Jonah Goldberg:

Here’s a good question for you: Why have public schools at all?
O.K., cue the marching music. We need public schools because blah blah blah and yada yada yada. We could say blah is common culture and yada is the government’s interest in promoting the general welfare. Or that children are the future. And a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Because we can’t leave any child behind.
The problem with all these bromides is that they leave out the simple fact that one of the surest ways to leave a kid “behind” is to hand him over to the government. Americans want universal education, just as they want universally safe food. But nobody believes that the government should run 90 percent of the restaurants, farms, and supermarkets. Why should it run 90 percent of the schools — particularly when it gets terrible results?

April Witt:

When a board appointed by Congress seized control of the D.C. public schools in 1996, its members were eager to give the school system a clean break from its troubled past. They fired Superintendent Franklin L. Smith, replaced him with a war hero, retired Army Lt. Gen. Julius W. Becton Jr., and urged Becton not to bother debriefing Smith.
“I finally decided, ‘This is crazy,’ ” said Becton, who arranged a quiet meeting with his predecessor at a downtown office building. The advice Smith gave was ominous.
“I know you are accustomed to giving orders, turning around and saying, ‘Forward march!’ ” Smith recalled telling Becton. “My only advice is that in this job, you turn around and look to see who is following you. Because every time you think people are following you, they are not. And that includes the inside staff.”
A year and a half later, it was the general’s turn to leave town in frustration, blamed for failing to transform the schools.

Beth Swedeen:

“As a member of the West High community, I want to applaud its success in implementing small learning communities and a rigorous core of courses for freshmen/sophs”

Much more on West high school, English 9 and English 10. Bruce King’s report on Madison West High School’s Small Learning Community Project.

Welcome to the new GREEN CHARTER SCHOOLS NETWORK.
You’re invited to connect with educators, environmentalists, parents, school leaders and others who are creating and operating environmental charter schools throughout the country. Here are examples of more than 40 “green” charter schools.
Wisconsin’s former U.S. Senator and Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson often stressed the importance of education for sustainable living and young people learning about their environment. We must pass on the conservation legacy to the next generation, he said. See “Green Charter Schools in Wisconsin”.
Led by a group of Upper Midwest public school friends, a GREEN CHARTER SCHOOLS NETWORK has emerged to foster the creation and sustainability of high performance public schools with environment-focused programs. We intend to facilitate sharing and networking among educators, students, environmentalists, policymakers and others through electronic communications, a national conference, regional workshops, state-based green school groups, and online connections.

Channel3000:

Columbus voters decided three school district proposals at a special referendum election Tuesday.
Voters approved only one of the three proposals on Tuesday, WISC-TV reported.
Voters approved the first question to set aside $700,000 over 10 years for maintenance costs.
However, voters soundly defeated a proposal to put $200,000 into a 4-year-old kindergarten program for the next three years. That proposal lost by more than 400 votes, WISC-TV reported.
Voters also rejected spending $300,000 over the next five years for technology improvements, including updating district computers.

Andy Hall:

The number of Wisconsin schools failing to meet federal No Child Left Behind standards this year grew from 87 to 95 and includes all four Madison high schools and three middle schools in the Madison, Middleton-Cross Plains and Mount Horeb school districts.
None of the Madison high schools attained the goal for reading proficiency, according to annual data released Tuesday by the state Department of Public Instruction.
Thirty-two Wisconsin schools — all in Milwaukee — receive Title I funds to assist low-income students and are subject to sanctions imposed by the No Child Left Behind law because they’ve missed the same goal for two or more consecutive years.

Jamaal Abdul-Alim has more as does WEAC President Stan Johnson.
Susan Troller:

“I don’t see this as a reflection on the effectiveness of our high schools,” Madison School Board President Arlene Silveira said this morning. La Follette, East and Memorial have been rapped in past years, as well as this year, for not reaching proficiency standards in some categories.
“There are problems with the inflexibility of the testing methods applied to every student. It uses just one way to measure everyone and doesn’t actually measure what they are learning,” Silveira said.
For example, she said, testing students who are just learning English with an English-only test or requiring students with disabilities who don’t perform well on standardized tests to be part of the testing process affects the results, especially in big, diverse schools.

Michael Alison Chandler:

Higher starting salaries, more rigorous teacher training programs and additional support for first year teachers are just a few of the incentives needed to deal with a projected shortfall of more than 280,000 math and science teachers across the country by 2015, according to a group of business, foundation and higher education leaders.
The recommendations were included in a report released yesterday by the Business-Higher Education Forum, a Washington-based group organized to increase U.S. competitiveness. Its release was timed to coincide with the national debate on teacher quality and pay as Congress prepares to reauthorize No Child Left Behind, the Higher Education Act and the budget for the National Science Foundation.

The complete report can be found here.

Jay Matthews:

And then we come to preschools. They have always struck me as beyond any sensible rating system, which is why I was stunned to find a new Web site, www.savvysource.com, trying to prove me wrong.
I know how my wife and I, and our friends, found preschools when we had children that age. We asked each other if we knew of any good ones. That was not, obviously, a very intelligent approach to the problem. But what else could we do? There wasn’t, and there still isn’t, much information out there, other than the yellow pages. And who has time to call or visit a long list of preschools until you find one you like?
The Savvy Source founder, Stacey Boyd, and her team of mostly young mothers like herself think the Internet could be the solution if they plug into it enough worthwhile information — particularly the views of parents who have had children in the preschools being rated. They are supplying parents and school directors with their survey forms and rating schools on philosophy, teaching quality, discipline, safety, tuition and several other factors.

Don Huebscher:

One of the principles of our republic – as I understand it, anyway – is that those in government derive their power from the consent of the governed.
For that reason, and because I’m in the business of informing the public about matters important to them (not counting Paris Hilton, et al), I’m bothered by the fact that the most important decisions about the size of our property tax bills are negotiated in secret.
I was reminded of this frustrating reality last week when negotiators from the Eau Claire school district and the local teachers union met to set the “ground rules” for their upcoming negotiations on a two-year teachers contract. Initial proposals weren’t released because the school board needed more time to prepare.
It’s unclear whether the eventual exchange of initial proposals will be done in public, because the ground rules agreed to by both sides say only the first negotiating session is open; “all subsequent sessions will be closed to the public.”

Dion Haynes:

The school systems making the largest gains are united by some common threads: Government and school leaders have set aside differences and harnessed their power behind reforms, superintendents have brought an intense, persuasive leadership style to the process, and efforts have concentrated on raising the test scores of the lowest-performing students.
But Philadelphia also illustrates how hard it can be to sustain improvements. The superintendent credited with much of the gain, Paul Vallas, is leaving the city this month as budget projections show a large deficit threatening his reform program.

Howard Blume:

Sherry Lansing retired as head of Paramount Pictures two years ago to head a foundation devoted to education and other causes. What if, she wondered recently, other retirees like her wanted to do the same.
Well, not exactly like her and not precisely the same way. She had in mind a lower-budget, in-the-trenches contribution: namely, becoming a teacher.
That plan blossomed into a media event led by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday heralding a public-private partnership to lure retirees into teaching math and science.
The effort was unveiled at Roosevelt High, where Lansing worked as a long-term substitute teacher in math shortly after graduating from college some 40 years ago.
Math, science and special education teachers are at a premium, and state officials estimate that 100,000 teachers will retire over the next decade, about one-third of the teacher workforce. Over that same period, California’s schools will need more than 33,000 new science and math instructors.

Paul Tough:

For the Glynn County Board of Education, Payne’s visit was a big deal. It was back in 2005 that Marjorie Varnadoe, the board’s director of professional development, called to request a presentation from Payne, and this particular Thursday, two years later, was the earliest available date. Principals had ordered Payne’s books and DVDs by the boxload, mostly her ur-text, “A Framework for Understanding Poverty,” and they made the books required reading for their staffs. All over the county, which is on the coast, down near the Florida border, schools held small workshops on class and education, using Payne’s “Framework” as a guide, and teachers sat down together for informal discussions and lunchroom chats about poverty and wealth. When the big day came, the entire school system was given the day off, and by 8 a.m. almost every single teacher and administrator in the county was packed into the Jekyll Island Conference Center, along with the school board, the Chamber of Commerce and various local dignitaries.

Clusty Search: Ruby Payne.

Nelson Hernandez:

Maryland will receive an $18.2 million federal grant to fund the expansion of the state’s nascent charter school program, state education officials announced yesterday.
The grant may allow the state to launch as many as 30 additional charter schools during the next three years, a spokesman for the Maryland State Department of Education said. This would more than double the number of charter schools in Maryland, which began its charter program in 2003 as a way of providing alternative methods of public school instruction.

Elizabeth Green:

A money manager recently sent an e-mail to some partners, congratulating them on an investment of $1 million that yielded an estimated $400 million. The reasoning was that $1 million spent on trying to lift a cap on the number of charter schools in New York State yielded a change in the law that will bring $400 million a year in funding to new charter schools.
The money managers who were among the main investors in this law — three Harvard MBAs and a Wharton graduate named Whitney Tilson, Ravenel Boykin Curry IV, Charles Ledley, and John Petry — are moving education-oriented volunteerism beyond championing a single school. They want to shift the political debate by getting the Democratic Party to back innovations such as merit pay for teachers, a longer school day, and charter schools.

Democrats for Education Reform website.

Jamaal Abdul-Alim:

The military features prominently in Room 412 of the Milwaukee Education Center – a special education classroom that contains some of the school’s most challenging students.
A U.S. Marine flag hangs just beneath the American flag. War books are propped up on a blackboard tray.
The teacher at the front of the class is Stan Loper, 44, a beefy, clean-shaven former U.S. Marine who is built like a tank. He begins the school day in a manner not much different from what you might expect from a drill sergeant, telling his students to use “nice and loud outside voices” as they recite their daily affirmation as members of “Club FAITH” – an acronym for Friendly, Able, Intelligent, Talented and Helpful.
“Who are we?” Loper yells.
“Club FAITH!” the students yell back.
Loper found his way into the classroom through Troops to Teachers, a U.S. Department of Defense-sponsored program that, among other things, offers up to $10,000 to get service members, both active and retired, to serve as teachers in the nation’s neediest schools. About 80 teachers around Wisconsin got their start in the program, which began in 1994.

Amit Paley:

The nation’s students have performed significantly better on state reading and math tests since President Bush signed his landmark education initiative into law five years ago, according to a major independent study released yesterday.
The study’s authors warned that it is difficult to say whether or how much the No Child Left Behind law is driving the achievement gains. But Republican and Democratic supporters of the law said the findings indicate that it has been a success. Some said the findings bolster the odds that Congress will renew the controversial law this year.

There has been some controversy over the quality and rigor of state standards, including Wisconsin’s. Sam Dillon has more. Joanne Jacobs adds a few comments and links to this article.

A Capital Times Editorial:

The new elementary school on Madison’s far west side will not be named for Hmong Gen. Vang Pao, who has been arrested by federal authorities on charges of masterminding a plot to use money collected from Hmong refugees in the United States to massacre Laotians in a violent coup.
Whether the Madison School Board recognizes that fact immediately or in a few weeks — after what board President Arlene Silveira describes as an investigation into the “nature of the charges” against Vang — there is no way that Madison, or any other city, is going to build a “Vang Pao Elementary School.”
That’s the first reality of the moment.
It is not a judgment regarding the guilt or innocence of Vang. The charges against the general, who for many years during the Vietnam War era did the dirty work of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, are serious. But just as there must always be an assumption of innocence, there should also be a measure of skepticism when it comes to federal claims regarding conspiracies.

Much more on the Vang Pao Elementary School here.

Washington Post:

Take it from Isabela Guimaraes, a top D.C. high school student who said she has been there and done that: Cramming for an exam is better than not studying at all, but it’s hardly a best practice.
Once, faced with a test in a troublesome trigonometry class, the Georgetown Day School student tried to fill her head with formulas for hours beforehand, only to find that her brain went blank at the critical moment. On her test, she wrote to her teacher:

The Washington Post:

Donald McCabe says he has the research to prove it: Business students probably cheat the most.
“Students in business already have a bottom-line mentality,” said McCabe, founder of the Center for Academy Integrity and a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey. ” ‘I have to get the job done, and how I get it done is less important.’ That kind of thinking.”

Valerie Strauss:

In libraries, classrooms and coffee shops, with books, computers and calculators, students are trying to squeeze in the last bit of studying for final exams that can spell the difference between a good grade and summer school.
Some schools keep buildings open for late-night, middle-of-the-night and early-morning cramming sessions, while others have official “study days,” when the entire campus is focused on that one task.

LaFollette Teacher Sean Storch:

hen the Madison School Board eliminated two high school athletic director positions to meet state-imposed budget restrictions, the La Follette High School family lost a critically valuable teacher, coach, adviser and school leader. Jim Pliner was modest when he said the surplus move “stings a little bit.”
In another sense, Pliner is quite right to be humble. He is not the only excessively dedicated school leader who works 16-hour days and long weekends trying to hold the school community together.
At La Follette High School alone, add the entire administration, teachers who come in two hours early and leave at least two hours late, and all coaches and extracurricular advisers who volunteer countless hours because they thrive on strengthening their community by nurturing future leaders.

Tony Barboza and Ashley Powers:

Vang Pao, a key figure among those arrested Monday on suspicion of plotting the overthrow of the communist Laotian government, is so well-known in the local Hmong community that his family always keeps fruit, soda and water on the living room coffee table to greet the constant stream of visitors who drop by his Westminster home.
An aging Pao would often regale them with war stories while seated under portraits of the former Laotian king and other royalty — and one of himself in military dress from his younger days.
But in addition to the nationwide image of patriarch and benefactor, Pao also has another reputation — that of a tough leader who worked for the CIA in its “secret war” in Laos during the Vietnam War more than 30 years ago.

Brittany Schoepp and Andy Hall have more, as does Susan Troller.

David Nakamura:

D.C. government officials will launch an extensive audit of the city’s public schools today designed to pinpoint how the system is spending its $1 billion budget and identify areas of waste and mismanagement.
The audit, scheduled for announcement at a midday news conference, comes as Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) prepares to take control of the 55,000-student school system and is patterned after similar studies in other jurisdictions, including New York, St. Louis and New Orleans. But those studies have not always provided clear answers and, in some cases, resulted in new problems created by the auditors.

NPR’s Steve Inskeep:

Some high schools are getting rid of a senior class tradition — naming a valedictorian. They say that lowering competition among students is better for their overall success. Eden Prairie High School in Minnesota will graduate its last valedictorians this year. Next year, exceptional students will receive just an honors diploma.

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Susan Troller:

Like countless thousands of other Hmong who had been American allies during the Vietnam War and who became hunted enemies in their own country when the United States withdrew from southeast Asia, Chue Thao lived as a refugee, eventually finding his way to the United States in 1987.
And like many in Madison’s Hmong community, he credits Hmong military and civilian leader Gen. Vang Pao with first establishing a proud Hmong ethnic identity and then opening the door for his people to build a new life in America, based on education and hard work.
Harrowing experiences of discrimination, war and violent dislocation are the rule for local Hmong families who escaped to America, and they help explain the fervent passion many feel towards naming a new west-side elementary school honoring Vang Pao.

Much more on Vang Pao Elementary School here.

Elizabeth Weil:

According to the apple-or-coin test, used in the Middle Ages, children should start school when they are mature enough for the delayed gratification and abstract reasoning involved in choosing money over fruit. In 15th- and 16th-century Germany, parents were told to send their children to school when the children started to act “rational.” And in contemporary America, children are deemed eligible to enter kindergarten according to an arbitrary date on the calendar known as the birthday cutoff — that is, when the state, or in some instances the school district, determines they are old enough. The birthday cutoffs span six months, from Indiana, where a child must turn 5 by July 1 of the year he enters kindergarten, to Connecticut, where he must turn 5 by Jan. 1 of his kindergarten year. Children can start school a year late, but in general they cannot start a year early. As a result, when the 22 kindergartners entered Jane Andersen’s class at the Glen Arden Elementary School near Asheville, N.C., one warm April morning, each brought with her or him a snack and a unique set of gifts and challenges, which included for some what’s referred to in education circles as “the gift of time.”

Amy Hetzner:

Students and their families should enjoy the pomp and circumstance that come with the upcoming graduation season, Milwaukee-area high school officials said.
They just would prefer a little more pomp and a little less circumstance.
So in the interest of preserving the decorum of their graduation proceedings, a number of school districts have drafted agreements with graduating seniors and their guests outlining behavioral expectations.