Steve Bartin:

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Chicago’s population peaked a long time ago. In 1950, Chicago had 3. 6 million people. Recent estimates put Chicago’s population at 2.7 million. With the growth of American suburbs, many Chicago families have fled to public schools in the suburbs. Chicago’s horrible public schools have been an embarrassment for Chicago’s elite. A recent Chicago Tribune editorial estimated that only “only 8 of 100 freshmen who enter Chicago public high schools manage to get a college diploma.”

In an attempt to keep white families from fleeing Chicago, the second Mayor Daley came up with a plan: test-admittance-only public high schools. This was a reasonable solution for gentry liberals who pay high property taxes but didn’t want to leave the city or couldn’t afford to send their children to private schools. These select public high schools produce college bound students while “limiting” gentry liberal’s children from being exposed to children from “troubled backgrounds”. This is a sensitive subject because Chicago’s Public School System is only 9.2% white, while being 39.7% African-American.

Being admitted to these select magnet schools can often determine whether a family stays in Chicago or moves elsewhere. Recently, Daniel Hertz made news by graphically showing how Chicago’s middle class has being largely eliminated since 1970. The new Chicago is still a one-party town, but is now a coalition of rich and poor with a residual government worker middle class. White children have left Chicago’s Public School system leaving minorities as the majority. But, who gets into the selective public high schools? The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Tim Parks:

The conditions in which we read today are not those of fifty or even thirty years ago, and the big question is how contemporary fiction will adapt to these changes, because in the end adapt it will. No art form exists independently of the conditions in which it is enjoyed.

What I’m talking about is the state of constant distraction we live in and how that affects the very special energies required for tackling a substantial work of fiction—for immersing oneself in it and then coming back and back to it on numerous occasions over what could be days, weeks, or months, each time picking up the threads of the story or stories, the patterning of internal reference, the positioning of the work within the context of other novels and indeed the larger world.

Every reader will have his or her own sense of how reading conditions have changed, but here is my own experience. Arriving in the small village of Quinzano, just outside Verona, Italy, thirty-three years ago, aged twenty-six, leaving friends and family behind in the UK, unpublished and unemployed, always anxious to know how the next London publisher would respond to the work I was writing, I was constantly eager for news of one kind or another. International phone-calls were prohibitively expensive. There was no fax, only snail mail, as we called it then. Each morning the postino would, or might, drop something into the mailbox at the end of the garden. I listened for the sound of his scooter coming up the hairpins from the village. Sometimes when the box was empty I would hope I’d heard wrong, and that it hadn’t been the postino’s scooter, and go out and check again an hour later, just in case. And then again. For an hour or so I would find it hard to concentrate or work well. You are obsessed, I would tell myself, heading off to check the empty mailbox for a fourth time.

Chad Alderman, via a kind reader:

The Census Bureau’s latest Public Education Finances Report is out, and it shows that employee benefits continue to take on a rising share of district expenditures.

The table below uses 20 years of data (all years that are available online) to show total current expenditures (i.e. it excludes capital costs and debt), expenditures on base salaries and wages, and expenditures on benefits like retirement coverage, health insurance, tuition reimbursements, and unemployment compensation. Although it would be interesting to sort out which of these benefits have increased the most, the data don’t allow us to draw those granular conclusions. But they do tell us that teachers and district employees are forgoing wage increases on behalf of benefit enhancements.

From 2001 to 2012 alone, public education spending increased 49 percent, but, while salaries and wages increased 36 percent, employee benefits increased 96 percent. Twenty years ago, districts spent more than four dollars in wages to every one dollar they spent on benefits. Now that ratio has dropped under three-to-one. Benefits now eat up more than 20 percent of district budgets, or $2,363 per student, and those numbers are climbing.

Much more on Madison’s 2014-2015 budget, here.

Here are some of the essays which won Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes after being published in Volume 24 of The Concord Review.

Kathleen Wenyun Guan of Singapore, a Senior at the United World College of Southeast Asia, had published a 6,103-word history research paper on the One Child Policy in China. (Georgetown School of Foreign Service)

Maya Tulip Lorey, of Oakland, California, a Senior at the College Preparatory School of Oakland, had published a 5,792-word history research paper on residential segregation in Berkeley, California. (Stanford)

Jonathan Slifkin, of New York, a Senior at the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, had published an 8,017-word history research paper on Brazilian Independence. (Harvard)

Iris Robbins-Larrivee, of Vancouver, a Junior at the King George Secondary School in Vancouver, had published a 14,212-word history research paper on French Canadian Nationalism. (McGill)

Rebecca Grace Cartellone, of Hudson, Ohio, a Senior at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson Ohio, had published a 7,111-word history research paper on the Three Gorges Dam. (Columbia)

Gao Wenbin, of Qingdao, Shandong, China, a Senior at Qingdao No. 2 Middle School in Shandong, had published a 16,380-word history research paper on Chinese Liberalism. (Yale)

——————————
“Teach with Examples”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
tcr.org/bookstore
www.tcr.org/blog

There is an idea floating around college campuses—including here at Harvard—that scholars should be funded only if their work conforms to a particular view of justice. There’s a word for that idea: censorship. And it is just a modern day form of McCarthyism.

Dennis Saffran, via Will Fitzhugh:

I wasn’t looking forward to Michael Bloomberg’s speech at my daughter’s Harvard commencement last week. As an active New York City Republican, I have decidedly mixed feelings about the former mayor, a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent and prominent social liberal. While I admired his successful anti-crime policies, I was less enthusiastic about his nanny-state hectoring on public health and driven to distraction by his instinctual reliance on (and seeming obliviousness to the bias of) liberal “experts” on a range of other issues. And, though I agree with many of his positions on gun control, I’ve always been put off by his morally superior tone, which can make him sound as if he’s blaming gun violence on law-abiding gun owners in the flyover states and the outer boroughs. In short, while the billionaire mayor did some great things and left New York City a better place, he often seemed to me the very embodiment of a “limousine liberal.” And it was this Michael Bloomberg that I expected to show up at Harvard. “It’s going to be all guns and trans fats,” I joked to a conservative friend of my daughter’s the night before the speech. The mayor, I assumed, would play it safe, and play up to his liberal audience.

I was splendidly wrong. Speaking at the epicenter of academic leftism, Bloomberg forcefully challenged growing intolerance and ideological rigidity on campus—which he bluntly called “modern day McCarthyism”—and declared that “a liberal arts education must not be an education in the art of liberalism.”

He set out his main themes early in the speech: that “great universities . . . lie at the heart of the American experiment in democracy” as “places where people of all . . . beliefs [can] debate their ideas freely and openly”; that “tolerance for other people’s ideas, and the freedom to express your own, are inseparable values” that form a “sacred trust” undergirding democratic society; that this trust “is perpetually vulnerable to the tyrannical tendencies of monarchs, mobs, and majorities”; and, pointedly, that “lately, we have seen those tendencies manifest themselves too often, both on college campuses and in our society.” Perhaps to reassure his audience, Bloomberg picked a conservative cause—opposition to the so-called Ground Zero mosque—as his first example of this tendency. But he quickly tied his defense of the mosque back to his central point: “We cannot deny others the rights and privileges that we demand for ourselves. And that . . . is no less true at universities, where the forces of repression appear to be stronger now than they have been since the 1950s.”

Bloomberg alluded to a recent proposal in The Harvard Crimson to jettison academic freedom in favor of an Orwellian concept of “academic justice” that would shut down “research promoting or justifying oppression” or “countering” the supposed “goals” of the “university community” to oppose “racism, sexism, and heterosexism.” The proposal echoed similar proposals at other elite universities. Bloomberg warned his liberal listeners of a new McCarthyism of the Left paralleling the Red Scare tactics of the fifties:

Cindy May:

“More is better.” From the number of gigs in a cellular data plan to the horsepower in a pickup truck, this mantra is ubiquitous in American culture. When it comes to college students, the belief that more is better may underlie their widely-held view that laptops in the classroom enhance their academic performance. Laptops do in fact allow students to do more, like engage in online activities and demonstrations, collaborate more easily on papers and projects, access information from the internet, and take more notes. Indeed, because students can type significantly faster than they can write, those who use laptops in the classroom tend to take more notes than those who write out their notes by hand. Moreover, when students take notes using laptops they tend to take notes verbatim, writing down every last word uttered by their professor.

Obviously it is advantageous to draft more complete notes that precisely capture the course content and allow for a verbatim review of the material at a later date. Only it isn’t. New research by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer demonstrates that students who write out their notes on paper actually learn more. Across three experiments, Mueller and Oppenheimer had students take notes in a classroom setting and then tested students on their memory for factual detail, their conceptual understanding of the material, and their ability to synthesize and generalize the information. Half of the students were instructed to take notes with a laptop, and the other half were instructed to write the notes out by hand. As in other studies, students who used laptops took more notes. In each study, however, those who wrote out their notes by hand had a stronger conceptual understanding and were more successful in applying and integrating the material than those who used took notes with their laptops.

[I asked her about some of her experiences with math and history. Will Fitzhugh]

Jessica Li (Class of 2015)
High School Junior, Summit, New Jersey
24 May 2014
[6,592-word Sophomore paper on Kang Youwei…
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize 2014]

My interest and involvement in mathematics was inspired by my family and my own exploration. My family instilled in me a strong love of learning in general but especially of mathematics. In elementary and early middle school, I mostly participated in various smaller math contests, practiced contest and advanced math on my own, and took higher-level math classes in school. In late middle school and high school, I first began to see the true beauty of mathematics when I began reading pure and applied math research papers written by graduate students and professors. At first, these papers were, of course, very difficult to understand. But gradually, through persistence and great effort, I began to understand them more and enjoy reading them more.

Before high school, especially in early middle school, my parents had provided more assistance in extracurricular academic pursuits, specifically giving me suggestions about what programs I should look into, what books I might want to read based on my interests, helping me through some challenging problems, etc. Around the beginning of high school, my involvement in mathematics became more independent of my family. They certainly supported me in everything I did, but I began to find my own route and chart my own path. Through participating in summer programs, contests, and online courses I found, I built a network of like-minded peers who shared more information with me about other math-related opportunities. Specifically, in summer 2012, I attended AwesomeMath Summer Program where I met International Math Olympiad participants, medalists, and coaches as well as many other talented young mathematicians.

In summer 2013, I attended the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathemats, a six-week math research program with interesting seminars and courses on a variety of different topics including 4D geometry, theoretical computer science, complex analysis, algebraic topology, set theory, graph theory, group theory, and more. For several years, I have participated in the American Mathematics Competition, American Invitational Mathematics Exam, the United States Mathematical Talent Search (where I received a Gold medal), and Math Madness (where I was in the top four in the country). I have written for Girls’ Angle Bulletin, the journal of Girls’ Angle. I recently conducted my own research and placed in the top three of my category and won a special computing award at the North Jersey Regional Science Fair and was published in the Journal of Applied Mathematics and Physics. Earlier this year, I was accepted to the MIT PRIMES-USA program, a year-round research program with MIT. Only thirteen students in the nation were accepted this year. Last week, I presented my research at the MIT PRIMES Conference.

I try my best not to take all of these wonderful mathematical opportunities for granted. I realize that many other students of all ages do not have the same opportunities as I do to explore mathematics. I have created programs for underprivileged students to learn contest mathematics and showcase their abilities.

In my school, I have worked to involve more girls in mathematics and get more girls interested in the subject through making presentations, suggesting programs, organizing contests and research courses, leading the Mu Alpha Theta research team, giving project ideas and research guidance, sharing posters and math games, etc. This summer, I will be traveling to different states to present at local schools about snowflake and virus symmetries, a main focus of my MIT PRIMES-USA project. The puzzles I designed and 3D-printed to share information about snowflake and virus symmetries will be featured in the Museum of Mathematics in New York City and hopefully other museums as well. My MIT PRIMES-USA project was featured at the Undergraduate Research Symposium at the Illini Union and in a presentation to the head of the Illinois Geometry Lab. My school, specifically the entire mathematics and science departments, honored me with the Rensselaer Medal for Mathematics and Science for my mathematics and science accomplishments in contests, research success, and for involving other students in math.

I have also used my mathematical knowledge and abilities in my other STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) activities. I have used statistical analysis in my environmental engineering projects on microbial fuel cells, cellulosic ethanol, and invasive species control. I also used the leadership skills I gained from getting more people, especially underprivileged students and girls, interested in mathematics to involve students worldwide in environmental engineering and research through a nonprofit organization I founded.

Though I have not used much math in computer science, my interest in math led me to study Java, Matlab, and C/C++ on my own. I have created a number of apps to help clean-water charities and the blind.

My typical family vacation has always been centered around museums. For as long as I can remember, I have loved visiting museums, reading the books about the museum exhibits and artifacts before and after the visit, listening to the tour guides, doing my own research on related topics, etc. I did not, however, conduct my own historical research and write a paper on my research until tenth grade. In my history 10 course, each student was required to write a research paper on a topic of their choice based on a relevant book. I had always been interested in Chinese history, because of its close connection to my family history and my roots. So, I read The Chinese in America by Iris Chang, an author who I was already familiar with after reading The Rape of Nanking. My paper focused on a comparison of the challenges faced by Chinese immigrants in mainland China and in America during the mid 20th century. I loved completing the project. Even though I was only required to write a four-page paper, I wrote twenty pages including a poem from the point of a view of a Chinese immigrant. I also used my computer science skills to create a game that teaches others about the information I learned from my research.

In the middle of tenth grade, I heard about The Concord Review through a friend who knew about my interests and abilities in history and suggested that I may be interested in submitting a research paper to the journal. I was very interested in taking on the challenge to improve my reading, writing, and research skills and to share my work with high school history students, teachers, and other historians. I had some difficulty deciding upon a topic to research.

Around this time in my history 10 class we were learning about the Opium War. After some thought, I decided to complete my research paper on Chinese modernization. I was fascinated by the progress China had made in terms of modernization in the last century and was interested in investigating further. I wanted to shed light on this topic that is not so well known to high school students and others. Before beginning my research paper when I asked teachers, other adults, and friends for advice, they all emphasized the importance of reading other history research papers on similar topics.

Not only would I learn more information relevant to my topic of choice but I would also be more familiar with the style of academic writing featured in high-level, very well-respected journals such as The Concord Review, which is unique at the secondary level. I spent the winter and spring of tenth grade in the library, reading dozens of books and papers on Chinese modernization. In the early spring, I finalized my topic—the rise and fall of Kang Youwei, a prominent reformer in the late Qing Dynasty who is little known, yet had a tremendous influence on Chinese modernization. For the rest of the spring, I focused on reading literature specifically about Kang and those movements and figures related to him and his effects.

I began writing my paper in the beginning of the summer and focused on editing and rewriting for the remainder of the summer. My history 10 teacher found time in her summer to help edit my paper and provide helpful suggestions for improving it. Finally, in August, I was ready to submit my (6,592-word) final paper to The Concord Review. My paper was accepted for publication later in the Winter 2013 issue. I was so excited and honored to be able to share my work with The Concord Review subscribers and others worldwide.

Even though I am not working on a new history project right now, I have continued pursuing my interest in history through reading papers and books and completed a shorter project this year on mental hospitals. I look forward to continuing my history studies and research in college and beyond. Before conducting my own history research, and writing history research papers, I never thought I would continue to study history after high school because I had always thought my main interest would be in math and engineering. But now, I realize the value of history research and academic writing in any career and life path I choose, and also simply to satisfy my curiosity about the past, the present, and the future.

The Rise & Fall of Kang Youwei (PDF).

“I am simply one who loves the past and is diligent in investigating it.”

K’ung-fu-tzu (551-479 BC) The Analects

Education Trust, via a kind email:

You really want to know what makes this school different?” high school Principal John Capozzi leaned in, “Talk to a kid like James.” A “tough kid from the Bronx,” James transferred to Elmont Memorial High School in New York, where he slid silently into seats in the back of his classes and waited for the same bad experience that met him at every school before. But this time, it never came.

“He was in my first period class when I was still teaching,” Capozzi recalled. “And, this one particular day, the kids were really whiney — ‘why all these rules,’ ‘why all this work,’ ‘nya, nya, nya.’ And, as they were complaining about things, James — who never said anything in class — looks up and says, ‘You guys don’t know what you have here. You got teachers who care, who want you to do your work. Y’all wouldn’t last one minute in a bad school.’

“So you want to know what makes this school different?” challenged Capozzi. “Talk to a kid who’s been somewhere else.”

Ten years later and Capozzi’s words remain one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received.

In the last few decades, education leaders, researchers, and advocates have amassed rich lessons from adults in high-performing schools: lessons about effective practices, leadership, and what it takes to sustain real change. These contributions, distilled in studies, books, and reports, have provided sharp insight into the workings of successful schools and have shifted the national conversation from one of whether educating all students is even possible to one of how best to do it.

Edgar Mendez

Chandlar Strauss and Danielle “Dani” Fleming, a couple of 16-year-olds from the suburbs, might seem an unlikely pair to be so deeply invested in the educational outcomes of Milwaukee students.

But every Tuesday since the beginning of the school year, they’ve been hitting the halls of Milwaukee College Prep’s Lloyd Street Campus to tutor, and the two recently staged a fundraiser that brought in $30,000 to help them play their own small part in an ambitious effort.

“We want to close the educational gap that exists between the city and suburbs and build a relationship between the communities,” Strauss said.

Fleming, of Mequon, and Strauss, of Whitefish Bay, are lifelong friends who were side by side in hospital cribs when they were born.

The teens have now created Kids4Kids, an organization they hope will support efforts in Milwaukee to expand high-performing schools. The two are encouraging like-minded suburban teens to join their effort.

“We’re hoping to recruit students from Nicolet, Shorewood and other places to volunteer (tutor) at schools in Milwaukee,” Fleming said.

Their organization recently hosted a dance for high schoolers at Rail Hall in Walker’s Point that raised nearly $30,000 — with donations still coming in, Strauss said.

Tap the chart to view a larger version.

A few slides from the School District’s fourth 2014-2015 budget presentation to the Board:

I am surprised to see Physician’s Plus missing from the healthcare choices, which include: GHC, Unity or Dean.

The slides mention that the “Budget Proposal Covers the First 5% of Health Insurance Premium Increase”.

Madison Schools’ 2014-2015 v4 budget document (PDF).

Deeper dive:

2014-2015 Madison Schools’ Budget

Long term, disastrous reading results.

Healthcare costs have long been a somewhat contentious issue, including decades of expensive WPS coverage.

Questions about recent maintenance referendum spending.

Middleton’s property taxes are about 16% less than Madison’s for a comparable home.

Wisconsin per capita property tax data via the May 30, 2014 WISTAX Focus Newsletter.

4MB PDF presentation. https://www.teachermatch.org. Duckduckgo search.

Fascinating. Humans create the software, reports and decision support process…

Chris Rickert:

I guess when you’re 76 years old and on the verge of retirement after more than 50 years in the same field, there’s really no need to pull your punches.

Madison East High School biology teacher Paul du Vair proved that in a Sunday story in this newspaper, where he says the “greatest failure in education” is how little experience professors of education have in the classroom.

“They have no idea what goes on in our schools,” he said.

Provocative words from someone who owes at least part of his long and successful career to his college education. But are they true?

No doubt plenty of education professors, especially researchers, at UW-Madison lack teaching experience and haven’t logged significant time in the classroom. But plenty of them have, too.

At least one instructor in each of the School of Education’s licensure areas — the sciences, art, English, etc. — has “extensive teaching experience,” according to Cheryl Hanley-Maxwell, a former special education teacher and the School of Education associate dean responsible for teacher preparation.

And she estimated that about 75 percent of the faculty that students encounter when doing their education-related coursework, and nearly all faculty in areas such as teaching methods and classroom management, have teaching experience.

Related: Wisconsin adopts one aspect of Massachusetts’ teacher content knowledge requirements – MTEL.

Wisconsin rated D+ in teacher NCTQ State Teacher Policy Handbook.

Wisconsin State Journal

The president of the Madison teachers union just lamented an “embarrassingly low” wage increase for his members of 0.25 percent.

But that doesn’t include automatic pay raises most teachers will receive for their years of experience.

A large majority of Madison school teachers (in past years it has ranged from two-thirds to three-quarters of educators) will get longevity raises averaging between 2 percent and

3 percent, according to the district.

Add that to the 0.25 percent and the real raise for most Madison teachers will be about 10 times more than advertised.

In addition, a smaller group of teachers will get extra pay for completing higher education coursework toward advanced degrees. And under the district’s new contract for the 2015-16 year, teachers who supervise certain extracurricular clubs as well as those who take on work related to special education can earn more.

Much more, here.

Gail Robinson :

Eleven-year-old Matthew Votto sits at an iPad, his teacher at his elbow. She holds up a small laminated picture of a $20 bill.

“What money is this?” she asks. Matthew looks at the iPad, touches a square marked “Money Identification,” and then presses “$20.” “Twenty,” the tablet intones, while the teacher, Edwina Rogers, puts another sticker on a pad, bringing Matthew closer to a reward.

They race through more questions. “What day of the week is it?” “What is the weather outside?” “What money is this?” In most cases Matthew, who has autism, answers verbally, but he is quicker and seems more comfortable on the device.

Charlie Eaton, Cyrus Dioun, Daniela García Santibáñez Godoy, Adam Goldstein, Jacob Habinek and Robert Osley-Thomas

America’s higher education system is gaining a reputation for high costs and large inequities. In 2012, the U.S. spent $491 billion on higher education1 and twice2 as much per student than comparable industrialized countries. Where is all that money going?

Scholars have offered several explanations for these high costs including faculty salaries, administrative bloat, and the amenities arms race.3 These explanations, however, all miss a crucial piece of the puzzle. In fact, financing costs for college institutional debts, equity investments in for-profit colleges, and student loans have also come to soak up a growing portion of educational expenditures by households, taxpayers, and other private funders of higher education.

In recent years, students’ families and colleges have increasingly sought capital from three main financial markets. Public colleges faced declining state appropriations, and the average cost of tuition, room, and board increased much faster than grant aid for needy students.4 This pushed families to borrow increasing amounts from student loan markets to pay for college costs.5 Private and public colleges increased institutional borrowing, particularly from municipal bond markets for capital projects.6 And the rapid growth of for-profit colleges was fueled by equity investors that provided them with capital. All of this financing comes at great cost, in the form of either interest payments or profits earned to satisfy equity investors.

In this report, we estimate – for the first time – the total cost to the American higher education system of reliance on capital from each of these markets. The report covers the years for 2002 to 2012 – the only years for which adequate data are available.7 For student loans, we estimate the total interest paid annually on all outstanding student loans — both private and federal. For institutional borrowing, we describe total interest payments on college and university debts — the largest share of which went to funding amenities.8 In the case of for-profit colleges with capital from equity markets, we estimate the costs to students and taxpayers of profits made by these institutions —and the vast share of revenue they brought in from federal student aid programs — to satisfy stock shareholders and private equity investors. Except where noted, our estimates cover all colleges that received federal Higher Education Act Title IV funds9 and granted two-year, four-year, or graduate degrees between 2002 and 2012.

George Joseph:

Between 2007 and 2009, 350 Filipino teachers arrived in Louisiana, excited for the opportunity to teach math and science in public schools throughout the state. They’d been recruited through a company called Universal Placement International Inc., which professes on its website to “successfully place teachers in different schools thru out [sic] the United States.” As a lawsuit later revealed, however, their journey through the American public school system was fraught with abuse.

According to court documents, Lourdes Navarro, chief recruiter and head of Universal Placement, made applicants pay a whopping $12,550 in interview and “processing fees” before they’d even left the Philippines. But the exploitation didn’t stop there. Immediately after the teachers landed in LAX, Navarro coerced them into signing a contract paying her 10 percent of their first and second years’ salaries; she threatened those who refused with instant deportation. Even after they started at their schools, Navarro kept the teachers dependent on her by only obtaining them one-year visas before exorbitantly charging them for an annual renewal fee. She also confiscated their passports.

“We were herded into a path, a slowly constricting path,” said Ingrid Cruz, one of the teachers, during the trial, “where the moment you feel the suspicion that something is not right, you’re already way past the point of no return.” Eventually, a Los Angeles jury awarded the teachers $4.5 million.

Adrienne Lu:

Once public university tuition goes up, it rarely, if ever, goes down.

Since the Great Recession ended, states have been struggling to control tuition costs with a patchwork of tuition freezes, more student aid and additional state funds.

Caught in the middle are students and their families, who have had to pick up a growing proportion of the cost of college by paying higher tuition. Average tuition and fees at public four-year colleges grew from $7,008 to $8,893, or 27 percent, from 2008-09 to 2013-14, according to a study by the College Board.

State and local funding for public colleges and universities is finally on the rise again in many states, after hitting bottom in fiscal year 2012. States appropriated 5.7 percent more to higher education in fiscal 2014 compared to the previous year, ranging from an increase of 27.3 percent in New Hampshire to a cut of 8.1 percent in Wyoming.

Despite the recent upswing, however, states are still spending an average of 23 percent less per student on higher education than they did when the recession hit at the end of 2007, according to the Center on Budget and Policy and Priorities.

Chris Lee:

Is it time to rethink higher education? I’m someone who went through the system and I’m now, to a greater or lesser extent, contributing to its maintenance, so it seems strange that I should advocate its dismantling. Yet I’m beginning to think that I ought to.

Unlike most rants of this nature, I have no complaints about the modern standard of education. The myth of falling standards has been with us since the Roman republic decided that they wanted the south of France as their personal back garden. If they really were falling for that long, we would all be living in caves wondering how our fore bearers were able to create this thing called fire.

Indeed, I think that students today learn a hell of a lot more than I did in my day. Although I may mourn the fact that Lagrangian mechanics is now a footnote on the way to a physics degree, that is not a sign of falling standards, but rather tells us that it is more important to learn other things to obtain a relevant education.

James Wigderson, via a kind reader:

We should not have been surprised when Democratic candidate for governor Mary Burke voted with the rest of the Madison school board to negotiate a contract extension with the teachers union. After all, it was just a month ago that Burke told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in a video recorded interview that she believes she didn’t need Act 10 to get the same concessions from the unions. “I think it was only fair to ask for contributions to health care and to pensions, um, but I think those could have been negotiated, ah certainly firmly but fairly.”

Let’s set aside that negotiating a contract extension with the union is likely a violation of the law, as attorney Rick Esenberg of WILL informed the school board. Okay, that’s a little bit like saying to the dinosaurs, “setting aside that giant meteor head towards Earth…”

But setting the issue with the law aside, we’re about to about to see whether Burke’s claim is correct that she is capable of achieving the benefits of Act 10 without having to rely upon the powers granted by Act 10 to local government bodies. If we’re to use upon history as our guide, Burke is unlikely to prove anything except that the passage of Act 10 by Governor Scott Walker and the legislature was necessary.

After the passage of Act 10, Madison teachers staged a massive “sick out” in order to protest Walker’s reforms. Despite a public statement from then-WEAC President Mary Bell to go back to work and a request by the Madison Metropolitan School District to cancel a scheduled day off, Madison’s teachers continued to stay out of work to continue the protest. In fact, a MacIver investigation discovered that John Matthews of Madison Teachers, Inc. lied about the union’s involvement in planning the protest.

Against that background, and a determination not to be bound by the terms of Act 10, the Madison teachers union and the school district negotiated the first contract extension into 2013. Instead of the 12.6 percent health care contribution called for under Act 10 and even supported by Bell, the district was only able to negotiate a 5 percent health care contribution. The agreement did allow an increase to 10 percent the following year.

Related:

Teacher Union Collective Bargaining Continues in Madison, Parent Bargaining “like any other union” in Los Angeles.

Act 10.

Mary Burke.

Cory Weinberg:

When Bill O’Reilly decried on his show last week a course on white privilege supposedly starting at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, he said his working class roots make him “exempt” from white privilege. Scholars across the country could have told the Fox News commentator that he got the concept wrong.

The concept of white privilege – with roots in the 19th century, a resurgence in 1980s feminist scholarship and now making a mainstream splash – doesn’t point fingers at white supremacy or racist acts, but at structural and historical problems in society. White privilege is about the way white people are treated, generally favorably, regardless of what is in their hearts and minds. And Harvard officials aren’t starting a course on the topic, despite what you might hear on Fox.

But despite misconceptions and misinformation, Paul R. Croll, assistant professor of sociology at Augustana College, sees the recent discussion as part of a watershed moment for the academic field. “It’s a complex, deep sociological idea being brought into the mainstream, and it’s not easy to understand always. But even an angry discussion opens the door,” Croll said. “Bill O’Reilly saying ‘I don’t have white privilege’ is still Bill O’Reilly saying ‘white privilege.’ ”

Norman Sannes

Nothing has changed in the past 30 years. The love affair between the Madison School Board and Madison Teachers Inc. Executive director John Matthews is still in full bloom.

The latest pending agreement to extend the existing union contract is proof. The ensuing litigation could cost Madison taxpayers a great deal. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has already promised to challenge this if the School Board caves to MTI.

MTI is not about our kids. It never has been (other than indoctrinating liberalism). The union’s opposition to the Madison preparatory charter school is further proof.

The School Board is supposed to be looking out for the kids and the taxpayers, but their first priority continues to be MTI and the demands from Matthews.

Related: Madison Governance Status Quo: Teacher “Collective Bargaining” Continues; West Athens Parent Union “Bargains Like any other Union” in Los Angeles.

Dan Rockmore:

Fifty years ago, at 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964, in the basement of College Hall at Dartmouth College, the world of computing changed forever. Professor John Kemeny, then the chairman of the mathematics department at Dartmouth and later its president, and Mike Busch, a Dartmouth sophomore, typed “RUN” on a pair of computer terminals to execute two programs on a single industrial-sized General Electric “mainframe” computer. The programs were written in Basic (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), a fledgling computer language designed for the everyman, by Prof. Kemeny, Professor Tom Kurtz and a team of eager students.

Back then, using a computer was almost exclusively the privilege of a select minority of scientists and engineers who were conversant in the early languages of assembly code and Fortran. Prof. Kemeny, who had been a programmer on the Manhattan Project for Richard Feynman and an assistant to Albert Einstein, and Prof. Kurtz, a former student of the computing pioneer John Tukey, saw great potential in computers for advancing teaching and research, but they realized that this would require a whole new level of accessibility.

Basic was the first programming language designed specifically for nonengineers and nonmathematicians. It was easy to learn (“LET X = 5,” “IF X = 5 THEN Z = 10,” “PRINT X”), and at the same time, mainframe computers were starting to use timesharing—a system that let them more quickly handle multiple requests from terminals (a novel form of which was created by a team of Dartmouth undergraduates). As a result, an environment of interactive and available computing took over the campus. The pieces were in place for a global transformation as wide-ranging as the Industrial Revolution.

Adam Kotsko:

Simply because the humanities are often critical in their approach does not mean that they lead people to contest existing political arrangements. Many if not most of the greatest humanistic scholars of all time were enthusiastic advocates — precisely in the context of their scholarly work — of policies that we now regard as self-evidently abhorrent.

Similarly, we should not be misled by the superficial similarities between certain humanistic habits of thought and certain desirable moral dispositions. Humanistic methods of inquiry have no more inherent moral force than do the various methodologies of the natural sciences.

Nor is it prudent to construe the difference between the humanities and other intellectual disciplines that model themselves on the natural sciences as that between the “qualitative” and the “quantitative.” Every intellectual discipline works with empirical facts of some kind (quantitative), and every intellectual discipline relies on concepts and theories (qualitative). And even if we could somehow claim that the humanities had a monopoly on the qualitative aspect as compared to the “merely empirical” sciences, that still would not give us grounds for believing that the humanities are more meaningful and hence that the study of the humanities leads necessarily to a more meaningful life.

Molly Beck

Classroom 3027 in the northeast corner of Madison East High School’s third floor looks — and smells — like a biology textbook come to life.

Schools of mounted fish and five tanks worth of swimming ones watch the classroom from their perches. Small turtles to giant tortoise shells hang on one wall. A reindeer hoof hangs on another.

Underneath the wall decorations, filling shelves and bookcases, are about 400 small jars with yellowing labels tapped out on a typewriter: “cat uterus,” “elegant spider,” “human ovaries” and “golden hamster.” There are human brains, a kidney and a cancerous uterus preserved in formaldehyde.

Also among them is the preserved “Lord Ribbit Baron of Barphe” — the African-clawed frog that lived for 30 years in the classroom, unsurprisingly named by high school freshmen.

To Paul du Vair, the collection is a scrapbook of a teaching career he leaves at 76 years old, an age possibly unmatched by any Madison teacher before him, when he retires this month after more than 50 years, including 34 at East.

My simple thoughts on Madison’s latest Superintendent, Jennifer Cheatham:

How is the new Superintendent Doing?

Our community faces several historic challenges:

Despite spending double the national average per student, Madison’s reading results are a disaster. The Superintendent has been talking about this and there are indications that at least administrative attention to this urgent problem has changed.

Perhaps the most significant challenge our community faces is that school districts largely remain as they were a century ago: doing the same thing over and over yet becoming more costly each year. The rest of the world is obviously not standing still (www.wisconsin2.org)

The organizational stasis continues despite:

A. The information revolution:
I had dinner with some college students recently. All bright and motivated, they mentioned using the Khan Academy and many other online resources to learn. Sometimes supplementing coursework and in other cases replacing inadequate classroom lectures.

B. A few public schools are re-thinking their models:
Some Wisconsin Public schools are moving toward year around schedules:

Madison, meanwhile, seems largely content with the status quo:

C. Substantial growth in property taxes over the years, despite big changes in homeownership trends, demographics (rental growth) and the local economy.

https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2013/06/09/madison_schools_89/

http://www.waxingamerica.com/2006/02/nineteen_financ.html

D. Michael Barry (the Madison School District’s Business Services Director) recently confirmed to me via email that 25% of the District’s 2014-2015 budget is spent on benefits (!)

Those trends will be very difficult to address within the current structure.

In summary: two big challenges: disastrous reading problems and an organization structure created for 1914.

It is too early to tell how things are going, though the District could certainly share reading results throughout the most recent school year, via its test results.

The interested reader would do well to review previous Superintendent coverage before, during and after. It is revealing. Pat Schneider takes a quick survey, here.

Henry Whitehead:

Dear Editor: While I bet much of sleepy Madison loved your article on new super-intendent Jennifer Cheatham, I found it both revolting and a perfect microcosm for the extreme flaws in the way we talk about student issues in Madison. The Madison School District and local media refuse to ever put the focus of these types of conversations on students. “Locals,” to you, means 11 bureaucrats and one graduated student. I have no interest in hearing from self-serving members of various boards and committees.

What I want, and what I never get, is testimonies from actual kids in the district who are struggling, who have had a problem during their K-12 years, and who could be better served by the Madison School District. I want to hear from a kid whose only meal comes at school, telling me the actual truth about whether their situation has improved or worsened, not 12 nearly identical, nondescriptive praises by adults. Put the focus where it belongs.

Gillian Tett:

Last week, my daughters experienced a very modern American childhood ritual. The teachers at their Manhattan school suddenly locked the classroom door and told everyone to hide under their desks, or inside the cupboard. Then somebody walked along the corridor outside, banging on the doors in a menacing manner, shouting, “Let me in.”

The teacher kept the door shut and told the children to silently crouch down, as part of a so-called Code Red drill. “It was very scary,” one of my daughters observed. “But this is what we have to do if a stranger comes into school.”

Welcome to one of the quirks of America in 2014. When I was a child at a British school 30 years ago, I often took part in fire drills, to prepare for the remote risk of a fire. But these days, American schools are not just conducting fire evacuations. In the wake of recent attacks on educational establishments – such as the tragic shootings in Newtown, Connecticut in late 2012, or the attacks on a California college last week – they are actively drilling children on how to respond to violent attacks as well.

These drills vary across the country. In some American schools, teachers have decided that they want “realistic” drills, so children huddle in places such as the gym while somebody fires a blank gun. In other establishments, teachers keep the threat relatively vague. Meanwhile, in the trendier parts of Brooklyn, the schools are so worried about psychological distress that they offer counselling to pupils after the drills.

Ben Austin, via a kind email:

Last week was an important moment in the Parent Power movement.

On Friday, LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy came to West Athens Elementary School in South LA to sign a groundbreaking Partnership Agreement with the leadership of the West Athens Parents Union, called the “Aguilas de West Athens” (AWA) – all without the parents having to gather a single Parent Trigger petition.

This negotiated Partnership Agreement is the result of collaboration and cooperation on the part of both the school district and parents. It invests $300,000 in new staffing positions (including a school psychologist and psychiatric social worker) to address issues of school climate and student safety; increases focus on Common Core implementation and professional development for teachers; and commits to strengthening parent voice and parent power in the school over the coming year.

There has been a ton of good media coverage (which you can read on our blog here), but we thought you might be most interested in hearing directly from the parents themselves who have led this effort. Below is a short video from Winter Hall, one of the parent leaders from West Athens, sharing her story about why she got involved and how the Parents Union was able to win these changes for their kids:
Winter Play

The efforts at West Athens are an important barometer of where the idea and the movement behind parent trigger are heading in California. As more and more districts come to terms with the political power and moral authority that organized parents now possess, we will continue to see more and more proof points of parents able to use their power to create “kids first” reforms at their school, regardless of whether or not they actually use the law to “trigger” the change.

Thank you again for your support. We will continue to keep you updated on everything happening at West Athens Elementary and elsewhere.

Parent Revolution

Related MTI (Madison Teachers, Inc.) Red Fills Doyle Auditorium; Collective Bargaining to Begin.

Related links:

Oconomowoc & Madison.

Madison’s Distastrous Reading Results.

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before.

2008: Commentary & Links on Madison’s reading results.