s working group on expanding access to published research findings reported last June. The intention of the Finch report is admirable, the effort misguided. The report concentrates on how academic research will be published. It rather neglects what research will be published.
Dame Janet Finch, advised less by academics than by organisations with interests in academic publishing, recommends open access – but open access to what? Perhaps only to the publications from which these organisations benefit most. Access to research findings unapproved by these organisations is likely to become more difficult.
Producing a vast report on academic publishing that does not mention research assessment is something of an accomplishment. Research assessment dominates academic life and academic publishing dominates research assessment. Publication in top journals is the main indicator of academic performance, determining salary, careers, research grants and a goodly slice of institutional funding.

Matthew DiCarlo:

Earlier this week, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced that the state will assume control over Camden City School District. Camden will be the fourth NJ district to undergo takeover, though this is the first time that the state will be removing control from an elected local school board, which will now serve in an advisory role (and have three additional members appointed by the Governor). Over the next few weeks, NJ officials will choose a new superintendent, and begin to revamp evaluations, curricula and other core policies.
Accompanying the announcement, the Governor’s office released a two-page “fact sheet,” much of which is devoted to justifying this move to the public.
Before discussing it, let’s be clear about something – it may indeed be the case that Camden schools are so critically low-performing and/or dysfunctional as to warrant drastic intervention. Moreover, it’s at least possible that state takeover is the appropriate type of intervention to help these schools improve (though the research on this latter score is, to be charitable, undeveloped).
That said, the “fact sheet” presents relatively little valid evidence regarding the academic performance of Camden schools. Given the sheer magnitude of any takeover decision, it is crucial for the state to demonstrate publicly that they have left no stone unturned by presenting a case that is as comprehensive and compelling as possible. However, the discrepancy between that high bar and NJ’s evidence, at least that pertaining to academic outcomes, is more than a little disconcerting.

From the Governor’s two page, fact sheet:

The problem is not a lack of funding, as Camden is receiving over $279.5 million in this year’s budget, an increase of $3.6
million from last year.
• During the 2011-12 school year, Camden spent $23,709 per student, compared to the statewide average of $18,045.
• Additionally, the teacher/student ratio during those years was 9.3 to 1, which was the lowest statewide of the largest
106 school districts in the state.

Christian D’Andrea:

A recent analysis by a Madison think tank is trying to poke holes in the six-year work of the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP). The true discovery here, however, is that this report from the Forward Institute seems to be more interested in discrediting the SCDP’s results than providing meaningful statistical analysis on the data or the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program itself. Even in that aspect, it falls short thanks to a limited view of the project’s six years of analysis in Wisconsin’s largest district.
According to the Forward Institute, the SCDP fails to provide compelling data that voucher schools are the underlying influence behind greater graduation and college attendance rates for students that leave MPS through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.
While the Forward Institute raises interesting points about the overall effect of familial influences on a child’s education and their overall success, the group fails to examine the full scope of research that the SCDP has produced in the realm of high school attainment in Milwaukee’s public and voucher schools.

Related: Though not perfect, I think $13,063 (MPS) and $7,126 (MPCP) are reasonably comparative per-pupil public support numbers for MPS and the MPCP..
Madison will spend about $15k per student during the 2012-2013 school year, yet continues to produce disastrous reading results.

John Dickert writes from Mount Vernon Farms, Virginia:

It has been an exciting week here for those of us in Washington who are following the education scene.
In one of the counties in Maryland adjacent to Washington, the county executive (in this case, an elected position) has taken over more control of the school system, after first trying to completely override the school board and the office of the school superintendent. Part of what drives this effort is that while that county’s academic scores are not high, its neighboring county to the west has the highest academic scores i the state of Maryland. The first linked article (released April 1st) will relate to that.
Then there was the test scoring scandal which broke in Atlanta. The next two articles (released April 4th) relate to that. The first was by Bill Gates. The second was printed next to it on the Op-ED pages of the Washington Post and relates to an educational incident in Wisconsin. I find that the ideas in the Bill Gates article will run into two roadblocks. The first is teat score envy, the concept that our district needs to keep up with the scores of those of our neighbors. The second is that in Education at the college (or university) level, success is measured by pushing the edge of the envelope in teaching methodology, in a field where success can not be measured until the suggestee is long graduated. When my children went through their pre-collegial schooling they were subjected to several new innovations in education, some of which worked and some of which were disasters. The creators of all these programs were rewarded before any of their programs were proven in the field.
The final attachment was released in our (Fairfax County VA) public library weekly newsletter. It is a recently developed program for aiding parents in assisting with their child’s homework. As it seems very involved, I can posit that only the most helicopterish of parents will be willing to use it.
As a window into my view of high school education when my oldest son entered high school back in 1996, Fairfax County Public Schools only required 3 years of social studies. Our high school offered a 4th year of the program, offered in the Sophomore year, the AP Modern European course. About 150 students would take the course each year offered in 5 periods by one teacher. It was highly sought after. In part due to this program our high school was one of the highest placing high schools on Jay Mathew’s early High School Challenge listings, back when it was only published by the Washington Post. At the time the school was offering only some 5 or 6 AP courses, 2 of which were electives. In the intervening years the AP Challenge Index has gone national, and the AP course offerings have grown geometrically, with the situation that for many courses the only effective college-prep version of a course is the AP course. Initially the AP program was promoted as a way to give high school students a means to have a taste of college. Many high school seniors now are driven to take 4 such courses. AND none of these courses in the social sciences or English, requires the creation of a researched paper. When my youngest child was in high school (she graduated in 2007) I served on a school education committee, and wrote locally about this issue. I never could convince anyone that high school was really about preparing our children for college, not directing them to take the maximum number of College like courses as possible.

Parents: A New Way To Help Your Kids with Their Homework

Library customers can now access a new resource to help with homework. To learn more about it, teachers and parents can sign up for a 30-minute demonstration on April 17. Online registration required: Wednesday, April 17 at 2 p.m.
This new online service by Literati includes a host of resources such as educational content for K-12 students and adults, informational videos and tutorials and interactive discovery tools. Literati Public has been specifically customized for Virginia libraries. Online tutoring help from certified teachers is offered through the “Homework Help” tab Monday through Thursday from
3 p.m. – 9 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. This service is offered to all students in Virginia (Grades 3-12) needing help in math, reading or writing. You can access this resource here. Select Fairfax County Public Library and Go; on the second screen enter your library card number.
There are multiple ways to access this new resource from the library website; here’s one:
Go to the library home page: www.fairfaxcounty.gov/library;
Select Homework help under Library Services in the center column;
Select Find an Online Teacher to Help/Find Resources;
Then follow the steps above (select FCPL and Go/enter your card number).

Rebecca Schuman:

Who wouldn’t want a job where you only have to work five hours a week, you get summers off, your whole job is reading and talking about books, and you can never be fired? Such is the enviable life of the tenured college literature professor, and all you have to do to get it is earn a Ph.D. So perhaps you, literature lover, are considering pursuing this path.
Well, what if I told you that by “five hours” I mean “80 hours,” and by “summers off” I mean “two months of unpaid research sequestration and curriculum planning”? What if you’ll never have time to read books, and when you talk about them, you’ll mostly be using made-up words like “deterritorialization” and “Othering”–because, as Ron Rosenbaum pointed out recently, the “dusty seminar rooms” of academia have the chief aim of theorizing every great book to death? And I can’t even tell you what kind of ass you have to kiss these days to get tenure–largely because, like most professors, I’m not on the tenure track, so I don’t know.
Don’t do it. Just don’t. I deeply regret going to graduate school, but not, Ron Rosenbaum, because my doctorate ruined books and made me obnoxious. (Granted, maybe it did: My dissertation involved subjecting the work of Franz Kafka to first-order logic.) No, I now realize graduate school was a terrible idea because the full-time, tenure-track literature professorship is extinct. After four years of trying, I’ve finally gotten it through my thick head that I will not get a job–and if you go to graduate school, neither will you.
You might think your circumstances will be different. So did I. There’s a little fable from Kafka, appropriately called “A Little Fable,” that speaks to why this was very stupid:

WGBH Nova, via a kind Richard Askey email:

In 1900, a storm blew a boatload of sponge divers off course and forced them to take shelter by the tiny Mediterranean island of Antikythera. Diving the next day, they discovered a 2,000 year-old Greek shipwreck. Among the ship’s cargo they hauled up was an unimpressive green lump of corroded bronze. Rusted remnants of gear wheels could be seen on its surface, suggesting some kind of intricate mechanism. The first X-ray studies confirmed that idea, but how it worked and what it was for puzzled scientists for decades. Recently, hi-tech imaging has revealed the extraordinary truth: this unique clockwork machine was the world’s first computer. An array of 30 intricate bronze gear wheels, originally housed in a shoebox-size wooden case, was designed to predict the dates of lunar and solar eclipses, track the Moon’s subtle motions through the sky, and calculate the dates of significant events such as the Olympic Games.

Dylan Pauly, Legal Counsel Steve Hartley, Chief of Staff, Madison School District via a kind reader’s email (700K PDF):

– removes the ability of an individual board member to initiate a charter proposal – must be initiated by the board instead (superintendent can also initiate)
– $6,500 per pupil funding formula, with reductions in district funding after the 3rd or 4th year (unclear) of between 10-20% based on private fundraising.

Madison will spend about $15k/student during the 2012-2013 school year.
Related: Many notes and links on the rejected (by a majority of the Madison School Board) Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School.
Madison Mayor Paul Soglin: “We are not interested in the development of new charter schools”. More, here.

Mary Beth Marklein:

Only one in 10 students surveyed would choose to take the crucial admissions test online vs. using the traditional No. 2 pencil and fill-in-the-ovals sheet.
Even in this digital age, college-bound teens say they would prefer taking the SAT the old-fashioned way — with paper and pencil.
Asked if they would like to take the standardized college entrance exam on a computer, just one in 10 students said yes, according to a survey by Kaplan Test Prep.
Many parents didn’t see that one coming. In a companion survey, nearly two out of three parents thought their kids would rather take the SAT online.
Daniel Clayton,18, a senior at Uniondale (N.Y.) High School on Long Island, N.Y., says he completes multiple-choice school assignments on an online system for his school but that doesn’t mean he would welcome an online SAT.

Gary Beckner:

For years, the quest to understand and leverage effective teaching has been at the center of the public discussion over how to improve America’s education system.
For the country’s hard-working educators, great teaching and common-sense reform aren’t simply policies or ideas backed by bureaucrats or legislators. Teachers are living the realities of the classroom every day. In order to promote positive change in our system, we must listen to the educators on the front lines.
For too long, individual teacher voices have fallen on deaf ears in favor of the self-preserving agenda of the teachers unions, which are focused primarily on maintaining a system of forced dues and political power. The public is beginning to recognize that the union does not have the best interest of students — or even teachers — in mind.

Alan Borsuk:

Vouchers, charters, public school spending, treatment of teachers – isn’t there something we’re not fighting about when it comes to education?
Why, yes, and last week’s quiet end to a boring race for state superintendent of public instruction underscores one of the biggest examples of that: The Common Core learning standards initiative.
The Common Core is the biggest thing in Wisconsin education that you hardly ever hear about, unless you’re employed in the school world. Then you hear about it all the time. For a lot of schools, teachers and students, it’s bringing clear, significant and, let us hope, ultimately productive changes in what goes on daily.
Take a tour of a school or talk to school leaders about what they’re up to anywhere in the state and two out of every three sentences you hear include the phrase “Common Core.” At least it feels that way.
In many classrooms, each student now has explicit goals to work on daily (“Use place value understanding to round whole numbers to the nearest 10 or 100,” for example, from the third-grade math standards) and will gladly tell you what standard they’re focused on at the time you ask (I’ve asked). Or perhaps show you the standard and their work on it on their iPad. If this hasn’t come to your child’s school yet, look for something like this soon.
The Common Core movement has swept across the nation in the last five years. It arose largely from among governors, state education chiefs, corporate leaders and education advocates who believed the nation as a whole was not aiming high enough in education and that the wide variation from state to state in defining good achievement and what it takes to get a high school diploma was a problem.

Jonathan Chait:

The Atlanta public-school system turns out to have engaged in widespread cheating, whereby teachers were pressured into altering their students’ test scores to create the illusion of massive gains. The test-cheating problem has become a favorite talking point for opponents of education reform. Eugene Robinson concludes that the whole idea of using tests to evaluate teachers or schools has been disproved: “It is time to acknowledge that the fashionable theory of school reform — requiring that pay and job security for teachers, principals and administrators depend on their students’ standardized test scores — is at best a well-intentioned mistake, and at worst nothing but a racket.”
This is a common reaction, but a highly perverse one. The factual premise — that connecting teacher and principal incentives to student achievement leads to more cheating — is probably true. Is this a reason to get rid of incentives? No, it isn’t.
Incentivizing any field increases the impetus to cheat. Suppose journalism worked the way teaching traditionally had. You get hired at a newspaper, and your advancement and pay are dictated almost entirely by your years on the job, with almost no chance of either becoming a star or of getting fired for incompetence. Then imagine journalists changed that and instituted the current system, where you can get really successful if your bosses like you or be fired if they don’t. You could look around and see scandal after scandal — phone hacking! Jayson Blair! NBC’s exploding truck! Janet Cooke! Stephen Glass! — that could plausibly be attributed to this frightening new world in which journalists had an incentive to cheat in order to get ahead.
It holds true of any field. If Major League Baseball instituted tenure, and maybe used tee-ball rules where you can’t keep score and everybody gets a chance to hit, it could stamp out steroid use. Students have been cheating on tests forever — massive, systematic cheating, you could say. Why? Because they have an incentive to do well. Give teachers and administrators an incentive for their students to do well, and more of them will cheat.

William G. Bowen, Matthew M. Chingos, Kelly A. Lack & Thomas I. Nygren:

Online learning is quickly gaining in importance in U.S. higher education, but little rigorous evidence exists as to its effect on student learning outcomes. In “Interactive Learning Online at Public Universities: Evidence from Randomized Trials,” we measure the effect on learning outcomes of a prototypical interactive learning online (ILO) statistics course by randomly assigning students on six public university campuses to take the course in a hybrid format (with machine-guided instruction accompanied by one hour of face-to-face instruction each week) or a traditional format (as it is usually offered by their campus, typically with 3-4 hours of face-to-face instruction each week).
We find that learning outcomes are essentially the same–that students in the hybrid format “pay no price” for this mode of instruction in terms of pass rates, final exam scores, and performance on a standardized assessment of statistical literacy. These zero-difference coefficients are precisely estimated. We also conduct speculative cost simulations and find that adopting hybrid models of instruction in large introductory courses have the potential to significantly reduce instructor compensation costs in the long run.

Vivek Wadhwa:

I have no doubt that my M.B.A. from New York University’s Stern School of Business was one of the best investments I ever made. It helped me climb the corporate ladder and become an entrepreneur. As a tech executive, I would readily pay a premium to hire B-school graduates. I also used to advise tech startups to strengthen their management teams by recruiting professional managers from M.B.A. programs.
I no longer advise startups to hire M.B.A.s and I discourage students who want to become entrepreneurs from doing an M.B.A.
That’s because I have seen a growing mismatch between the skills that business schools teach and what fast-paced startups require. And corporate management isn’t the best path to entrepreneurship anymore–the best way is to work for a startup.
Most business schools are geared toward churning out investment bankers and management consultants. That is who they put on the pedestal. In his new book, “Turnaround: Third World Lessons for First World Growth,” the dean of my alma mater, Peter Blair Henry, goes as far as to prescribe that countries measure their success “through the lens of their stock exchanges.” This is the same lens that business schools use to measure the success of their students.

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The Capital Times:

Now that the Madison School Board election is over, the board should take a serious look at reforming how elections are organized. The system of electing members on a districtwide basis from numbered seats worked reasonably well until this year. But the challenges that arose in the District 5 race after one of two primary winners quit the contest identified vulnerabilities in the process.
T.J. Mertz and Sarah Manski won a primary that also included Ananda Mirilli. Manski then quit, leaving Mertz in a noncompetitive “contest.” We urged Mirilli to mount a write-in campaign and she seriously considered doing so. But she and her supporters determined that mounting a citywide run would be expensive and difficult. That was a credible conclusion. And it raises a question: Might there be a way to avoid such circumstances?
For instance, what if School Board members were elected from districts? With a smaller pool of voters in relatively tight-knit neighborhoods, it would be easier for all candidates, not just write-in contenders, to mount grass-roots campaigns. That could reduce the cost of campaigns and get candidates back on the doorsteps.
Another fix might be to have all candidates run in one citywide race, rather than for numbered seats. If six candidates were contending for three seats, one candidate could exit the contest and the competition would remain.
Some communities have employed instant runoff voting, in which voters rank candidates in order of preference rather than simply selecting a single candidate. Votes cast for the weakest candidates are transferred to stronger contenders, creating the purest reflection of voter preferences.

Much more on the 2013 Madison School Board elections, here.

George Will:

The real vocation of some people entrusted with delivering primary and secondary education is to validate this proposition: The three R’s — formerly reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic — now are racism, reproduction and recycling. Especially racism. Consider Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction. It evidently considers “instruction” synonymous with “propaganda,” which in the patois of progressivism is called “consciousness-raising.”
Wisconsin’s DPI, in collaboration with the Orwellian-named federal program VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America; the “volunteers” are paid), urged white students to wear white wristbands “as a reminder about your privilege, and as a personal commitment to explain why you wear the wristband.” A flyer that was on the DPI Web site and distributed at a DPI-VISTA training class urged whites to “put a note on your mirror or computer screen as a reminder to think about privilege,” to “make a daily list of the ways privilege played out” and to conduct an “internal dialogue” asking questions such as “How do I make myself comfortable with privilege?” and “What am I doing today to undo my privilege?”

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Julia Haskins:

Preschool is an exciting, exploratory time for little ones, characterized by what feels like all fun and play. Children aren’t aware of the educational and interpersonal skills they’re developing while finger painting and singing nursery rhymes, but the effects are apparent in the long run. Children who attend pre-K are more prepared for kindergarten than their peers who do not, having already begun their emotional and intellectual growth.
This period of schooling is as enjoyable as it is pivotal in a child’s life, and policy makers are working to expand this opportunity to all children. With the help of researchers at Harvard University, the Boston Public Schools (BPS) system is at the forefront of this education revolution in its attempt to widen quality pre-kindergarten access. By using a research-backed course of study and coaching for individual teachers, the BPS pre-K program has had a significant impact on about 2,000 students of various ethnic and economic backgrounds.

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Kyle Redinger:

What is technical intelligence? Technical intelligence involves the accurate appraisal and expression of the ability to interact with machines in a way that enhances living. But how do we get there, why is it important for our world, and what is the relation to our company?
A Brief on IQ
Undoubtedly, we have a world that is familiar with the idea of IQ. In it’s raw form, IQ stands for intelligence quotient, and is based upon a test invented by famous psychologist William Stern. Stern, and many subsequent psychologists, refined this test in the hopes that it would become the standard to measure someone’s intelligence. They also hoped that IQ could predict things like personal, financial, and professional success.
IQ is unique from other forms of testing because it is considered ‘innate’ i.e. a high genetically driven IQ predisposes us to be more successful. The problem with this sort of thinking is doesn’t reflect the reality of our world, mainly, that there are many other drivers besides pure intelligence that enhance our ability to achieve things. IQ, not surprisingly, isn’t a very good predictor of success in school or life. For instance:

Julian Siddle:

At first sight, it seems unlikely – a continent most associated with war and famine producing globally significant scientific research.
However, in many ways, the groundwork is there – knowledge, ingenuity, willingness to learn and adapt, coupled with the rapid expansion of digital technology. All of this is really allowing Africa to play a major part in global scientific collaborations.
Holding development back, higher education remains poor.
Many non-governmental organisations (NGOs), churches and development agencies push basic literacy – it is a huge international industry.
But there is nothing at the higher end, very little money for tertiary education. It is quite hard to study in Africa, and encouraging talented students to leave is an industry in itself, with a large variety of academic bursaries available for study in the US and Europe.

channel3000.com

Jen Cheatham, who started Monday as Madison’s new schools superintendent, said she was planning to visit each of the district’s schools by the end of May.
The visits will include community meetings at each of the district’s high schools, allowing parents and community members to share what’s working and what needs to improve in the district, Cheatham said.
“It’s important to me to learn about what’s working and what isn’t working,” Cheatham said. “Often, new superintendents make changes to things that are actually beneficial to the district — unknowingly.”
Cheatham said she would start working soon with the school board on a list of priorities, which would include bridging the district’s minority achievement gap. The board will have at least two new members after Tuesday’s spring election, with Maya Cole and Beth Moss retiring.
The superintendent warned that state funding cuts, which district administrators have estimated will cost Madison schools about $8 million next year, may force the district to raise property taxes. She called Gov. Scott Walker’s school voucher proposal “a real threat to the quality of education we can provide.”

Related: Up, Down & Transparency: Madison Schools Received $11.8M more in State Tax Dollars last year (2012), Local District Forecasts a Possible Reduction of $8.7M this Year.
One would hope that the new Superintendent’s job 1 is addressing the District’s long term disastrous reading results.

Please see the following information from Kathryn Bush, School Psychology Consultant at DPI.
Many of you have asked for more information about the “Formative Assessment System for Teachers,” with an eye toward possible use in your school districts.
Dr. Ted Christ has arranged a “virtual” meeting next week regarding “Formative Assessment System for Teachers” (FAST)
What: Overview of FAST system
Who: Anyone who has the URL for the meeting can enter the “virtual” room. There is no limit to the number of attendees.
When: April 11th from 12:30 – 2:30 PM CST
Where: Wisconsin Adobe Connect Pro meeting at URL: https://umconnect.umn.edu/wisconsinfast/ Please use the URL to access the meeting.
Why: To gain information about a low cost computer adaptive screener (benchmarking system) for reading and math, with an associated CBM-Reading for progress monitoring. Although FAST is being used around the country, it is a relative unknown in Wisconsin.
$$$: There is no cost for this presentation.
For more information about FAST: FAST is a suite of efficient assessment tools designed in collaboration with teachers for screening, progress monitoring, and program evaluation as part of a Response to Intervention (RtI) model of service delivery. It is distributed by researchers from the University of Minnesota at low cost to schools around the country. For more information, go to https://fast.cehd.umn.edu (Use Firefox or Safari, not internet explorer)
Sign in: guest@fast.umn.edu Password: guest@fast.umn.edu

Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via a kind email:

Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction invites you to attend our upcoming Literacy (un)Conference. Aimed toward literacy leaders, especially principals and reading specialists serving grades K-3, this online professional learning opportunity includes pre-recorded sessions and live chats.
Sessions about standards-based instruction and assessment will be posted Monday, April 15, 2013. A live chat about this content will be held April 15 at 7:00 p.m.
Sessions about planning for professional learning and collaboration will be posted Tuesday, April 16, 2013. A live chat about this content will be held April 25 at 7:00 p.m.
Watch this space for further details including links to the conference site and live chat events. More details can be found here.

The Economist:

“THIS BUSINESS”, SAYS John Demby, the principal (headmaster) of Sussex Tech, a high school in Delaware, “has changed dramatically in a very short period.” This year, like all principals in the state, he is evaluating teachers under a new system for the first time. The state is also adopting a new curriculum for English and maths, the “common core”. That will require changes to the state’s regular computerised tests for students, themselves only three years old. On top of all that, Sussex Tech is launching a scheme to allow students to start accumulating college credits while still in high school. And it is overhauling the vocational training it offers in order to serve local businesses better and to provide students with more useful qualifications.
It is not just Sussex Tech; all Delaware’s schools are undergoing a similar upheaval, thanks to a series of reforms championed by Jack Markell, Delaware’s governor. He has made education reform a centrepiece of his tenure because he sees it as critical to the state’s competitiveness. (It is the states that regulate education in America, although the federal government often tries to bribe them to adopt its pet policies.)

Kenneth K. Wong and Francis X. Shen:

Using mayoral governance–in which a city’s mayor replaces an elected school board with a board that he or she appoints–as a strategy to raise urban school performance began about two decades ago, when then-Mayor of Boston Raymond Flynn (D) gained control over the city’s school district. Boston was soon followed by Chicago, where Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) appointed both the chief executive officer and the entire school board of the school system. Over the past 20 years, mayoral governance of schools has been featured prominently in nearly 20 urban school systems across the country. (see Table 1 in the PDF)
Mayoral control and accountability is one of very few major education reforms that aim at governance coherence in our highly fragmented urban school systems. A primary feature of mayoral governance is that it holds the office of the mayor accountable for school performance. As an institutional redesign, mayoral governance integrates school-district accountability and the electoral process at the systemwide level. The so-called education mayor is ultimately held accountable for the school system’s performance on an academic, fiscal, operational, and managerial level. While school board members are elected by fewer than 10 percent of the eligible voters, mayoral races are often decided by more than half of the electorate. Under mayoral control, public education gets on the citywide agenda.
Governance constitutes a structural barrier to academic and management improvement in too many large urban districts, where turf battles and political squabbles involving school leaders and an array of stakeholders have for too long taken energy and focus away from the core mission of education. Many urban districts are exceedingly ungovernable, with fragmented centers of power tending to look after the interests of their own specific constituencies. Consequently, the independently elected school board has limited leverage to advance collective priorities, and the school superintendent lacks the institutional capacity to manage the policy constraints established in state regulations and the union contract. Therefore, mayoral accountability aims to address the governing challenges in urban districts by making a single office responsible for the performance the city’s public schools. Citywide priorities such as reducing the achievement gap receive more focused attention.

John Markoff:

Imagine taking a college exam, and, instead of handing in a blue book and getting a grade from a professor a few weeks later, clicking the “send” button when you are done and receiving a grade back instantly, your essay scored by a software program.
And then, instead of being done with that exam, imagine that the system would immediately let you rewrite the test to try to improve your grade.
EdX, the nonprofit enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to offer courses on the Internet, has just introduced such a system and will make its automated software available free on the Web to any institution that wants to use it. The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.
The new service will bring the educational consortium into a growing conflict over the role of automation in education. Although automated grading systems for multiple-choice and true-false tests are now widespread, the use of artificial intelligence technology to grade essay answers has not yet received widespread endorsement by educators and has many critics.
Anant Agarwal, an electrical engineer who is president of EdX, predicted that the instant-grading software would be a useful pedagogical tool, enabling students to take tests and write essays over and over and improve the quality of their answers. He said the technology would offer distinct advantages over the traditional classroom system, where students often wait days or weeks for grades.

Related: Robo Essay Grading.

Allie Grasgreen:

If you are a low-income prospective college student hoping a degree will help you move up in the world, you probably should not attend a moderately selective four-year research institution. The cards are stacked against you.
That’s the sobering bottom line of Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality (Harvard University Press), a new book based on five years of interview research by Elizabeth A. Armstrong, an associate professor of sociology and organizational studies at the University of Michigan, and Laura T. Hamilton, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California at Merced.
It’s not entirely the colleges’ fault, Hamilton says. Declining state and federal support and rising tuition have made it critical to recruit students who can pay more (and who continue to donate after they leave). But the out-of-state and affluent students attending these colleges are not in it for the academics – those students are going to the Harvards, Michigans and Berkeleys of the world.
The students who end up at Midwestern University – a pseudonym for the flagship institution where Armstrong and Hamilton follow a group of women through their college careers, from the dorm floor to a year post-graduation – are socially minded. Thus, to lure and keep those students, institutions have come to structure their academic and social frameworks in a way that accommodates that population.

National Council on Teacher Quality

Elementary and Special Education Teacher Preparation in Reading Instruction
New legislation now requires as a condition of initial licensure that all elementary and special education teachers pass an examination identical to the Foundations of Reading test administered as part of the Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure. The passing score on the examination will be set at a level no lower than the level recommended by the developer of the test, based on the state’s standards.
2011 Wisconsin Act 166, Section 21, 118.19(14)(a)
https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2011/related/acts/166.pdf
Teacher Preparation Program Accountability
Each teacher preparation program must submit a list of program completers who have been recommended for licensure. Also, a system will be developed to publicly report measures of performance for each prep program. Beginning in the 2013-2014 school year, each program must display a passage rate on the first attempt of recent graduates on licensure exams.
2011 Wisconsin Act 166, Section 14, 25.79, Section 17, 115.28(7g)
https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2011/related/acts/166.pdf
Wisconsin Response to Policy Update
States were asked to review NCTQ’s identified updates and also to comment on policy changes related to teacher preparation that have occurred in the last year, pending changes or teacher preparation in the state more generally. States were also asked to review NCTQ’s analysis of teacher preparation authority (See Figure 20).
Wisconsin noted that middle childhood–early adolescence elementary teachers are required to earn a subject area minor. Wisconsin also included links and citations pertaining to content test requirements for adding to secondary certifications.
The state asserted that its alternate route programs require the same basic skills tests and passing scores for admission that are required for institutions of higher education (IHEs). The state added that alternate route programs are required to use the same content tests and passing scores as IHEs and that content tests are taken as an
admissions requirement.
Wisconsin referred to its handbook and approval guidelines for alternate route programs and noted that the state has added a new pathway, “License based on Equivalency.” The state noted that its new website, Pathways to Wisconsin Licensure, along with updated materials, will be posted in mid-August 2012 at http://dpi.wi.gov/tepdl/
licpath.html.
In addition, Wisconsin was helpful in providing NCTQ with further information about state authority for teacher preparation and licensing

Kevin Kiley:

A conservative Republican governor walks into a university president’s office.
It sounds like the start of a bad joke (or, in certain parts of the country these days, an academic’s nightmare), but it’s a daily occurrence here, where Mitch Daniels recently assumed leadership of Purdue University after a high-profile eight-year run as Indiana’s governor.
Daniels might seem an odd choice for Purdue, a public land-grant university with an emphasis on science and engineering. The institution has historically been led by accomplished researchers and academic administrators, and most of Daniels’s predecessors held advanced academic degrees in science, medicine, math or engineering.
Daniels, who attended Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs as an undergraduate and received a law degree from Georgetown University, is not a scientist or engineer, nor does he have significant academic experience. His C.V. includes no peer-reviewed papers, no courses taught and no previous academic administrative experience. His career spans a range of government and private-sector administrative jobs, and his fame in the political world comes predominantly from the budget-cutting, small-government attitude with which he approached these various positions.

Megan McArdle:

All right, children: it’s time for Aunty Megan to bore you with how things were In Her Day. Way back in 1989, when I was applying to college, there was a certain amount of creativity applied to college applications. The particular school I attended was structured to make you look good on college applications: athletics were practically mandatory, extracurriculars were strongly encouraged. The essay seemed to require an epiphany, whether or not you’d actually had one, so we did our best to emulate personal insight.
But the things that we achieved were basically within reach of a normal human being who was going about the business of growing up: playing a sport, perhaps badly; taking classes; occasionally volunteering as a candy striper. Most of us took the SAT without the benefit of test prep services, and the “test prep” we got in class consisted of–learning vocabulary and algebra. People like me, who were painfully unathletic and had hashed some early high school classes still had a shot at an Ivy League School

The Union Leader:

It is crazy and unsupportable. But who is this “we” he is talking about?
Huddleston, like other university officials, ties the price of his product to state subsidies, but not to the underlying cost of his product. That cost is the real issue and always have been. If UNH administrators wanted to reduce the price, they would slash the cost. Instead, they would rather pressure legislators to hike the subsidies. That, not lowering tuition, is what this PR campaign is all about.

People may now order a printed on demand copy or copies of the Winter 2012 issue, with this link.
https://www.createspace.com/4206242
The Concord Review.

Walter Jones:

It’s not just parents complaining about the cost of college, as state and national policymakers search for ways to balance it against the need for more graduates to fill future jobs.
At a lecture to board members of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta last week, Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee professor and author of “The Higher Education Bubble,” reminded them of Stein’s principle of economics, which says, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Since the price of tuition grows faster than personal income, a college education is rapidly becoming unaffordable for average families without relying on their retirement savings, an inheritance or loans to foot those bills.

Blare Kennedy:

Joe Gothard, assistant superintendent of the Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin: According to School Exec Connect, Gothard is the second in command at a ” highly successful district.” He has a master’s degree and a six-year superintendent-principal’s license. Previous to becoming an assistant superintendent, Gothard was a principal at both the high school and middle school level.
“He took on one of the toughest high schools in the city and turned it around, basically,” said Dr. Kenneth Dragseth, of School Exec Connect. “I got an e-mail from a parent who said he turned their kid’s life around.”
Dragseth said that all sources described Gothard as a “rising star,” who is actively involved in his community and “extremely well-liked” by everyone he came across. Dragseth added that Gothard is “very familiar” with the issues that arise in a diverse district like Burnsville’s.

Via a Matthew DeFour Tweet.

1.7MB PDF via a kind Kaleem Caire email:

Between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2012, the Urban League of Greater Madison stood on the firm shoulders of its founders – Leslie Fishel, Jr., Sydney Forbes, Isobel Clark and Frank Morrison – and demonstrated exceptional courage and foresight by launching a well-orchestrated campaign to raise the community’s consciousness about an embarrassing and unconscionable racial achievement gap that is leaving hundreds of Black, Latino and Asian children behind each year. We also informed the community about the acceleration of middle class families moving their children out of Madison’s public schools, either through relocation or utilizing the state’s inter-district public school choice program. Between 1989 and 2012, the student population in Madison schools grew from 24% non-white to 55% non-white. We also began an aggressive campaign to enlist the support of businesses, education institutions, community partners and resource providers to expand workforce development and career training opportunities for unemployed and underemployed adults in Dane County, and address diversity and inclusion opportunities among them.
The public should consider our 2013-14 Strategic Plan to be Phase II of the League’s efforts to provide courageous and transformational leadership to ensure thousands more children, adults and families succeed in our schools, colleges, workplaces, neighborhoods and communities. In 2020, the Urban League of Greater Madison would like local citizens and the national media to report that Madison, Wisconsin has indeed become “Best [place] in the Midwest for Everyone to Live, Learn and Work”. Early returns on the investment made thus far indicate that our vision can become a reality.
This Strategic Plan covers a 24-month period, from January 1, 2013 through December 31, 2014. We believe shorter time-windows enable us to keep the organization focused on achieving a reasonable number of high impact goals, and with the appropriate sense of urgency necessary to produce the results it seeks and the community needs. As our nation has demonstrated extraordinary courage and overcome extraordinary challenges in years past, we will do so again.

The Urban League’s Board of Directors is interesting in its breadth. Mo Andrews, architect of WEAC’s rise is an interesting member.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF):

Each year about this time MTI begins the process of developing its budgets for the ensuing fiscal year, in this case July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014. MTI has two (2) budgets, one for MTI (the Union) and one for the MTI Building Corporation, the owner of MTI’s headquarters building.
MTI’s budget is the operating budget under which the Union provides services to the members of its five (5) bargaining units; i.e. the Teacher/professional unit (MTI); the Educational Assistants bargaining unit (EA-MTI); the Clerical/Technical bargaining unit (SEE-MTI); the Substitute Teacher bargaining unit (USO-MTI); and the Security Assistants bargaining unit (SSA-MTI).
This year’s proposed budgets are based on last year’s dues levels; i.e. no dues increase. This is the second straight year the Union has not proposed a dues increase.

Pat Schnieder:

The election night parties ran late Tuesday night at The Fountain bar downtown and Badger Bowl on the south side as supporters of Madison School Board candidates Dean Loumos and Wayne Strong waited for the results in what turned out to be a very tight race.
There was a good-sized, lively crowd at each of the parties making plenty of noise, but one thing I couldn’t help but notice is that the Fountain crowd was predominately white, like Loumos, and the Badger Bowl crowd was predominately African-American, like Strong.
The significance of that is up for debate, but this much is clear: Race was very much an issue in this School Board election. And candidates of every stripe identified the embarrassing race-based achievement gap as the most pressing issue facing the district.
The results of the Seat 3 match-up between Loumos and Strong won’t be known until next week. Loumos held a 279-vote margin with all wards reporting early Wednesday, but Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell told the Wisconsin State Journal that there were potentially hundreds of absentee ballots yet to be counted.

Much more on the 2013 Madison School Board election, here.

David Blaska:

Congratulations to Madison’s white power elite, especially to Democrats, organized labor, John Matthews and his teachers union. You very well may have elected a teachers union-first (“Collectively we decide …”), children second school board. You also just handed Scott Walker a powerful case for expanding private school vouchers.
What are you afraid of? That more parents might not choose the taxpayer-coerced public school monopoly? What do you expect, when you leave them no (ahem) … choice.
I would like to hold out hope that absentee ballots will make the difference, but 279 votes is probably too many for Wayne Strong to overcome to defeat Dean Loumos, who holds an 18,286 to 18,007 lead. If there are 1,333 absentee ballots that need to be counted, as the city clerk’s website advertises, Strong would have to beat Loumos 806 to 527 in those uncounted votes.
(BTW: Is this the new normal? As absentee voting becomes more popular, winners won’t be declared for a week after the election?)

Much more on the 2013 Madison School Board election, here.

Amy Barrilleaux:

For state superintendent Tony Evers, reelection was the easy part. He handily beat his opponent, staunch conservative Rep. Don Pridemore (R-Town of Erin), with over 60% of the vote Tuesday.
“Voters spoke loudly and clearly, affirming their commitment to Wisconsin’s strong public schools and calling for a much-needed reinvestment to support the over 870,000 public school kids in our state,” says Evers in a statement.
But despite the big win, Evers faces an even bigger battle in the Legislature, where lawmakers are considering Gov. Scott Walker’s latest budget. It’s unclear whether the Republican majority is united behind Walker’s plan to increase funding for the state’s voucher schools by $73 million — something Evers campaigned against, insisting there is no evidence that voucher programs are working.
“The academic data just does not justify expansion,” he told the Joint Finance Committee (PDF) during a hearing in March.
It also remains to be seen whether lawmakers will give more money to traditional public schools, which were hit with a historic $800 million cut in Walker’s previous budget. Despite pleas from Evers, almost none of that money has been restored by Walker this time around.

State Rep. Don Pridemore says he doesn’t understand why fellow Republican Gov. Scott Walker didn’t endorse him in his race for state superintendent.
Pridemore lost to incumbent Tony Evers in Tuesday’s election.
Evers signed the petition to recall Walker, but the governor still refused to endorse anyone in the race.
Pridemore says after his loss that he is disappointed Walker didn’t help him with his campaign. Pridemore says people should question why Walker “didn’t support someone who would be a much friendlier person in this job.”

Pridemore’s statements, the muted campaign against incumbent Evers and a reasonably quiet state supreme court race make this observer wonder what sort of a deal might have been cut….

Rapprochement

Kira Goldenberg:

So this piece has been making the rounds since Monday. It’s on op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by high school senior Suzy Lee Weiss waxing bitter about being rejected from college. She blamed her rejections (she doesn’t say how many, or whether she was accepted someplace) on the fact that she is a straight, white person with normal abilities and habits. It’s the most-read piece on the WSJ’s site and has been shared more than 10,500 times, according to the site Who Shared my Link.

Paula Monarez Diaz and David Burge

The controversial El Paso Independent School District forensic audit, which is expected to detail which educators may have been a part of a districtwide test-cheating scheme, will be released Monday.
The $800,000 audit by Weaver and Tidwell LLP, will be posted on the district’s website by Monday afternoon, interim Superintendent Vernon Butler said.
The audit is being released as a response to outcries from some parents and students, as well as County Judge Veronica Escobar, who criticized the removal of four high school principals and other school administrators because of the audit.
Escobar, in a letter to Butler, asked that the audit be made public. And students rallying Friday on behalf of a principal asked the school district to let the principals know what they did wrong and why they were being removed.

Related: Removal of El Paso School District principals opposed.

Pat Schneider:

The results of the Seat 3 match-up between Loumos and Strong won’t be known until next week. Loumos held a 279-vote margin with all wards reporting early Wednesday, but Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell told the Wisconsin State Journal that there were potentially hundreds of absentee ballots yet to be counted.
The shocking withdrawal just after the Seat 5 primary of Sarah Manski, the candidate of the local progressive establishment, pushed third place finisher, Latina Ananda Mirilli, off the ballot and set up a disturbing tension between the local progressive community and communities of color. Kaleem Caire, CEO of the Urban League of Greater Madison and architect of the controversial Madison Preparatory Academy, used the occasion to resurrect some of the divisive stands around the proposed charter school for African-American students that was rejected in 2011 by the School Board.
Loumos, in addition to backing from unions like Madison Teachers Inc, AFSCME and South Federation of Labor AFL-CIO, also boasted an array of the progressive endorsements that usually win races in Madison: Progressive Dane, Four Lakes Green Party, Fair Wisconsin PAC.
But he insisted Tuesday that that tension between progressives and communities of color wasn’t a factor in his race, in part because he doesn’t have the profile for it.
Loumos has worked for decades with people struggling at the edges of society, many of them black and Latino. Currently executive director of a nonprofit agency that provides housing for homeless people, he used to teach in Madison School District programs for kids who were faltering.

Matthew DeFour

But the race between Dean Loumos, executive director of Housing Initiatives Inc., and retired Madison Police lieutenant Wayne Strong remained too close to call.
Loumos held a 279-vote margin with all wards reporting, but Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said there were potentially hundreds of absentee ballots yet to be counted. Those won’t all be counted by the canvassing board until next Tuesday, due to a recent change in state law, McDonell said.
Strong said he would wait to make a decision about whether to seek a recount. Loumos said he respected Strong’s position and he didn’t declare victory.

Much more on the 2013 Madison School Board election, here.

Francesco di Meglia:

As a student at University of Indiana’s Kelley School of Business, Derek Pacqué lost his coat at a bar, got angry, and came up with a business plan. He borrowed and saved $500 to purchase racks and hangers to start a coat check business at local hangouts.
CoatChex does not require patrons to keep tickets, which often get lost. Instead, someone at a kiosk photographs clients’ faces and coats with an iPad or smartphone and then uses their phone number and photos for secure pick-up. A paltry original investment eventually had Pacqué negotiating with–and turning down–a $200,000 offer from entrepreneur Mark Cuban on ABC’s Shark Tank for a 33 percent stake in the business. In the last two months, CoatChex earned $100,000.
“You go to school to get a job or an education,” says Pacqué, who graduated in 2011. “I went to college because I wanted to create my own career, to create something of value.”
Pacqué is among a new breed of undergraduate business students. Professors and classmates say they hunger to be their own bosses. More undergraduate business students than ever before are launching startups right after graduation–or sometimes while still at school, say administrators. A query to the top 20 undergraduate business schools asking for contacts with promising startups launched by students, or by very recent graduates, resulted in at least 100 responses.

Laura Waters:

At last night’s NJ Spotlight Roundtable entitled “Camden Schools and the Future of Urban Education in New Jersey, Camden School Board Member Sean Brown (a last-minute replacement for Asst. Superintendent Patricia Kenny) related this story to a large and boisterous audience at the Camden-Rutgers Campus Center.
In August 2011, Mr. Brown paid an unannounced visit to the Camden Public Schools’ Central Office, about two weeks before school started. In a back room he discovered “at least a hundred boxes of smart boards.” Smart boards are interactive white boards, popular in classrooms, that retail for about $5,000. Disturbed by the sight, he took a picture and texted it to then-Superintendent Bessie LeFra Young and his fellow school board members.
The response? He was reprimanded for paying the unexpected visit and told that Security and Maintenance shouldn’t have let him in.
The following week he repeated his visit. With school due to start in one week, the smart boards were still in their original boxes. As an aside, he remarked, “At last night’s NJ Spotlight Roundtable entitled “Camden Schools and the Future of Urban Education in New Jersey, Camden School Board Member Sean Brown (a last-minute replacement for Asst. Superintendent Patricia Kenny) related this story to a large and boisterous audience at the Camden-Rutgers Campus Center.
In August 2011, Mr. Brown paid an unannounced visit to the Camden Public Schools’ Central Office, about two weeks before school started. In a back room he discovered “at least a hundred boxes of smart boards.” Smart boards are interactive white boards, popular in classrooms, that retail for about $5,000. Disturbed by the sight, he took a picture and texted it to then-Superintendent Bessie LeFra Young and his fellow school board members.
The response? He was reprimanded for paying the unexpected visit and told that Security and Maintenance shouldn’t have let him in.
The following week he repeated his visit. With school due to start in one week, the smart boards were still in their original boxes. As an aside, he remarked, “as a board member, I’m lied to all the time.”