Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Branding: CNN Poll: Three-fourths think federal officials not honest

CNN:

Folklore says that George Washington was known for never telling a lie. But as the United States marks its first president’s birthday, a new poll indicates that 74 percent of the public thinks the father of our country did lie to the public while he served as president – an indication that Americans think that the government has been broken for a very, very long time.
The CNN/Opinion Corporation survey was released Monday, the 278th anniversary of Washington’s birth.
Full results (pdf)
Three quarters of people questioned in the survey think that modern-day federal officials are not honest, a figure that is essentially unchanged since 1994. But the poll suggests that Americans think the problem of dishonesty is not a new one.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

More high-schoolers reinvent or skip their senior year

Greg Toppo:

When Utah state Sen. Chris Buttars unveiled a cost-cutting measure this month that would have made the high school senior year optional, perhaps no one in the state Capitol Building was more surprised than 18-year-old Jake Trimble, who already opted out of the second half of senior year just weeks earlier.
He has spent the past month working at the Capitol as an unpaid intern for the state Democratic Party’s communications team, designing posters and writing scripts for legislators’ robocalls. Trimble graduated in January, one semester early, from the nearby Academy of Math Engineering and Science (AMES).
“I’m very happy to not be in high school anymore,” says Trimble, who proudly reports that he’s “not rotting in my parents’ basement.” Actually, when the legislative session ends next month, he’ll move on to another internship (this one paid) as a lab assistant at the University of Utah’s Orthopedic Center.
Trimble is part of a small but growing group of students — most of them academically advanced and, as a result, a tad restless — who are tinkering with their senior year. A few observers say the quiet experiment has the potential to reinvent high school altogether.

Budget/Financing, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, School Climate

Madison school board rivals Tom Farley and James Howard square off at forum

Lynn Welch:

Walking toward the audience wearing a dark blue suit and tie, James Howard explained that he doesn’t have all the answers to big issues facing Madison’s schools.
“I won’t stand here and tell you I know the best way. But we do have to make sure we protect learning,” said Howard, 56, a contender for Madison school board, at a candidate forum on Sunday. “$30 million is a heck of a deficit. Have you written you r congress people? We really need to come up with a different funding source.”
Tom Farley and James Howard are vying for school board Seat 4, being vacated by Johnny Winston. It is the only contested seat of three on the April 6 ballot.
Following a brief presentation from uncontested candidates Maya Cole and Beth Moss, Howard and Farley answered questions posed by forum organizers from Progressive Dane and submitted questions from an audience of about 50 at Wright Middle School. One key area of inquiry was how the candidates would go about solving an anticipated $30 million budget hole next year.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, TAG, Teacher Support

An Interview with Eagle School Co-Founder Mary Olsky

1 Comment

It was a pleasure to meet and visit with Fitchburg’s Eagle School Co-Founder Mary Olsky recently.
We discussed a wide variety of topics, including Eagle’s History (founded in 1982), curricular rigor, the importance of good textbooks and critical student thinking. I also found it interesting to hear Mary’s perspective on public / private schools and her hope, in 1982, that that the Madison School District would take over (and apply its lessons) Eagle School. Of course, it did not turn out that way.
I’ve always found it rather amazing that Promega Founder Bill Linton’s generous land offer to the Madison School District for the “Madison Middle School 2000” charter school was rejected – and the land ended up under Eagle’s new facility.
Listen to the conversation via this 14mb mp3 audio file.

Read the transcript here.
Eagle’s website.
Finally, Mary mentioned the term “high school” a number of times, along with $20,000,000. I suspect we’ll see a high school at some point. It will take a significant effort.
Thanks to Laurie Frost for arranging this interview.

Books, College Preparation, Curriculum, Curriculum - Languages, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Student Support

Will Fitzhugh…has been fighting for more non-fiction for years: Help pick non-fiction for schools

Jay Matthews:

It wasn’t until I was in my fifties that I realized how restricted my high school reading lists had been, and how little they had changed for my three children. They were enthusiastic readers, as my wife and I were. But all, or almost all, of the required books for either generation were fiction.
I am not dismissing the delights of Twain, Crane, Buck, Saroyan and Wilder, all of which I read in high school. But I think I would also have enjoyed Theodore H. White, John Hersey, Barbara Tuchman and Bruce Catton if they had been assigned.
Maybe that’s changing. Maybe rebellious teens these days are fleeing Faulkner, Hemingway, Austen, and Baldwin, or whoever is on the 12th grade English list, and furtively reading Malcolm Gladwell, David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin and other non-fiction stars.
Sadly, no.
The Renaissance Learning company released a list of what 4.6 million students read in the 2008-2009 school year, based on its Accelerated Reader program that encourages children to choose their own books. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter has given way to the hormonal allure of Stephenie Meyer’s teen vampire books, but both school and non-school books are still almost all fiction.
When I ask local school districts why this is, some get defensive and insist they do require non-fiction. But the only title that comes up with any frequency is Night, Elie Wiesel’s story of his boyhood in the Holocaust. It is one of only two nonfiction works to appear in the top 20 of Accelerated Reader’s list of books read by high schoolers. The other is ‘A Child Called ‘It,’ Dave Pelzer’s account of his alleged abuse as a child by his alcoholic mother.
Will Fitzhugh, whose Concord Review quarterly publishes research papers by high school students, has been fighting for more non-fiction for years. I agree with him that high school English departments’ allegiance to novels leads impressionable students to think, incorrectly, that non-fiction is a bore. That in turn makes them prefer fiction writing assignments to anything that could be described by that dreaded word “research.”
A relatively new trend in student writing is called “creative nonfiction.” It makes Fitzhugh shudder. “It allows high school students (mostly girls) to complete writing assignments and participate in ‘essay contests’ by writing about their hopes, experiences, doubts, relationships, worries, victimization (if any), and parents, as well as more existential questions such as ‘How do I look?’ and ‘What should I wear to school?'” he said in a 2008 essay for EducationNews.org.
Educators say non-fiction is more difficult than fiction for students to comprehend. It requires more factual knowledge, beyond fiction’s simple truths of love, hate, passion and remorse. So we have a pathetic cycle. Students don’t know enough about the real world because they don’t read non-fiction and they can’t read non-fiction because they don’t know enough about the real world.
Educational theorist E.D. Hirsch Jr. insists this is what keeps many students from acquiring the communication skills they need for successful lives. “Language mastery is not some abstract skill,” he said in his latest book, The Making of Americans. “It depends on possessing broad general knowledge shared by other competent people within the language community.”
I think we can help. Post comments here, or send an email to mathewsj@washpost.com, with non-fiction titles that would appeal to teens. I will discuss your choices in a future column. I can see why students hate writing research papers when their history and science reading has been confined to the flaccid prose of their textbooks. But what if they first read Longitude by Dava Sobel or A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar? What magical exploration of reality would you add to your favorite teenager’s reading list?

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Student Support

Los Angeles Approves Governance Changes: Hands over Some Schools to Charters & Teacher Groups

Tamara Audi:

Los Angeles’ Board of Education voted Tuesday to hand over some of its public schools to charter school operators and teachers groups, part of an unusual experiment.
The city’s Board of Education voted Tuesday to hand over some of its public schools to charter school operators and teachers groups, part of an unusual experiment to see whether outsiders will have better luck improving student achievement in the nation’s second-largest school district.
But most of the 30 campuses, some with more than one school, were awarded to teachers and administrators employed by the school district. The board awarded four schools to charter groups, and two schools to a group led by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The majority of the schools were awarded to teachers’ groups. The board’s vote was a blow to charter advocates and a boost to teachers in the city’s divided education community.
Hundreds of parents, teachers and charter school advocates had gathered outside school board offices all day, and packed the board room during the five-hour meeting.

College Preparation, Curriculum, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support

The high school courses students need for college

Bruce Vinik via Valerie Strauss:

It’s that time of year again. Pitchers and catchers are reporting to spring training and high school students are puzzling over which classes to take next fall. The choices students make do matter. Outside of grades, nothing is more important in college admissions than the classes kids take in high school. “Strength of Program” is a big deal.
Let’s start with the basics. Colleges expect students to take at least five core academic subjects every year of high school — English, social studies, science, math and foreign language.
In a perfect world, students would take each core subject every year. But the world isn’t perfect and colleges don’t expect kids to be. As long as students take each core subject through eleventh grade, they should feel free to pursue their particular academic interests in greater depth during twelfth grade. There’s nothing wrong with dropping social studies senior year in order to double up on science.

College Preparation, Curriculum, School Climate

Assessment as Marketing

Dean Dad:

n a conversation last week with a big muckety-muck, I realized that there are two fundamentally different, and largely opposed, understandings of outcomes assessment in play. Which definition you accept will color your expectations.
The first is what I used to consider the basic definition: internal measures of outcomes, used to generate improvement over time. If you understand assessment in this way, then several things follow. You might not want all of it to be public, since the candid warts-and-all conversations that underlie real improvement simply wouldn’t happen on the public record. You’d pay special attention to shortcomings, since that’s where improvement is most needed. You’d want some depth of understanding, often favoring thicker explanations over thinner ones, since an overly reductive measure would defeat the purpose.
The second understanding is of assessment as a form of marketing. See how great we are! You should come here! The “you” in that last sentence could be prospective students being lured to a particular college, or it could be companies being lured to a particular state. If you understand assessment in this way, then several things follow. You’d want it to be as public as possible, since advertising works best when people see it. You’d pay special attention to strengths, rather than shortcomings. You’d downplay ‘improvement,’ since it implies an existing lack. And you’d want simplicity. When in doubt, go with the thinner explanation rather than the thicker one; you can’t do a thick description in a thirty-second elevator pitch.

Community Partners, Curriculum, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Special Education

More Catholic schools reaching out to special-needs students

Michael Alison Chandler:

A math class for students with intellectual disabilities at Paul VI Catholic High School in Fairfax practiced naming dates on a calendar one recent morning and deciphering what time it is when the big hand is on the 10 and the little hand is on the 11. But first, the teacher led them in a prayer.
Father in heaven, we offer you this class and all that we may accomplish today,” they said together.
Federal law requires that public schools offer a free, appropriate education for students with disabilities, and federal and state governments subsidize the higher costs of smaller classes and extra resources. Catholic schools have no such legal mandate, and financial constraints have historically made it difficult for them to offer similar specialized services.
That is starting to change.

College Preparation, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support

To Impress, Tufts Prospects Turn to YouTube

Tamar Lewin:

There are videos showing off card tricks, horsemanship, jump rope and stencils — and lots of rap songs, including one by a young woman who performed two weeks after oral surgery, with her mouth still rubber-banded shut.
There is also Rhaina Cohen’s video, working off the saying “You never truly know someone until you have walked a mile in her shoes,” and featuring the blue sandals from her bat mitzvah, the white sneakers she bought cheaply in Britain, and the black heels in which she “stood next to Hillary Clinton.”
It is reading season at the Tufts University admissions office, time to plow through thousands of essays and transcripts and recommendations — and this year, for the first time, short YouTube videos that students could post to supplement their application.
About 1,000 of the 15,000 applicants submitted videos. Some have gotten thousands of hits on YouTube.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, School Climate

Textbooks That Professors Can Rewrite Digitally

Motoko Rich:

Readers can modify content on the Web, so why not in books?
In a kind of Wikipedia of textbooks, Macmillan, one of the five largest publishers of trade books and textbooks, is introducing software called DynamicBooks, which will allow college instructors to edit digital editions of textbooks and customize them for their individual classes.
Professors will be able to reorganize or delete chapters; upload course syllabuses, notes, videos, pictures and graphs; and perhaps most notably, rewrite or delete individual paragraphs, equations or illustrations.
While many publishers have offered customized print textbooks for years — allowing instructors to reorder chapters or insert third-party content from other publications or their own writing — DynamicBooks gives instructors the power to alter individual sentences and paragraphs without consulting the original authors or publisher.

Books, Community Partners, Curriculum, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Learning as We Go: Why School Choice Is Worth the Wait

Paul Hill via a Center on Reinventing Public Education email:

Why haven’t schools of choice yet achieved a broader appeal? Publicly funded school choice programs–charter schools in forty-three states and vouchers in a few localities–have for the most part been qualified successes. Yet the rhetoric of choice supporters promised much more effective schools and an era of innovation that has not come to pass. In Learning as We Go: Why School Choice Is Worth the Wait, Paul T. Hill examines the real-world factors that can complicate, delay, and in some instances interfere with the positive cause-and-effect relationships identified by the theories behind school choice.
Hill explains why schools of choice haven’t yet achieved a broader appeal and details the key factors–including politics, policy, and regulation–that explain the delay. The author then suggests changes in public policy along with philanthropic investment that could overcome barriers and increase the rate of progress toward full operation of what he calls the “virtuous cycle” stimulated by school choice.

Community Partners, Curriculum - Fine Arts, School Climate

Parents, staff to take part in Jefferson Middle School concert

Pamela Cotant:

Jefferson Middle School parents and staff members who put away their band instruments years ago — or maybe never played one — will get a chance to perform in a school band concert.
A portion of Jefferson’s band concert at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the gymnasium will feature five songs performed by about 30 parents and community members connected to the school. They’ll be joined by about 10 staff members.
This is the second time in five years that Jefferson band director Allison Jaeger has invited adults to join the middle schoolers — an idea her husband, Ben Jaeger, had tried earlier at Spring Harbor Middle School, where he is the band director. Jaeger had fun taking part in that concert.
“Really the most important thing is that the parents are showing they are learning right alongside their students,” Jaeger said.

Budget/Financing, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Staff Support, Teacher Support

New Jersey Unions lose seats of power

Charles Stile:

Marching orders bellowed from across the state Senate president’s balcony on Monday, jolting the union members nestled in the public gallery.
They had to get out — now. Too noisy. Too crowded. The beefy sergeant-at-arms did not seem to care that some people had secured those seats hours earlier.
“That’s everybody,” he said, his arms shooing them toward the exits.
“Well, that’s a first,” a stunned New Jersey Education Association representative complained.
A brigade of public employee union leaders, hoping to defeat four pension “reform” bills with a last-minute show of force, also found little sympathy or patience downstairs at the door to the Senate chambers. A “Vote No!” chant was quickly doused. Officials herded them along the wall. An irritated state trooper snapped at one protester perceived to be a little too loud.
Public employee unions, whose money and muscle once earned them a permanent access to Trenton’s inner sanctums of power, are being told to leave their business cards at the door. They once roamed the State House halls, feared and respected; now they are subjected to aggressive crowd control.

Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

National Standards: Raising the Bar for Global Opportunity

Woodrow Wilson International Center:

Arundhati Jayarao, Middle and High School Chemistry and Physics, Virginia; Sarah Yue, High School Chemistry, California; Kirk Janowiak, High School Biology and Environmental Science, Indiana; Ben Van Dusen, High School Physics, Oregon; Mark Greenman, High School Physics, Massachusetts; and John Moore, High School Environmental Science, New Jersey.
Moderated By: Kent Hughes, Director, Program on America and the Global Economy.
The Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellows offer a unique perspective on U.S. schools and educational policymaking; they have been chosen by the Department of Energy to spend a fellowship year in congressional or executive offices based on their excellence in teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics(STEM) subjects in K-12 schools. The Fellows will discuss how to achieve national standards that are benchmarked to the world’s best and how higher standards will affect changes in curricula.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Where the Bar Ought to Be

Bob Herbert:

Deborah Kenny talks a lot about passion — the passion for teaching, for reading and for learning. She has it. She wants all of her teachers to have it. Above all, she wants her students to have it.
Ms. Kenny has created three phenomenally successful charter schools in Harlem and is in the process of creating more. She’s gotten a great deal of national attention. But for all the talk about improving schools in this country, she thinks we tend to miss the point more often than not.
There is an overemphasis on “the program elements,” she said, “things like curriculum and class size and school size and the longer day.” She understood in 2001, when she was planning the first of the schools that have come to be known as the Harlem Village Academies, that none of those program elements were nearly as important as the quality of the teaching in the schools.
“If you had an amazing teacher who was talented and passionate and given the freedom and support to teach well,” she said, “that was just 100 times more important than anything else.”

Community Partners, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, Legal Rights, School Climate

School District Laptop Snooping: district can’t discuss its cameras or other issues without alerting the plaintiff

Joseph Tanfani & Larry King:

The next time Lower Merion school administrators want to talk to students and parents about their laptop-camera controversy, they will have to get a lawyer’s blessing.
Not from their own lawyers, but the ones suing them on behalf of a Harriton High sophomore who claims the school invaded his home and his privacy by remotely snapping his image with the camera on his school-provided laptop.
The unusual order, signed by a federal judge yesterday, means those running the elite Lower Merion School District can’t say a word about the laptop cameras or any other issues in the suit without giving the other side a copy of what they want to say – plus six hours’ notice.
Such communication limits are commonplace in class-action litigation, but rare in the context of a school district at the center of what’s become a nationwide controversy.

Budget/Financing, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Student Support, Teacher Support

Teacher Seniority Rules Challenged With Tens of Thousands of Layoffs Looming, Government Officials and Parents Want to Change the ‘Last in, First out’ System

Barbara Martinez:

Teacher seniority rules are meeting resistance from government officials and parents as a wave of layoffs is hitting public schools and driving newer teachers out of classrooms.
In a majority of the country’s school districts, teacher layoffs are handled on a “last in, first out” basis. Critics of seniority rules worry that many effective and talented teachers who have been hired in recent years will lose their jobs.
Unions say that seniority rules are the only objective way to carry out layoffs, and that they protect teachers from the whims and bias of managers, who might fire effective teachers they don’t like.
This year, because of cuts in state aid to New York City, the city could be facing a loss of about 8,500 teacher jobs out of a total of 80,000. The last time the nation’s largest school system laid off a teacher was 1976.
If New York City is forced to lay off some of the more than 30,000 new teachers it has hired in the past five years, it is “going to be catastrophic,” said Joel Klein, chancellor of the city’s school system. “We’re going to be losing a lot of great new teachers that we hired” in recent years, the chancellor said.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Community Partners, Curriculum, Curriculum - Math, Curriculum - Science, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support

Khan Academy: Math & Science Lessons Online

Spencer Michels:

33-year-old math and science whiz kid — working out of his house in California’s Silicon Valley — may be revolutionizing how people all over the world will learn math. He is Salman Khan, and until a few months ago he made his living as a hedge fund analyst. But he’s become a kind of an unseen rock star in the online instruction field, posting 1200 lessons in math and science on YouTube, none of them lasting more than about 10 minutes. He quit his job at the hedge fund to devote full time to his Khan Academy teaching efforts, which he does essentially for free.
Khan explained how the U.S. unemployment rate is calculated in a NewsHour exclusive video.

Community Partners, Governance/Board Decision Making, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support

The Boy Gap

Joanne Jacobs:

It’s time for schools to focus on the widening gap in reading and writing skills that leaves so many boys unprepared for success in college or vocational training.
As a volunteer in my daughter’s kindergarten class, I was asked to help children write a “story” (a few words) to illustrate their pictures. Only one girl needed my writing help; only one boy could write for himself. Nearly all the boys seemed to be a full year behind nearly all the girls in their ability to pay attention, follow directions, control frustrations, sit still, handle a pencil or crayon and do what used to be considered first-grade work.
As reading and writing are pushed down to earlier ages, boys are struggling harder to meet higher expectations, writes Richard Whitmire, a former USA Today reporter, in Why Boys Fail.
“Each year since 1988 the gap between boys’ and girls’ reading skills has widened a bit more,” Whitmire writes. Boys aren’t wired for early verbal skills — and teachers aren’t trained in “boy-friendly” techniques to help them catch up.

Curriculum, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support

Raising the realtime child

Nicholas Carr:

Amazingly enough, tomorrow will mark the one-year anniversary of the start of Rough Type’s Realtime Chronicles. Time flies, and realtime flies like a bat out of hell.
Since I began writing the series, I have received innumerable emails and texts from panicked parents worried that they may be failing in what has become the central challenge of modern parenting: ensuring that children grow up to be well adapted to the realtime environment. These parents are concerned – and rightly so – that their kids will be at a disadvantage in the realtime milieu in which we all increasingly live, work, love, and compete for the small bits of attention that, in the aggregate, define the success, or failure, of our days. If maladapted to realtime existence, these parents understand, their progeny will end up socially ostracized, with few friends and even fewer followers. “Can we even be said to be alive,” one agitated young mother wrote me, “if our status updates go unread?” The answer, of course, is no. In the realtime environment, the absence of interactive stimuli, even for brief periods of “time,” may result in a state of reflective passivity indistinguishable from nonexistence. On a more practical level, a lack of realtime skills is sure to constrain a young person’s long-term job prospects. At best, he or she will be fated to spend his or her days involved in some form of manual labor, possibly even working out of doors with severely limited access to screens. At worst, he or she will have to find a non-tenure-track position in academia.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Student Support

Lift the cap on Wisconsin virtual schools

Representative Brett Davis:

In Wisconsin, we have always been proud of our strong education system. New demands and technology are changing the way we prepare our children to enter the 21st century workforce. We must ensure that our state’s education system remains a national leader by providing our children with the skills that are needed to compete in a global economy.
It has been proven that not every child learns the same way. In fact, some students learn best outside of the traditional bricks-and-mortar school setting. For these children, virtual schools have come to fill an educational need. Virtual schools involve long-distance learning that use computers and Internet connections. These schools employ vigorous and challenging curricula along with regular interaction with state-certified teachers.
However, virtual schools were nearly wiped out in 2007 due to a court challenge by WEAC, the state’s teachers union.
In response, in the last legislative session I led the charge to ensure that virtual schools remain an option for Wisconsin’s parents and children. A bipartisan compromise was reached to keep the schools open but included a cap of 5,250 students requested by critics until a legislative audit could be conducted.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Student Support

A Modest Proposal for NCLB Reauthorization

Chad Aldeman:

Senior House Republicans and Democrats recently announced a new bi-partisan effort to re-authorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It’s a good sign for some real progress, both for education specifically and Washington in general, but there’s been no word on whether the Senate is so inclined. The “proposals” put forward so far by the Department of Education and at yesterday’s announcement are light on details, so this post is my attempt at rectifying some of the major issues around No Child Left Behind.
No More Pass/ Fail
One of the more frequent criticisms of the law concerns its binary pass/ fail system. If a school fails to meet a single academic benchmarks in a single grade in a single subject by a single sub-group of students, it is said to not meet “adequate yearly progress,” or AYP. If it does not meet AYP for multiple years in a row, the school is subject to a series of consequences that become more punitive the more years it misses targets.
The strengths of this arrangement came from protecting under-served populations. Because a school would be held accountable for all groups of students, it focused much more attention on achievement gaps and did not let a school hide its problems educating important sub-groups behind school-wide averages.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, Health Care, School Climate

Milwaukee Public Schools faces a crisis in both accountability and democracy

Milwaukee School Board member Bruce Thompson:

For Milwaukee Public Schools, the financial crisis that many of us have been warning about is here. As principals get their initial budgets, they are faced with cutting teachers; larger class sizes; the loss of specialty teachers such as those in art, music, physical education; and the lost of librarians. Perversely, schools that have the best student achievement are often the hardest hit, since the middle-class students attracted to these schools bring less aid with them.
While many other school systems (and other government units) are also facing cuts brought on by exploding health care costs and the weak economy, MPS has been particularly hard hit. And much of the MPS pain is self-inflicted. Next year, MPS is facing a 77% fringe benefit rate, meaning that the cost to the district of an employee is 77% more than that employee’s pay. If the unfunded liability for retiree benefits were correctly included, the fringe benefit rate would rise to almost 104%, meaning that the cost to the school district of an employee is more than twice that employee’s pay.
The biggest factor in the exploding benefits cost is the cost of health care. MPS offers two plans, one of which costs MPS twice as much per employee as the other. Yet because MPS pays the full cost of the plans, there is no incentive for employees to pick the less-expensive plan. Employees can retire at age 55 and continue to have MPS pay for their health insurance at the rate it did when they retired. Pensions have an employer and an employee contribution, but MPS pays both parts.

Budget/Financing, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Student Support, Teacher Support

New Jersey Senate panel approves pension reforms; Whelan tells teachers times have changed

Juliet Fletcher:

As Trenton lawmakers gave first approval Thursday to a group of bills to reform the state’s public-worker pension and benefits systems, Sen. Jim Whelan, D-Atlantic, tackled the teachers unions, telling them their case for strong state pensions was out-of-date.
Shortly before committee members voted to approve three bills and a constitutional resolution, Whelan, who teaches in the Atlantic City school district, told hundreds of assembled public workers — including dozens of teachers — that state workers should no longer claim they needed large pensions to make up for low pay.
“I’m of a generation that that was true for,” Whelan said at a hearing of the Senate State Government, Wagering, Tourism and Historic Preservation Committee that he chairs.
“Quite bluntly, when I began teaching — almost 100 years ago, not quite — we made lousy money, and you were always going to make lousy money. That was true whether you were a teacher, a cop, a fireman, any public employees across the board. We were underpaid,” he said.

Budget/Financing, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, Lifelong Learning, School Climate

Wisconsin Teachers Union Tops Lobbying Expenditures in 2009, more than Double #2

Wisconsin Government Accountability Board [22K PDF]:

The Wisconsin Education Association spent $1.5 million in 2009 lobbying state lawmakers, nearly twice as much as the next-largest spender, according to a report from the Government Accountability Board.
Overall, lobbying organizations reported spending $36.2 million in 2009, a 5.2 percent increase from the first half of the previous legislative session.
The 2009 report analyzes the activities of 746 lobbying principals and 750 registered lobbyists.
“Not only is Wisconsin’s lobbying law strong, but information about lobbying activities is easy to use online,” said Kevin J. Kennedy, director and general counsel of the G.A.B. “The law requires disclosure and prohibits gifts to lawmakers. The Board’s Eye on Lobbying online database allows the public to keep track of lobbying activities at the Capitol without leaving home.”
The most lobbied bill in 2009 was the AB 138, regarding appointment of the secretary of the Natural Resources Board. Organizations reported spending 2,923 hours attempting to influence legislators on that bill.

Complete 80K PDF Report.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Governance/Board Decision Making

The Pulse: Critical Week Ahead for Chicago School Reform

Crystal Yednak:

Chicago Public Schools’ controversial process of closing, consolidating and turning around schools will receive new scrutiny this week.
The City Council’s Education Committee will hold a hearing Monday on a resolution to impose a one-year moratorium on any such changes, and the Chicago Board of Education is scheduled to vote Wednesday on proposals to close two schools, consolidate two others, turn around five and phase out one. Turnarounds involve replacing new teachers, principals, and other staff while the student body remains intact.
“The process — from recommendation to the Board of Education vote — is probably no more than a month,” said Alderman Pat Dowell (3rd Ward), who co-sponsored the resolution in response to complaints of too little community involvement. “That’s unfair.”

Curriculum, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support

The Post-Text World

Idea of the Day:

Today’s idea: Since written language is merely a technology for storing and transferring information, it’s likely to be replaced by a newer technology that performs the same function more effectively, a futurist says.
E Reader on empty bookshelf. This image has been manipulated using Photoshop.
The Britannica Blog has a series of posts called Learning and Literacy in the Digital Age, including this one by Patrick Tucker, senior editor of The Futurist. He speculates that text could be rendered obsolete not by the “culture of the image” — that threat is so last century — but by the so-called “information age” itself:

… Research into cyber-telepathy has direct ramifications for the written word and its survivability. Electronic circuits mapped out in the same pattern as human neurons could, in decades ahead, reproduce the electrical activity that occurs when our natural transmitters activate. Theoretically, such circuits could allow parts of our brain to communicate with one another at greater levels of efficiency, possibly allowing humans to access data from the Web without looking it up or reading it.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Staff Support, Teacher Support, What Can I Do?

Stowe teachers set example for rest of Vermont: Forego 5.25% Pay Raise

Burlington Free Press:

Teachers and staff members in the Stowe School District have set an example for the rest of the state by agreeing to go without a pay increase built into their contract to help preserve programs and positions threatened by tough economic times.
The teachers and staff agreed to forgo a 5.25 percent raise, shaving about $240,000 from the proposed $9.7 million budget. That was enough to save a list of athletic and academic programs, as well as save jobs in the school district.
People tasked with balancing a public budget in the midst of the worst economic downturnin a generation often talk about making difficult decisions. Those who feel the impact of reduced budgets often are quick to argue why their interests deserve to be spared. This is a phenomenon seen from the halls of the Statehouse to budgets meetings in communities throughout the state.
The Stowe teachers took a different tack, choosing to give something up so their colleagues could keep their jobs, and students could keep their classes and teams.

Related: Madison School District & Madison Teachers Union Reach Tentative Agreement: 3.93% Increase Year 1, 3.99% Year 2; Base Rate $33,242 Year 1, $33,575 Year 2: Requires 50% MTI 4K Members and will “Review the content and frequency of report cards”.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, PTO Priorities, School Climate

Comments on Seattle’s Math Curriculum Court Ruling, Governance and Community Interaction

Melissa Westbrook:

I attended Harium’s Community meeting and the 43rd Dems meeting (partial) yesterday. Here are some updates (add on if you attended either or Michael DeBell’s meeting).
We covered a fair amount of ground with Harium but a lot on the math ruling/outcomes. Here’s what he said:

  • the Board will decide what will happen from the math ruling. I asked Harium about who would be doing what because of how the phrasing the district used in their press release – “In addition to any action the School Board may take, the district expects to appeal this decision.” It made it sound like the district (1) might do something different from the Board and (2) the district had already decided what they would do. Harium said they misspoke and it was probably the heat of the moment.
  • He seems to feel the judge erred. He said they did follow the WAC rules which is what she should have been ruling on but didn’t. I probably should go back and look at the complete ruling but it seems like not going by the WAC would open her decision up to be reversed so why would she have done it? He said the issue was that there are statewide consequences to this ruling and that Issaquah and Bellevue (or Lake Washington?) are doing math adoptions and this ruling is troubling. I gently let Harium know that the Board needs to follow the law, needs to be transparent in their decision-making and the district needs to have balanced adoption committees or else this could happen again. No matter how the district or the Board feel, the judge did not throw out the case, did not rule against the plaintiffs but found for them. The ball is in the Board’s court and they need to consider this going forward with other decisions.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Washington, DC: $28,000 per student, gives Voucher Students $7,500

John Stossel:

On my show last night — which re-runs at 10pm tonight on FBN — I said that Washington DC gives voucher schools $7,500 per student, but DC’s public schools cost twice that much: $15,000.
The $15,000 number has been cited by congressmen and newspapers like the WSJ and the Denver Post. It comes from the the National Center for Education Statistics, and the Census.
Unfortunately, it’s also wrong. Or at least very misleading, since it ignores major sources of spending. As CATO Education scholar Andrew Coulson explains:

DC also has a “state” level bureaucracy that spends nearly $200 million annually on k-12 programs, and the city spends another $275 million or so on school construction, school facilities modernization, and other so-called “capital” projects.

But those aren’t included in the regular spending figures.

Related: Education: Too Important for a Government Monopoly. Joanne has more as does Mark Perry.
Locally, the Madison School District has 24,295 students and a 2009/2010 budget of $418,415,780. $17,222 per student. The DC budget morass illustrates the necessity of K-12 budget clarity in all cases, including Madison.

College Preparation, Curriculum, Events, School Climate

16 Wisconsin high schools have students with perfect ACT scores

Amy Hetzner:

Sixteen Wisconsin high schools had at least one senior in the Class of 2009 who received the top score on the ACT, ACT Inc. announced this week.
The schools with students who received 36s were:
Arrowhead High School in the Town of Merton
Bay City Baptist School in Green Bay
Central Wisconsin Christian High School in Waupun
Edgewood High School in Madison
Fort Atkinson High School
Heritage Christian School in West Allis
Homestead High School in Mequon
Marquette University High School in Milwaukee
Middleton High School
Monona Grove High School in Monona
Neenah High School
Onalaska High School
Oshkosh North High School
Oshkosh West High School
Wauwatosa East High School
West High School in Madison

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support, What Can I Do?

United Teachers Los Angeles protests school district reform

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez:

L.A. Unified’s teachers’ union organized protests today and for next week against school district administrators. The union is upset that the superintendent has tentatively allowed outside groups to assume control of new and low-performing campuses.
The school district received 85 proposals to run three dozen campuses. Teachers, charter school companies and other nonprofits crafted the plans. The superintendent is recommending teacher and district-written plans for more than half the schools. Outside groups could run another quarter of the schools.
A teacher, parent and student vote earlier this month favored the teacher plans. A nonprofit run by L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa received the recommendation to run Carver Middle School.
Kirsten Ellis, a teacher there, doesn’t like the idea. “We demand that the school board and the superintendent adhere to and follow the vote of the people, instead of throwing it out and ignoring it.”

Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support

Your Kids Love It. You Love It. Perfect.

Stephen Kreider, Isaac and Levi Yoder:

Time was running out, so I bought two tickets to Villahermosa, Mexico.
Three planes, a bus ride and a hike later, Levi and I are finishing this column among the Mayan pyramids of Palenque. It’s about 80 degrees out, and howler monkeys are bellowing from the surrounding jungle.
But this isn’t a column about travel. It’s about one of the loveliest fringe benefits to having kids: You can use them as an excuse to do stuff you wanted to do yourself but never would have.
Time was running out on a promise I made Levi when he was 7. He has always been keen on history, and he became fascinated with the Mayans.
“Isn’t there a pyramid where you can go inside and see the king’s grave?” he asked. “Yes, and I’ve been there!” I said. “How about you and I go there some winter break soon?”

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Governance/Board Decision Making, Lifelong Learning, School Climate

Harambee Community School has had periods of excellence. But now, lack of accreditation could mean its end after 40 years.

Alan Borsuk:

A rich history. Energetic, sweet students, including several kindergartners who spontaneously gave me hugs. Teachers and administrators who want to succeed. A good building. I enjoyed my visit to Harambee Community School, and I’d like to feel bad about what the school is facing now.
But I don’t.
Harambee faces its end, after 40 years. And it’s hard to reach any conclusion other than that it is the fault of leaders of the school.
If efforts to bring more quality to Milwaukee schools are going to mean anything, a central pillar has to be accountability or, to put it another way, taking a firm line on schools that don’t measure up, be they voucher, charter, or conventional public schools.
In a tough love sort of way, if Harambee closes after this school year, this probably will be a success for those saying high-needs children need better than what they are getting.
A law passed by the Legislature in 2006 was perfectly clear: To stay in Milwaukee’s private school voucher program and receive large sums of money from the state, a school had to get accredited by Dec. 31, 2009.
Three and a half years later, it was Dec. 31, 2009, and every school that was covered by the requirement had either succeeded or closed, except one: Harambee.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

On Teacher Union Conflicts between Pay and Accountability

Kevin Manahan:

The New Jersey Education Association makes it easy to conclude that most public school teachers in New Jersey are lousy or mediocre. They must be, because they’re willing to settle for the same pay the lazy, unprepared and uninspiring slug in the chaotic classroom across the hall is getting.
The NJEA — the union for most of New Jersey’s public school teachers — refused to back the state’s application for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid because the Rise to the Top program demands that teachers tie their pay to measurable student performance.
President Obama has endorsed merit pay, but the NJEA, as expected, has come up with many reasons why this is a bad idea. Of course it won’t propose its own merit-pay formula, because the NJEA is against any form of merit pay.
The union doesn’t want teacher pay tied to testing because a teacher could be penalized if “a kid was up all night playing video games” or “didn’t have breakfast,” NJEA president Barbara Keshishian recently told The Star-Ledger editorial board. That’s a silly argument, because no one would suggest tying a salary to a single test, but those are the kinds of silly arguments the NJEA makes.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, School Climate, Student Support

Sibal to hold talks with India states on fee structure, teachers’ salary

India Times:

With a little over a month before the Right to Education Act is notified, union human resource development minister Kapil Sibal said that his ministry would hold consultations with the states to resolve issues such as fee structure and teachers’ salaries, that are likely to arise while implementing the Act. Stressing that the government will take steps to prevent commercialisation of education, Mr Sibal said that the consultation would be undertaken to evolve a policy so that “poor, marginalised, and disadvantaged” students are not adversely affected.
“Our aim is to ensure that all children in India get quality education, but we are against commercialisation of education. Incessant hike of fee and overcharging from parents is something we do not support. I will talk to every state government on issues regarding implementation of the RTE Act from April 1. I will be meeting Delhi chief minister Sheila Diskhit on Monday regarding the same,” the minister said. Mr Sibal drew special attention to the need to provide some relaxation to “marginal” schools, which are currently not recognised. The RTE makes it mandatory for all schools to be recognised. While state laws, such as that of Delhi, require that all recognised schools pay teachers according to government scales, and tuition fees of schools be regulated.

Community Partners, Curriculum, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support

Friends School of Baltimore Teaches 8th-Graders About Islam

James Tarabay:

Most American schoolchildren learn about Islam in a social studies classroom. But at the Friends School in Baltimore, eighth-graders make their own mini-pilgrimage every year, to the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C.
As their bus rattles along the highway south to Washington, most of the kids are busy making up songs about each other. But 12-year-old Julia Potter is counting off the Five Pillars of Islam on her fingers: charity, prayer, fasting, profession of faith, and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
These kids are well-versed in the basics of Islam and more: In class, they learn about Judaism, Hinduism and Christianity; about prophets, taboos and holy laws. And every year, eighth-graders visit the Islamic Center — though every year, according to teacher Deloris Jones, they get there late. “There’s absolutely nothing over the years I have been able to do to keep this thing on time,” Jones says.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Change and Race to the Top

Robert Godfrey:

Which brings us to this next item, one with twist and turns not completely understandable at this point, but certainly not held up by people like myself as a model of how to “get the job properly done” — to use Herbert’s words.
Diane Ravitch, an intellectual on education policy, difficult to pigeonhole politically (appointed to public office by both G.H.W. Bush and Clinton), but best described as an independent, co-writes a blog with Deborah Meier that some of our readers may be familiar with called “Bridging Differences.” This past week she highlighted a possibly disturbing development in the Race to the Top competition program of the Department of Education, that dangles $4.3 billion to the states with a possible $1.3 billion to follow. Ravitch’s critique suggests that this competition is not run by pragmatists, but rather by ideologues who are led by the Bill Gates Foundation.

If this election had been held five years ago, the department would be insisting on small schools, but because Gates has already tried and discarded that approach, the department is promoting the new Gates remedies: charter schools, privatization, and evaluating teachers by student test scores.

Two of the top lieutenants of the Gates Foundation were placed in charge of the competition by Secretary Arne Duncan. Both have backgrounds as leaders in organisations dedicated to creating privately managed schools that operate with public money.

None of this is terribly surprising (See the Sunlight Foundation’s excellent work on the Obama Administration’s insider dealings with PhRMA). Jeff Henriques did a lot of work looking at the Madison School District’s foray into Small Learning Communities.
Is it possible to change the current K-12 bureacracy from within? Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman spoke about the “adult employment” focus of the K-12 world:

“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

I suspect that Duncan and many others are trying to significantly change the adult to student process, rather than simply pumping more money into the current K-12 monopoly structures.
They are to be commended for this.
Will there be waste, fraud and abuse? Certainly. Will there be waste fraud and abuse if the funds are spent on traditional K-12 District organizations? Of course. John Stossel notes that when one puts together the numbers, Washington, DC’s schools spend $26,000 per student, while they provide $7,500 to the voucher schools…..
We’re better off with diffused governance across the board. Milwaukee despite its many travails, is developing a rich K-12 environment.
The Verona school board narrowly approved a new Mandarin immersion charter school on a 4-3 vote recently These citizen initiatives offer some hope for new opportunities for our children. I hope we see more of this.
Finally, all of this presents an interesting contrast to what appears to be the Madison School District Administration’s ongoing “same service” governance approach.

Books, College Preparation, Curriculum, Curriculum - Languages, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Student Support

Give students a reality check: Assign more nonfiction books.

Jay Matthews:

It wasn’t until I was in my 50s that I realized how restricted my high school reading lists had been and how little they had changed for my three children. They were enthusiastic readers, as my wife and I were. But all, or almost all, of the required books for both generations were fiction.
I am not dismissing the delights of Twain, Crane, Buck, Saroyan and Wilder, all of which I read in high school. But I think I also would have enjoyed Theodore H. White, John Hersey, Barbara Tuchman and Bruce Catton if they had been assigned.
Could that be changing? Maybe rebellious teens these days are fleeing Faulkner, Hemingway, Austen and Baldwin, or whoever is on the 12th grade English list, and furtively reading Malcolm Gladwell, David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin and other nonfiction stars.
Sadly, no. The Renaissance Learning company released a list of what 4.6 million students read in the 2008-09 school year, based on its Accelerated Reader program, which encourages children to choose their own books. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter has given way to the hormonal allure of Stephenie Meyer’s teen vampire books, but both school and non-school books are still almost all fiction.

Budget/Financing

The Edgewater TIF. Or, Can I Use My MasterCard to Pay My Visa Bill???

1 Comment

As I watch the debates and political maneuvering around the proposed Edgewater development, it is hard not to consider ALL of the repercussions of the decisions that will be made before this is all over. One of the most invisible aspects of the debate is how TIF financing will affect the already-strained finances of Madison’s public schools.
No matter where one lands on the question of how many permanent jobs will be created, the right of people to be heard on development issues that affect their neighborhoods, the value of historic preservation, or public financing for private development, there is one issue that should be made visible to all parties: the TIF financing package is going to hurt the tax base available to our public schools until the TIF is closed out (which could be over 20 years from now).
While proponents of TIF financing rightly assert that TIF increases property value and by extension increases the tax base for the jurisdictions that levy property taxes, there is a hidden side that is rarely discussed publicly in the crush to jump on the “pro-economic development” bandwagon: that benefit does not become available until the district is closed. While districts often close earlier, they may remain open for over 20 years. The benefit does not accrue for years down the road, and in the meantime the value of the affected properties is frozen at the start year of the district.
Not to worry, says the Department of Revenue:
In many areas the school levy represents the biggest portion of the local property tax bill, so it is not a surprise that a large portion of tax increment revenues comes from the school levy. This doesn’t mean that schools don’t get the money they need, however. The school levy that goes toward the tax increment is levied on top of the taxes they need to operate. The school levy is subject to the revenue caps, but within those constraints the schools get all the money they require. The tax increment makes the levy higher than it would otherwise be, but only for as long as the district has a TID in it. Once the TID is closed the larger tax base can help to reduce the tax burden on district residents. (emphasis added)
In other words, the Department of Revenue adopts the same posture adopted by the Joint Finance Committee when it went forward with the plan that left Madison with the biggest cut in state aid to any Wisconsin district: “It’s OK. Schools don’t need to be hurt because districts can raise property taxes to cover the revenue that they lost.” This leaves the dirty work to school districts, who must choose between raising taxes and hurting property owners during a recession, or cutting programs and adding to the damage done by successive years of cuts since Wisconsin’s revenue caps went into effect in 1993.
The Double Whammy
In the case of the Edgewater, and the recently-approved expansion of the capitol square TID #23, Madison Metropolitan School District gets a double whammy of revenue loss. How does this work and what does it mean?
Full post at http://lucymathiak.blogspot.com/

Board Meeting Archives, Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, Lifelong Learning, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support, What Can I Do?

Thinking about the Cost of Educating Students via the Madison School District, Virtual Schools and a Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes email to State Senator Fred Risser

6 Comments

Susan Troller:

Madison School Board member Ed Hughes sent me an e-mail pointing out another vexing problem with Wisconsin’s school funding system and how it penalizes the Madison district, which I’ve written about in the past. Hughes notes in his e-mail “This particular wrinkle of the state school financing system is truly nuts.”
Hughes is incensed that the IQ Academy, a virtual school operated by the Waukesha district, gets over $6000 in state aid for poaching students from the Madison district while total state aid for educating a student in a real school here at home is $3400. Waukesha makes a profit of about $500 per student at the expense of taxpayers here, Hughes says. And that’s including profits going to the national corporate IQ Academy that supplies the school’s programming.

The complete text of Ed Hughes letter to Senator Risser:

Sen. Risser:
As if we needed one, here is another reason to be outraged by our state school financing system:
This week’s issue of Isthmus carries a full page ad on page 2. It is sponsored by “IQ Academy Wisconsin,” which is described as a “tuition-free, online middle and high school program of the School District of Waukesha, WI.” The ad invites our Madison students to open-enroll in their “thriving learning community.”
What’s in it for Waukesha? A report on virtual charter schools by the State Fiscal Bureau, released this week, sheds some light on this. The Madison school district gets a little more than $2,000 in general state aid for each of our students. If you include categorical aids and everything else from the state, the amount goes up to about $3,400/student.
However, if Waukesha (or any other school district) is successful in poaching one of our students, it will qualify for an additional $6,007 in state aid. (That was actually the amount for the 2007-08 school year, that last year for which data was available for the Fiscal Bureau report.) As it was explained to me by the author of the Fiscal Bureau report, this $6,007 figure is made up of some combination of additional state aid and a transfer of property taxes paid by our district residents to Waukesha.
So the state financing system will provide nearly double the amount of aid to a virtual charter school associated with another school district to educate a Madison student than it will provide to the Madison school district to educate the same student in an actual school, with you know, bricks and mortar and a gym and cafeteria and the rest.
The report also states that the Waukesha virtual school spends about $5,500 per student. So for each additional student it enrolls, the Waukesha district makes at least a $500 profit. (It’s actually more than that, since the incremental cost of educating one additional student is less than the average cost for the district.) This does not count the profit earned by the private corporation that sells the on-line programming to Waukesha.
The legislature has created a system that sets up very strong incentives for a school district to contract with some corporate on-line operation, open up a virtual charter school, and set about trying to poach other districts’ students. Grantsburg, for example, has a virtual charter school that serves not a single resident of the Grantsburg school district. What a great policy.
By the way, Waukesha claims in its Isthmus ad that “Since 2004, IQ Academy Wisconsin students have consistently out-performed state-wide and district averages on the WKCE and ACT tests.” I didn’t check the WKCE scores, but last year 29.3% of the IQ Academy 12th graders took the ACT test and had an average composite score of 22.9. In the Madison school district, 56.6% of 12th graders took the test and the district average composite score was 24.0.
I understand that you are probably tired of hearing from local school board members complaining about the state’s school funding system. But the enormous disparity between what the state will provide to a virtual charter school for enrolling a student living in Madison, as compared to what it will provide the Madison school district to educate the same student, is so utterly wrong-headed as to be almost beyond belief.
Ed Hughes
Madison School Board

Amy Hetzner noted this post on her blog:

An interesting side note: the Madison Metropolitan School District’s current business manager, Erik Kass, was instrumental to helping to keep Waukesha’s virtual high school open and collecting a surplus when he was the business manager for that district.

I found the following comments interesting:

An interesting note is that the complainers never talked about which system more effectively taught students.
Then again, it has never really been about the students.

Madison is spending $418,415,780 to educate 24,295 students ($17,222 each).
Related: Madison School District 2010-2011 Budget: Comments in a Vacuum? and a few comments on the recent “State of the Madison School District” presentation.
The “Great Recession” has pushed many organizations to seek more effective methods of accomplishing their goals. It would seem that virtual learning and cooperation with nearby higher education institutions would be ideal methods to provide more adult to student services at reduced cost, rather than emphasizing growing adult to adult spending.
Finally Richard Zimman’s recent Madison Rotary talk is well worth revisiting with respect to the K-12 focus on adult employment.
Fascinating.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, School Climate, Student Support

New annual Wisconsin school testing system on hold

Amy Hetzner:

Nearly six months after the state announced it was scrapping its annual test for public school students, efforts to replace it with a new assessment are on hold and state officials now estimate it will take at least three years to make the switch.
The reason for the delay is tied to what is happening in the national education scene.
Wisconsin is among the 48 states that have signed onto the Common Core State Standards Initiative, which expects to complete work on grade-by-grade expectations for students in English and math by early spring. Once that is done, the anticipation is that the state will adopt the new standards, using them to help craft the new statewide test.
Wisconsin officials also are planning to compete for part of $350 million that the U.S. Education Department plans to award in the fall to state consortiums for test development.

The WKCE (Wisconsin Knowledge & Concepts Exam) has been criticized for its lack of rigor. The Madison School District is using the WKCE as the basis for its value added assessment initiative.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Curriculum - Math, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, Legal Rights, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support, What Can I Do?

Skydiving without Parachutes: Seattle Court Decision Against Discovery Math Implementation

Barry Garelick:

“What’s a court doing making a decision on math textbooks and curriculum?” This question and its associated harrumphs on various education blogs and online newspapers came in reaction to the February 4, 2010 ruling from the Superior court of King County that the Seattle school board’s adoption of a discovery type math curriculum for high school was “arbitrary and capricious”.
In fact, the court did not rule on the textbook or curriculum. Rather, it ruled on the school board’s process of decision making–more accurately, the lack thereof. The court ordered the school board to revisit the decision. Judge Julie Spector found that the school board ignored key evidence–like the declaration from the state’s Board of Education that the discovery math series under consideration was “mathematically unsound”, the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction not recommending the curriculum and last but not least, information given to the board by citizens in public testimony.
The decision is an important one because it highlights what parents have known for a long time: School boards generally do what they want to do, evidence be damned. Discovery type math programs are adopted despite parent protests, despite evidence of experts and–judging by the case in Seattle–despite findings from the State Board of Education and the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Curriculum, Curriculum - Fine Arts, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Fine-arts teachers connect the educational dots

Karen Kimball:

First-year elementary school teachers must take a “generalist” exam to be in compliance with federal standards. The Texas Education Agency has successfully fought for a waiver that would exempt fine-arts teachers from the test.
While I certainly realize the time and expense involved in testing as many as 30,000 new teachers statewide and understand TEA’s desire to cut that number, I feel that such an exemption is a big mistake.
Elementary school is a time when children learn about the world around them and make connections between subjects. More detailed instruction in various disciplines comes at the secondary level. With the current emphasis on testing in math, reading, science and social studies, classroom teachers find themselves working to see that basic concepts in each of these subjects are learned by their students. Time constraints make lessons with numerous “connections” difficult to achieve.
What better place to weave many subjects together than in the music or art class? I have always chosen to teach this way but have discovered than many music teachers do not, perhaps because they do not see the necessity or because they may not see the connections themselves. A test of general knowledge may help.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Governance/Board Decision Making, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, What Can I Do?

Down with parent power

Jay Matthews:

I have been exchanging emails with Gabe Rose, communications director of something called the Parent Revolution in my home state, California. Rose and his organization are part of a movement that has, to my open-mouthed amazement, persuaded the state government to give parents the power to close or change the leadership of low-performing public schools.
It sounds great. It has many parents excited. It could shake up the state educational establishment, including the education department, school boards and teacher unions. They could use some shaking up.
Yet I can’t shake my feeling it is a bad idea, a confusing distraction that will bring parents more frustration, not less, and do little to improve their children’s educations.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Student Support

The Disappearance of Public Schools

Emily:

A fresh, educational reform is sweeping the U.S. and leaving Vermont in the Jurassic period of traditional public schools. What is this reform and why haven’t many MMU students heard of this?
The terms public school and private school are terms that are familiar to all of us. There is nothing foreign to us about the concept (or the practice) of public schools. Something that is not so familiar is the idea of a charter school. Many MMU teens have no idea what a charter school even is. An interviewed sophomore asked if charter schools were “private schools that public people went to,” that student was by far closer than most MMU students. There has been a fast-paced change in education over the past several years and while many states have jumped on the bandwagon, Vermont hasn’t even come close. That change is the development of charter schools.
The U.S .Charter Schools website defines charter schools as “innovative public schools providing choices for families and greater accountability for results.” In other words, they are schools that have been granted a charter exempting themselves from selective state or local rules, while still adhering to the basic educational laws. Their purpose is to build strong communities, to focus on the kids and their needs as well as the make sure each child has the access to a quality education.

Books, Curriculum, Lifelong Learning, School Climate

Digital Books and Your Rights: A Checklist for Readers

Electronic Frontier Foundation:

After several years of false starts, the universe of digital books seems at last poised to expand dramatically. Readers should view this expansion with both excitement and wariness. Excitement because digital books could revolutionize reading, making more books more findable and more accessible to more people in more ways than ever before. Wariness because the various entities that will help make this digital book revolution possible may not always respect the rights and expectations that readers, authors, booksellers and librarians have built up, and defended, over generations of experience with physical books.
As new digital book tools and services roll out, we need to be able to evaluate not only the cool features they offer, but also whether they extend (or hamper) our rights and expectations.
The over-arching question: are digital books as good or better than physical books at protecting you and your rights as a reader?

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

New Plan on San Francisco School Selection, but Still Discontent

Jesse McKinely:

After years of complaints from parents, the San Francisco Unified School District has just taken a serious step toward revamping its well-meaning but labyrinthine student-assignment system, which decides the educational homes for tens of thousands of children.
The current system — designed to meet the terms of a settlement in a long-fought federal desegregation case — involves a complicated computer algorithm that creates student “profiles,” using various economic and educational factors, with the aim of sending students of different backgrounds to the same schools.
It has resulted instead in more segregation and has aggravated parents to a point where efforts to manipulate the system have become endemic.
This month, the school district rolled out a new plan. It is designed to more closely consider proximity between a student’s home and classroom. It is to be applied to every child headed for kindergarten.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support, What Can I Do?

Education reform, one classroom at a time

Melinda Gates:

Sitting on the desk of the secretary of education are dozens of ideas bold enough to finally start solving our country’s education crisis. They are contained in applications by 40 states and the District of Columbia for grants from the Race to the Top fund, a $4.35 billion piece of the stimulus package designed to dramatically improve student achievement.
Congress established strong guidelines to guarantee that states spend Race to the Top money on audacious reforms. Many states responded with equal fortitude, submitting proposals to radically improve how they use data or to adopt college- and career-ready standards — concepts that used to be considered third rails in the world of education. Never before has this country had such an opportunity to remake the way we teach young people.
One reason I am so optimistic about these developments is because, after decades of diffuse reform efforts, they all zero in on the most important ingredient of a great education: effective teachers. The key to helping students learn is making sure that every child has an effective teacher every single year.

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Minnesota Schools proactive while eyeing state budget woes

Ed Lee:

The St. Peter School Board has directed district administration to identify $500,000, or even $1.2 million, in possible expenditure reductions.
Board members said they are trying to be proactive as the State of Minnesota deals with its own budget deficit of more than $1 billion.
The vast majority of funding to school districts flows from the State of Minnesota.
Superintendent Dr. Jeffrey Olson said the state provides close to 80 percent of District 508’s funding.
School districts throughout Minnesota are bracing for cuts in state funding.

History - Madison Schools

Madison schools want input for new branding Campaign

5 Comments

Gayle Worland:

If Madison Avenue met Madison public schools, imagine the possibilities:
Billboards touting the joys of high school algebra?
TV spots selling fifth-grade science?
Facebook updates on student test scores?
It’s not quite a case of “Extreme Makeover,” but the Madison School District needs to put some polish on its image, officials say. The word is out to marketing firms that the district would like some help, and officials are asking the public – particularly parents of school-aged children – to join them at Marquette-O’Keeffe Schools on Monday night to brainstorm on “positive branding” techniques.
The desire to spiff up the public perception of Madison schools came out of months of discussions last year as a community team formed a five-year strategic plan for the district, said Superintendent Dan Nerad.

Ideally, everything an organization does improves its brand. Today’s wonderful solo ensemble is a great example of a subtle, positive student, parent and faculty event.
I’d rather see the Administration and Board focus on substantive improvements than simple “messages”. Doc Searls is right on: “there is no demand for messages“. Verona’s recent approval of a Mandarin immersion charter school resonates far more with parents than spending precious dollars on messages.
Send your thoughts to the Madison School Board: board@madison.k12.wi.us

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Education: Too Important for a Government Monopoly

John Stossel:

The government-school establishment has said the same thing for decades: Education is too important to leave to the competitive market. If we really want to help our kids, we must focus more resources on the government schools.
But despite this mantra, the focus is on something other than the kids. When The Washington Post asked George Parker, head of the Washington, D.C., teachers union, about the voucher program there, he said: “Parents are voting with their feet. … As kids continue leaving the system, we will lose teachers. Our very survival depends on having kids in D.C. schools so we’ll have teachers to represent.”
How revealing is that?
Since 1980, government spending on education, adjusted for inflation, has nearly doubled. But test scores have been flat for decades.
Today we spend a stunning $11,000 a year per student — more than $200,000 per classroom. It’s not working. So when will we permit competition and choice, which works great with everything else? I’ll explore those questions on my Fox Business program tomorrow night at 8 and 11 p.m. Eastern time (and again Friday at 10 p.m.).
The people who test students internationally told us that two factors predict a country’s educational success: Do the schools have the autonomy to experiment, and do parents have a choice?

Locally, the Madison School District has 24,295 students and a 2009/2010 budget of $418,415,780. $17,222 per student.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, Legal Rights, School Climate, Student Support

Key Curriculum Press Response to Seattle Discovery Math Court Decision

1 Comment

Charlie Mas:

Key Curriculum Press is in quite a snit over the Court’s decision about the high school textbooks.
Check out this web page they wrote in response.

Much more on the recent successful community vs. Seattle School District Discovery Math court case here.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Disagreement surfaces over Rhode Island’s Central Falls school reform talks

Jennifer Jordan:

School Supt. Frances Gallo and the city’s teachers union gave conflicting accounts Thursday of how talks to reform the struggling Central Falls High School broke down last week, leading to the dramatic decision to fire the entire staff.
Gallo said she offered the high school’s 74 teachers “100-percent job security” for the 2010-11 school year, if they’d agree to her six conditions to transform the low-performing school.
But teachers union President Jane Sessums said that while the issue of job security certainly came up in negotiations, Gallo never promised to protect every job.
In the wake of their failure to reach agreement, Gallo mailed letters Thursday afternoon to every teacher at Central Falls High School informing them that she is recommending their termination at the end of the current school year. The school district’s Board of Trustees will vote on Gallo’s recommendation Feb. 23.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Maryland Governor O’Malley proposes changes in tenure, test rules for chance at federal funds

Nick Anderson & Michael Birnbaum:

The lure of $4 billion in federal funding at a time of fiscal peril has driven state after state toward school reforms long considered politically unlikely, undoable or unthinkable. This week, Maryland provided the latest surprise: Gov. Martin O’Malley, who is seeking union support for reelection, proposed tighter rules for teachers to qualify for tenure and opened the door to broader use of test scores to evaluate them.
Many teachers view such policies with deep skepticism despite a national movement to overhaul public education’s seniority system. Until recently, there was no reason to think Maryland would join the movement because the state has high-performing public schools and strong unions. O’Malley (D) initially hesitated to propose any changes. But the governor shifted course, hoping to boost Maryland’s chances at snaring as much as $250 million in President Obama’s Race to the Top competition.
“Who fights money?” asked Clara Floyd, president of the Maryland State Education Association, a teachers union.
The contest has catalyzed action from coast to coast to expand charter schools, lay the groundwork for teacher performance pay, revise employee evaluation methods and even consider the first common academic standards. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), also seeking reelection, said it added up to too much federal intrusion in local affairs and pulled his state out of the competition. But O’Malley aims for Maryland to apply in June.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support

Report on New York City small schools finds more choice, but modest interest

Anna Phillips:

A new report on the rapid proliferation of small schools in New York City finds that while the schools have expanded students’ options, most students choose to attend larger schools.
Commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the report is one of four that will eventually be released in order to study how the schools have multiplied, who is attending them, who is teaching in them, and whether they’re succeeding. The Gates Foundation popularized and funded the small schools movement in New York, fueling the growth of nearly 200 small schools with a $150 million investment.
A New-York based research group, MDRC, conducted the report, which does not look at the schools’ academic record — that analysis will come out in spring — but focuses on the schools’ enrollment and demographics.
One of the report’s key findings is that the small schools are seeing modest demand from students.

Complete report: 3.4MB PDF.

Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, What Can I Do?

Why not link teacher pay to test scores?

Lisa Guisbond:

Have your kids ever gotten an A for work that you, or they, didn’t think was worthwhile? Something like that happened recently with Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
Education historian and New York University Professor Diane Ravitch gave him an A for effectiveness at getting buy-in for linking teacher evaluations to student test scores and a D- for pushing bad ideas. I would forgo the A and lower the grade to an F for pushing ideas that are destructive.
Why destructive? At first blush, rewarding teachers for higher student test scores seems reasonable to many people. The second and third blushes are the problem.

The National Center for Fair & Open Testing.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support, What Can I Do?

New regulations impacting Milwaukee school choice program: School closures up, number of new schools down

The Public Policy Forum, via a kind reader’s email:

Between the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years, fewer new schools joined the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) than ever before. In addition, 14 MPCP schools closed and another three schools merged–the most year-over- year closures the program has seen (Chart 1).
In this 12th edition of the Public Policy Forum’s annual census of MPCP schools, we find 112 schools are participating in the choice program, enrolling 21,062 students using taxpayer-funded tuition vouchers. The number of full-time equivalent students using vouchers is greater than in any other year of the program’s 19-year history; however, there are fewer schools participating today than earlier this decade (Chart 2, page 2).
The decline in the number of new schools and the increase in the number of closed schools are likely due to new state regulations governing the program. These regulations require schools new to the program to obtain pre-accreditation before opening and require existing schools to become accredited within three years of joining the program.
Throughout this decade, the average number of schools new to the program had been 11 per year. Under the new pre- accreditation requirement, 19 schools applied for pre-accreditation, but just three were approved. Another 38 schools had previously indicated to state regulators an intent to participate in the program in 2009-2010, but did not apply for pre -accreditation. The pre-accreditation process is conducted by the Institute for the Transformation of Learning (ITL) at Marquette University.

Milwaukee Voucher Schools – 2010.
Complete report: 184K PDF, press release: 33K PDF

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, Parenting, School Climate, Special Education, Student Support, What Can I Do?

Teachers group pushes back against proposed Wisconsin dyslexia testing mandate

Susan Troller, via a kind reader’s email

Will Morton was a happy, creative and enthusiastic child until he went to kindergarten.
As his classmates sounded out letters, and began reading words and simple sentences, he fell behind. His teacher was perplexed by Will’s lack of progress because he was clearly bright and had plenty of exposure to books and language at home. And his parents were worried, because Will’s older brother and sister had learned to read easily.
“We knew nothing about reading problems because we hadn’t ever had any experience with them, but I remember wondering in kindergarten if he was dyslexic because he seemed to have trouble recognizing letters and associating them with sounds,” says Chris Morton, Will’s mother. “His teacher told us not to worry, that it was a little developmental delay and we needed to give him time and he’d be fine.”
But she was wrong, experts on dyslexia say.
Students like Will – who have persistent trouble reading because the neural pathways in their brains do not decode letters and sounds in the ways that make reading and writing natural – need specific help, they say, and the sooner the better. Without that kind of help, they will never catch up, and even if they manage to disguise their different learning style, they are likely to continue to struggle with reading, spelling, language and sometimes with math; in short, they won’t ever achieve their full intellectual potential.

Learning Differences Network and Wisconsin State Reading Association.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support, What Can I Do?

Rhode Island Education Chief Gist Chat Transcript on Teacher Quality, Parenting, Firing all Central Falls High School Teachers

3 Comments

Deborah Gist & Pamela Reinsel Cotter:

Deborah Gist: Chasm: Seniority is no longer a way in which teachers will be selected and assigned in our state. I sent a letter to all superintendents last fall to remind them that the Basic Education Program Regulation in going in effect this summer, and seniority policies would be inconsistent with that regulation. Unfortunately, state statute requires that layoffs be done on a “first in, first out” policy. Legislation would be required to change that, and I would wholeheartedly support it if it were introduced. I will do whatever is necessary to ensure that the very highest quality teacher is in every classroom in our state.
Deborah Gist: I can’t imagine how any district or school leader could interpret my words or actions to be anything other than ensuring the top quality, so “change for change’s sake” would be contradictory to that.
Bob: Please run for governor. I love your go getter attitude!
Deborah Gist: I appreciate your support very much. Make sure to keep watching and hold me accountable for results!
Parent: As a parent of 2 children, I know how crucial parent involvement is. Has anyone looked at educating the parents of the kids of these failing schools? You can replace the teachers….and you can give new teachers incentives to change things around. But this is a band aid. Teachers are blamed for too many problems. They can’t be expected to solve the problems of society. Teachers have many many challenges these days- more so than 25 years ago. Kis and parents need to take responsibility for on education. Just look at math grades around the state. Kids don’t know how to deal with fractions because they don’t know how to tell time on an analgoue clock. But the teachers are blamed. Let’s take a look at the real problems. Educate the kids – the parents- look around the country at other programs. Please don’t make this mistake.
Deborah Gist: Parent involvement is important, and supportive, engaged parents are important partners in a child’s education. Fortunately, we know that great teaching can overcome those instances when children have parents who are unable to provide that level of support. I don’t blame teachers, but I do hold them accountable for results. I also hold myself and everyone on my team accountable.
Matt: Will you apologize for repeatedly saying that “we recruit the majority of our teachers from the bottom third of high school students going to college”? The studies that you cite do not back this up.
Deborah Gist: Matt: As a traditionally trained teacher, I know this is difficult to hear. I don’t like it either. Unfortunately, it is true. While there are many extraordinarily intelligent educators throughout Rhode Island and our country, the US–unlike other high performing countries–recruits our teachers from the lowest performers in our secondary schools based on SAT scores and other performance data.
Deborah Gist: If you have a source that shows otherwise, I’d love to see that. I’m always open to learning new resources. So, I’d be happy for you to share that.

Clusty Search: Deborah Gist. Deborah Gist’s website and Twitter account.
A must read.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

1994 NEA Resolutions

1MB PDF, via a kind reader:

The September 1994 issue of NEA Today, the monthly newspaper published by the National Education Association, reports the “resolutions” adopted by delegates to their 1994 Representative Assembly. Below is a small sampling from the 302 resolutions that were passed this year. (One of the resolutions listed is not among those adopted by the NEA. See if you can figure out which one it is.)
Arbor Day Education
Repatriation of Native American Remains
Left-Handed Students
Professionalism and Accountability
Genocide
Competency Testing and Evaluation
World Hunger
Statehood for the District of Columbia
Violence Against and Exploitation of Asian/Pacific Islanders

The resolution that didn’t make it is “Professionalism and Accountability”.

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, Legal Rights, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home

Cory Doctorow:

According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins’s child was disciplined for “improper behavior in his home” and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.
If true, these allegations are about as creepy as they come. I don’t know about you, but I often have the laptop in the room while I’m getting dressed, having private discussions with my family, and so on. The idea that a school district would not only spy on its students’ clickstreams and emails (bad enough), but also use these machines as AV bugs is purely horrifying.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Riley plan for Alabama charter schools blocked

Phillip Rawls:

A major part of Gov. Bob Riley’s final year agenda, the legalization of charter schools, has been killed by the Alabama Legislature.
The Senate Finance and Taxation-Education Committee voted 13-4 Wednesday to kill the Senate version of Riley’s charter school bill. The House Education Appropriations Committee voted 13-2 last week to kill the House version of the bill.
“I would pretty much conclude it has no chance for the rest of the session,” a proponent, state Superintendent Joe Morton, said after the vote Wednesday.
An opponent, teacher lobbyist Paul Hubbert, agreed the issue is gone “for this year,” but he said it may be back after the 2010 state elections.
Riley blamed the defeat on Hubbert’s Alabama Education Association.

Budget/Financing, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Milpitas superintendent recommends more cuts for 2011-12 budget

Shannon Barry:

The Milpitas Unified School District is preparing for the next in the series of continuing shock waves that has been hitting education hard and rippling throughout California.
The latest response comes after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget proposal, which could widen the deficit from $1.5 million to nearly $7 million if passed, in the 2011-12 school year for the Milpitas Unified School District alone.
District staff is advancing plans to garner enough support to pass a parcel tax expected to bring in $1.4 million to $1.6 million annually for five years, if passed in the June election. But even if this passes, the district will still be left with a large hole to fill.

Milpitas 2009-2010 budget: 4.5MB PDF.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Special Education, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Spectrum in Name Only

Charlie Mas:

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

McDonnell budget: furloughs, job cuts, reduced services for the sick and children, no new taxes

Tyler Whitley & Olympia Meola:

Gov. Bob McDonnell wants to fill a $2 billion budget shortfall by eliminating more than 500 jobs over three years, instituting 10 furlough days for state workers and slashing services for children and the sick.
But he proposes no new taxes, and he is electing to keep the $950 million-a-year car-tax break for localities.
The governor also wants to spare higher education from further cuts and seeks to restore some of former Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s proposed cuts to public safety.
Schools and health care — the largest parts of the state’s general fund budget — take heavy hits under McDonnell’s plan, with reductions of $731 million to public education over the two-year budget period, and more than $300 million to health-care programs.
“All the cuts give me heartburn,” McDonnell said at a news conference. “All of them were difficult because I know that behind every cut there is a Virginian . . . that might be affected.”

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Most Calif. schools bow out of $700M Race to the Top Program

Christina Hoag:

Less than half of California school districts and only about a quarter of teacher unions have promised to make key education reforms required for the state to win $700 million in competitive federal grants, officials said Wednesday.
Only 41 percent of school districts and 60 percent of eligible charter schools signed on for changes needed to participate in the Obama administration’s Race to the Top contest in which states can win extra federal funding to ease the impact of steep budget cuts.
Still, state education officials were hopeful California would be among the states chosen in April to share about $4.35 billion. Officials note that districts agreeing to the reforms represent 58 percent of the state’s public school students and almost 61 percent of students from low-income families.
“We’re very pleased with the turnout,” said Hilary McLean, spokeswoman for the California Department of Education. “We think we have a very strong application. We’re competitive.”

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

America’s Private Public Schools

Janie Scull & Michael Petrilli:

This new analysis by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute finds that more than 1.7 million American children attend what we’ve dubbed ”private public schools” — public schools that serve virtually no poor students. In some metropolitan areas, as many as one in six public-school students — and one in four white youngsters — attends such schools, of which the U.S. has about 2,800. Read on to see whether there’s one in your neighborhood.

Complete PDF Report.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Student Support

New Jersey Charter schools fight to survive

Patricia Alex:

State and federal leaders are touting charter schools as key to education reform, but advocates say the movement needs more public funding to grow in New Jersey.
“It’s politically expedient to talk about charter schools,” said Rex Shaw, lead person at the Teaneck Community Charter School. “But show me the money.”
Governor Christie has been a vocal supporter of the schools, which act independently of local districts even though they are publicly financed. But his office was mum on whether more money would be available to spur the movement.
At their best, charters serve as laboratories for innovation — trying new approaches without the restraints of union rules and administrative orthodoxy.
But the schools have been slow to catch on in most of New Jersey — hampered by a lack of money and interest in a state where the public schools generally are considered good. Nearly 80 percent of the 68 charters now operating are in urban areas where the local districts are struggling, if not failing.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

A school district’s new theory of relativity

George W. Fisher:

In recent years, the Hamilton Township School District has set about silently taking in relatives of board of education members and high-ranking administrators, with the district serving as a paying home-away-from-home-until-retirement home. There, kin can gently labor beneath a motto borrowing on the formula E=mc², “Everything is Relative,” and bond with one another in an exclusive patronage pool. A family welfare system is in the making.
Privately, I have wanted this stealth project to fail. My mindset is not entirely propriety-driven; like a lot of people, I am tempted to bend principle to become principal. Other forces at work are envy and money. I am unrelated to any board member or administrator, so I can’t enjoy the relative benefits. I am also a taxpayer in the district and have to shoulder its costs. I am a double loser — no money coming into my pocket all the while money is being emptied from it.
Nevertheless, I feel compelled to express publicly my admiration of the district’s ability to engineer its version of relativity into a family support system . A greater utopia I am hard-pressed to imagine. Let me offer supporting facts. In 2003, only one of the nine members of the board had any relatives working in the district. He had three, so he might be regarded as a pioneer of the project. By 2008, five members were relative-on-board, with a total of seven employed in the district. In 2009, while the number of members with family in-district dropped to four, the total of employed relatives remained at six. Meanwhile, the superintendent and two assistants were also nurturing the value of paid family togetherness. In 2003, they contributed five relatives to the district; by 2009, the number had doubled to 10.

More from New Jersey Left Behind.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

The Online Learning Imperative: A Solution to Three Looming Crises in Education

Governor Bob Wise & Robert Rothman340K PDF:

In his blockbuster best-selling book, writer Malcolm Gladwell identified a phenomenon called ―the tipping point.‖ This point marks the level at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable and something happens that, in either large or small measure, turns the world on its axis. For those who have been working to improve education, it appears that the tipping point may have finally arrived.
Currently, K-12 education in the United States is dealing with three major crises, each of which on its own is capable of wreaking havoc on schools and communities around the nation, but together are an all-out perfect storm. Simultaneously, the U.S. education system is facing

  • global skill demands vs. educational attainment;
  • the funding cliff;
  • and a looming teacher shortage.

These three factors have brought our education system to a point where the need for change and innovation is no longer something to be researched and discussed. We must do what people have done for centuries and turn crisis into opportunity, somehow making progress in the face of enormous challenges.

Via the Alliance for Excellent Education.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Curriculum, Curriculum - Math, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

The secret of Schmitz Park Elementary School is Singapore Math

Bruce Ramsey:

Sally made 500 gingerbread men. She sold 3/4 of them and gave away 2/5 of the remainder. How many did she give away?
This was one of the homework questions in Craig Parsley’s fifth-grade class. The kids are showing their answers on the overhead projector. They are in a fun mood, using class nicknames. First up is “Crackle,” a boy. The class hears from “Caveman,” “Annapurna,” “Shortcut” and “Fred,” a girl.
Each has drawn a ruler with segments labeled by number — on the problem above, “3/4,” “2/5” and “500.” Below the ruler is some arithmetic and an answer.
“Who has this as a single mathematical expression? Who has the guts?” Parsley asks. No one, yet — but they will.
This is not the way math is taught in other Seattle public schools. It is Singapore Math, adopted from the Asian city-state whose kids test at the top of the world. Since the 2007-08 year, Singapore Math has been taught at Schmitz Park Elementary in West Seattle — and only there in the district.
In the war over school math — in which a judge recently ordered Seattle Public Schools to redo its choice of high-school math — Schmitz Park is a redoubt or, it hopes, a beachhead. North Beach is a redoubt for Saxon Math, a traditional program. Both schools have permission to be different. The rest of the district’s elementary schools use Everyday Math, a curriculum influenced by the constructivist or reform methods.

Related: Math Forum Audio / Video.

Budget/Financing, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Memphis teachers union OKs contract with raises City schools workers to get 2% pay increase this year

Jane Roberts:

A new teacher contract in the Memphis City Schools district includes a 2 percent raise this year, and a 1 percent raise next year for the largest union in the district.
Although the raises are the smallest teachers have received in several decades, the deal was overwhelmingly approved by the membership.
“Nobody is going to turn down a 2 percent raise. Shelby County (teachers) got nothing,” said Stephanie Fitzgerald, president of the Memphis Education Association.
MEA has more than 6,000 members, including principals and librarians.
The school board approved the agreement Monday night.

Related: Madison School District & Madison Teachers Union Reach Tentative Agreement: 3.93% Increase Year 1, 3.99% Year 2; Base Rate $33,242 Year 1, $33,575 Year 2: Requires 50% MTI 4K Members and will “Review the content and frequency of report cards”.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Here’s the dope on teacher pensions

Ed Inghrim, Director, Saucon Valley School Board Lower Saucon Township:

Recently New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced a freeze on spending and said pensions and benefits are the major driver of spending increases at all levels of government. He citied two examples of retired public employees. A 49-year-old retiree, who paid $124,000 toward retirement pension and health benefits, will get $3.3 million in pension payments and nearly $500,000 for health care benefits — $3.8 million on a $120,000 investment. A retired teacher who paid $62,000 toward her pension and nothing for full family medical, dental and vision coverage, will collect $1.4 million in pension and $215,000 in health care benefit premiums over her lifetime.
I decided to check his math using the Saucon Valley School District teacher contract as a model. I assumed a teacher hired at age 24 at $40,000 would work 30 years and get an average pay increase of 4 percent a year (quite conservative) and contribute 7.5 percent of salary to the state retirement system. Retiring at 54, the teacher’s total pension contribution would be $168,255. Assuming the teacher lived to 85 and got health benefits until Medicare eligible, he or she would collect about $3.4 million after retiring. Not a bad return. If the annual raise were 5 percent, the teacher would get a return of $4.2 million on an investment of $199,317.

Saucon Valley School District 2009-2010 budget document (PDF).

College Preparation, Curriculum, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support

Questioning the Way Colleges Are Managed

Jack Kadden:

Ninety percent of parents believe it is likely that their children will attend college, and most of them believe that any student can get the loans or financial aid required. But a new survey, reported on by my colleague, Tamar Lewin, finds that parents don’t have a lot of confidence in the way colleges are managed.
Increasingly, parents think colleges are too focused on their own finances, rather than the educational experience of students, the survey found.

“One of the really disturbing things about this, for those of us who work in higher education,” said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, “is the vote of no confidence we’re getting from the public. They think college is important, but they’re really losing trust in the management and leadership.”

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

KC District parents, students make pitch to keep their schools open Read more: KC District parents, students make pitch to keep their schools open & Interesting Comments

Joe Robertson:

For many of the 400 people who came out to defend their schools from Kansas City’s chopping block Tuesday night, this was their first time for one of these hearings.
Not for those from McCoy Elementary.
They’d been through this before, most recently a year ago. And the school’s supporters were back again in their orange shirts with their neighbors, teachers and a popular principal.
“It’s the best school on the planet — McCoy,” 7-year-old Edwin Lopez declared to a round of cheers.
With the district pushing its longest list of possible closings ever, McCoy supporters know it will be hard for the school to escape one more time.
But as Superintendent John Covington and his staff started the community tour Tuesday night, he left everyone in the crowd with some hope that his plan to close half of the district’s 60 schools could change. He also left them with the reality that many of their schools will be closed.

Much more on Kansas City here.

Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Teacher Quality Means Some Must Go

Tom Vander Ark:

The President and Secretary deserve credit for advancing the teacher quality agenda-a tough thing for democrats to do. Some of the credit for that goes to Jon Schnur and DFER. Because we don’t have very good predictive techniques, it’s important to watch teachers in their first few years, keep the best, and ask 10-20% or so that don’t appear cut out for teaching to find a new job. Historically, 99% of teachers have been granted lifetime employment. The idiocy of this policy is finally coming to light. Two examples follow.
NY Chancellor Joel Klein wrote a candid piece for the NY Daily Post which ran with the headline: Get Incompetent Teachers Off the Payroll:

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Schools & Competition

Matthew Yglesias:

Daniel Mitchell at Cato says school choice “is better than government-imposed monopolies” and also that “[t]he evidence about the school-choice systems in Sweden, Chile, and the Netherlands is particularly impressive.”
I think the buyer needs to beware when he hears libertarian touting school choice concepts. Choice can add a lot of value to education, or it can be destructive. The details actually matter a great deal. Bentley MacLeod and Miguel Urquiola did a paper, “Anti-Lemons: School Reputation and Educational Quality” which sheds important light on this issue:

Friedman (1962) argued that a free market in which schools compete based upon their reputation would lead to an efficient supply of educational services. This paper explores this issue by building a tractable model in which rational individuals go to school and accumulate skill valued in a perfectly competitive labor market. To this it adds one ingredient: school reputation in the spirit of Holmstrom (1982). The first result is that if schools cannot select students based upon their ability, then a free market is indeed efficient and encourages entry by high productivity schools. However, if schools are allowed to select on ability, then competition leads to stratification by parental income, increased transmission of income inequality, and reduced student effort–in some cases lowering the accumulation of skill. The model accounts for several (sometimes puzzling) findings in the educational literature, and implies that national standardized testing can play a key role in enhancing learning.

Budget/Financing, College Preparation, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Plan Would Let Students Start College Early

Sam Dillon:

Dozens of public high schools in eight states will introduce a program next year allowing 10th graders who pass a battery of tests to get a diploma two years early and immediately enroll in community college.
Students who pass but aspire to attend a selective college may continue with college preparatory courses in their junior and senior years, organizers of the new effort said. Students who fail the 10th grade tests, known as board exams, can try again at the end of their 11th and 12th grades. The tests would cover not only English and math but other subjects like science and history.
The new system of high school coursework with the accompanying board examinations is modeled largely on systems in high-performing nations including Denmark, Finland, England, France and Singapore.
The program is being organized by the National Center on Education and the Economy, and one of its goals is to reduce the numbers of high school graduates who need remedial courses when they enroll in college. More than a million college freshmen across America must take remedial courses each year, and many drop out before getting a degree.
“That’s a central problem we’re trying to address, the enormous failure rate of these kids when they go to the open admission colleges,” said Marc S. Tucker, president of the center, a Washington-based nonprofit. “We’ve looked at schools all over the world, and if you walk into a high school in the countries that use these board exams, you’ll see kids working hard, whether they want to be a carpenter or a brain surgeon.”

This makes sense.
Related: Janet Mertz’s enduring effort: Credit for non-MMSD Courses

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Governance/Board Decision Making, Legal Rights, Lifelong Learning, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Unionized Rhode Island Teachers Refuse To Work 25 Minutes More Per Day, So Town Fires All Of Them

Henry Blodget:

A school superintendent in Rhode Island is trying to fix an abysmally bad school system.
Her plan calls for teachers at a local high school to work 25 minutes longer per day, each lunch with students once in a while, and help with tutoring. The teachers’ union has refused to accept these apparently onerous demands.
The teachers at the high school make $70,000-$78,000, as compared to a median income in the town of $22,000. This exemplifies a nationwide trend in which public sector workers make far more than their private-sector counterparts (with better benefits).

Jennifer Jordan & Linda Borg:

After learning of the union’s position, School Supt. Frances Gallo notified the state that she was switching to an alternative she was hoping to avoid: firing the entire staff at Central Falls High School. In total, about 100 teachers, administrators and assistants will lose their jobs.
Gallo blamed the union’s “callous disregard” for the situation, saying union leaders “knew full well what would happen” if they rejected the six conditions Gallo said were crucial to improving the school. The conditions are adding 25 minutes to the school day, providing tutoring on a rotating schedule before and after school, eating lunch with students once a week, submitting to more rigorous evaluations, attending weekly after-school planning sessions with other teachers and participating in two weeks of training in the summer.
The high school’s 74 teachers will receive letters during school vacation advising them to attend a Feb. 22 meeting where each will be handed a termination notice that takes effect for the 2010-’11 school year, Gallo said.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

On School Vouchers

Dennis Byrne & Eric Zorn:

From Dennis to Eric:
State Sen. James T. Meeks, D-Chicago, one of the most influential voices in the city’s black community, recently stood before a group of mostly white, free-market conservatives to passionately plead for their support.
It was an unlikely meeting of the minds at an Illinois Policy Institute lunch session, but when Meeks was finished, he had his audience cheering. Might this be the launch of a political alliance that would unshackle Chicago kids from the tyranny, dangers and incompetence of Chicago Public Schools?
Meeks, pastor of Salem Baptist Church, was pitching Senate Bill 2494, his proposed Illinois School Choice Program Act that would give vouchers to students in the worst public schools to attend non-public schools of their choice.
Meeks, a recent voucher convert, came to talk political reality: Legislation that would free children from their bondage would be hard for African-American lawmakers to oppose. Combined with the support of Republican voucher supporters, they might be able to create a coalition that could make vouchers available for the first time in Illinois.

Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Student Support

Willingham: In defense of measurement

Daniel Willingham & Valerie Strauss:

My guest is cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, professor at the University of Virginia and author of “Why Don’t Students Like School?”
By Daniel Willingham
I have recently written about the problems in trying to use student achievement data to measure teachers’ effectiveness.
But that doesn’t mean that I think teachers’ effectiveness should not be measured.
Indeed, I think it’s essential that it is.
People focus on just one of the uses to which measurement of teachers could be put: rewarding the successful and firing the unsuccessful. But if you’re interested in improving the practice of teaching, you must have a method of measuring teachers’ effectiveness.

Curriculum, Lifelong Learning, School Climate

Give higher priority to Farm to School programs

1 Comment

Margaret Krome:

The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, held a conference call last week with about a thousand of his closest friends to talk about the Obama administration’s initiatives on child nutrition and physical activity. He started by describing the twin problems that make this a high priority for the administration: obesity and hunger. A third of the nation’s children are overweight, and 16.5 million children live in food-insecure households — those with hunger or fear of starvation.
For decades, the federal government has sought to address child hunger through programs such as the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, Snack Program, Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, and Child and Adult Care Food Program. These programs are coming up for review as part of the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, which will occur this year, and attention will also be given to how they reduce obesity. Vilsack says the Obama administration is committing an additional $1 billion to this effort.
However, I was disappointed not to hear from Secretary Vilsack or see in the Obama budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2011 a clear commitment to fund Farm to School programs, which aim to get locally grown food served to children in school cafeterias. Among the groups working to do so are the National Farm to School Network and the Community Food Security Coalition.

Special Education

Hormone offers new hope in autism research

Rob Stein:

A nasal spray containing a hormone that makes women more maternal and men less shy apparently can help those with autism make eye contact and interact better with others, according to a provocative study released Monday.
The study involving 13 adults with autism found that when they inhaled the hormone oxytocin they scored significantly better on a test that involved recognizing faces and performed much better in a game that involved tossing a ball with other people.
Although more research is needed to confirm and explore the findings, the results are the latest in a growing body of evidence indicating that the hormone could lead to ways to help people with the often devastating brain disorder function better.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Parents pulling ‘trigger’ on school

Connie Lianos:

After five years of getting nowhere with Los Angeles Unified officials, fed-up parents in Sunland-Tujunga are using a new state law to force change at a long-troubled middle school.
Parents and community members say problems at Mount Gleason Middle School, which has been on a federal list of under-performing campuses for a dozen years, go beyond failing test scores.
“There is an unsafe atmosphere at this school that is spilling over into the community…,” said Lydia Grant, a resident and parent of a former Mount Gleason student. “People are tired of it and we want to see change.”
Thanks to new legislation, known as the “parent trigger” law, they’re able to do something about it.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Rhode Island education officials to push charter schools

Associated Press:

Rhode Island education officials are pushing an expansion of charter schools as a way to boost innovation and quality.
Education Commissioner Deborah Gist said her goal is to have excellent schools for all children, whether it’s a charter school or regular school.
Gist and other charter school supporters want to change a law that limits the number of state charter schools to 20 and says a maximum of 4 percent of the state’s students can attend them. That’s about 6,000 students.
Right now, Rhode Island has 13 charter schools with 3,200 students and 3,600 student on waiting lists.
Gist plans to testify in favor of removing the cap when lawmakers reconvene later this month.

Board Meeting Archives, Community Partners, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, Legal Rights, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support, What Can I Do?

An exchange with the director of the Washington State Board of Education

Martha McLaren:

Here is an open letter which I sent last night to Edie Harding, Executive Director of the State Board of Education. Under the letter I have paraphrased her reply; below that is my response to her.
I am responding to your comment today in the Seattle Times:
‘ “It’s long been established that in our state, the local board is always the prime decision-maker on curriculum.” ….the Seattle decision was “a surprise, and if I were the Seattle School Board, I would — well, I might take issue with the judge,” she added.’
Having been one of the plaintiffs in the recent textbook appeal in Seattle, I’m well aware that School Boards make curriculum decisions. However, Ms. Harding, what recourse do you suggest to parents when School Boards abdicate their decision making power – refusing to consider voluminous, compelling, evidence from parents and community members, and instead give school administrators carte blanch to turn math education in directions that are unacceptable to informed parents and community members?

College Preparation, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support

Competing for Students Who Can Pay

Jack Kadden:

My colleagues at the Economix blog have put up an interesting post by an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst exploring the increasing competition for students who can help a school’s bottom line.
The professor, Nancy Folbre, notes that competition works when consumers “can taste before they buy,” but that’s difficult when making choices about higher education.
She particularly questions the marketing efforts of for-profit colleges.

Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Education professor: Schools are pressure cookers ready to explode

Maureen Downey:

A Clayton State University education professor says the recipe has been in place for a while for CRCT cheating with the main ingredient being the pressure on schools to reach artificial and questionable goals.
Here is an opinion piece by Mari Ann Roberts, assistant professor in Clayton State University’s department of teacher education:

I like to cook so I’m going to share a recipe with you.

  • Take one flawed underfunded federal education improvement act, like NCLB,
  • add increasing pressure on individual schools to meet “Adequate Yearly Progress,”
  • include some inane expectations that teachers can work miracles,
  • sprinkle liberally with furlough days, suspended raises, and budget cuts dating back to 2003 that will total more than $2.8 billion through the fiscal year ending next June.

And what do you get? Whatever it is, it can’t be good.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate, Student Support, Teacher Support

Kansas City Public School closings are painful but needed

Kansas City Star:

Superintendent John Covington has offered a painful but bold proposal to close about half the schools in the Kansas City School District. The radical surgery is needed for the district to survive and improve its chances of providing better public education.
Covington and other officials announced on Saturday that up to 31 of the district’s schools could close, including Westport High School and possibly Northeast High School. The central office at 12th and McGee streets also will be for sale.
The proposed reductions are fiscally sound and clearly necessary. The schools on average are operating at only half capacity. The months-long decision-making process evaluated each school’s age, costs, efficiency and durability, as well as the best transfer possibilities for students to get a good education.
Covington and his administrative team deserve high marks so far for involving the public in the decision process, beginning last year. Parents, students, district workers, and business, faith, civic and community leaders were invited to “Right Sizing the District” forums.

Budget/Financing, Elections, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

LA school board to vote on parcel tax for ballot

Associated Press:

The Los Angeles Unified School District board was expected to vote Tuesday on whether to put a parcel tax on the June 8 ballot that would help ease its budget crisis.
If approved by two-thirds of voters, the $100 per-parcel tax increase would generate $92.5 million per year for schools over four years, the Daily News reported Saturday.
Low-income seniors would be exempt from the property tax, and none of the money would fund administrators’ salaries.
The income would go toward limiting class size increases, reducing teacher layoffs, and maintaining vocational and job training programs.
“The bottom line is the district is in desperate straits,” said Judith Perez, president of Associated Administrators Los Angeles. “There is just no way to come up with this money through cuts.”

Community Partners, Governance/Board Decision Making, Nutrition, Parenting, School Climate, What Can I Do?

Nutrition: Vermont’s healthy start

Lisa Rathke:

The third- and fourth-graders at Sharon Elementary know where the veggies in their soup come from because they’ve visited the farms. They know the nutritional value of the carrots, onions and cabbage because they’ve studied them in class, and they know how they’re grown because they’ve nurtured them in raised beds out back.
The 105-student school is part of the National Farm to School Network, aimed at getting healthier meals into school cafeterias, teaching kids about agriculture and nutrition and supporting local farmers.
About 40 states have farm-to-school programs, but Vermont is a leader in incorporating all three missions into its programs.
“Vermont has really taken it on in quite the most holistic way and not just in a couple of school districts, but statewide,” said Anupama Joshi, director of the Farm to School program, based at the Center for Food and Justice at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
Vermont might be a step ahead of other states because a nonprofit partnership called Vermont FEED already had been working to get local foods into schools.

College Preparation, Lifelong Learning, Parenting, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

The $555,000 Student-Loan Burden

Mary Pilon:

As Default Rates on Borrowing for Higher Education Rise, Some Borrowers See No Way Out; ‘This Is Just Outrageous Now’
When Michelle Bisutti, a 41-year-old family practitioner in Columbus, Ohio, finished medical school in 2003, her student-loan debt amounted to roughly $250,000. Since then, it has ballooned to $555,000.
It is the result of her deferring loan payments while she completed her residency, default charges and relentlessly compounding interest rates. Among the charges: a single $53,870 fee for when her loan was turned over to a collection agency.
“Maybe half of it was my fault because I didn’t look at the fine print,” Dr. Bisutti says. “But this is just outrageous now.”

College Preparation, Community Partners, School Climate

Black churches spread gospel of higher education

Nanette Asimov:

The pulpit at many black churches has become a place to pray to a higher power – and praise higher learning.
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of the dream of reaching the promised land- with education!” cried the man addressing the congregation Sunday at Greater St. John Missionary Baptist Church in West Oakland.
The words came not from the pastor, but from the president of California State University East Bay, Mo Qayoumi, whose remarks were also carried live on KDYA the Light, a gospel radio station.
On Sundays throughout February, Qayoumi and other university leaders are fanning out to more than 100 black churches across the state to spread the gospel of higher education in a program they call Super Sunday.
They’re aiming their message mainly at the families of middle-school children, preaching the idea that it’s never too early to prepare for college.

Lifelong Learning, Nutrition, Parenting, School Climate, Student Support, Wellness, What Can I Do?

To make school food healthy, Michelle Obama has a tall order

Ed Bruske:

First lady Michelle Obama’s new campaign against childhood obesity, dubbed “Let’s Move,” puts improvements to school food at the top of the agenda. Some 31 million children participate in federal school meal programs, Obama noted in announcing her initiative last week, “and what we don’t want is a situation where parents are taking all the right steps at home — and then their kids undo all that work with salty, fatty food in the school cafeteria,” she explained. “So let’s move to get healthier food into our nation’s schools.”
Last month I had a chance to see up close what all the school food fuss was about when I spent a week in the kitchen of my 10-year-old daughter’s public school, H.D. Cooke Elementary, in Northwest D.C. Chartwells, the company contracted by the city to provide meals to the District’s schools, had switched in the fall from serving warm-up meals prepackaged in a factory to food it called “fresh cooked,” and I couldn’t wait to chronicle in my food blog how my daughter’s school meals were being prepared from scratch.

Budget/Financing, Curriculum, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, History - Madison Schools, School Climate, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Retired Army officer’s new mission: D.C. public schools

Bill Turque:

Anthony J. Tata was an Army brigadier general in northeast Afghanistan’s Kunar Province in April 2006 when a Taliban rocket slammed into a primary school in Asadabad, killing seven children and wounding 34.
The vicious attack and others like it by the Taliban left him with a thought: “It struck me at the time that if the enemy of my enemy is education, then perhaps that’s a second act for me.”
Three years later, Tata began his second act by accepting Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee’s offer to become chief operating officer for D.C. public schools, a newly created post that places him in charge of purchasing, food service, technology and other support areas.
After a 28-year career that took him to Kosovo, Macedonia, Panama, the Philippines and the international agency charged with thwarting improvised explosive devices, Tata’s mission is to help bring the District’s notorious school bureaucracy to heel.

Brent Elementary principal Cheryl Wilhoyte was mentioned in this article. Wilhoyte is a former Superintendent of the Madison School District.

Budget/Financing, Community Partners, Curriculum, Governance/Board Decision Making, Parenting, Staff Support, Student Support, Teacher Support

Utah considers cutting 12th grade — altogether

DeeDee Correll:

The proposal by state Sen. Chris Buttars would chip away at Utah’s $700-million shortfall. He’s since offered a toned-down version: Just make senior year optional.
Reporting from Denver – At Utah’s West Jordan High School, the halls have swirled lately with debate over the merits of 12th grade:
Is it a waste of time? Are students ready for the real world at 17?
For student body president J.D. Williams, 18, the answer to both questions is a resounding no. “I need this year,” he said, adding that most of his classmates feel the same way.
The sudden buzz over the relative value of senior year stems from a recent proposal by state Sen. Chris Buttars that Utah make a dent in its budget gap by eliminating the 12th grade.

A good idea.

Budget/Financing, Elections, Events, Governance/Board Decision Making, School Climate

Covington’s bold Kansas City school-closing plan

Yael T. Abouhalkah:

Congratulations to Kansas City School District Superintendent John Covington.
He’s just take the courageous and correct step of saying the district needs to shutter more than two dozen schools in the ever-shrinking district.
From 74,000 students about 40 years ago to 17,000 now, the district has no reason to continue to operate so many buildings at less than 50 percent capacity.
Covington, however, also must get rid of a proportionate number of administrators at the downtown office building, which has been bloated with staff for many years.
If more than 200 teachers are going to receive pink slips in closed buildings, the downtown administrators should share in the pain.
Read The Star story, which includes other aspects of Covington’s proposal.

Related: Money And School Performance:

Lessons from the Kansas City Desegregation Experiment:

or decades critics of the public schools have been saying, “You can’t solve educational problems by throwing money at them.” The education establishment and its supporters have replied, “No one’s ever tried.” In Kansas City they did try. To improve the education of black students and encourage desegregation, a federal judge invited the Kansas City, Missouri, School District to come up with a cost-is-no-object educational plan and ordered local and state taxpayers to find the money to pay for it.

Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil–more money per pupil, on a cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in the country. The money bought higher teachers’ salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.

The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration.

The Kansas City experiment suggests that, indeed, educational problems can’t be solved by throwing money at them, that the structural problems of our current educational system are far more important than a lack of material resources, and that the focus on desegregation diverted attention from the real problem, low achievement.

Former Madison School District Superintendent Art Rainwater served in Kansas City prior to his time in Madison.

This is rather astonishing, given the amount of money spent in Kansas City.

Curated Education Information