Tuesday’s Results


Dane County 04/06/2004 spring election results are available here.
Locally, congrats to Ruth Robarts, Shwaw Vang and Johnny Winston, Jr. for their School Board seat victories. None of the races were all that close (although from a spending perspective, Winston & Vang far outspent their opponents while Robarts was substantially outspent by Olson & MTI). Thanks also to Alix Olson, Sam Johnson and Melania Alvarez for taking the time to run.
We do indeed need more discussion about local issues, and this election, with debate on topics such as curriculum, budget, board leadership and PAC/Group spending was useful. Bummer that so few people showed up to vote!
UPDATE: Lee Sensenbrenner summarizes the results here, along with Doug Erickson’s summary of the board races here.

MPS: Life & Death of 8-T

Alan Borsuk writes about the demise of Milwaukee Public Schools 8-T program, an initiative “aimed at dealing with a problem that perplexes urban school districts across the United States: what to do with the large number of eighth-graders who are not really ready for high school”.

Extensive research indicates that neither holding students back a grade nor promoting them unprepared fosters achievement,” the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory said in a report summarizing the issue.
So what do you do with such students?
In 1997, the Milwaukee School Board voted to require students to meet a set of proficiency standards before they graduate from middle school in an effort to deal with a “social promotion” problem that made ninth grade, in the words of one MPS administrator, “a parking lot” for hundreds of kids who were doing poorly.

Intel Co-Founder Helps Fund Silicon Valley Charter School


The technology legend and his wife Betty Moore donated $250,000 to the school’s foundation, charter-school supporters announced Saturday during a casino-night fundraiser held at the Fremont Hills Country Club.
Gordon Moore, who is famous for predicting that a computer chip’s power would double every two years, stated in the charter-school foundation’s press release that “Betty and I feel very strongly that competition in educational opportunities results in innovation and significant improvements for all participants.” From Tim Oren

Integration’s Triumphs & Failures after 50 years


The Washington Post Magazine Features a series of articles on integration.

Blocks, nap time giving way to language and reading programs


Sarah Carr writes:

Many researchers see the root causes of this gap in the early years. There is a growing conviction that even good schools cannot do enough for students who start far behind.
“If we send kids to kindergarten with this big gap, we can be pretty sure that as things stand, the gap is not only going to remain, but will get bigger,” said Deborah Stipek, the dean of Stanford University’s School of Education.
Increasingly, educators are focusing on preschool programs as a critical step in making up the deficit, and they are developing – or being pushed to develop – programs that are more overtly academic than ever. Nationally, some programs are cutting nap time; others have instituted more formal assessments. Literacy blocks – the jargon for early language and reading programs – are becoming as common as wood blocks.