School Information System – Page 551 – Curated Education Information

Open Source K-12 Curricula

Curriki is more than your average Website; we’re a community of educators, learners and committed education experts who are working together to create quality materials that will benefit teachers and students around the world.
Curriki is an online environment created to support the development and free distribution of world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them. Our name is a play on the combination of ‘curriculum’ and ‘wiki’ which is the technology we’re using to make education universally accessible.

Thinkfinity:

Verizon Thinkfinity offers the highest quality, standards-based, K-12 lesson plans, student materials, interactive tools and Web sites in seven academic disciplines. A companion professional development program prepares educators to effectively utilize these exceptional resources to support student learning and achievement. Follow the links below to learn about Thinkfinity resources for K-12 Education.

Parents & Math

Joanne Jacobs:

KitchenTableMath and Text Savvy aren’t happy with the Education Department’s advice to parents on teaching children math:

Try to be aware of how your child is being taught math, and don’t teach strategies and shortcuts that conflict with the approach the teacher is using.

There are many reasons parents might be interested in their children’s math program(s), including this discussion of math scores. Math Forum audio / video.

2007 / 2008 $339M+ MMSD Budget: “School Shuffle is Losing”

Andy Hall:

A controversial plan to close and consolidate schools on Madison’s North and East sides appears dead a week before the Madison School Board’s self- imposed deadline for determining $7.9 million in spending reductions.
Four of the board’s seven members plan to vote against Superintendent Art Rainwater’s proposal to save $1 million by closing tiny Lindbergh Elementary and reshuffling hundreds of other students in elementary and middle schools, according to interviews with all board members.
The plan could be revived, however, if board members fail to find a comparable amount of cost savings elsewhere in the district’s 2007-08 budget.

Related 2007-2008 MMSD Budget (07/08 budget is either $339M or $345M (- I’ve seen both numbers used); up from $333M in 06/07) Posts:

“Bitter Medicine for Madison Schools”: 07/08 budget grows 3.6% from 333M (06/07) to $345M with Reductions in the Increase (I”ve also seen a $339M 07/08 budget number)
MMSD $6M Structural Deficit Publicly Revealed
Larger than typical reductions in the annual budget increases
Concessions made in advance of MTI negotiations by a majority of the Madison School Board [alt view]
Salary & Benefit budget increases: The dog that didn’t bark
Active Citizens for Education Budget Proposal Documents
We support a multi-year operating referendum
MMSD spending, staffing and attendance history
Madison area school student population numbers

Budget Cuts: The Dog that Didn’t Bark

Can anyone explain why the discussion of ways to meet the gap in next year?s school budget has not included any mention of the cost of teachers? salaries and benefits and how much they are expected to go up next year?
The district has projected a budget deficit for next year of $7.9 million. To arrive at this figure, the district has to make some assumption about the costs of salaries and benefits for next year, which necessarily implies an assumption about how much those costs will increase. There seems to be no information available from the district that explains that assumption.
In last week’s Isthmus, Jason Shepard wrote that salaries and benefits are slated to rise 4.7% next year. That figure comes from a five-year budget projection that is available on the district’s web site. However, I have been told that that figure is not accurate. The district’s contract with MTI for next year has not yet been negotiated (bargaining commences on April 25). I have been told that the district wants to keep its budget assumptions about salaries and benefits confidential for now, in order to avoid adversely affecting its bargaining position. The idea is to preserve the possibility that the district could do better in its bargaining than it is now assuming.
This explanation does not seem compelling to me, for a couple of reasons. First, call me a cynic, but I can’t imagine that the very competent folks at MTI cannot figure out what assumptions the district is utilizing, and so those the district is leaving in the dark include everyone except MTI. Second, once the district has gone through the agony of the current round of budget cuts, it will have very little incentive to try to do better in bargaining than the result that it has already planned for.
It seems to me that the cost of salaries and benefits is the dog that didn’t bark in the current discussion of budget cuts. The amount by which those costs will go up next year has a significant impact on the amount of cuts that will be required.

(more…)

Math conference: Meeting the Needs of Diverse Learners

From Diana Kasbaum, Mathematics Consultant & School Improvement Consultant, Title I and School Support Team, WI Department of Public Instruction

This is a reminder that the WI Mathematics Council’s Annual Conference (May 2-4) is fast approaching and will provide valuable opportunities to schools and districts using Title I funding for mathematics. As noted below, the Wednesday pre-conference focus is ‘Meeting the Needs of Diverse Learners’ and will focus on ELL, Special Education and Gifted & Talented. The information will be valuable to those who work with Title I students. There are also keynote and sectional presentations about interventions, struggling learners, special education and Title I at the conference on Thursday and Friday.
Additional information can also be found at: http://wismath.org/GL.html.
If you have further questions about Title I mathematics, please feel free to contact me: Diana.Kasbaum@dpi.state.wi.us.

A Comparison of Madison Elementary, Middle & High Schools to other Wisconsin Districts

Madtown Chris:

This blog will contain my personal analysis of Dane County schools primarily based on the state testing data. The posts are really intended to be read sequentially, more or less. So far it’s not really a stream-of-consciousness like a normal blog; rather it’s more of a straightforward analysis.
Why bother with this?
Our friends recently mentioned that they were concerned with the Madison schools among other things and were thinking about moving to a small town like Lodi. Other people we know are putting their kids in private school. I thought that Madison schools might not be in the dismal situation that seems to be the conventional wisdom today but I couldn’t say for sure.
I stumbled upon the State of Wisconsin web site that provides test scores for various grades for every school in Wisconsin and decided to conduct an analysis to see what I could discover about the various schools in the area. Should we move? Should they move? Should you be concerned about the schools? I attempt to answer these questions given numerous assumptions.
Summary of Results
Madison has the best schools in Dane county and among the best in all of Wisconsin.
But, and it’s a big BUT, you have to make sure you’re in the right one. Choose poorly and you get a relatively bad school.
High Schools
Middle Schools
Elementary Schools

Los Angeles School District Review

Joel Rubin and Howard Blume:

The 115-page report — based on previously conducted audits and analyses as well as interviews with more than 100 district employees — describes an operation beset by an almost complete lack of accountability or consequences for poor performance, running from the most senior staff to school principals. Job descriptions are often unclear and evaluations rarely pegged to improved district performance, while communication among various corners of the organization is muddled or nonexistent, the report found.
“The most apparent and inhibiting deficit standing in the way of instructional coherence in LAUSD today is a lack of accountability,” said the report by Florida-based Evergreen Solutions. “Currently, directives are given but few, if any, consequences are enforced for noncompliance.”
Perhaps the overriding message in the report is that past recommendations, made in one study after another, have rarely moved from paper to reality. In an interview, Brewer promised that things would be different this time.

Nonfiction Liberation

In the 1970s, when Ms. Magazine came out, there was a great story about three (heterosexual) couples who got together for dinner: a lawyer, a chemist, a teacher, a lawyer, a manager, and a lawyer, and one of the lawyers looked around the room and said: “This will be great, we’re all lawyers!” (the men were lawyers).
In a similar way, I feel that history books just get completely overlooked in schools. People who talk about writing in the schools, talk about fiction, and people who talk about reading (in the schools) talk as if nonfiction just did not exist. It does not seem to find a place in their thoughts. Literature Rules! (good and bad)…
I know that, in the early days of women’s liberation (1970s version), men would sometimes catch themselves, and say, “or she,” and the like, but it was a real struggle. Now in schools there may be people who mention nonfiction in the same way, but history and other nonfiction have not really moved into the mainstream. There is a glass ceiling for nonfiction so thick, that people standing on it, as a floor, do not even see nonfiction down there waiting its turn.
The Nonfiction Liberation Movement should challenge that Hegemonic monopoly and at least teach educators that to mention writing, without mentioning academic expository writing (term papers), and to talk of reading, without mentioning history, is to be politically incorrect!
Then perhaps the downtrodden brothers and sisters in the History Departments will dare to assert themselves and say, boldly, to the astonishment of their peers, “I am going to assign a complete history book this semester!” and “I am going to assign a serious Extended Research Essay this semester!” A cadre of new Nonfiction Freedom Riders will arise, and our kids will no longer be sent off to college and into the world never having read a complete history book or written one serious nonfiction term paper.
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
Consortium for Varsity Academics? [2007]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org

MMSD Budget Proposal Documents: Active Citizens for Education

Emerson verse to air on radio

Susan Troller writes:
But when you ask the kids why they like poetry, they don’t talk about history or literature. They just say it’s fun.

Vang Pao Elementary School is as local as most MMSD school names

Making school names local, as suggested by Capital Times editor John Nichols, is a sensible goal. Make school names local The Madison School Board had an open nomination process and it held televised public hearings on the naming of the new west side elementary school. We did so to hear the preferences of local people and their reasons for their choices.
Over several months, we sought and received nominations. While we heard from some people living outside the district, we heard primarily from people from the district.
During these months I came to the conclusion that naming a school after Hmong General Vang Pao would meet important local needs, the need to recognize the sacrifices of the Hmong generation who were US allies during the Vietnam War and to explain the Hmong presence in our community which is a direct result of that alliance.
Having heard from many Hmong speakers during the hearings and from my colleague, Shwaw Vang, about the role that Vang Pao played in their lives, I did not feel that substituting a different Hmong name was an option. I could not imagine telling Shwaw Vang that I had decided that he is a more appropriate hero for the Hmong people in the Madison district. I believe that such an action would have shown great disrespect for the very people that we hope to acknowledge are part of our community and play very positive roles in our community.
The tradition in MMSD—rightly or wrongly—has been to name some schools after national heroes, some after locations, some after people who made significant contributions to the state or the district and some after people who have earned respect locally, even though the honorees were not without controversy. To me, naming the school after General Vang Pao fits in that range.

Audit of SAGE program defeated

Amy Hetzner:

A joint legislative committee deadlocked Wednesday on whether to study Wisconsin’s class-size reduction program, ultimately defeating the measure in what Republicans called a partisan maneuver and Democrats hailed as supporting a popular initiative.
In proposing an audit of the Student Achievement Guarantee in Education program, or SAGE, Republican lawmakers characterized it as a routine request for a decade-old program that the governor has recommended spending $109 million on in the next school year.
State Rep. Kitty Rhoades (R-Hudson) also raised concerns about the state Department of Public Instruction’s practice of granting waivers that allow school districts to exceed the 15-student class limit called for in the law.
“The waiver process was not established by statute, nor was it established by the Legislature, nor do we even know what it is,” she said during a hearing Wednesday.

2007 / 2008 Madison School Board & Budget Discussion

The new Madison School Board heard a brief strings performance from some students this evening at a Memorial High School budget hearing.
Left to right: Jacinth Sohi, Beth Moss, Carol Carstensen, Maya Cole, Johnny Winston, Jr., Lawrie Kobza, Arlene Silveira and Lucy Mathiak.

MMSD High School Redesign Committee Selected

According to a report from a recent East High United meeting, where MMSD Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Schools Pam Nash did a presentation on the District’s high school redesign plans, the following eleven people have been named to the redesign committee:
Pam Nash — Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Schools, former principal of Memorial HS. While at Memorial, Ms. Nash oversaw the development and implementation of the “neighborhoods” school restructuring and implementation of the 9th grade core curriculum.
Alan Harris — Principal of East HS, former principal at Black Hawk MS.

Loren Rathert — Interim principal at LaFollette HS, former interim principal at East HS, former MMSD Social Studies Coordinator, and former principal at West HS. While at West, Mr. Rathert oversaw the development and initial implementation of the SLC grant, including the initial implementation of the school restructuring and the 9th and 10th grade core curriculum.
Ed Holmes — Principal at West HS (since fall, 2004), former principal at Wright MS and former assistant principal at West HS. Mr. Holmes has been principal at West during the continued implementation of the SLC grant, school restructuring, and 9th and 10th grade core curriculum.

Bruce Dahmen — Principal at Memorial HS.
Sally Schultz — Principal at Shabazz HS.
Steve Hartley — MMSD Director of Alternative Programs. These include the Transitional Education Program (TEP), the School-Age Parent Program (SAPAR), Operation Fresh Start, the Omega program and many others. Mr. Hartley also oversees the District’s implementation of the state-mandated Youth Options Program (YOP), which requires the District to pay for appropriate educational opportunities for eligible high school juniors and seniors whose needs cannot be met at their own schools. A wide range of students may take advantage of YOP. The District’s YOP implementation and — importantly — policy regarding the giving of high school credit for non-MMSD courses is currently under review and has been discussed on this blog —
https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2006/11/youth_options_p.php
https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2006/09/madison_school_37.php
https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2006/10/latest_madison.php

Lisa Wachtel — Director of MMSD Teaching and Learning Department, former MMSD Science Coordinator. Dr. Wachtel oversees a staff of 30-40 educational professionals across a variety of content areas. Possibly important, when asked by the Superintendent to cut two people from her staff for next year, she chose to eliminate two TAG staff (leaving a TAG staff of only five people for the entire district, if the BOE approves the cut).
L. Alan Phelps — Professor in the U.W. Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis (School of Education) and Director of the U.W. Center on Education and Work. He seems to have special interests in special education and intercultural learning. Here are links to two of his recent papers, one entitled “Using Post-School Outcomes Data to Improve Practices and Policies in Restructured Inclusive High Schools” and another entitled “High Schools with Authentic and Inclusive Learning Practices: Selected Features and Findings” —
http://www.ncset.org/publications/viewdesc.asp?id=1096
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2/content_storage_01/0000000b/80/28/02/91.pdf

M. Bruce King — Faculty Associate in the U.W. Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis (School of Education). Dr. King is a longtime West area parent and was hired by the District to serve as the West HS SLC Evaluator. He is the author of the November, 2005, report on West’s English 10 initiative that has been heavily discussed on this blog — https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2005/11/evaluation_of_t.php

Diana Hess — Associate Professor in the U.W. Department of Curriculum and Instruction (School of Education). Dr. Hess’s special area is social studies education, with a particular interest in training teachers to do discussion-based instruction, especially around controversial issues. Here is a link to an article by Dr. Hess entitled “Teaching Students to Discuss Controversial Public Issues” — http://www.indiana.edu/~ssdc/cpidig.htm

More deck-chair shuffling

From the MMSD:

For immediate release
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Six elementary schools to have different principals
Six elementary schools will have different principals next year in a series of transfers and changes within the Madison School District. The principals who are transferring have been at their current schools from four to ten years.
The list of new assignments, by principal, with current school and length of service:
Deborah Hoffman to Lincoln from Franklin (10 yrs.)
Beth Lehman to Hawthorne from Lincoln (6 yrs.)
Catherine McMillan to Franklin from Hawthorne (10 yrs.)
Michael Hertting to Lapham from a leave of absence
Kristi Kloos to Lake View from Lapham (4 yrs.)
Joy Larson to Allis from Marquette (4 yrs.)
Allis Principal Chris Hodge and Gompers Principal Sherrill Wagner will retire this summer, and Lake View Principal Linda Sweeney will take a leave of absence for career exploration. Hertting will come off a similar leave; previously he led Orchard Ridge for five years. Vacancies will be filled within the next few months.
“We believe these assignment changes are good for the students, the staff, the principals and the district,” said Superintendent Art Rainwater. “Last year, we shifted six other elementary principals after stays of similar length.”
Parents at each of the schools were notified yesterday. The changes will take place over the summer in time for the Tuesday, September 4 start of the new school year. Each of the principals will assist her successor in the transition to make it more effective and efficient.

Constant shuffling of principals damages the effectivenss of the MMSD. All the rhetoric about building relationships amounts to nothing but words, when these actions speak louder.
The superintendent named no principal at Marquette. Apparently, he plans to “consolidate” Lapham and Marquette regardless of whether the board votes for it or not.
With the uncertainty and stress about staff cuts and school closings, the changes could not come at a worse time.
Is the superintendent hell-bent on destroying the MMSD?

Milwaukee School Panel Approves Handcuff Use

Sarah Carr:

After hours of emotional debate, a Milwaukee School Board panel approved a measure Tuesday night that would allow safety aides to use flexible handcuffs to restrain students who demonstrate threatening behavior.
“We’ve been in situations where we’ve had to restrain students for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour,” said Shawn Buford, a safety aide at Custer High School. Buford said he has been out of school three times this school year after being assaulted by students.
But Raphiel Cole called use of handcuffs “a form of pre-institution that you are doing for our kids.”
Cole, who has nieces and nephews in Milwaukee Public Schools, added: “Anything but these handcuffs. You are going to have holding cells for the children, what’s next?”

Report Cards: Waukesha group suggests changes in grading

Amy Hetzner:

After more than two years of study, a group of Waukesha educators has drafted a set of guidelines that challenge some traditional notions of grading.
Among the recommendations:

Removing evaluations of student participation, effort, attendance and behavior from academic results.
Ending the use of zeros for late or unfinished work, a “potentially damaging practice in a 100 point scale,” in favor of other methods that motivate students to complete their assignments.
Allowing homework used for practice or preparation to account for no more than 10% of a grade, with project work getting more weight.
Replacing averages, which allow single grades to skew final class assessments, with medians, which more accurately reflect a student’s overall class performance, in final grades.

School District officials stress that the guidelines, which are in the midst of being distributed to principals and teachers and go before a School Board committee today, are just that – guidelines. They insist the district is not interested in mandating universal changes to how teachers assign grades, often considered among a teacher’s most personal tasks.

I’ve heard from local parents again concerned about the lack of data in some Madison elementary school report cards. Several 2006 posts addressed this issue: Can We Talk 3: 3rd Quarter Report Cards; Mary Kay Battaglia, an Elvejhem Parent via Ruth Robarts and Thoreau parents.

Scholarships available to wind energy conference

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) is pleased to announce the launch of the AWEA Educational Scholarship Fund. In cooperation with the generous support of Suzlon Wind Energy and Vestas Americas, this new scholarship program was created to provide complimentary conference registration for individuals interested in enhancing their knowledge of the wind industry, including full-time students, faculty and staff of K-12 institutions among others who want to attend those interested in attending the WINDPOWER 2007 Conference and Exhibition in Los Angeles, June 3-6, 2007.
The deadline for submitting an application for WINDPOWER 2007 Conference and Exhibition is April 28, 2007.
More details and application here.

NYC Restructures School Governance

David Herszenhorn:

The reorganization is a sort of inversion of the city school administration. Instead of the traditional model in which principals work directly for a superintendent, each of the city’s more than 1,400 principals will choose a “school support organization” to work with their schools, and will pay these groups out of the school’s budget.
“Until now many educational decisions were made outside of the schools and classrooms,” Mr. Klein said during a news conference at Education Department headquarters.
Principals will have a menu of choices, at various prices, Mr. Klein said. At the low end, principals will pay $29,500 to join the so-called “empowerment network,” in which they are largely freed from oversight in exchange for agreeing to meet performance targets that include higher test scores.
At the high end, schools can choose to contract with the Success for All Foundation, a private nonprofit company based in Baltimore that offers a “whole school reform” model at a cost of up to $145,215, depending on enrollment. Smaller schools will be able to contract with the Success for All for as little as $44,694.

Seven Ways Not to Pick a Study Abroad Program

Jay Matthews:

I did not give much thought to my college daughter’s plans to spend her spring semester last year in Chile. I did not study the brochures. I did not ask the study abroad office any questions. Neither my wife nor I had ever studied overseas. We had no stories to tell and no expertise to share. We figured this was one area where we would not be our usual overbearing, interfering selves, and let Katie take care of everything.
She did a fine job. But then she was robbed in Santiago. It was at a Starbucks where she liked to study. A young man approached and asked her what was in an espresso coffee. She thought this was an odd question, but he was good-looking and wasn’t until she finished her answer that she realized he had gotten a hand on the strap of her book bag — with wallet, passport, laptop and lots of other good stuff. In another second he was out the door. She never saw him, or her belongings, again.
I got the call that afternoon sitting where I am sitting now, at my computer at work. Katie was upset, but had already contacted the Santiago office of her study abroad program. They were helping her deal with the police and start the frustrating process of replacing everything she had lost.

Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold

Cornelia Dean:

For decades, undergraduate women have been moving in ever greater numbers into science and engineering departments at American universities. Yet even as they approach or exceed enrollment parity in mathematics, biology and other fields, there is one area in which their presence relative to men is static or even shrinking: computer science.

MMSD Math Review Task Force Introduction and Discussion

The Madison School District’s Math Task Force was introduced to the School Board last night. Watch the video or listen to the mp3 audio.
Background Links:

Madison School Board Discusses Independent Math Review: Audio / Video.
Math Forum Audio / Video
UW Math Professor Dick Askey on the MMSD’s math scores; related: State test scores adjusted to match last year
Isthmus Take Home Test on Curriculum
Connected Math in Olympia, WA
Lee Sensenbrenner on Connected Math
The Politics of K-12 Math and Academic Rigor
New Math Curriculum Draws Complaints

6th Grade Textbooks: Connected (left) and Singapore Math.
UPDATE: A reader emailed this:

I noticed that there were 10 student books in the 6th grade pile for CMP. That was surprising since there are only 8 in publication. Then I looked at the teacher editions and noticed there were 10 as well. There are two copies of both How Likely is It? and Covering and Surrounding.
The statement, “A quick look at the size of the Connected Math textbooks compared to the equivalent Singapore Math course materials illustrates the publisher and author interests in selling these large volumes irrespective of curriculum quality and rigor (not to mention the much larger potential for errors or the lost trees….)” is following the picture in one of the discussions. Taking a look at the Singapore Math website It appears that in addition to the 2 textbooks pictured and student workbooks pictured, there are Intensive Practice books, Extra Practice Books, and Challenging Word Problems books, as well as other resources. Also, the white book on the bottom of the pile appears to be an answer key. There are also teacher guides for 6A and 6B that are not in the picture.
I’m not suggesting the statement above is false, I would just like to point out that the picture being used is not an accurate comparison. I hope you find this information valuable.

Bill Keys Bids Adieu to Ruth Robarts and Shwaw Vang

Long time teacher, former school board member/president and activist Bill Keys spoke last night during Ruth and Shwaw’s retirement discussions. Video | mp3 audio

Math task force named

According to Arlene Silveira, the superintendent named the following members of a math task force:

Merle Price (co-chair): an adjunct faculty member in education policy at Cal State University, Northridge. A former high school principal and deputy superintendendt for Los Angeles Unifed School District.
Jim Lewis (co-chair): professor of mathematics at University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Was department for 15 years and has numerous NSF grants, including funding to improve mathematics education.
Neither co-chair has been directly involved in NCTM-based curricula implementation, in the interest of impartiality.
Other members:
Norman Webb, mathematics educator and evaluator
Martha Alibali, cognitive scientist
David Griffeath, mathematician
Eric Knuth, math education researcher
Mitchell Nathan, cognitive scientist
Ken Zeichner, university teacher education expert
A K-12 teacher and a parent are still to be named.

Arlene added:

No MMSD employee is on the task force, in the interest of impartiality. Lisa Wachtel and Brian S. will serve as point people for the task force if information or data is needed for the district.
The Board will be responsible for setting the direction of the task force and making decisions on “branch points” in the process. The community will be involved.

Americans Believe Writing Skills Are More Important Than Ever

National Writing Project:

While 98 percent of Americans believe that good writing skills are very important to succeed in today’s economy, roughly half believe the quality of students’ writing skills has declined over the past 20 years, a report released by the Berkeley, Calif.-based National Writing Project says.
Two-thirds of the people surveyed wanted more resources earmarked for writing instruction, and almost three-fourths thought writing should be taught to students in every subject at every grade level. Seventy-four percent of respondents thought good writing skills were important regardless of what career students pursue. The study surveyed a representative sample of 1,501 adults in the United States.

Via EdWeek.

“Milwaukee Offers a Wide Array of Specialized High Schools”

Alan Borsuk:

Where there once were 15 large high schools in the Milwaukee Public Schools system, there will be about 50 high schools of all different sizes under the MPS umbrella this fall, and many have untraditional names.
The options outside MPS used to be primarily a handful of large Catholic and Lutheran high schools. Many of those schools still are thriving, but the array of non-MPS options is growing, thanks to the private school voucher program for low-income families and to charter schools authorized by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Milwaukee’s City Hall. New schools in those ranks are also set to open in the fall.
A fresh wave of MPS charter high schools is almost certain to get approval from the School Board on Thursday night. Each of the proposals was approved by a board committee last week and was given preliminary approval by the board months ago.
Here’s a snapshot of new schools coming before the board this week:

Freezing Business Services Budget Would Avoid Closings and More

This is a two-parter.
Part 1
In 2006-2007, the Business Services Department of the MMSD spent $111,286,422, according to page 2-118 of the document titled Department & Division Detailed Budget.
In the previous year’s budget process, the board approved spending of $110,245,079, according to page 10 of the Executive Summary, 2006-2007 School Year.
Why did Business Services overspend by $1,041,343? Did the board approve additional spending beyond what was initially approved in the 2006-2007 budget?
Part 2
In the current budget for next year, the superintendent’s proposed budget would INCREASE the amount to $114,239,659. Simply freezing the Business Services budget would reduce spending in the proposed budget by $2,953, 237 ($114,239,659 minus $111,286,422 = $2,953, 237).
The freeze would avoid micro-management by the board. It simply gives the administration a budget figure, and the administration will be free to operate within the budget.
The proposed plans to “consolidate” schools and move alternative programs would save $769,450. [See Discussion Item C-19 of the document titled Superintendent’s Budget Changes (Reductions to Balance the Budget) 2007-08]

Author’s Poverty Views Disputed Yet Utilized

Ian Shapira:

The Texas-based author says in her book “A Framework for Understanding Poverty”: Parents in poverty typically discipline children by beating or verbally chastising them; poor mothers may turn to sex for money and favors; poor students laugh when they get in trouble at school; and low-income parents tend to “beat around the bush” during parent-teacher conferences, instead of getting to the point.
But many academics say her works are riddled with unverifiable assertions. At the American Educational Research Association’s annual conference in Chicago last week, professors from the University of Texas at Austin delivered a report on Payne that argued that more than 600 of her descriptions of poverty in “Framework” cannot be proved true.
“She claims there is a single culture of poverty that people live in. It’s an idea that’s been discredited since at least the 1960s,” said report co-author Randy Bomer.

Montgomery County School Budget Battles

Miranda S. Spivack and Daniel de Vise:

Some council members said they resent the pressure.
“The suggestion,” Duchy Trachtenberg (D-At Large) said, “is that unless I support 100 percent” of Weast and the school board’s budget plan, “I’m not a friend to education.”
Weast’s budget proposal this year included an increase of more than 7 percent from last year’s budget and totals nearly half of the county’s $4 billion spending plan. Leggett proposed a 6.3 percent increase for the schools. The school system’s budget has increased 31 percent over the past four years, according to a county report.
“I am hard-pressed to believe that in a budget of $2 billion . . . [Weast] cannot find ways to absorb” $20 million, Leggett said recently.
Leggett also has taken a different approach from Duncan to drafting the county budget. Duncan left behind a budget gap that ballooned to nearly $200 million this year, Leggett said, leaving it to him to ask government agencies across the board to scale back their wish lists. The school system, whose annual spending of more than $13,000 per student leads the state, would not be immune, he told Weast in one of their few private meetings.

Grade 5 Strings – How you can help

Grade 5 elementary string students need your help. There are ways you can support the hundreds of ten-year olds who are in Grade 5 strings and this year’s Grade 4 students who would like the chance to take the course next year:
A. Bring your child to play his/her instrument at Thursday’s Budget Hearing – April 19th at 6:00 p.m., Memorial High School Auditorium.
If your child would like to “play” in support of Grade 5 strings, there will be an opportunity to do this at Thursday’s budget hearing to be held in the auditorium at Memorial High School ( http://www.mmsd.org/145.htm). Students from grades 5-12 are welcome. There will be adults present to help coordinate the playing of a few songs from the strings festival. If you want to play, please come at 6 p.m., so we can organize the students.
B. Email the School Board – comments@madison.k12.wi.us – let them know:
1. you support the program for all children,
2. what this course has meant to your child if your child is/has
taken elementary strings,
3. you would like the newly formed school board community task
force on fine arts to have a chance to do it’s work, which
includes:
a. identifying the community’s fine arts education values and
goals,
b. identifying ways to increase low-income/minority
participation in the arts (45% elementary string students
are minority, 35% are low income), and
c. identifying funding priorities for the School Board
C. Speak at the Budget Hearings – 6:30 p.m. – Tuesday, April 17th at La Follette High School Auditorium and Thursday, April 19th at Memorial High School Auditorium:
There are two public hearings next week on the budget – Tuesday, April 17th, 6:30 p.m. at La Follette High School and Thursday, April 19th, 6:30 p.m. at Memorial High School – both public hearings are in the school’s auditoriums. If you come, you need to sign if you want to speak. You can sign in and not speak but say you support the program. Each person who speaks is given 3 minutes.
For nearly 40 years, MMSD has had an elementary strings program. Two years ago, elementary string instruction was cut in half. Last year, Grade 4 strings was cut entirely. This year, Superintendent Rainwater is proposing to cut Grade 5 strings, which would eliminate all string instruction during the school day.
Thank you for your support of Grade 5 strings and a strong fine arts education for our children.

Madison Area School Student Population Numbers

Susan Troller’s recent article on possible school closings mentioned that some Madison Schools have smaller populations than others in the District. I’ve posted a simple table that summarizes MMSD elementary, middle and high school student population numbers with those from nearby suburban communities: Middleton-Cross Plains, Monona Grove, Stoughton, Sun Prairie, Verona and Waunakee. MMSD facility map.
I’d like to add more districts to this table along with links to performance data, then plot it all on a map. Let me know if you have some time to help compile the data.
Karyn Saemann’s article on Monona’s search for new young families adds another twist to the discussion.

Unhealthy Competition: Young kids are training like professionals, and have the injuries to prove it

Regan McMahon:

In March 2005, The San Francisco Chronicle Magazine published my article exploring how the over-the-top youth sports culture was affecting kids and families. Titled “How Much Is Too Much?” it generated tremendous reader response, and two months later I signed a deal with Gotham Books to investigate the issue on a national scale. The results of that research, conducted in the academic year 2005-2006, appear in my book, “Revolution in the Bleachers: How Parents Can Take Back Family Life in a World Gone Crazy Over Youth Sports.”
In the book, I look at the way youth sports have changed in the past 20 years and how those changes have altered the nature of childhood in America and patterns of family life. Many households are putting demanding sports schedules above bonding rituals such as eating dinner together, taking family vacations, spending holidays with relatives and relaxing at home on weekends. Lots of kids are stressed out, and some are getting burned out. I wondered if, for this generation, success at sports was coming at too high a cost. And I came up with suggestions of how parents can bring balance back into their children’s lives.

Finding the Best High Schools

Jay Matthews:

Part Four: Rationing AP:

William Lichten, the distinguished Yale professor emeritus of physics, is at it again, trying to keep U.S. high schools from giving so many Advanced Placement courses and tests to racial minorities and low income students. Too many of those people fail the tests, he says. They should be given something easier to do.
Most of the AP teachers I know think Lichten is out of his depth on this issue. I agree with them. He is a brilliant man who knows the dynamics of the forces of nature, but he does not understand the dynamics of American public high schools. What he sees as harmful failure on AP college-level tests is actually beneficial exercise of flabby academic muscles. Interviews with many students, and some major studies, indicate that struggling with hard courses in high school helps prepare students for the academic demands they will face in college.
Part Five: Grade Grubbing in Scarsdale:

High school teachers often try not to think about the true sources of irritation in their lives. The perfidy of principals and the selfishness of parents can sometimes be too much to bear and are best ignored. Such denial has its virtues. But maybe the faculty of Scarsdale High School has taken it too far. They have decided that the best way to recover the love of learning at their famously competitive campus is to get rid of the Advanced Placement program.
The Scarsdale faculty make their case in their “Proposal for Advanced Topics Implementation,” a plan to create a set of courses deeper, more challenging and less prone to grade grubbing than AP. Their proposal is worth considering. It will appeal to teachers across the country. It also will help destroy the myth that Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses and tests are the major cause of student anxiety in our most affluent neighborhoods because anyone who knows Scarsdale can see that AP is not their biggest problem.

Advice for students: How to unstuff a sentence

Michael Leddy:

Student-writers often believe that the secret of good writing is a reliance upon bigger and “better” words. Thus the haphazard thesaurus use that I wrote about last month. Another danger for student-writers involves the assumption that good writing is a matter of stuffy, ponderous sentences. Stuffy sentences might be explained by the need to make a required word-count, but I see such sentences even in writing assignments of only modest length. Most often, I think, these sentences originate in the mistaken idea that stuffiness is the mark of serious, mature writing.
A writer can begin to unstuff a sentence by looking closely at each of its elements and asking if it is needed. Here is an extreme example:

To begin, it is important to note that the theme of regret is an important theme in “The Road Not Taken,” which was written by Robert Frost, and that evidence for it can be found throughout the entire poem.

“To begin”: Like “to conclude,” this phrase is an unnecessary, empty transition. If a point is coming early (or late) in an essay, trust that a reader can see that. Removing “To begin” involves no loss of meaning.

Madison Literary Club Talk: Examinations for Teachers Past and Present

2.1MB PDF
First, a disclaimer. I am far from an expert on most of the topics which will be illustrated by questions. One of my aims in giving this talk is to let others know about a serious problem which exists beyond the problem of mathematical knowledge of teachers.
I have written about the problem in mathematics and hope that some others will use the resouces which exist to write about similar problems in other areas.
In his American Educational Research Association Presidential Address, which was published in Educational Researcher in 1986, Lee Shulman introduced the phrase “pedagogical content knowledge”. This is a mixture of content and knowing how to teach this content and is the one thing from his speech which has been picked up by the education community. However, there are a number of other points which he made which are important. Here is an early paragraph from this speech:

We begin our inquiry into conceptions of teacher knowledge with the tests for teachers that were used in this country during the last century [the 19th] at state and county levels. Some people may believe that this idea of testing teacher competence in subject matter and pedagogical skill is a new idea, an innovation spawned in the excitement of this era of educational reform, and encouraged by such committeed and motivated national leaders as Albert Shanker, President, American Federation of Teachers, Bill Honig, State Superintendent of Schools, California, and Bill Clinton, Governor of Arkansas. Like most good ideas, however, it’s roots are much older.

It took Wisconsin almost 20 years to adopt this “good idea”.

MMSD School Closing Discussion

Susan Troller:

At the heart of the issue is the fact that the East High School attendance area has more elementary schools and schools with smaller populations than the other attendance areas in the district. Of the 10 elementary schools in the East High attendance area, only Hawthorne has more than 300 students.
By contrast, La Follette and Memorial high schools’ attendance areas have seven elementary schools, and the West High School attendance area has eight elementary schools. The populations of these schools average over 400 students.
But hundreds of staunch fans of the East area elementary schools are rallying to the defense of their schools, saying that they are successful hubs of their communities, and that their small size and close-knit students and staff help engage families across all demographics while improving student achievement.
“People living on the east and northeast sides of the city shouldn’t be punished because the schools in this area were built to be small,” parent and longtime school volunteer Jill Jokela said at a gathering last week.

In Obesity Wars, A New Backlash
A Western town pushed school kids to eat right and exercise more. Did it go too far? ‘Mr. Coca, do you think I’m fat?’

Anne Marie Chaker:

Brittany Burns, 12 years old, has always been on the heavy side. Last year in fifth grade, neighborhood kids started picking on her at the bus stop, calling her “fatty” and “chubby wubby.” Then someone else piled on: Brittany’s school.
In a letter dated Oct. 2, 2006, the Campbell County School District No. 1 invited “select students” to take part in a fitness and nutrition program set up for some of the district’s most overweight kids. At 5 feet 2 inches tall and 179 pounds, Brittany qualified.
Receiving the letter was “embarrassing,” Brittany says. Her mother, Mindi Story, a clerk at an Albertsons supermarket, says she seethed “pure anger” because, she argues, her daughter’s weight shouldn’t be the school’s concern: “I send her to school to learn math and reading.”
Spurred by a local doctor and an enthusiastic school board, Gillette has banned soda and second helpings on hot meals. This year, it included students’ body-mass index — a number that measures weight adjusted for height — on report cards, and started recommending students like Brittany for after-school fitness programs. It even offers teachers the chance to earn bonuses based on their fitness.

Does budget make untrained staff responsible for special ed needs of speech and language kids?

Can anyone explain Discussion Item C-9, which says “Excluding from the cross-categorical special education allocation formula, Students with a Speech and Language Only Disability?” (I attached the district’s explanation below.)
It appears that speech and language clinicians will provide “special education services and supports,” but speech and language clinicians aren’t trained to deliver special education services. Is it a good idea to have untrained staff providing services to kids who need specially trained staff?
Additionally, this change will supposedly eliminate 22.5 FTE educational assistants and 22.5 FTE teachers. Will those positions be special education EAs and teachers?
It appears to me that special education students are going to be badly short-changed and mis-served.
Does anyone have another take on the cuts?

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Referendum Budget and School Closings

From: Thomas Mertz
Subject: Referendum Budget and School Closings
A group of parents and community members are working to convince the Board not to close schools or make other nearly irreversible cuts before offering the voters a chance to pass an operating referendum. You can help. More details here.
Please follow the link, read and sign on.

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Public hearings set on MMSD budget

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007
6:30 p.m. Special Board of Education Meeting
1. Public Hearing on the 2007-08 Proposed MMSD Budget
2. Adjournment
La Follette High School Auditorium
702 Pflaum Road
Madison, WI 53716
———————————————————————-
THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2007
6:30 p.m. Special Board of Education Meeting
1. Public Hearing on the 2007-08 Proposed MMSD Budget
2. Adjournment
Memorial High School Auditorium
201 S. Gammon Road
Madison, WI 53717

College Freshman Not Ready

Sherry Saavedra:

What students learn in high school doesn’t match with what they need to know as college freshmen, according to a national study released yesterday.
Professors believe high school teachers should cover fewer topics with more depth to prepare students for college. That is one of the findings of the survey by ACT, a nonprofit educational and testing organization.
“A really common complaint from (college) faculty is students not being able to put together a complete sentence properly,” said Erin Goldin, director of the Writing Center, which provides tutoring at Cal State San Marcos.
“When students come in here, . . . I try to explain the rules, but they don’t seem to have learned the structure of a sentence.”

ACT Report.
More here and here

“Time for National Standards”

Denis Doyle:

The case for national standards is so self-evidently powerful that I am always surprised that it has to be made. Indeed, for years I have expected national standards to emerge spontaneously, with state after state seeing the wisdom of pooling resources rather than re-inventing standards 50 times over. After all, America is rich and powerful because we are a democratic, continental common market with a shared language and civic and popular culture. With these traits aligned could national standards be far behind?
Oddly enough, the answer is “yes,” they have been and continue to be far behind. But perhaps not forever. The Council of the Great City Schools – an association of 66 of the nation’s urban districts – has endorsed the idea as have selected think tanks like the Fordham Foundation. Equally important, some of the nation’s premier superintendents are calling for national standards (see Ed Week, vol. 26, no. 26, March 7, 2007, The Case for National Standards in American Education, Rudy Crew, Paul Vallas and Michael Casserly). Times they are a changin’.
The principle reason – and the principled reason — opponents have rejected the idea of national standards is to preserve local control. Such a slender reed on which to lean, reminding me of nothing so much as Janis Joplin’s Saturday Night Swindle: “freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose…”

How Safe Is Your Child’s School Bus?
Despite Recent Accidents, It’s the Safest Way to Go

Jonathan Welsh:

Yesterday, a school bus collided with a truck in Brampton, Ontario, critically injuring a 10-year-old boy and seriously harming another child. It was the latest in a series of dramatic crashes that have heightened many parents’ fears about the safety of the yellow buses their kids ride on every day.
In Atlanta last month, an accident involving a motor coach killed six college-baseball-team members, and in Huntsville, Ala., in November, a school-bus crash killed four teenage girls.
Some parents, such as Gwen MacMillan, a Leawood, Kan., mother of three, opt to drive their kids themselves rather than entrust them to a school bus. “I really don’t understand why the buses don’t have seat belts, because it seems like they would make them safer,” says Ms. MacMillan, echoing many parents’ concerns.
Yet accident data and interviews with transportation experts suggest school buses are actually far safer than other forms of school transport, including the family car. Indeed, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, school buses are by far the safest passenger vehicles on the road.
School-bus makers have made several upgrades in the past few years to address everything from driver visibility to handing, maneuverability and comfort. Space-age adhesives replace spot welds and rivets in certain body and chassis parts, and some new buses have Global Positioning Systems and computerized controls that function like the “black box” recorders found in aircraft. Many of the new models represent the first significant changes to school-bus design since the most recent federal safety standard for school buses took effect in 1977.

Wisconsin businesses don’t pay their fair share

From an Associated Press story in the Capital Times by Scott Bauer:

MADISON (AP) – If Wisconsin businesses would pay the national average in state and local taxes, an additional $1.3 billion would flow to school districts, fire departments and other governmental services, a new report concluded.
The study released Wednesday by the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future, a Democratic-leaning group founded in 1994 and based in Milwaukee, concludes that too many of Wisconsin’s biggest profit-makers are underpaying taxes when compared with their counterparts in other states.

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Grade 5 Strings – Letter to School Board

Please write the School Board about what is important to you and your state legislature about funding our public schools. Following is a copy of my letter to the school board on Grade 5 strings:
Dear School Board Members (comments@madison.k12.wi.us),
I am happy to serve as a member of the newly created Fine Arts Task Force for the next year. The second charge to the committee is: ” Recommend up to five ways to increase minority student participation and participation of low income students in Fine Arts at elementary, middle and high school levels.”
I noticed in the Grade 5 strings report you received last week there was no information on low-income and minority student enrollment. Our task force received this specific demographic information at our March 26th meeting along with additional information, so I would like to share it with you, because I think it is important. As the program has been cut in the past two years, the low-income and minority student enrollment (numbers and percentage) has remained strong [but the cuts have affected hundreds of low-income students as the numbers show]. For this school year, 44% of the string students are minority students (47% of all Grade 5 students are minority students), and 35% of the string students are low income (44% of Grade 5 students are low income students). This information is captured in the attached Chart for the this year and the previous two years when the program was offered to students in Grades 4 and 5. I’ve also included information on special education student enrollment. I was not able to access ELL information for the previous years.

Decreasing academic opportunities to develop skills at a younger age is more likely to hurt participation at higher grades for low income and minority students who often lack support outside school to strengthen and reinforce what is learned in school either at home or through additional, private opportunities.
I hope you make the decision to give the Fine Arts Task Force an opportunity to complete its charge before making additional cuts to courses, because these cuts may prove to be more harmful to those students we want to reach than we realize. Also, if changes are made, I hope they are done equitably and with time for transitions. I’m asking this not only for arts education but also for other programs and activities Madison values in its public education. Eliminating elementary strings entirely would be the third year of major cuts in either funds or instruction time for students in this program. This seems to me to be overly harsh, especially when you consider that no extracurricular sports have been cut (nor would I support that).
Elementary strings is one arts course, but it has taught up to 2,000+ children in one year and is valued highly by parents and the community. I have 500+ signatures on a petition, which I will share with the board next week that says: “Madison Community Asks the MMSD School Board: Don’t Cut, Work with the Community to Strengthen and Grow Madison’s Elementary String Program. I have many emails with these signatures, and I’m planning to ask folks to write you about what this program means to them, so you hear their words and not only my words.
As I stated when I spoke before you earlier this year, there are those activities where a mix of public and private funding along with fees and grants might work for the arts and for extracurricular sports, for example. Please consider support of this and please consider helping with transitions toward different approaches.
Thank you for your hard work and support for public education.
Barbara Schrank
P.s. – note, I am speaking as an individual and not on behalf of the fine arts task force.
I would also like to add for SIS readers – I know due to the current financing scheme, the state is not funding public schools adequately nor fairly and is placing a huge burden on personal income and property taxes. I also know there have been cuts in previous years to the arts, increases in class sizes, fewer SAGE classes, etc. Just so you know, that is not the point of this letter. I see the need to work both locally and at the state. I also feel we need to be doing something more than referendums at the local level, and I don’t mean cut or referendum. I think in the areas of extracurricular sports, some of the arts, we may be able to put in place a financial package of public, private, fees, grants – but this takes time and planning and commitment by our school board following public discussions on the topic.
Not all minority children are low income, but by far, the majority of low income children are minority. By not working with the community on funding for this high demand, highly valued program, several hundred fewer low income students are receiving skill-based training on an instrument, which scientific research is showing more and more has a positive effect on other areas of academics.
No where else in this city do so many low-income children have the opportunity to learn how to play an instrument and to do so as inexpensively per student. This is a program where “thinking outside the box” for the School Board could come in handy, so we can continue this academic program as part of the school day for so many children.

The American Freshman – Forty Year Trends

UCLA – Graduation School of Education:

The nation’s college freshmen are more financially advantaged today than they have been at any point in the last 35 years and come from families with a median income 60 percent higher than the national average, according to a new UCLA report that examined 40 years of data from UCLA’s national survey of entering undergraduates at four-year colleges and universities.
The report, “American Freshmen: Forty-Year Trends 1966–2006,”documents the values and characteristics of college freshmen nationwide and is part of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program administered by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.
“As colleges and universities continue their financial policies of increasing tuition and fees, we are seeing direct effects on students that come from poorer families,” said José Luis Santos, UCLA assistant professor of education and an author of the report. “Poorer students alter their choices of whether or not to go to college at all, or choose a college based on financial costs and packages. Students from wealthier families can endure greater fluctuations in ‘sticker price’ than poorer students, and as a result, more students entering college come from homes that are increasingly wealthier than the national median income.”
In 2005, entering freshmen came from households with a parental median income of $74,000, 60 percent higher than the national average of $46,326. This represents a 14 percent increase from 1971, whenstudents’ median family income was $13,200, 46 percent higher than the national average of $9,028.

Waukesha School District Budget Notes and Links

The Waukesha School District’s 2006-2007 Budget ($165,388,112 for 13,063 students = $12,660 – similar per student spending to the Madison Schools. Wisconsin’s average per student spending is just under $10,000.) [1.1MB PDF]
Amy Hetzner:

Only a month after voting to eliminate the equivalent of 62 full-time staff positions to avoid a budget shortfall in the coming school year, the School Board began discussions Wednesday about ways to broach nearly $3.7 million in reductions for 2008-’09.

Waukesha Taxpayer League’s Teacher Salary Study
Mark Belling:

In no school district in Wisconsin is the school tax situation more disgusting than Waukesha. In that community, a demagogic school board and superintendent are threatening draconian cuts including the elimination of all high school sports. Their tactic is anything but subtle. They’re laying the groundwork for a tax increase proposal.
In fact, the Waukesha School District is awash in cash. It has been raising school taxes for decades and is spending thousands more per student than it did only a few years ago. I can solve its budget “crisis” now.

April Board of Education Progress Report – Johnny Winston, Jr.

The month of April brings showers; however, for the Madison BOE it brings new beginnings, budget challenges and community dialogue.
First, regarding new beginnings, let me congratulate Beth Moss and Maya Cole on their election onto the Madison School Board. They will be replacing the retiring Shwaw Vang and Ruth Robarts. Our community should be proud of Mr. Vang and Ms. Robarts’ years of service. I was also re-elected to a second term and look forward to continued public service in this position.
In addition to new Board members, the Board decided unanimously to name the new school General Vang Pao Elementary.
Second, the Madison School District faces a $7.9 million dollar shortfall, which has the Board discussing school closings and consolidations, increasing elementary class sizes in several schools, increasing class sizes across the district in elementary art, music, gym and REACH, and eliminating the 5th grade strings program. After 14 years of being under the state imposed revenue limits, the budget cuts are now reaching the point of cutting into the foundation of our educational values.
Third, several public hearings on the budget reductions will be held throughout the community including on Tuesday April 17th at La Follette and Thursday April 19th at Memorial. Both hearings are at 6:30 pm. The 2007-08 budget will be finalized in late April or early May.
Fourth, the Board voted down an operating referendum proposal that could have taken place in the summer. However, given our budgetary situation I won’t be surprised to see an operating referendum on the ballot in February 2008.
Fifth, the Board approved a Request For Proposals for consultants to conduct a superintendent search, and decided on health insurance contributions for administrators.
Board Committees
A full month of public hearings and Board workshop agendas kept many committees from meeting since my last report. However, the committees have played an important part in analysis and discussion this year.
Finance and Operations (Lawrie Kobza, Chair) continues its work on the citizen’s budget. Long Range Planning (Carol Carstensen, Chair) held public hearings in the community regarding the proposed closings and consolidations.
Communications (Arlene Silveira, Chair) held a special workshop regarding community advocacy efforts regarding lobbying our state government for additional K-12 funding. Community Partnerships (Lucy Mathiak, Chair) received a presentation regarding the process and procedure the UW Foundation uses to engage people to make contributions.
MMSD News
On Monday March 26th, the MMSD held its annual recognition awards honoring district staff, students and citizens who have made significant contributions to Madison’s outstanding schools. Nine students received the Joe Thomas Community Service Award, five teachers were recognized for their work toward the Kohl Teacher Fellowship, and eleven individuals received the Distinguished Service Award. For more MMSD news click here: http://mmsd.org/today/
Thank you for your interest and support of the MMSD.
Johnny Winston, Jr., President, Madison Board of Education
jwinstonjr@madison.k12.wi.us
Want district information? Go to www.mmsd.org
Write to the entire school board at comments@madison.k12.wi.us.
Sign up for MMSD communications at http://mmsd.org/lists/newuser.cgi
Watch school board meetings and other district programs on MMSD Channel 10 & 19.
Ken Syke
Public Information
Madison School District
voice 663 1903; cell 608 575 6682; fax 608 204 0342

School closings critical in board race

John Nichols:
So how did Cole secure her 3,000-vote majority?
The answer would appear to have a lot to do with threats by school administrators to consolidate and perhaps close schools on the isthmus. A few months before the election, the administration floated the notion that budgets could be balanced by radically altering how Lapham and Marquette elementary schools and O’Keeffe Middle School are organized.

It’s Vang Pao Elementary School

MMSD Today:

The Board of Education at its April 9 meeting unanimously voted to name the new elementary school on the far West side for General Vang Pao, a prominent, national Hmong leader.
His name was selected from a list of 39 names that were nominated earlier this year by community members.
Vang led the Hmong in the Secret War against the communists in Laos and Southeast Asia. After he arrived in the U.S. in 1975, he worked to help resettle the Hmong in this country and has been an advocate here for the rights of Hmong people.
The naming process defined by a previously established Board of Education policy also involved holding a public hearing at which dozens of persons spoke to the Board about the various names for the new school. There was also the opportunity for citizens to provide feedback by e-mail and via the Internet.

Workshop on green charter schools

From the Wisconsin Charter Schools Association:

You’re invited to join educators, environmentalists and others at the Environmental Charter Schools Workshop.
Date: May 2, 2007, Wednesday
Time: 9:00am to 2:30pm
Site: MADISON, UW Arboretum
Workshop Program: Unique features of “green” charter schools, integrated environmental curriculum, standards and accountability, charter partners supporting sustainable schools, and implementing a green charter school. Learn more at Green Charter Schools.
Presenters, Partners & Discussion Leaders: JIM McGRATH, founder and former principal of Oshkosh Environmental Charter School; VICTORIA RYDBERG, Teacher, River Crossing Charter School; JULIE SPALDING, Educator, Fox River Academy, and INGRID BEAMSLEY, WCSA Deputy Director
Registration: The registration fee is only $20, which covers the conference, lunch and materials. Send registrant’s name and email address, along with a $20 check payable to the WCSA, to: Wisconsin Charter Schools Association, PO Box 1704, Madison, WI 53701-1704 . Questions? Contact the WCSA at: Tel: 608-661-6946 or Email: info@wicharterschools.org or FAX: 608-258-3413
Links to 40 “GREEN” charter schools.
Read about “Green Charter Schools” in Wisconsin Trails magazine.

The Debate Over Homework: Two Views (3 Letters)

Madison West Student Natalia Thompson:

Re “In Homework Wars, Student Wins a Battle: More Time to Unwind on Vacation” (On Education column, April 4):
As a 15-year-old high school sophomore with a demanding course load, I read your article with interest.
On regular weekdays, my evenings fill up quickly with daily homework assignments and extracurricular activities. My weekends are my opportunity to catch up on projects and essays, review notes and study for upcoming tests — which leaves hardly any time to relax.
Spring break is a rare occasion for me to unwind, reflect, rejuvenate and prepare for the onslaught of work when I return to school. It’s the only way I keep going.

To Close Gaps, Schools Focus on Black Boys

Winnie Hu:

In an effort to ensure racial diversity, the school system here in northern Westchester County is set up in an unusual way, its six school buildings divided not by neighborhood but by grade level. So all of the second and third graders in the Ossining Union Free School District attend the Brookside School.
But some minority students, the black boys at Brookside, are set apart, in a way, by a special mentoring program that pairs them with black teachers for one-on-one guidance outside class, extra homework help, and cultural activities during the school day. “All the black boys used to end up in the office, so we had to do something,” said Lorraine Richardson, a second-grade teacher and mentor. “We wanted to teach them to help each other” instead of fight each other.
While many school districts have long worked to close the achievement gap between minority and white students, Ossining’s programs aimed to get black male students to college are a new frontier.

Lindbergh Parents Vow To Fight For Their School

Channel3000.com:

The largest cuts in the superintendent’s budget are through the consolidation of some schools.
Lindbergh parents were surprised on Monday night to hear the superintendent is backing a plan that would close their school.
They had anticipated their school being taken off the district’s chopping block.
Many of the parents have been fighting to keep up with the information coming from the board, and now they’re hoping the board will listen to their concerns.
Parent Jeffrey Lewis has had three children go to Lindbergh Elementary, but with a budget plan calling for the close of the school, he’s worried about how it would affect all of the students there.
“The district has looked at this from a monetary standpoint, but never have they addressed how this is going to impact equity,” said Lewis. “How will they maintain the opportunity that kids currently have in small schools?

Public Schools Lack a Competitive Spirit

35 Year Michigan Teacher Ken Feneley:

Brendan Miniter’s description of “how school choice was defeated in South Carolina” (“Cross Country: A Day Late,” op-ed, March 31) perfectly describes the power created by a combination of teacher unions and politicians they help elect to office. What gets lost is what’s best for the kids. In this case, it seems, the paranoid worries about the impact of losing students to schools of choice has outweighed possible benefits that might, just might, happen for 200,000 kids in South Carolina.
There is no apparent competitive spirit among the public school establishment types that is leading them to say what I would have: “Go ahead with school choice and I’ll prove you wrong. Just tell me what I need to do and watch what happens. I’ll change, if needed, and soon you will wish you had had left your kids in my school.”
I would not worry about some lean times while my public school made adjustments. I’d tighten my belt, suck up my pride, take two deep breaths and get to work. I, while teaching for 35 years, fully recognized that the union, the Michigan Education Association, could not have cared less about whether I was a good teacher or not. Its only concern was that I not have more than one prep period per day, did not exceed more than the contracted student numbers per class, that I did not do anything the contract prohibited, that I was paid the same as the teacher down the hall regardless of merit, that teaching and other positions were guaranteed regardless, that as many grievances be filed as possible, and, oh boy, that dues were such that the upper level union employees could be paid better than any contracted teacher in a local school.
Instead, we have this perpetual paranoid promotion of the idea that public schools will decline because of competition. And unionists and unions really do have something to fear, I guess, because if that paranoia dissipates, the teachers union loses its reason for existence: the endless promotion of teacher jobs at union pay rates that support the South Carolina Education Association and the National Education Association infrastructure through union dues. They can’t get along without them.
Notice that student education concerns through my subject matter delivery skills was not mentioned once. Unions don’t care. Obviously, neither do South Carolina politicians.

April Madison Board of Education Progress Report

The month of April brings showers, however, for the Madison BOE it brings new beginnings, budget challenges and community dialogue.

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Editorial: Better school board races

Capital Times Editorial – April 9, 2007:
This year’s race for the Madison School Board seat left open by the retirement of Ruth Robarts makes the case for doing School Board campaigns differently.
This newspaper endorsed mother-on-a-mission Maya Cole over champion-teacher Marj Passman because we thought Cole had some stronger ideas about how to encourage innovation by a school district that is often too cautious when it comes to making needed changes.
But we would have been perfectly satisfied if Passman had won.
The truth about the race was that Cole and Passman were two of the finest contenders for the board that Madison has seen in a long time.
Unfortunately, you would not know that from listening to the campaign.

The Changing Face of the MMSD: Why All Madisonians Should Care

From the listserve of Communities United:

MAGNET’s Public Policy committee invites you to attend a discussion on the social and economic impact of the changing face of the Madison Metropolitan School District. Superintendent Art Rainwater (Superintendent of the Madison Metropolitan School District) and Dr. Douglas Harris (UW Assistant Professor of Educational Policy Studies) will conduct the discussion.
Why is this important to you? A community with good schools is a desirable place to live resulting in strong property values and a good economy. The percentage of low income students in the Madison Metropolitan School District has doubled in recent years to 40%. Learn how this impacts our community and how the MMSD is keeping Madison’s schools strong in the face of a dramatic increase of students with greater learning needs.
Superintendent Rainwater has served as the superintendent of the Madison Public School System since 1999. He has over 40 years of experience in education serving as a teacher, principal, and administrator in both public and private schools. Professor Harris is a UW Assistant Professor of Educational Policy Studies and Affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty. He is a well-published economist whose work explores factors affecting student educational outcomes, the role of families and neighborhoods in education, and the way in which educational outcomes affect the long-term labor market success of students and the competitiveness of national economies.
We invite anyone with an interest or curiosity to attend.
When: Wed, April 18th
Time: Registration: 6:00 – 6:30p.m. Program: 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
Where: McDaniels Auditorium in the Doyle Building at 545 W. Dayton St.
Cost: Free
RSVP: director@madisonmagnet.org

Are Wisconsin taxes too high, or just property and personal income taxes?

As residents scramble to complete their taxes by this year’s deadline, April 17, there are two contrasting messages coming from Wisconsin’s corporate community on the subject of taxes and economic prosperity.
One of those messages dominates political discussion. It’s easy to state, easy to understand, and easy to put on bumper stickers: Cut My Taxes.
Its chief proponent is Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC), the Madison-based big-business lobby that for years has focused its legislative agenda on plaintive appeals for a reduced tax burden.
Business boosters disagree, but it’s possible to get to the truth
Jack Norman, in Isthmus, April 4, 2007
Are Wisconsin taxes too high?

How much would the state spend to fund education adequately?

The school advocates who rightfully point to the state’s inadequate funding of education want the legislature to adopt Assembly Joint Resolution 35 or the identical Senate Joint Resolution 27. The resolutions call for the following:

1. Funding levels based on the actual cost of what is needed to provide children with a sound education and to operate effective schools and classrooms rather than based on arbitrary per pupil spending levels;
2. State resources sufficient to satisfy state and federal mandates and to prepare all children, regardless of their circumstances, for citizenship and for post−secondary education, employment, or service to their country;
3. Additional resources and flexibility sufficient to meet special circumstances, including student circumstances such as non−English speaking students and students from low−income households, and district circumstances such as large geographic size, low population density, low family income, and significant changes in enrollment;
4. A combination of state funds and a reduced level of local property taxes, derived and distributed in a manner that treats all taxpayers equitably regardless of local property wealth and income . . .

I dug around briefly in various Web sites (WAES and IWF) on these or similar recommendations, and I cannot find a fiscal estimate of whether or how much these changes might increase state aids, how any increase might be funded, and whether property taxes for education would fall. Does anyone have some figures?
If better funding requires the state to raise more money, the legislature should look at the falling proportion of state tax collections from the corporate income tax, raise the corporate income tax to a generate a fairer proportion of state revenue, and put the money into education.

Cut our schools some slack

WSJ Editorial – The next time you’re shocked by the announcement of yet another school referendum in your community, don’t tee off on the school board.

Laptops vs Learning

David Cole:

“Could you repeat the question?”
In recent years, that has become the most common response to questions I pose to my law students at Georgetown University. It is usually asked while the student glances up from the laptop screen that otherwise occupies his or her field of vision. After I repeat the question, the student’s gaze as often as not returns to the computer screen, as if the answer might magically appear there. Who knows, with instant messaging, maybe it will.
Some years back, our law school, like many around the country, wired its classrooms with Internet hookups. It’s the way of the future, I was told. Now we are a wireless campus, and incoming students are required to have laptops. So my first-year students were a bit surprised when I announced at the first class this year that laptops were banned from my classroom.
I did this for two reasons, I explained. Note-taking on a laptop encourages verbatim transcription. The note-taker tends to go into stenographic mode and no longer processes information in a way that is conducive to the give and take of classroom discussion. Because taking notes the old-fashioned way, by hand, is so much slower, one actually has to listen, think and prioritize the most important themes.

I Think There is Room For Improvement – I Look Forward to the new Board

There is room for improvement at the local level in this year’s budget process, and I’m hoping the School Board carefully examines the entire budget. By room for improvement, I do not mean “no new taxes” for schools. As part of this spring’s budget process, I hope the School Board looks out several years and begins to make decisions and plan with several years in mind.
I also believe it was irresponsible for the Superintendent to put school closings and increased class sizes on a cut list while leaving in nearly $2 million for extracurricular activities – that’s about 40 teachers in the classroom. I feel the proposed TAG cut was spiteful as was a third year of major cuts for elementary strings at the same time a Community Fine Arts Task Force begins its work. So, yes, I do hope our School Board looks for options, such as saving transportation costs on the near east side as Lucy Mathiak discovered. Also, to keep the arts and sports, we may need to look at multiple sources of funding but some time is needed for discussions, planning and transitions.
If the School Board begins planning now for several years, incorporating this year’s budget and subsequent budgets with strategic financial planning, we’ll have a better chance of laying the groundwork for an operating referendum later this year or early 2008, but we have to begin now. I’m confident we can successfully pass operating referendums.
Lastly, the election was last Tuesday, and the results were decisive, so why aren’t the folks who care so much about public education moving on? I and others were sad when our candidate did not advance in the February primaries, but we did not carry on about it nor wring our hands over the poor media coverage, which many felt there was.
There are more important things to work on, in my humble opinion – learning how to work together might be a place to start since I still believe we all value excellent public education, which is a great starting point from my perspective. Sadly, I am concerned there are those who would rather spend their time labeling those who don’t agree with them as CONSERVATIVES – start shaking in your boots. I prefer not to waste my energy on such foolishness and fear mongering, because I don’t see how that puts the kids first and gets us where we need to be for them.

No Child Left Behind Renewal Discussion

Sam Dillon:

Now, as the president and the same Democrats push to renew the landmark law, which has reshaped the face of American education with its mandates for annual testing, discontent with it in many states is threatening to undermine the effort in both parties.
Arizona and Virginia are battling the federal government over rules for testing children with limited English. Utah is fighting over whether rural teachers there pass muster under the law. And Connecticut is two years into a lawsuit arguing that No Child Left Behind has failed to provide states federal financing to meet its requirements.
Reacting to such disputes in state after state, dozens of Republicans in Congress are sponsoring legislation that would water down the law by allowing states to opt out of its testing requirements yet still receive federal money.
On the other side of the political spectrum, 10 Democratic senators signed a letter last month saying that based on feedback from constituents, they consider the law’s testing mandates to be “unsustainable” and want an overhaul.
“It’s going to be a brawl,” said Jack Jennings, a Democrat who as president of the Center on Education Policy has studied how the law has been set up in the 50 states. “The law is drawing opposition from the right because they are opposed to federal interference and from the left because of too much testing.”

Kindness crosses county line: Plight of cash-strapped team sparks Messmer to action

Amy Hetzner:

Messmer High School is a central-city Catholic school with about 85% of its student body qualifying for federally subsidized meals. Waukesha West High School is a suburban public school where only about 6% of the students live in low-income households.
But when students in Messmer’s National Honor Society heard about the nearly $10,000 fund-raising challenge facing West’s Academic Decathlon team, they saw only fellow students in need.
“Ten thousand dollars to these kids – National Honor Society kids from Messmer, inner-city kids – it just blew them away,” said Bob Monday, a volunteer business teacher at the Milwaukee school.

Thank you from Marj

From Marj Passman’s Web site:

Thank you Madison voters:
This campaign began, in my mind, for the children of Madison. ALL the children. It wasn’t about the parents – let me repeat – it was about our young people. Every single person who came on board and worked their hearts out did it for the same reason. We needed to bring education back to its educators – to its teachers, curriculum designers, staff developers – back to its supporters – the people who care about every child.
This is called Public Education – not partnership with some ethereal, intangible, nether world of ill defined private saviors who aren’t exactly knocking down the doors at Doyle with offers of pots of gold for our struggling school system. It is about us – all of us – working with parents, not against them, working with teachers, not against them, working with administrators and not against them, working with the city, state and federal government not to just get back some money into our striggling schools BUT for what is our right, for PUBLIC EDUCATION. This money is our due- it is owed us – it is not a generous luxury.
We “pay taxes to support the role public education plays in civilizing and enriching our society.” What does that mean? Public education means what is best for all of us – not some of us – it means opportunity, it means mobility, it means our schools must be the “great equalizer” in our country. We cannot and should not educate some of children over others – our schools must be there for every child – for the voiceless and well as the angry few – for the children of poverty – for the children struggling with just the moment to moment functions of daily life. If we lose sight of the hungry, struggling children we lose our souls.
I believe we define ourselves by how we treat those less fortunate than ourselves and that the way we educate ALL of our children will determine what kind of city, community, democracy we have tomorrow.
To all of the caring, decent, humane people who supported my campaign You all mean so much to me – you have added so much to my life . I thank you so much. I wouldn’t have missed this for anything.
Marjorie Passman
April 5, 2007

Discussion of contributions to the MMSD

On Monday, April 9, 2007, the board Committee on Community Partnerships, chaired by Lucy Mathiak, meets at 5:00 p.m. and has an agenda item that reads, “Process and procedure the University of Wisconsin Foundation uses to engage people to make contributions to the University of Wisconsin.”
I’m delighted to see the topic on the agenda, because I have always wondered why people give millions to universities and little to public schools. A person’s university education might have been very important and the contributions show their appreciation, but they couldn’t have succeeded at a university without the foundation of earlier education, which needs their contribtuions as badly as any university.
I hope the discussion produces some positive ideas for the MMSD to use in approaching potential donors.

Tax Foundation: State & Local Tax Burden Hits All-Time High

Curtis Dubay [430K PDF]:

State and local taxes will consume a record-
setting 11 percent of the nation’s income in 2007. Since 1986, the state-local tax burden had never fallen below 10 percent or risen
above 10.9 percent. Figure 1 charts the course of the nation’s state-local tax burden since 1982.
This estimate of state-local tax burdens at an all-time high comes at a time when personal and corporate incomes have risen for almost
four consecutive years, sometimes at a remarkable pace. Along with low unemployment, these rising incomes have boosted tax collections substantially and helped most states meet their revenue expectations with ease since 2004.

Wisconsin ranked 6th: Tax Burder as a % of Income = 12.3%; 4,736 / 38,639. Via TaxProf.

Learning About the Past: Where history isn’t bunk

The Economist:

Across the world, approaches to teaching children about their nation’s past are hotly contested—especially at times of wider debate on national identity.
IF THE past is a foreign country, the version that used to be taught in Irish schools had a simple landscape. For 750 years after the first invasion by an English king, Ireland suffered oppression. Then at Easter 1916, her brave sons rose against the tyrant; their leaders were shot but their cause prevailed, and Ireland (or 26 of her 32 counties) lived happily ever after.
Awkward episodes, like the conflict between rival Irish nationalist groups in 1922-23, were airbrushed away. “The civil war was just an embarrassment, it was hardly mentioned,” says Jimmy Joyce, who went to school in Dublin in the 1950s.

Software’s Benefits On Tests In Doubt

Amit Paley:

Educational software, a $2 billion-a-year industry that has become the darling of school systems across the country, has no significant impact on student performance, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Education.
The long-awaited report amounts to a rebuke of educational technology, a business whose growth has been spurred by schools desperate for ways to meet the testing mandates of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law.
The technology — ranging from snazzy video-game-like programs played on Sony PlayStations to more rigorous drilling exercises used on computers — has been embraced by low-performing schools as an easy way to boost student test scores.

No Child Left Behind testing eased for more students

AP & Amy Hetzner:

The Bush administration is letting more children with disabilities take simplified tests under the No Child Left Behind education law.
The change, outlined in final regulations Wednesday, would triple the number of children who can take tests that are easier than those given to most students under the 2002 law.
Roughly 10% of special education students – those with the most serious cognitive disabilities – currently can take simplified, alternative tests and have the results count toward a school’s annual progress goals.
Under the new rules, about an additional 20% of children with disabilities could take alternative tests and have those count toward a school’s progress goals.

“Let’s put the kids first”

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial:

The new board must not chase away Andrekopoulos. He has worked indefatigably and creatively to transform MPS into an effective system of schools.
We have referred to one board faction as the reform wing and the other as the union wing. Those labels best describe what unites them but not necessarily what divides them. The reform side is not necessarily anti-union, and the union side is not necessarily anti-reform.
Bonds, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, may find board support for his call for a more rigorous curriculum. We backed Bonds but hope he doesn’t take the board down the policy cul-de-sac of renewed busing. It won’t lead to more integration, his stated goal, for lack of white students to go around.

Tuesday’s Election: Mandate for new thinking

Jason Shepard writes: Maya Cole’s victory Tuesday night over Marj Passman is yet another sign that voters expect new ways of thinking from the seven elected citizens who govern the Madison Metropolitan School District.

Thank You For Re-Electing Me

Dear Friends:
Thank you for your generous support of my campaign bid for re-election to the Madison School Board. Whether your support was financial, displaying a yard sign, or voting and encouraging others to vote, I truly appreciated your help.

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Capitol press conference on school funding

From Tom Bebee, Institute for Wisconsin’s Future:

Wisconsin Association for Excellent Schools (WAES) and other school-funding reform advocates will be gathering at the State Capitol in Madison on Thursday, April 19, to support Senate Joint Resolution 27 and Assembly Joint Resolution 35 asking the Legislature to change Wisconsin’s school-funding system.
We need you to attend, if possible, and support these important resolutions.
A press conference will begin at 10 a.m. in the Assembly Parlor. This would also be an excellent opportunity to set up meetings with your legislators or their aides and talk about school funding, the joint resolution, and reform. If you need help, let me know. It would be a good idea to visit the WAES website at http://www.excellentschools.org to study up on the resolution and its intent before you go.
If you plan to attend, please let me know by responding to this e-mail so we can make sure that all groups and organizations in attendance are recognized. Resolution sponsors Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts and Sen. Roger Breske are hosting the press conference.

Cake and more at election night parties for the Madison school board

Isthmus’ Kenneth Burns ate cake on election night and took in the festivities.

Federal Study Finds No Edge for Students Using Technology-Based Reading and Math Products

From the Education Week Web site:

A major federal study of reading and mathematics software has found no difference in academic achievement between students who used the technology in their classrooms and youngsters who used other methods.
The $10 million study of 15 educational software products is the most extensive federal study yet to follow methods that the U.S. Department of Education considers scientifically rigorous.

Madison BOE elections 2007: Voters 2, MTI 1

The Isthmus article Blame for the media illustrates a long-obvious truth: John Matthews is Madison’s Mayor Daley, a ward boss of our very own, and he gets very angry when his political control slips.
Matthews wanted to control the selection of Board members for three seats in 2007. Odd-year elections are especially important to Madison Teachers Inc. because odd years are the years in which the 2-year MTI-MMSD contracts are negotiated.
This time Mr. Matthews failed. He couldn’t find a suitable candidate to run against Johnny Winston, Jr., so he labeled and publicly berated him for not being Bill Keys. In Mr. Matthews’ mind that failure left only two seats in play. He won with Beth Moss and lost with Marj Passman.

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MTI points to inadequate coverage as a reason for Passman’s defeat

Blame for the media
“Half isn’t enough,” John Matthews, the head of Madison Teachers Inc., was saying shortly after Marj Passman conceded her school board loss to Maya Cole and Beth Moss claimed victory Tuesday night at Fyfe’s.
Matthews, whose union played a key role in both candidates’ races, says Passman’s victory was needed to provide a greater push for the Legislature to increase school funding.
Thoughts?

Cole, Moss and Winston – Newly Elected and Re-Elected to the MMSD School Board

Tuesday, April 3rd Madison votes returned Johnny Winston, Jr., to the School Board and elected two new board members – Maya Cole and Beth Moss.
Election of Cole, Moss may ease thoughts of school closings As candidates, both Cole and Moss have said they would look for other places to make cuts rather than disrupt families and neighborhoods through school closings.
School Board winners to pick superintendent – In winning her second bid for a School Board seat after losing to Arlene Silveira by 79 votes last year, Cole is the third candidate to be elected in three years who has called for radical change in the way the board does business, joining board members Lawrie Kobza and Lucy Mathiak.
“I feel like my message resonated with people all over the district,” said Moss, who co-chaired a grassroots effort to help pass last year’s successful school funding referendum.

Extra effort could garner two diplomas upon graduation

From a story by Shawanna Robinson in the Daily Journal, Park Hills, Missouri:

Farmington High School Senior Jake Goff will graduate from Farmington High School this May with not only his high school diploma, but an Associate of Arts Degree from Mineral Area College as well.
He is the first of what the district hopes will be many students accomplishing such a feat. The Early College Pathway Program recently received a stamp of approval by both the Farmington R-7 Board of Education and the Mineral Area College Trustees.
The Early College Pathway Program is one where the Juniors and Seniors enrolled would finish their senior year with their high school diploma and either a transcripted 42 (credit hours) general education block from Mineral Area College transferable to most Missouri four-year universities or, such as Goff, with a 62 (credit hours) Associate of Arts degree from Mineral Area College. Goff will actually graduate with 64 credit hours this May.

High School “Better Newspaper Contest”

From the Wisconsin Newspaper Association via the DPI newsletter of State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster:

Student journalists are invited to enter their best work, published in their school newspapers during the 2006-07 academic year, in the high school “Better Newspaper Contest,” sponsored by the Wisconsin Newspaper Association (WNA).
The entry deadline is April 16 for awards to be presented in May at end-of-year assemblies. The contest period has been shifted from previous years to allow awards to be presented during the current academic year.
The contest annually recognizes student achievements in high school newspapering. The panel of judges from Wisconsin’s newspapers includes publishers, general managers, editors, reporters, photographers, copy editors and other staffers.
Any student enrolled in a Wisconsin public, parochial or private senior high school may enter. Information is available at WNA Student Newspaper Contest.

Cole’s vision makes her best fit for board – Vote Today

Vote Today – I’m endorsing Maya Cole for Seat 5.
A letter to the editor
On Tuesday, please join me in voting for Maya Cole.
For many years, I’ve been an active advocate for Madison’s schools, working on campaigns and task forces, as well as a volunteer in schools and a PTO officer. I’ve been encouraged by the substantive discussions the School Board has undertaken this past year with new perspectives, but there is more work to be done.
With annual budget cuts in the millions of dollars, doing business as usual jeopardizes our neighborhood schools, puts academic excellence at risk and alienates the community by pitting parent against parent.
This short-term planning cannot continue, and Maya Cole won’t let this happen.
As a board member, she will work with the School Board to develop a long-term plan.
Cole will also work with and be open to ideas from teachers, parents, students and the wider community. Her openness, innovation and fresh perspectives will help strengthen Madison’s excellent schools.
I support Maya Cole for Seat 5 on the School Board.
Barbara Schrank
Madison
Published: April 2, 2007 http://www.ci.madison.wi.us/clerk/

Ruth Robarts: Let’s take school closings off the table, start the planning needed for another referendum

Ruth Robarts, who supports Maya Cole and Rick Thomas for School Board, wrote the following letter to the editor:
I voted no on Carol Carstensen’s proposed three-year referendum for several reasons.
First, a referendum requires careful planning. Two weeks’ notice did not allow the School Board to do the necessary analysis or planning.
Second, the referendum is not part of a strategic long-range plan. The district needs a 10-year strategic plan, and such a plan must address the structural deficit created by state revenue limits. It must also bring businesses, community organizations and the city of Madison into the solution. While referendums for operating dollars will be necessary, without planning they are of limited use.
Third, relief from the state revenue limits is not on the horizon. Gov. Jim Doyle has no proposal for eliminating the revenue limits. Madison’s state representatives recommend that we focus our lobbying efforts on small -cale, stopgap funding issues.
There are some steps that the School Board can take to increase public confidence and pass operating budget referendums in the future.
1. Direct the administration to find the best ways to use the Doyle Building to generate revenue for the district. In 2006, the board defeated this proposal (Kobza and Robarts were the only yes votes.) Using the building as a revenue-generating asset could also move administrators to school buildings and help keep the schools open.
2. Negotiate changes in health insurance coverage for teachers to minimize future costs. Administrators and other unions have recently made such changes without losing quality of health care.
3. Take the closing/consolidation options presented by the Long Range Planning Committee off the table. Look for more focused approaches to saving money, such as moving the Park Street Work and Learn Center into an under-enrolled elementary school as we did in the past when we housed WLC at Allis School.
4. Invite the community to join in a strategic planning process as soon as possible. As long as the state and federal governments shirk their responsibilities and the state over-relies on residential property taxes to pay for essential local services, there will be a gap between the tax funds available and the cost of the high-quality, comprehensive K-12 school system that we want. We need a plan as badly as we need the elimination of the revenue limits and a progressive tax to adequately fund our schools.
Ruth Robarts
member, Madison School Board
Published: April 2, 2007

Keep the board functional: Vote Cole

A year ago, I joined other volunteers to help with the recount of the votes in Maya Cole’s slim loss to Arlene Silviera.
After the recount had been going for a while (I can’t remember whether it was the second or third day), the process clipped along smoothly with volunteers and the city clerk’s staff bonding with somewhat dark humor about the tediousness of the effort.
All of a sudden, someone helping Arlene harshly and loudly blurted out, “Those people can’t touch the ballots!” Someone helping Maya had handed a pile of ballots to one of the clerks, as everyone had been doing for the last day or two.
The room fell silent, as rooms do in reaction to something unpleasant.
Maya calmly stepped over to the person and matter-of-factly said, “Marj, we don’t want this to become antagonistic. We’re just being certain that all of the ballots were counted correctly.” Everything returned to normal.
The incident starkly shows the styles that Marj Passman and Maya Cole will bring to the school board if elected. I prefer Maya’s.
As I said before, the personalities of Bill Keys, Bill Clingan, and Juan Lopez reduced the board to ineffectivenss.
No one should want to put a person on the board with an interpersonal style that will again cripple its efforts.

Academy makes the improbable possible for teens

A column by Miami Herald writer Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Words tumble to mind by way of description. Words like desolate. Words like tough. Words like hard and mean and grim and sad. Words like dead. Bail bonds and liquor stores are what passes for industry here. Ragged row houses, many boarded and abandoned, crowd one another like strangers in a bus shelter.
Now consider the girl who goes to school here. Danielle Branche, 16, is tiny, has a pretty smile and speaks with self-possession about her dreams.
”When I graduate, I want to go to either Antioch College in Ohio or Point Park University in Pittsburgh, and I want to get my bachelor’s in both dance and business management so I’ll be able to open my own dance company,” she said.
Consider the neighborhood. Consider the child. If they seem not to fit each other, well, that’s the point. Welcome to St. Frances Academy. Welcome to What Works.

Record year for school referendums

Andy Hall reports on the record 52 of 425 WI school districts that on Tuesday will ask voters to approve referendums to borrow money for construction or for permission to raise taxes above the amounts allowed by the state’s revenue limits.

Ruth Robarts Deserves a Medal

Ruth Robarts’ roller coaster
DOUG ERICKSON 608-252-6149
derickson@madison.com
Ruth Robarts steps down April 23 after 10 years on the Madison School Board, and, no, she’s not expecting a cake from her colleagues.
Although Robarts first ran as a facilitator – “That didn’t work out so well,” she says now with a guffaw – she became known more as a budget hawk and contrarian.
Along the way, she’s been praised as a straight-shooting maverick and criticized as an obstructionist who just likes to carp.
She chose not to seek re- election. Her replacement – Maya Cole or Marjorie Passman – will be elected Tuesday.
Robarts’ legacy differs markedly, depending on who’s talking, but most agree she traveled an interesting route from a team player to an outsider to a can’t-be-ignored-because-the- voters-like-her force.
She finishes her board service less lonely due to the elections in recent years of like- minded colleagues Lawrie Kobza and Lucy Mathiak. But Robarts cautions that in the last decade, it has become more difficult for candidates not endorsed by the teachers union or tied to the board majority to get elected.

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Do We Need to Close Schools to Close the Budget Gap? – Lucy Mathiak Does Not Think So!

Lucy Mathiak has posted a piece on Isthmus’ The Forum
As a board member, my questions focus on whether we need to close schools, or we might restructure how we currently operate low enrollment schools to come close to that $769,000 in savings.

Why the Union Vote?

via a reader email:

I believe that people can do much more as a group coming together around common causes than is possible to do individually – from unions to religions. But problems arise when people start identifying with the group itself. We give away our individual control in lieu of having someone or something that we think is greater than ourselves make decisions for us. It becomes tribalism.
I’ve really worked at researching the views of the candidates for the school board race. But I have to admit I have not had time to become informed about some of the other races in the April 3 election. Similarly, many people in Madison who don’t have kids in school (that’s most of Madison) aren’t up on the School Board race.
For these reasons I think voters turn to groups such as the teachers union (MTI) or politicians’ endorsements of candidates.
My husband and I are dissatisfied with the current situation for students in MMSD. There are long standing problems with finances, and growing problems with school behavior and education. Probably all of us know at least one family that’s left the public schools or even Madison because of this. We think it’s time for change.

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Ruth Robarts: Cole is just what the School Board needs

Dear Editor: My ten years on the Madison School Board have convinced me that the board’s highest priorities must be new ideas and new community partnerships. Maya Cole gets my vote for Seat 5 because innovation is her top priority and she has the energy to bring the community together to plan for the future.
As a community and school activist, Maya has learned to listen and build consensus. She is an independent and original thinker at a time when the board needs exactly that.
Inadequate state and federal funding for public schools and overreliance on residential property tax revenues are very significant problems. However, we cannot postpone innovation until those problems are solved.
We must start today by encouraging innovative programs, including charter schools, and enlisting business and community allies in new funding partnerships. We must evaluate curriculum in ways that are understandable and be willing to change when the student results are not as promising as we had hoped.
Together we must envision a high-achieving, stable school system in 2020. A shared vision of the future of our schools will help us agree on the changes necessary at the state and federal level as well as the changes necessary here and now.
Maya Cole understands innovation and can provide critical leadership during these difficult times. Please join me in voting for her.
Ruth Robarts, Member, Board of Education, Madison
A letter to the editor

Hasty Vote Wisely Avoided

“If we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it right,” board member Lucy Mathiak argued for the majority of the board in rejecting longtime board member Carol Carstensen’s push for the referendum.
School Board Member Mathiak has also detailed a number of options other than closing near eastside schools, which she does not support.
WI State Journal Editorial

An open letter to the Superintendent of Madison Metropolitan Schools

Dear Mr. Rainwater:
I just found out from the principal at my school that you cut the allocations for SAGE teachers and Strings teachers, but the budget hasn’t even been approved. Will you please stop playing politics with our children education? It?s time to think about your legacy.
As you step up to the chopping block for your last whack at the budget, please think carefully about how your tenure as our superintendent will be viewed a little more than a year from now when your position is filled by a forward-thinking problem-solver. (Our district will settle for no less.)
Do you want to be remembered as the Superintendent who increased class size as a first step when the budget got tight? Small class size repeatedly rises to the top as the best way to enhance student achievement at the elementary level. Why would you take away one of best protections against federal funding cuts mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act? Rather than increase pupil to teacher ratios, have you checked to see if the pupil to administrative staff ratio has been brought closer to the state-wide average? (In 2002, Madison Metropolitan schools were at 195 children per administrator; the rest of the state averaged 242 children per administrator.) Have the few administrative openings you?ve left unfilled over the past few years actually brought us into line with the rest of the state?

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Some interesting insight into another district’s budgeting process, knowledge, and challenges.

Shane Samuels:

There are those who like to work with numbers, and then there are those who figure school budgets. They’re not necessarily the same person.
School finance consists of a labyrinth of property values, student enrollment totals, federal aid, and state aid. Only two people in Chetek claim to understand the funding formula from top to bottom: Superintendent Al Brown and business manager Tammy Lenbom.
A couple times of year their budgetary work catches the public’s eye – once in September when it comes time to pass the budget at the annual meeting, and once about this time of year when Brown and Lenbom propose that budget for next fall.
The budget proposal period is more visible, because that is when we find out how those financial decisions will affect people’s lives – teachers who may be forced to look for new jobs, or students who might have their favorite class offering taken away from them.
While it takes a professional to explain a school budget line item by line item, this article is an attempt to at least summarize how school administrators and the school board reach their budgetary decisions, as well as detailing some of the struggles they face.
The timetable

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Linda Martin Files Suit Against the MMSD

COMPLAINT [67K PDF] HAS BEEN FILED AGAINST MADISON METROPOLITAN SCHOOL DISTRICT IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF WISCONSIN
Linda Martin, Plaintiff v. Madison Metropolitan School District and District officials Roger Price, Renee Bremer, Mary Teppo and Donna Williams, Defendants.
The District was Ms. Martin’s employer. Ms. Martin received a right to sue letter from the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. Allegations include “bid rigging;” discrimination during a hiring process; denial of free speech rights; harassment; wrongful discharge; and intentional violation of federal law.
Susan Troller: School District Sued for Harrassment.

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Cole endorsement was right on money

The Cap Times carried the following letter to the editor:

Dear Editor: I am supporting Maya Cole for Seat 5 of the Madison School Board.
The Capital Times was right in endorsing her candidacy. Her work ethic, thoroughness and openness to new ideas make her an ideal candidate. The school district is facing many tough issues, the most pressing being whether the elected School Board actually sets policy for the district or whether it merely acts as a rubber stamp for the administration and the teachers union.
Maya has shown a willingness to consider all points of view before making a decision and will be a thoughtful addition to the board.
While Maya and I probably do not agree on much regarding partisan politics, I feel confortable with her being on the School Board. Decisions regarding our children cannot be made based on political considerations and I believe that Maya Cole will leave politics at the door when making decisions about our schools.
Maya is giving us an opportunity to take back our schools and I urge everyone to vote for her on Tuesday.
John S. Pinto
Madison

MMSD, MTI and Health Insurance – A Clarification

There seems to be some confusion about the negotiations between MTI and the school district. The Board WILL be negotiating health insurance with MTI; the Board has NOT taken health insurance off the table. The Voluntary Impasse Agreement (VIA) does NOT eliminate this as a subject of negotiation. The VIA DOES set up a structure for negotiations: a schedule, agreement by MTI that teachers will not engage in job actions, dates for the start of mediation if a settlement hasn’t been reached, name of the mediator, a date for binding arbitration if mediation is not successful and name of the arbitrator. IF no voluntary settlement is reached and we go to binding arbitration, MTI agrees that it will not propose a change to the salary schedule and the Board agrees not to change health insurance. Those agreements are meant to make binding arbitration less attractive to both sides – and to put the emphasis on reaching a voluntary agreement.
Because the Board has not yet provided MTI with our proposals I cannot discuss them in public. I can however talk about the settlement we have reached with our custodians who are represented by AFSCME. The custodians agreed to change their health insurance to a choice of 3 HMO’s (Group Health, Physicians Plus and DeanCare). The savings from this change allowed a greater salary increase (2.5%). A small amount of the savings ($15,000) went back to the budget. These savings are realized only in the first year – thereafter, the base for figuring future costs uses the lower health insurance costs.
One of the most dramatic changes of the last 5 years (and one that has been little noted) is the movement of teachers from WPS to Group Health. This year more than 50% of the teacher’s unit take Group Health Insurance – the lowest priced HMO in the community.
A more complete discussion of this issue can be found at: http://www.madisonamps.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,31/p,51/
Carol Carstensen

Board needs Cole and Thomas

Our schools need a new School Board majority, one committed to open government, including transparent budgeting and decision-making, and accountability to the community.
The next board will also hire the new superintendent and handle his or her performance evaluation, something Superintendent Art Rainwater has had little of from the current majority.
We stand at a crossroads with this election. Will it be more of the same top-down, teachers union-directed governance, or independent, open-minded, responsive representation?
There are many good issues-based reasons to vote for Maya Cole and Rick Thomas, but concerns for fair process and superintendent selection stand out for me.
It will take electing them both to gain that new majority.
– Joan Knoebel, Madison
http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/opinion/readersviews/index.php?ntid=127085&ntpid=1

Unions pump funds to Passman

According to the last campaign finance report available on this blog, these teachers’ unions contributed to Marj Passman’s campaign:

$1,560 – MTI Voters
$250 – United Northeast Educators, Green Bay
$250 – Green Bay PAC (Green Bay Education Association)
$500 – Wi Ed. Assoc. Council Fox Valley PAC
$200 – Children’s Great School Fund (WEAC’s conduit)