You laugh, but the zeal to protect ourselves from our food has gotten the better of many well-intentioned people, and was challenging the ability of school groups to host potlucks. The original of this release is on-line at:
http://www.thewheelerreport.com/releases/Mar06/Mar3/0303gronemuspotluck.pdf

GRONEMUS “POTLUCK LIBERATION BILL” HEADS TO THE GOVERNOR
By unanimous vote the Wisconsin State Senate has concurred in Assembly Bill454, the “Potluck Liberation Bill”. The bill, authored by State Representative Barbara Gronemus, will exempt potluck events from the public health regulation of restaurants. The bill previously passed the State Assembly by a vote of 95-0.
According to Gronemus, “Assembly Bill 454 was introduced to correct a “state of confusion” between our law books and our state administrative codes on the subject of potlucks by creating an exception to the definition of “restaurant” for a potluck event in Wisconsin and defines the term “potluck event” events that meet the following criteria:
(1) attendees provide food and beverages to be shared and consumed at the event,
(2) no compensation is provided to any person who conducts or assists in providing the event or who provides food and beverages, and no compensation is paid by any person for consumption of food or beverages, and
(3) the event is sponsored is a church; religious, fraternal, youth, or patriotic organization of service club; civic organization; parent-teacher organization; senior citizen center or organization; or adult day care center.
In final comments on Senate passage of Assembly Bill 454, Gronemus stated, “To quote a major newspaper in our state, “Potlucks are as much a Wisconsin tradition as Packers tailgate parties and Friday Fish fries and are an old-old way for communities to come ogether, share food and trade hot dish recipes” and I am proud to have authored Assembly Bill 454 to being some common sense back to the area of potlucks and keep them alive and well as a means of social interaction between people and their recipes and their communities, and I am hopeful that Governor Doyle will sign it into law”.
In addition, Gronemus renewed her intent to sponsor a State Capitol Potluck in celebration of her efforts to protect and liberate them from over zealous government regulations.

Art Rainwater:

The health of cities, towns and villages is interdependent with their school districts. Great cities have great school districts. For 167 years the residents of the Madison Metropolitan School District have enjoyed that reality. I am honored and proud to work here. All of our citizens have every reason to feel that pride in what they have created and supported – a great place for kids to grow and learn.

Pam Belluck:

Poultney, a town of 3,600 bordering New York, is just one example of a situation that increasingly alarms many in Vermont. This state of beautiful mountains and popular ski resorts, once a magnet for back-to-the-landers, is losing young people at a precipitous clip.
Vermont, with a population of about 620,000, now has the lowest birth rate among states. Three-quarters of its public schools have lost children since 2000.
Vermont also has the highest rate of students attending college out of their home state — 57 percent, up from 36 percent 20 years ago. Many do not move back. The total number of 20- to 34-year-olds in Vermont has shrunk by 19 percent since 1990.

Most of my UW-Madison friends have long since left Wisconsin. We’re providing some help to states like California and Colorado.

Ruben Navarrette, Jr.:

YOU HAVE to hand it to critics of “No Child Left Behind.” In trying to preserve the status quo, they’re wrong. But at least they’re persistent. In fact, they’re persistently wrong.
Made up of teachers, administrators, school board members and anyone who turns a blind eye to the mediocrity of public schools, the critics are relentless in their attempts to discredit the education reform law.
They’ll get another chance to blast away over the next several months as a bipartisan commission holds public hearings across the country to get an earful on what works with the law, and what doesn’t. The commission will send recommendations to Congress, which is expected to renew the law in 2007.
It’s easy to see why those who prefer the status quo detest “No Child Left Behind.” Under the law, children in every racial and demographic group in every public school must improve their scores on standardized tests in math and science. No excuses. Schools that fall short of that goal can be shut down, and their students can transfer to another public school.
The critics hate requirements like that for one reason — because good tests not only tell you if kids are learning, but also if teachers and administrators are holding up their end. If the truth comes out, disgruntled parents might go from demanding accountability from schools to demanding it from the individuals who work in them.

Bill Livick:

The two-hour meeting was organized by Vandewalle & Associates and the UW Applied Population Lab. The organizations are doing research to determine potential future school sites and predict space needs. Their findings will be part of a long-range facilities and enrollment report. District officials believe the report will help guide decisions about where and when to build new schools, and will ultimately save taxpayers millions of dollars.
About 40 residents, as well as School Board members and district administrators, met at Country View Elementary School on Tuesday, Feb. 21. The goal was to better understand residents? values and priorities regarding schools and the district?s future.

Madison School Board Seat 1 Candidate Maya Cole:

Did you know that the No Child Left Behind legislation requires school districts that receive Title 1 funds to involve parents with their children’s schooling?
One goal I have for the school board is to encourage and model increased parental participation in the schools. We need to focus on building consensus on the board, with the parents and in the community.
I am hoping as a school board member to visit a different school every week for the academic year. I think it would also be helpful to volunteer in that same school for an hour during the visit as well.
As parents, many of us recognize the need to augment or encourage creative and social learning for our children outside of the classroom. What better way to share this with other kids than by involving parents?…..
We need more effective communication between the district and the community. We need to be open to new ideas, voices and perspectives of education in our community.

Maya’s opponent in the April 4, 2006 election is Arlene Silveira. Learn more about the candidates here.

WisPolitics video:

In a new TalkAboutLive@WisPolitics.com Web cast from the Madison offices of WHD Government Affairs, GOP Rep. Jeff Wood and Dem Sen. Bob Jauch debate TABOR and the new “Wisconsin Taxpayer Protection Amendment.”

Florida Department of Education:

A Comparison of Performance Pay Proposals: 2005; Denver, Houston, Florida and Minnesota.

Alan Eisner:

Nobody is quite sure exactly how many American children are being taught at home. The National Center for Education Statistics, in a 2003 survey, put the number that year at 1.1 million. The Home School Legal Defense Association, which represents some 80,000 member families, says the figure now is quite a bit higher — between 1.7 and 2.1 million.
But there is no disagreement about the explosive growth of the movement — 29 percent from 1999 to 2003 according to the NCES study, or 7 to 15 percent a year according to HSLDA.
This growth has spawned an estimated $750 million a year market supplying parents with teaching aids and lesson plans to fit every religious and political philosophy. Home-schooled children regularly show up in the finals of national spelling competitions, generating publicity for the movement.

Katherine Kersten:

Something momentous is happening here in the home of prairie populism: black flight. African-American families from the poorest neighborhoods are rapidly abandoning the district public schools, going to charter schools, and taking advantage of open enrollment at suburban public schools. Today, just around half of students who live in the city attend its district public schools.
Black parents have good reasons to look elsewhere. Last year, only 28% of black eighth-graders in the Minneapolis public schools passed the state’s basic skills math test; 47% passed the reading test. The black graduation rate hovers around 50%, and the district’s racial achievement gap remains distressingly wide. Louis King, a black leader who served on the Minneapolis School Board from 1996 to 2000, puts it bluntly: “Today, I can’t recommend in good conscience that an African-American family send their children to the Minneapolis public schools. The facts are irrefutable: These schools are not preparing our children to compete in the world.” Mr. King’s advice? “The best way to get attention is not to protest, but to shop somewhere else.”
They can do so because of the state’s longstanding commitment to school choice. In 1990 Minnesota allowed students to cross district boundaries to enroll in any district with open seats. Two years later in St. Paul, the country’s first charter school opened its doors. (Charter schools are started by parents, teachers or community groups. They operate free from burdensome regulations, but are publicly funded and accountable.) Today, this tradition of choice is providing a ticket out for kids in the gritty, mostly black neighborhoods of north and south- central Minneapolis.

Brennan Nardi:

We also had the opportunity to interact with Jefferson students. We ate lunch with the eighth graders and poked our heads into afternoon classes. Four area educators then weighed in on what matters most in helping kids achieve. Jefferson principal John Burmaster told us that during middle school, “the best thing you can do is sit down with a kid and show that kid that you like them. It always goes back to relationships.”

[3.5MB PDF, Page 12]

Rodney Gedda:

If securely deploying 10,000 wireless access points across 1700 locations in five months to create what is said to be the world’s largest enterprise Wi-Fi network sounds like a challenge, Victoria’s Department of Education (DET) took it all in its stride – with the help of a little penguin.
With 540,000 students, 42,000 teachers, more than 200,000 computers, and 40,000 notebooks spread across the 1700 sites, the department last year allocated $6.5 million to implement a wireless network aimed at easing connectivity, but at first its technology options were limited.
During a presentation at this year’s wireless summit in Sydney today, the department’s head of ICT security, Loris Meadows spoke of how the Wireless Networks in Schools (WINS) project required a custom proxy and security services appliance dubbed “EduPass” to be engineered due to the WAN’s complexity.

Channel3000:

he Wisconsin Senate passed a bill on Tuesday that would monitor indoor air quality at schools around the state.
The measure, Senate bill 235, was championed by Jeanne and Dick Black, of Darlington, after their 9-year-old daughter Jade became ill from what they said that poor air quality at her school.
They said that Jade was diagnosed with severe mold-induced asthma and suffered headaches, migraines, blurred vision, rashes on her face, stomach aches and nausea while attending Darlington Elementary and Middle School. The symptoms subsided when she transferred to another school under doctor’s orders.
According to the Wisconsin Education Association Council, 80 schools in the state have air quality problems. They include Chavez and Midvale Elementary in Madison, Edgerton High School, Marshall Elementary School, Webb Middle School in Reedsburg, and Black Earth Elementary in the Wisconsin Heights District. Other districts cited without a specific school listed include Adams-Friendship, Boscobel, Columbus, Cuba City, Monticello, Palmyra-Eagle, Poynette, Rio and Wisconsin Dells, WISC-TV reported.

Jared Sandberg:

School ties are immensely powerful in the business world, providing preexisting networks of relationships and low search costs. But while relying on them often works out just fine, lost in the mix of well-meaning loyalty to educational institutions and nostalgia for the past is the possibility that the ties that bind can also blind, undermining corporate efforts to build meritocracies.
Everyone knows that the educational degrees you earned can affect your career. How else to explain the spate of exaggerated claims of academic prowess among top executives, some of whom have decades-long track records but nonetheless continue to inflate precareer educational achievements. Most recently, Radio Shack was stung by this problem. But it also happened to Bausch & Lomb, Veritas Software, A.T. Kearney and the U.S. Olympic Committee when they welcomed executives to their top echelons.

Greg Toppo:

The brushed aluminum box on the brick wall glows purple, a rim of light around an unblinking HAL-like eye.
You peek in and stare for a second, and the steel doors click open. A soothing female voice says: “Identification is completed.”
Welcome to Park Avenue Elementary School.
Freehold Borough School District installed the iris-scanning devices in its three schools last month. It and a district down the road in New Egypt are the first U.S. school systems to study what happens when adults are asked to eye-scan to get in the door each day.

Joanne Jacobs rounds up commentary, including those from Cal education and public policy professor Bruce Fuller:

Universal preschool would cost Californians $23 billion over the next 10 years, if Rob Reiner’s Proposition 82 passes. But it won’t close the learning gap for poor kids, warns Bruce Fuller, a Berkeley education and public policy professor. Currently, 64 percent of four-year-olds go to preschool; Reiner’s plan would boost that only to 70 percent. Instead of directing public money at needy families, most of the dollars would go to provide free preschool to middle-class and wealthy parents. Any gains by poor children are likely to be lost when they enter substandard schools.
We are learning empirically that gains experienced by poor children who attend preschool fade by third grade unless youngsters enter quality elementary schools, according to new studies by UC-Santa Barbara and University of Wisconsin economists.
Fuller also questions the requirement that all preschool teachers earn a bachelor’s degree. This would disqualify two-thirds of current preschool teachers.
. . . two decades of research show that children benefit when their teachers have a two-year degree and focused training in child development. After that, more years in college are spent on general education requirements, exerting no additional effects. Only the cost rises dramatically.

Kurt Gutknecht and Bill Livick pen an interesting article, published recently in the Fitchburg Star:

Several teachers at area schools did not return calls asking for their opinion on the act. Administrators were less reluctant to weigh in.
The principal of a Madison middle school, who did not want to be identified, gave a qualified endorsement to the act for focusing on essential skills and for including all students.
“They’re reasonable standards. A student can’t solve problems if she can’t read well,” the principal said.
Madison schools have a good foundation in addressing the needs of all students, which predated the act, according to the principal. Of greater concern was the act’s requirement that specialists teach every content area, which could force many qualified teachers from the profession. Although it’s not unreasonable to focus on formal teaching standards, “it seems ludicrous” because “many of our most effective teachers are generalists,” said the principal, particularly when there’s no funding for training.
The requirements of the act have “terrified” some teachers, who fear being labeled as ineffective and are concerned about teaching in a school that’s labeled as having failed, according to the principal.

(more…)

Cecilia Le:

Of every 100 high school freshmen in Delaware, 21 will graduate from college on time.
Sixty-four will graduate from high school in four years, 38 will enter college immediately after high school and just 30 are still enrolled by their sophomore year. [Wisconsin: 79 graduate from high school on time, 47 immediately enter college, 34 are still enrolled sophomore year and 25 graduate from college on time [pdf report])
The numbers are similarly sobering nationwide, where just 18 out of 100 high school freshmen graduate from college on time — within three years for an associate degree or six years for a bachelor’s degree.

View Wisconsin’s results via the achieve.org website.

Ned Crabb:

Two weeks ago, a six-year-old boy was suspended from first grade for three days for “sexual harassment” because he allegedly put “two fingers inside [a] girl’s waistband while she sat on the floor in front of him,” according to an AP story.
Sexual harassment at age six. Growing up kind of fast these days, aren’t they?
“He doesn’t know those things,” the boy’s mother told the local press. “He’s only six years old.” The woman said she “screamed” about the suspension.
Yeah, well, I’d scream too. The whole thing is stupid–children poking at one another and then being punished for it in terms of adult concepts, described with adult words.

I remember a fellow male first grade classmate walking up and kissing a female classmate many, many (!) years ago.

Channel3000:

The police data on the school shows a mixed record. In the past three and a half years, Madison West ranks first among the other city schools in bomb threats, property damage and fights.
However, it also has the fewest number of drug incidents and weapons violations.
Overall, West High School has the lowest crime rate.
School principal Ed Holmes, who is in his second year, said that he wants it even lower.
He said that it’s one reason that he’s completely reshaped the school day with a revolutionary overhaul of the lunch schedule.

Channel3000:

News 3 examined the data from Madison Memorial High School on Wednesday night. The school outpaces the three other city schools combined.
So far this year, Memorial has 68 arrests while West High School has 11, East High School has 18, and Robert M. LaFolette has 15.
At the current rate, Memorial would end the school year with an 88 percent increase in crime. West would be up 29 percent, but East and LaFollette would each see a 54 percent decrease
Memorial is a school at a real crossroads, and one frequently in the news because of reports of violence.
Video

WKOW-TV notes a recent pellet gun shooting at the school.
UPDATE: Lisa Schuetz reports that a 17 year old girl was charged in this shooting.

Michael Winerip:

But for all FairTest’s impact, its days may be numbered. Never before has standardized testing so dominated American public education, thanks to the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind Law. Every child from grade 3 to high school must now take state tests. And the Bush administration is considering extending those tests to colleges.
“With N.C.L.B., a lot of people feel the debate is over,” said Monty Neill, director of FairTest, officially the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. “The attitude seems to be, ‘Testing is so pervasive, what’s the point?’ ” Support from foundations has virtually dried up and individual donations have not made up the difference. “Our board has seriously discussed whether to fold the operation,” Mr. Neill said

Eduwonk has much more.

Channel3000:

News 3 examined the data from Robert M. LaFolette High School on Tuesday night. The school is the smallest of the four schools included in this series, boasting more than 1,700 students.
During a typical afternoon at LaFollette High School, principal Mike Meissen walks the halls.
If it’s going on at LaFollette, Meissen knows about it. He uses a new technology that all four Madison principals have this year — a palm pilot. Meissen can access a list of LaFollette’s 1,748 students along with their pictures and class schedules. They tell him where they should be at all times.
Assistant Principal Mikki Smith is in her first year as one of his top assistants and she said that he has a reputation for maintaining order at the school.
“Mike is known for running a pretty tight ship,” Smith said. “He has high expectations for students and he makes that known.”

video