Michelle Delio writes that a new American Electronics Association report on outsourcing charges that the American school system fails to provide a strong science and math education to students.

“Despite our best efforts, our kids really have a hard time understanding why they might need advanced math or science in their adult lives”, said New York middle-school teacher Keri Carnen.
Noting that roughly 50 percent of all engineering, math and science degrees awarded by U.S. universities now go to foreign nationals, AeA researchers also called on the federal government to give green cards to all foreign nationals upon their graduation with master’s and Ph.D. degrees, in an effort to keep these people — and their skills — in the United States.

Lee Sensenbrenner writes that Madison School Board President Bill Keys stated during a telephone interview Tuesday that golf and strings should be on the chopping block as the Board considers $9m reductions in the $310+ budget:

“Funding for the fourth-grade stringed music classes and varsity golf teams is being questioned by Madison School Board President Bill Keys as the school district struggles to find $10 million worth of cuts.
The district administration made its recommendations earlier this month for next year’s budget, and the board is in the process of its own review.
Although administrators did not propose cutting the popular strings class, Keys said in a telephone interview Tuesday it’s an option he’d like to consider.
“The strings class has always been brought up as a possibility, so I said let’s bring it up again,” Keys said.”

Interestingly, Barb Schrank sent a one page Madison Schools Budget update where she writes:

“To date, the School Board has not received the budget for next year. How can the School Board make cut decisions without a reference budget?”

[95K PDF] Great question…..

The Madison school district has, for a number of years, supported a Microsoft based monoculture of computing tools. This ill advised policy has placed far too much emphasis on one computing model (by the time today’s elementary & middle school students enter the work force, the technology at hand will be quite different).
Today, Microsoft, a convicted monopolist was fined over $600m by the European Union. A number of other legal cases are underway, including this one in Minnesota.

Among the documents introduced in court this week was a letter from June 1990 in which Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, told Andrew S. Grove, the chief executive of Intel at the time, that any support given to the Go Corporation, a Silicon Valley software company, would be considered an aggressive move against Microsoft.
Other evidence presented by the plaintiffs’ lawyers at trial yesterday gave an account of how Microsoft violated a signed secrecy agreement with Go and showed that Microsoft possessed technical documents from Go that it should not have had access to.

Madison’s financial support of this monoculture is absurd. We should take the cash we’re sending to Microsoft and fund our PE program instead…. (Note that the argument that business uses Microsoft therefore we should feed our children the same dog food does not hold water. Increasingly, business is using open source tools such as linux, apache, php, mysql and other products)

Samantha Ganey writes about child rearing strategies:

You’d better be a good parent. Because if you’re not, your kids will resent you, get tattoos, pierce their upper lip frenulums, drop out of school and maybe even join the circus. And believe me, you’ll be sorry, Mister.
So how’s that feel?

Kathy Walsh Nufer writes about Hilbert High School’s Grandparents Greeters Day:

Meet Rita Mathes and Jeanne Gast, who stationed themselves in the high school?s front hall on St. Patrick?s Day with a giant box of cookies.
?Top of the mornin? to you, help yourself,? Mathes wished students going her way.
?You, too, as soon as I can see,? responded a bleary-eyed boy as he shuffled in, fresh from the shower.
?They?re so polite,? said Gast, taking pride in their manners as if all the students were her own. This grandparent of 23 knows most kids in town. ?We grew them up from pups, most of ?em,? she said.

Very nice high school web site, btw, including panoramic Quicktime VR Tours…

Bruce Murphy writes that low income students struggle to fund a college education:

“Fifty years after the Supreme Court ruled that black Americans must receive an equal chance at a quality education, a college degree has become the ticket to the middle class. But it is a ticket that poor families – a high percentage of them minorities – often can’t afford.
…Holmes works eight hours a week on campus and another 21 hours a week off campus at a local bank. She’s had to scale back her class load to keep up. She also could take out more loans in order to cut back on work, but that would saddle her with as much as $20,000 in debt by graduation, with years of medical school education yet to finance.”

Barb Schrank passed along this news release regarding the 4th & 5th grade strings program vis a vis the current Madison Metropolitan School District $310+M budget discussions. [PDF version 83k]

Lee Sensenbrenner writes about Wednesday’s School Board Candidate Statements to the Madison Rotary Club:

Given six unfettered minutes to explain to the Madison Downtown Rotary why she is seeking re-election to the Madison School Board, Ruth Robarts said that with or without her, the school district has sharp divisions.
“I think it’s wishful thinking that says removing me from the board will heal this divide, and we’ll go forward in a unified way,” she said during Wednesday’s meeting. “I think now, in a very real way, our board needs a diversity of viewpoints. To grow confidence in the board, we need to have a full debate of issues and approaches.”

The Cap Times Editorial Page comments on the role of the School Board vis a vis the Administration.

The Wisconsin State Journal’s Editorial Page writes:

Instead of recognizing the Florence County cash squeeze for what it is – a symptom of a statewide school financing problem begging for legislative attention – lawmakers instead will:
Roll over for whiners hollering “crisis!” Many large rural school districts are in trouble, squeezed by declining enrollment, inadequate tax base and high transportation costs. Florence County’s substantial loss of state aid in recent years matches a corresponding decline in student enrollment. Lawmakers wrote this formula, which applies to all public schools, not just one in the hinterlands.
Reward bad management. The Florence County School Board recently bought out the contracts of three administrators for a whopping $439,000, plus extended health coverage for the former superintendent. With that kind of money at stake, school officials could have served taxpayers better by jetting in Donald Trump to bark out his catch phrase: “You’re fired!”

It’s certainly time to revisit how we fund public education. I sincerely hope that Governor Doyle thinks about this while winging his way to China (on a Tommy Thompson style trade mission) [WI Dept of Commerce 6 page PDF document on the trip fees & schedule]

Cypress Semiconductor CEO TJ Rodgers is running for Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees, with the stated goal that the college stop adding ethnic studies classes and refocus its resources on the fundamentals, such as civics, science and history.