School Information System

3 Simple Things: Conduct Board Business Differently

1. Good Health Care at an Affordable Price: Reduce Costs by $12 Million
2. Put a Lid on the Cookie Jar: Cut Taxes Over $9 Million
3. Eliminate Chaos: Board Decisions; Priceless: Improve Student Achievement.

MADISON MARKET COMPARITIVE HEALTH CARE COSTS

The bargained contract between the Madison Metropolitan School District and Madison Teachers, Inc. (representing teachers) stipulates health coverage from a ‘preferred provider’ (WPS) and a ‘health maintenance organization’ (GHC).

Bids have not been solicited from health care providers in many years. Comparative monthly premium costs for the employer and the employee in the Madison market:

Plan	Single Coverage		Family Coverage
	Employer	Employee	Employer	Employee
MMSD (WPS)	$673.00	$75.00	$1,765.00	$196.00
MMSD (GHC)	$365.00	$00.00	$974.00	$00.00
City (Dean)	$406.00	$13.09	$1,010.00	$33.00
County (Phys Plus)	$385.00	$00.00	$905.00	$33.00
State (Dean)	$438.00	$22.00	$1.091.00	$55.00

VIDEO: watch the press conference here. Download the 823K PDF presentation materials.

SCHOOL BOARD WATCHDOG GROUP TO HOLD NEWS CONFERENCE TUESDAY at 12:15 pm

In reference to current talk about a referenda proposal by the Madison Metropolitan School Board (MMSD), Active Citizens for Education (ACE) will hold a news conference this coming Tuesday, June 5th at 12:15 p.m. at The Coliseum Bar, 232 East Olin Ave, Madison [map].

The group will advance three proposals that the School Board should adopt and initiate in the process of deciding whether or not to place any additional requests before the voters for taxpayer funds or exemptions from the state-imposed revenue caps. The proposal topics are:

• GOOD HEALTH CARE AT AN AFFORDABLE PRICE
• PUT THE LID ON THE COOKIE JAR
• ELIMINATE THE CHAOS OF BOARD DECISIONS

Speakers will include Don Severson, president of ACE, and former Madison Alder Dorothy Borchardt, an activist in school and community issues.

In addition to comments by Severson and Borchardt, there will be five display boards briefly outlining the proposals as well as duplicated handouts. The presentation part of the news conference will last 15 minutes, followed by questions.

Saving Our Schools

Andy Moore:

The sun came up over the near east side Tuesday morning. It wasn’t supposed to. Forecasters said to expect thunderstorms. But for an hour or so, sunshine painted the upper branches of the sugar maples that line the streets within the heart of the isthmus.

For those of us in the Lapham and Marquette neighborhoods, it was hard to avoid the symbolism. Clear skies rode in on the fair winds of change at the previous night’s school board meeting. The board’s earlier decision to consolidate Lapham and Marquette schools at Lapham — and close Marquette — was reversed.

The original decision was a harsh product of the inexorable pressure of state revenue caps on the school budget. The reversal was a product of many things. Among them, a courageous, open-minded school board willing to, as board member Johnny Winston Jr. put it, “think outside the box.”

2006 MMSD WKCE Scores: A Closer Look

Test scores from the November 2006 Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE) and companion Wisconsin Alternate Assessment (WAA) were released by the state Department of Public Instruction this week. The MMSD press release on Madison students' scores ("Despite changes and cuts, Madison students test well") reports the following "notable achievements":

1. that reading scores have remained steady and math scores have gone up;
2. that non-low income MMSD students score better than their non-low income peers statewide;
3. that a higher percentage of MMSD African-American students perform at the highest proficiency level than do other African-American students across the state as a whole; and
4. that a consistently higher percentage of MMSD students perform at the highest proficiency level than do students across the state as a whole.

Let's take a closer look at the PR and the data:

1: "Reading scores have remained steady and math scores have gone up."

[boxed text and charts excerpted from MMSD press release]

This chart is misleading. In 2002, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction revamped the scoring scale for the WKCE to lower the cut score (or threshold) for the "proficient" category (which is apparent in the jump between pre-2002 and post-2002 scores, as shown above). The DPI web site clearly states that "Proficiency data for November 2002 and later are not comparable to earlier years."

To provide an accurate basis for comparison, the chart should have looked like this:

The corrected chart shows that the percentage of MMSD students scoring at the advanced+proficient levels in reading declined from 2003 to 2006, and that the increase in the percentage of MMSD students scoring at the advanced+proficient level in math increased only slightly from 2003 to 2006. Although numeric percentages aren't specified, it's apparent that the percentage decline in reading exceeded the percentage increase in math. (So, if reading proficiency levels are being described as having remained "steady" because the decline wasn't statistically significant, the minimal change in math proficiency levels can't be touted as a noteworthy increase.)

2: "Non-low income MMSD students score better than their non-low income peers statewide."

There's no question about the data here. But what about the rest of the picture?

In reading and math, a greater percentage of MMSD low-income students scored at the basic+minimal levels (i.e. below grade level) than their peers statewide this year (scores below are for combined grades).

	MMSD	State
Reading	43.3%	32.7%
Math	49.2%	43.0%

Table 1: 2006 low-income, basic+minimal, combined grades

(This and all data are from the DPI web site, using WKCE+WAA scores.)

Looking at 4th grade scores, the percentages of low-income MMSD students performing below grade level in reading and math grew from 2003 to 2006, and grew at a faster rate than statewide peers.

	MMSD	State
2003	33.1%	29.6%
2006	43.2%	31.8%

Table 2: 2003 and 2006 reading, low-income, basic+minimal, 4th grade

	MMSD	State
2003	47.5%	41.4%
2006	48.7%	38.2%

Table 3: 2003 and 2006 math, low-income, basic+minimal, 4th grade

Looking at more 4th grade scores, a greater percentage of non-low income MMSD students score at the advanced level in reading and math than low income MMSD students, and this gap between high-performing non-low income and low income MMSD students grew from 2003 to 2006.

	Low income	Non-low income	Gap
2003	19.1%	56.7%	37.6%
2006	16.8%	64.5%	47.7%

Table 4: 2003 and 2006 reading, advanced, MMSD 4th grade

	Low income	Non-low income	Gap
2003	9.7%	43.4%	33.7%
2006	15.0%	57.8%	42.8%

Table 5: 2003 and 2006 math, advanced, MMSD 4th grade

This gap between low and non-low income performance at the advanced level exists across the state, but MMSD's gap grew at a faster rate.

	MMSD	State
2003	37.6%	27.8%
2006	47.7%	29.2%

Table 6: 2003 and 2006 reading, advanced, 4th grade, gap between low-income and non-low income

	MMSD	State
2003	33.7%	21.5%
2006	42.8%	25.3%

Table 7: 2003 and 2006 math, advanced, 4th grade, gap between low-income and non-low income

3: "A higher percentage of MMSD African American students perform at the highest proficiency level than do other African American students across the state as a whole."

The scale of the percentage range (y-axis) in this chart is magnified in a way that exaggerates this "achievement". (Even so, it's clear that grade by grade, black students don't outperform their state peers in grades 3, 4, or 10.)

	MMSD	State	Difference
Combined grades	17.1%	15.0%	2.1%
4th grade	16.3%	16.3%	0.0%

Table 8: 2006 reading, advanced, African-American

The scale for math is even more exaggerated, and the achievement somewhat less than "especially significant."

	MMSD	State	Difference
Combined grades	9.7%	7.9%	1.8%
4th grade	9.0%	10.5%	-1.5%

Table 9: 2006 math, advanced, African-American

What is especially significant, however, is the achievement gap between black and white students at the advanced level. MMSD's achievement gap exceeds that for the state, and has grown at a significantly faster rate.

	MMSD	State
2003	38.1%	31.7%
2006	48.9%	31.9%

Table 10: 2003 and 2006 reading, advanced, 4th grade, gap between white and black students

	MMSD	State
2003	36.5%	24.4%
2006	48.6%	30.3%

Table 11: 2003 and 2006 math, advanced, 4th grade, gap between white and black students

4: "A consistently higher percentage of MMSD students perform at the highest proficiency level than do students across the state as a whole."

However, MMSD's racial and economic achievement gaps at the advanced level exceed those for the state.

	MMSD	State
Reading	46.1%	34.8%
Math	41.4%	29.2%

Table 12: 2006, advanced, combined grades, gap between white and black students

	MMSD	State
Reading	45.0%	29.8%
Math	39.7%	24.5%

Table 13: 2006, advanced, combined grades, gap between non-low income and low income students

5: "A significant change in testing procedures resulted in a significantly increased percentage of students scoring in the lowest proficiency category."

Without more data (Exactly how much of the percentage increase in this category was attributable to this testing procedure change? How did this increase compare to other districts and the state as a whole, since they were also affected by this same testing procedure change?), this is not sufficient to explain away the increase in the below-grade level category.

Further thoughts:

1. Curriculum Effectiveness: It's reasonable to assume that students in outperforming categories (white and non-low income) are more likely to have extracurricular educational support and supplementation than other students, and are more likely to be able to overcome curriculum deficiencies they encounter in the MMSD. Any inference that the MMSD deserves all the credit for such students' achievements is misplaced. On the other hand, the success or failure of students at the bottom of the widening racial and economic achievement gaps (and who are likely to lack those extracurricular advantages) is highly dependent on the effectiveness of MMSD's curriculum and instructional choices. For example, we might look at the schools that would have qualified for the Reading First funding that was rejected by the MMSD in 2004, and the percentages of students in 4th grade that are reading below grade level:

   	2003	2006	Increase
   Orchard Ridge	18.4%	28.6%	10.2%
   Hawthorne	30.6%	30.6%	0.0%%
   Glendale	20.6%	47.4%	27.4%
   Lincoln	25.0%	50.0%	25.0%
   MMSD	18.4%	22.7%	4.3%
   State	17.4%	18.1%	0.7%

   Table 14: Reading, basic+minimal, 4th grade

2. Rigor of WKCE: NAEP scores for 2007 (when they're released) should be compared against WKCE scores as a reality check on whether WKCE testing and standards are consistent or are softening.

3. Hidden achievement gap: The WKCE scores in the "proficient" category should be examined on a disaggregated basis. If historically underperforming groups are clustered at the lower end of the category (yet are still being identified as "proficient" due to the lowering of the cut scores when the category standards were redefined in 2002), this is an achievement gap too, and shouldn't be ignored.

Math Task Force & High School Redesign

Can someone post an update on the math task force and high school redesign? Thanks.

2007 Challenge Index: Ranking America's High Schools

Memorial is the only Madison High School in the top 1200 (1084), while Verona ranked 738th.

Washington Post:

The Washington Post Challenge Index measures a public high school's effort to challenge its students. The formula is simple: Divide the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge tests a school gave by the number of seniors who graduated in June. Tests taken by all students, not just seniors, are counted. Magnet or charter schools with SAT combined verbal and math averages higher than 1300, or ACT average scores above 27, are not included, since they do not have enough average students who need a challenge.

The rating is not a measurement of the overall quality of the school but illuminates one factor that many educators consider important.

Milwaukee's Rufus King is Ranked 259th. Marshfield High is ranked 348th. Whitefish Bay is ranked 514th, Shorewood 520th. New Berlin West 604th. Brookfield Central is 616th. Hartland Arrowhead is 706th. Nicolet is 723rd. Verona is 738th. Grafton 810th. Nathan Hale (West Allis) is 854th. Brookfield East is 865th. Greendale is 959th. Riverside University School (Milwaukee) is 959th. Madison Memorial is ranked 1084th. Salem's Westosha Central is 1113rd. West Bend West is 1172nd while West Bend East is 1184th.

Jay Matthews:

The Challenge Index list of America's best high schools, this year with a record 1,258 names, began as a tale of just two schools. They were Garfield High School, full of children of Hispanic immigrants in East Los Angeles, and Mamaroneck High School, a much smaller campus serving very affluent families in Westchester County, N.Y. I had written a book about Garfield, and the success of its teachers like Jaime Escalante in giving low-income students the encouragement and extra time they needed to master college-level Advanced Placement courses and tests.

I was finishing a book about Mamaroneck, and was stunned to find it was barring from AP many middle-class students who were much better prepared for those classes than the impoverished students who were welcomed into AP at Garfield. That turns out to be the rule in most U.S. schools -- average students are considered not ready for, or not deserving of, AP, even though many studies show that they need the challenge and that success in AP can lead to success in college.

Nearly everyone I met in New York thought Mamaroneck was a terrific school because its parents were rich and its state scores high, even though its building was in bad shape and its policy of reserving AP only for students with top grades made no sense. Nearly everyone I met in Los Angeles thought Garfield was a terrible school because its parents were poor and its state scores low, even though it was doing much more to prepare average and below-average students for college than any other school I knew. It was like rating restaurants not by the quality of their food, but by the bank accounts of their customers.

I was covering Wall Street for The Washington Post at that time, and not liking the job much. My life was ruled by indexes¿the Dow Jones, the Standard & Poor's. I decided to create my own index to measure something I thought was more important --which schools were giving their students the most value. This would help me show why Garfield, in a neighborhood full of auto-body shops and fast-food joints, was at least as good a school as Mamaroneck, in a town of mansions and country clubs.

Matthews participated in an online chat regarding the Challenge Index. A transcript is available here.

Related: MMSD High School Redesign Committee and West's English 10 and Bruce King's Report on West's SLC (Small Learning Community) Project. Joanne Jacobs on Palo Alto High School's non-participation.

2007 - 2008 Madison Board of Education Committee Assignments

Assignments to Standing Committees for 2007-08:

Communications	Beth Moss, Chair Carol Carstensen, Member Lawrie Kobza, Member
Community Partnerships	Maya Cole, Chair Lucy Mathiak, Member Johnny Winston, Jr., Member
Finance & Operations	Lucy Mathiak, Chair Carol Carstensen, Member Maya Cole, Member
Human Resources	Johnny Winston, Jr. Chair Lawrie Kobza, Member Beth Moss, Member
Long Range Planning	Carol Carstensen, Chair Lucy Mathiak, Member Beth Moss, Member
Performance & Achievement	Lawrie Kobza, Chair Maya Cole, Member Johnny Winston, Jr., Member

An Update

The Studio School Charter School:
In a couple of years I hope to take another try at leading a charter school initiative. I continue to read so much educational research and literature that strongly supports The Studio School concepts. As you know, we spent some time looking into ways to create TSS as a private school but just couldn't see how it could be affordable to everyone and be sustainable. Even as a sliding-scale-tuition cooperative, there would have to be some tuition paid and that leaves out so many children. It still looks as though a charter school is the best alternative. So maybe there will be some changes in our school district and administrators/ board members will become more actively supportive of charter schools, innovation, and the Studio School concept. Am I overly optimistic?

Programs in my home:
Currently, I'm working with some people to piece together a rather eclectic "menu" of educational programs (art, Spanish, yoga, tutoring, early childhood, etc.) in my home that is licensed for child care for ages 4 - 17. The programs being offered are philosophically aligned with the Reggio Approach - experiential, child-centered, multi-modal learning. I don't have a final name for this yet but the concept is that of a "learning studio" that offers a variety of enriching programs that will provide children with a variety of "languages" for learning and expressing their ideas. (This summer I am offering an Art & Architecture program for 5-8 year old children on Wednesday mornings and we will be working with recycled materials.) If the "eclectic" studio concept is successful, the plan is to move the program out of my house into a public space in the next year or so. I recently met with someone involved in the Hilldale Mall redevelopment project and a location there might be a possibility down the road. And/or it could be offered through community centers or other neighborhood organizations. It's also my hope that if I could somehow provide real life examples of the Reggio Approach to teaching and learning, people might be better able to envision the amazing positive impact it could have in an elementary school.

Community Partnerships:
I intend to continue meeting with people who are interested in new educational initiatives and who might want to work together to create programs and schools that include the arts & technology for all Madison children. So I want to keep reaching out to neighborhood groups and community members. Please let me know if you run into any folks who might be interested in talking with me about this and I will be happy to contact them. Thanks

Nancy Donahue
ndonahue@tds.net

Madison and it's Public Schools - 1970's

Paul Soglin:

In the 1970's with the decline of Baby Boomers in the Madison Public Schools (MMSD), the school board proposed closing a number of schools including Marquette and Lapham. The city responded with the following message:

Police calls for Madison schools - September through December 2006

Madison Parents' School Safety Site:

The charts below (click on each thumbnail to enlarge) summarize Madison Police Department calls for service to MMSD schools from September 1 through December 31, 2006. The data is summarized by school below the fold.

Data like this provides a starting point for getting a sense of the type and levels of incidents that affect safety in our children’s schools, and it’ll be useful to compare these numbers from time to time against like categories of data going forward. Context that we need, but don’t have, is information on the number and types of violent or disruptive incidents occurring in the schools as a whole (not just those resulting in police calls), and to what extent policies on summoning law enforcement in response to a violent or disruptive incident vary from school to school (in which case call data alone may be an unreliable index of the school’s relative safety).

Lapham Marquette Statement

There has been bitterness, surprise and resentment over my vote with respect to the Lapham/Marquette consolidation. I would like to let people know why I voted to move the alternative programs to Marquette. I have a mix of emotions several days after the storm and hope you find it helpful to understand the process from my perspective.

I made this decision in the most thoughtful and respectful manner possible. Unfortunately, the process of getting to this vote is more complicated than the moment in time when the board makes a single vote. I hope those of you most affected by this can see how this transpired.

In the past three weeks, Beth Moss and I, as newly elected members of the Board of Education, have met with the staff of MMSD to get up to speed with our current programs. This process takes many, many hours. We have also spoken with teachers, visited schools, gone to public forums, taken calls, studied data, looked at programs with a critical eye and visited with many constituents.

Many of you went to forums over the past few weeks and spoke passionately about your schools and programs. I took copious notes and asked questions. Our participation and commitment was to be as effective as possible under the circumstances. Not to just listen silently and abdicate our role by letting the rest of the board make difficult choices.

Our board president urged us to listen to the public and to keep in mind that we had to make a decision soon. He wanted us to stay on task, to move the process forward and to ask the administration as many questions as needed.

In light of the enormous task at hand, we wondered, was there enough time? How could we possibly get all the information we needed? Could we get answers to questions once more information came back from the community?

At first, we were told that we would be voting on the budget the day after we were sworn in. This date was delayed by a week, but it still left us with very little time to ask meaningful questions and make meaningful contributions to the process.

As a board member, I made the motion to slow down the process and give the board two weeks to work together before the final vote. We were given one day to hand in our formal amendments. It is a frustrating process to say the least.

Much of the work on the budget and long range planning had been done in committee this past year. These were the options that the committee brought to the administration and the board. I chose to respect the time and effort of these committees, my fellow board members and staff over the course of the past few years. I respect the work and dedication of all those on the board.

Some people have asked what would have happened if I abstained. I’ve been thinking of this from the standpoint of risking further dissention on the board. Do we really want to risk board members actively and publicly working against each other? I feel we have to stand as one governing body with differing opinions. Outright dissent is crossing the line into the divisiveness for the board that our community has wanted to eliminate.

We can work to change the process. Set a better timeline that gives board members two weeks of orientation; a training session with the Wisconsin Association of School Boards (WASB) on school budgeting; a day at the capital learning about state budgeting (perhaps with another seated board member) and two more weeks to study the budget with no other items on our agenda.

In addition, I would ask for the board to revisit criteria that we could use to provide further review and analysis of specific programs so we can evaluate them. One example is the programs housed in the Teaching and Learning Department. I would like to know exactly how much we want to spend to support quality professional development whether is it effective. Can we measure it?

I am hoping we can improve on the process, but abstaining from the process would be like giving up. I contend we made the best decisions possible for the kids. We inherited a job that many board members face each year. Is it disjointed? Yes. Can it be improved? Yes, and our board can address what worked and what did not this year at our retreat. I have also contacted the WASB for advice on how we can put a process in place if we ever have to consider consolidating or merging paired schools in the future.

I would also like us to consider coming up with community-supported criteria for this process beyond square footage, programming and enrollment. That is the job of the administration. I want us to come up with clear criteria on which to base our board decisions. We are quite capable of doing this.

Lindbergh is a small, charming school in our northside community. It is similar to Leopold, another school that has dealt with overcrowded conditions and is on the edge of our district map. Both are retrofitted from the open classroom concept to divided space.

It serves as a reminder of what we did right. We visited the school and talked to as many people as we could. We held a public forum at Kennedy Heights Neighborhood Center there. Beth and I went on a tour with neighbour-advocates, parents and teachers.

And in the end, with much debate, we found that this is a school that works. It has parent participation, teacher buy-in, neighborhood support and happy kids. All the while, our children are learning and improving.

We made difficult cuts, raised fees and asked more from our community. We committed to being fiscally responsible. We took middle schools off the table until we can have more conversations with community as to what our middle schools should look like.

We made a commitment to save small class size for all of our elementary schools, a worthwhile investment in our future and our young teachers. I personally want to focus on how we can better serve our younger staff and keep the cuts from affecting them the most. These cuts serve as a reminder of how we desperately need to talk about the cost of health insurance in our district.

And when you take a look at what we did not cut; a picture appears: we took Shabazz High School off the table; we took Blackhawk Middle School off the table; and we took Lindbergh off the table. All are good schools that have strong community support, school pride and work outside the general paradigm of what makes a successful school (too alternative, too small, etc.).

In some ways, philosophically, we made a commitment to alternative approaches in education in our district. We chose to not judge a book by its cover.

And the controversy? The near east side schools of Lapham, Marquette and O’Keefe. My experience with paired schools gave me a unique perspective of the inherent difficulties with pairings: one more transition for kids; different leadership styles which can lead to kids sliding backward in their schooling; no room for kids to expand to more challenging classes if they need to “jump ahead” in a particular subject. There are many benefits to bringing this pair together at Lapham.

Mr. Winston’s motion to move the alternative programs from rental space to effectively no known space was not acceptable. I made a motion to put alternative programs in Marquette because of my commitment to these kids.

Conversely, I couldn’t support the rationale provided by those who voted against consolidation – that we would continue to remain silent on where to put alternative programs. It is too late in the process to bring up suggestions for alternative program placement the night of the budget. Our alternative programs needed us to make a decision Monday night; our kids deserve that from us.

At that moment, I recognized that although I was sworn in less than two weeks ago as an individual board member, my success is “inextricably tied to the success of [our] board.” In addition, I became painfully aware that I do not have the authority as an individual to fix the problems I campaigned to fix once we step up before the public and convene as a board.

My alternative cuts may have prevented this consolidation but were not supported by enough members of the board. I was ready to raise fees or cut back on sports programs, a move that a majority of the board is against. I had hoped to have a further discussion on the reduction or elimination of REACH. I wanted to open the possibility of creating a new revenue stream in charging parking fees for those at Doyle and perhaps throughout the district.

I will be looking more closely at these issues in the future.

I feel very sorry to have alienated many of those in the Marquette attendance area with this controversial decision. I hope after reading this you will at least understand my rationale. I chose to advocate for all kids in the community, not just for the politically affluent. I stand by my vote.

I will remain committed to forging working relationships with everyone in the community. Our work is far from over. I hope our community, city alders, the mayor and the business community can find a way to keep all of our schools open. We need leaders to support our school communities. The board’s role is to oversee the education of the children in those schools. I trust that the Marquette community can come together and support our most fragile kids. I know I will.

An open letter to the School Board of Madison Metropolitan Schools

It's about time that this community approached the budget process with the honesty and integrity that we homeowners are required to do. For the past several years, the Superintendent and his associates have made a projected budget by increasing all categories of the budget by a certain percentage (about 5%) whether costs in that area are going up or not. (This is a "cost-plus" approach for those econ majors among you.) Each year, the projected budget comes up short of what is available and the games begin. Cuts are made to beloved programs or high profile student services; the community is upset and the board calls for a referendum or reform of the state funding scheme.

How about budgeting the way I have to? My house, my car, my medical costs and my insurance eat up the majority of the household income. So it is with the district. Teacher's salaries and benefits use up 85% of the budget and go up 4.7% each year. This is essentially a fixed cost that isn?t going to change much. We can complain about rising medical insurance costs or cut a few teachers from beloved "extras" like Strings, but those actions simply raise the ire of the community. I don?'t like that car costs jump up significantly over the several years that pass between purchases. My partner can complain about the mortgage, but we're not moving out of the house.

The reality is that the remaining 15% of the budget IS where the cuts need to be made. When the pocket money in our household drops down during lean times, the morning latte and pastry are replaced by home-perked coffee and a 30-cent bagel. When the muffler blew at the same time as the back tire, we replaced them both and began setting aside money for a new car. How can it be that during the "lean years" of state-imposed constraints, we have had a computer program for budgeting written by consultants who over-ran their budget by hundreds of thousands of dollars? How did the Doyle building get re-furbished from floor tile to light fixture with nary a cough at the timing of it? Where did the money come from to install a district-wide phone system that will likely be outpaced by cellular technology within two or three years? How do we manage to come up with the funds to pay non-union electricians for work when our own full-time employees sit idle (and therefore on target for the chopping block)?

How is it that our district has a 20% "better" child to administrator ratio, (195 children/administrator in Madison vs. 242 children/administrator statewide) and yet we've only let a handful of positions go unfilled? How did Roger Price manage to OVERSPEND his consultant budget by a million dollars, but in his next breath recommend cutting $300,000 for Strings for little kids?

These kinds of budgetary abuses continue despite their being easily defined differences between "student contact" budgetary items (teachers, books, Strings, etc.) and non-student contact items (computer consultants, budgeting programs, etc.). In those years when things like building maintenance costs didn't go up, or the need for consultants is not proven, why can't those non-student contact items be subjected to a freeze?. As a board, I'm sure that your task of managing the "little things" is as difficult for you as it is for me to convince my partner of the virtues of DVD rentals over a night out on the town. But, when the pocket money for the week is frozen at $20, and the credit card is hidden, home-popped corn smells extra good. Perhaps it is time that you send the current budget recommendations back to Mr. Rainwater and Mr. Price with notification that all non-student contact budgetary items will be frozen for the coming year. I'm sure they can work out the details from there.

Thanks for supporting our children first.

10 Reasons to Combine Lapham & Marquette

Here are 10 good reasons to put the paired elementary schools, Lapham and Marquette, into one building.

1. The school would be a K-5 school, like most elementary schools in the District.
2. Siblings in elementary school would go to school in the same building. They would not be split after 2nd grade.
3. Students would have the benefit of having teachers from kindergarten through 5th grade in the same building, which should strengthen relationships between students and teachers.
4. The teaching teams at Lapham and Marquette would be combined for the K-5 school, so strong teaching teams would not be split up.
5. The combined K-5 school would have approximately 450 students, which is the size of six other MMSD elementary schools, and significantly smaller than two other MMSD elementary schools.
6. The K-5 school would have full-time, or close to full-time, art, music and physical education teachers.
7. All students would attend school close to their homes. Lapham and Marquette are only 1.06 miles away from each other.
8. District schools would continue to exist and be operated in both the Lapham and Marquette neighborhoods.
9. If the District’s growth projections for the area are too low, there is still plenty of space at neighboring Lowell and Emerson schools for students.
10. Last but not least, combining the paired schools would save money, and would free up space to house programs currently located in rented space.

In my view, of almost all the budget items the School Board is looking at, this item has the fewest negative impacts on students. It will be a shame if the Board’s concerns about political pressure trump its concerns about what is best for students.

MMSD / MTI Contract Negotiations Begin: Health Care Changes Proposed

Susan Troller:

The district and Madison Teachers Inc. exchanged initial proposals Wednesday to begin negotiations on a new two-year contract that will run through June 30, 2009. The current one expires June 30.

"Frankly, I was shocked and appalled by the school district's initial proposal because it was replete with take-backs in teachers' rights as well as the economic offer," John Matthews, executive director of MTI, said in an interview Thursday.

But Bob Butler, a staff attorney with the Wisconsin Association of School Boards who is part of the district's bargaining team, said he believed the district's proposal was fair and flexible.

He said the administration's proposal on health care provides two new HMO plans that could bring savings to the district and new options to employees, while still providing an option for the more expensive Wisconsin Physicians Service plan for employees who want it.

The district is proposing that teachers accept language that would allow two new HMO insurance plans, provided by Dean Care and Physicians Plus, to be added to the two plans currently offered.

Slightly more than 53 percent of the employees represented by the teachers' bargaining unit use the less expensive Group Health Cooperative plan, which is a health maintenance organization, or HMO. The district's costs for the GHC plan for next year are $364.82 per month for singles and $974.08 for families. Employees who opt for the GHC do not pay a percentage of the premium themselves but are responsible for co-pays for drugs that range from $6 to $30.

If about the same number of district employees -- 1,224 -- use the GHC plan next year, it would cost the district about $11.6 million.

The other option currently available to teachers is provided by Wisconsin Physicians Service. A preferred provider organization plan, it provides health insurance to just under 47 percent of the district's teacher unit.

A more flexible plan that allows participants to go to different doctors for different medical specialties, the WPS plan next year will cost the district $747.78 per month for singles and $1,961.13 for families. Under the current contract, employees pay 10 percent of the cost of the WPS plan, which this year is $65.65 per month for singles, and $172.18 per month for families.

The cost estimate for the school district's share of the WPS plan under the current contract would be about $19 million. Employees, who pick up 10 percent of the cost as their share of the premium, would pay another $2 million under the current structure.

It's important to remember that a majority of the Madison School Board voted several months ago to not arbitrate with MTI over health care costs. Andy Hall has more:

But with the Madison School Board facing a $10.5 million budget shortfall, is the board giving away too much with its promises to retain teachers' increasingly pricey health insurance and to discard its legal mechanism for limiting teachers' total compensation increase to 3.8 percent?

Yes, School Board Vice President Lawrie Kobza said Saturday, "I feel very strongly that this was a mistake," said Kobza, who acknowledged that most board members endorse the agreement with Madison Teachers Inc., the teachers union.

State law allows districts to avoid arbitration by making a so-called qualified economic offer, or QEO, by boosting salaries and benefits a combined 3.8 percenter a year.

"To agree before a negotiation starts that we're not going to impose the QEO and negotiate health care weakens the district's position," Kobza said. She contended the district's rising health-care costs are harming its ability to raise starting teachers' salaries enough to remain competitive.

The "voluntary impasse resolution" agreements, which are public records, are used in only a handful of Wisconsin's 425 school districts, according to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission.

Carol Carstensen posted an alt view on Concessions before negotiations. Related: What a sham(e), Sun Prairie Cuts Health Care Costs & Raises Teacher Salaries - using the same Dean Healthcare Plan and "Going to the Mat for WPS". TJ Mertz says Susan neglected to mention the QEO (note that the a majority of the MMSD school board agreed ">not to arbitrate over the QEO or health care casts in "Concessions before negotiations".

Deficit Spending: Declining Madison School District Equity Fund Balance

Fund Balance as Percent of General Fund Expenditures FY 2000 Thru FY 2006 Source: Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance
	FY 00	FY 01	FY 02	FY 03*	FY 04	FY 05	FY 06*
K-8 AVERAGE	22.4%	15.7%	20.3%	18.0%	20.2%	20.0%	18.6%
UHS AVERAGE	24.1%	22.3%	23.6%	21.2%	25.8%	25.4%	22.6%
K-12 AVERAGE	15.2%	23.9%	15.1%	13.8%	14.5%	14.7%	13.4%
MMSD ACTUAL	18.9%	16.4%	12.1%	12.2%	7.7%	7.1%	7.1%
MMSD Budget	$252M						$333M
Equity Fund (M)	$48M						$24M

Related:

• Lawrie Kobza publicly discussed the MMSD's $6M Structural Deficit with Superintendent Rainwater during a November, 2006 board meeting:

  "Why did our equity go down this past year since we, the board, passed a balanced budget in 2005/2006? Why did it go down by $2.8M (about a 1% variance in last year's $319M+ budget)?
  
  Answer: "Negative expenditure of $6M in salaries (tuition income was down, special ed high incidence aid was down) $5.9M "structural deficit in place"."

• Structural Deficit will increase MMSD revenue shortfall.
• 2007 / 2008 MMSD Budget Outlook: Half Empty or Half Full?
• 2007 / 2008 Budget Discussions Begin
• Property Tax Levies in Wisconsin #1 As a % of Home Values

The Administration used a "salary savings" account to "balance" the budget. When such savings did not materialize, the MMSD's equity (the difference between an organization's assets and liabilities) declined.

Interestingly, Madison School Board members Beth Moss, Carol Carstensen and Maya Cole have advocated the continued reduction in the District's equity as a means to help balance the 2007 / 2008 $339M+ budget. Beth proposed budgeting an additional $2.133M in "salary savings" above the planned $1M while Carol sought $2M and Maya asked for an additional $500K. [Board member proposed 2007/2008 budget amendments 540K PDF]

Finally, several years ago, I received an email from a person very concerned about the "dramatic" decline in the MMSD's "reserves", which according to this person were, at one time over $50M. I asked for additional data on this matter, but never heard from that person again.

The equity fund's decline gives the MMSD less wiggle room over time, and means that we, as a community face decisions related to facilities, staffing and services. Hopefully, the MMSD board and administration can start to consider and implement new approaches, including virtual learning tools and expanded collaboration with community assets like the UW, MATC and others. I hope that we can move beyond the annual "same service approach" and begin to think differently. Peter Gascoyne's 5 year approach to budgeting is a good place to start

"[Ask] what is the best quality of education that can be purchased for our district for $280 million a year. Start with a completely clean slate. Identify your primary goals and values and priorities. Determine how best to achieve those goals to the highest possible level, given a budget that happens to be $40 million smaller than today’s. Consider everything – school-based budgeting, class sizes, after-school sports, everything."

A definition of "equity". 2007 / 2008 $339M+ MMSD Citizen's Budget

MMSD's Proposed Private School Bussing Reductions

Susan Troller:

Catholic school parents and administrators are upset by proposed Madison school district budget cuts that would eliminate the bus service they receive to get their kids to school.

But the school district is hoping to trim nearly $230,000 from its budget by offering more than $162,000 directly to parents to transport their children instead of providing yellow school bus service to five Catholic schools in the Madison district. Busing those students is projected to cost about $392,000 in 2007-08.

State statutes require public school districts to provide transportation for students in private schools as well as public schools, but Madison district officials say it costs them more than 50 percent more per pupil to bus the Catholic school students. Underlying the proposal is the need for the Madison School Board and administrators to find nearly $8 million to cut from next year's budget to comply with state-imposed revenue caps.

There are 358 students who attend St. Dennis, St. James, Edgewood Campus School, St. Maria Goretti and Queen of Peace schools who would be affected by the policy change.

2006/2007 and 2007/2008 MMSD Citizen's Budget.

Fascinating issue.

Vang Pao Elementary School and The American Experience

Some years ago, while reading a book on Sherman's March to the sea, a distant relative (who lives in the south) pointed out that the book was "one perspective". Madison has a middle school named "Sherman". Which sort of proves the point. A reader pointed out that Sherman middle school was named for "Roger Sherman", signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Indeed, it was one perspective.

Vang Pao elementary school offers us an opportunity to discuss the American experience in Southeast Asia with our children:

These books, films and websites are useful tools to learn more about the USA and Vietnam (and adjacent countries):

• France's 100 years of colonial rule Clusty
• Rads by Tom Bates
• The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
• About Face by David Hackworth
• A Bright Shining Lie
• The Fog of War
• The Lonely Planet: Vietnam
• The Quiet American
• The American Experience: Vietnam
• David Halberstam
• Eisenhower and Vietnam
• JFK and Vietnam
• LBJ & Vietnam
• Nixon and Vietnam
• Gerald Ford and Vietnam
• Ho Chi Minh's letters to the USA
• The Draft and Vietnam
• Selective Service System
• Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Local conversations on the Vang Pao Elementary School.

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.

Let me be more specific. The superintendent's preferred school consolidation plan calls for closing three schools (Lindbergh, Marquette, and Black Hawk), requiring more than 800 students to change schools, and, to my mind, adversely affecting the education available to many of the elementary school students and certainly all of the middle school students in the East attendance area. (Thanks, Art!) This plan is said to save about $1 million next year, though for various reasons I think that figure is inflated.

Let's assume for the moment that the figures in the District's five-year projection are accurate. I've been told they're not, but we've got nothing better to work with, so let's use these numbers for illustrative purposes. According to this document, the district's salary and benefits costs are assumed to grow from $189,845,020 to $198,761,362 next year, an increase of 4.7%. The Qualified Economic Offer provision of state law requires these costs to increase by at least 3.8% in order to permit the district to avoid arbitration on economic issues. If these expenses went up by 3.8% rather than 4.7%, the budget gap would shrink by $1,702,231. (This means - again assuming the accuracy of these figures - that about $1.7 million of next year's budget gap is, from a legal perspective, voluntarily incurred rather than statutorily imposed.)

According to the web site of the Wisconsin School Board Association, the total average package increase per teacher in school settlements across the state in 2006-2007 was 4.29%. If the district's salary and benefits expenses went up by 4.29% rather than 4.7%, the budget gap would shrink by about $772,000.

If these figures are anywhere close to being accurate, the district could save the same amount of money it hopes to save by closing schools by instead scaling back on the amount by which it plans to increase teacher salary and benefits next year to some percentage closer to 3.8%.

To be clear, I'm not necessarily advocating a reduction in whatever the district and Board are assuming in terms of teacher salaries and benefits. The take home pay of the teacher who lives next door to me hasn't gone up at all in the last three years. That stinks. But the school board is confronted with a menu of awful choices. Shouldn't the awful choice of cutting back the projected increase in teacher salary and benefits to something closer to 3.8% be added to the mix?

MMSD Budget Proposal Documents: Active Citizens for Education

• 2007/2008 Budget Reallocation Topics
• Parameters for Studying Health Insurance
• Achieving Health Insurance Cost Savings
• Community Service Fund 80 Overview
• Fund 80 Audit Request
• Cost Analysis Proposal for all MMSD Services
• Extra-curricular Activities Funding Proposal
• 2004 / 2005 Budget Proposal

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

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.

Balance of power could shift with school board election

Jason Shephard:

On April 3, voters will elect three members to the Madison Board of Education. At least two will be newcomers, replacing retiring Ruth Robarts and Shwaw Vang, while board president Johnny Winston Jr. is runing for a second term. Victories by Beth Moss and Marj Passman could give Madison Teachers Inc., the teachers union, greater control of the board’s majority. A victory by Maya Cole, meanwhile, could provide a continued 4-3 split between MTI-endorsed politicians and more reform-minded officials. Here’s a look at the three races.

Hard MMSD Budget Still Has Wiggle Room

Scott Milfred:

It's a contentious fact that has run through so many Madison School Board races and referendums in recent years:

Madison schools spend a lot -- $12,111 per student during the 2005-06 school year.

If the district is spending that much, how can it be in crisis?

The answer is complex and a bit murky. Yet a few things are clear.

Liberal Madison has long spent more than most K-12 districts in Wisconsin. This was true before the state adopted school revenue limits in the 1990s, and the caps only reinforced this today.

"When revenue caps went in, everyone was basically frozen in place," Madison School Superintendent Art Rainwater said Friday. "We do spend more than the state average. But that has been the expectation of our community."

So why does Madison spend more? Berry points to Madison's higher number of staff who aren't teachers. Madison hires a lot of social workers, psychologists, nurses and administrators.

Madison spends more per pupil than Racine, Green Bay and Kenosha -- as well as the state average -- on student and staff services, administration and building and grounds. And Madison's non- instructional costs are rising as a percentage of its spending.

"Madison is actually de- emphasizing instruction," Berry contends.

In addition, Berry suspects Madison is over-identifying students for learning disabilities.

Links: Madison spending, student and staffing history. 2006/2007 MMSD Citizen's Budget. Carol Carstensen's thoughts on a 2007 Referendum.

Q: Wisconsin Reading Comprehension Test Changes

Does anyone have solid information about how and when the Wisconsin Reading Comprehension Test has been revised over the years?

One obvious question in comparing scores from 1998 to those in 2005 is how the tests were changed. [NYT Article on Madison's Reading Program]

"Bitter Medicine for Madison Schools":
07/08 budget grows 3.6% from 333M (06/07) to $345M with Reductions in the Increase

Doug Erickson on the 2007/2008 $345M budget (up from $333M in 2006/2007) for 24,342 students):

As feared by some parents, the recommendations also included a plan to consolidate schools on the city's East Side. Marquette Elementary students would move to Lapham Elementary and Sherman Middle School students would be split between O'Keeffe and Black Hawk middle schools.

No school buildings would actually close - O'Keeffe would expand into the space it currently shares with Marquette, and the district's alternative programs would move to Sherman Middle School from leased space.

District officials sought to convince people Friday that the consolidation plan would have some educational benefits, but those officials saw no silver lining in having to increase class sizes at several elementary schools.

Friday's announcement has become part of an annual ritual in which Madison - and most other state districts - must reduce programs and services because overhead is rising faster than state-allowed revenue increases. A state law caps property-tax income for districts based on enrollment and other factors.

The Madison School District will have more money to spend next year - about $345 million, up from $332 million - but not enough to keep doing everything it does this year.

School Board members ultimately will decide which cuts to make by late May or June, but typically they stick closely to the administration's recommendations. Last year, out of $6.8 million in reductions, board members altered less than $500,000 of Rainwater's proposal.

Board President Johnny Winston Jr. called the cuts "draconian" but said the district has little choice. Asked if the School Board will consider a referendum to head off the cuts, he said members "will discuss everything."

But board Vice President Lawrie Kobza said she thinks it's too early to ask the community for more money. Voters approved a $23 million referendum last November that included money for a new elementary school on the city's Far West Side.

"I don't see a referendum passing," she said.

Links: Wisconsin K-12 spending. The 10.5M reductions in the increase plus the planned budget growth of $12M yields a "desired" increase of 7.5%. In other words, current Administration spending growth requires a 7.5% increase in tax receipts from property, sales, income, fees and other taxes (maybe less - see Susan Troller's article below). The proposed 07/08 budget grows 3.6% from 333M+ (06/07) to $345M (07/08). Madison's per student spending has grown an average of 5.25% since 1987 - details here.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

The spectre of central city school closings was what prompted some of us to resist the far-west side school referendum. Given the looming energy crisis, we should be encouraging folks to live in town, not at the fringes, strengthen our city neighborhoods. Plus, along with the need to overhaul the way we fund schools, we need a law requiring developers to provide a school or at least the land as a condition to development.

UPDATE 2: Susan Troller pegs the reduction in the increase at $7.2M:

Proposed reductions totaled almost $7.2 million and include increases in elementary school class sizes, changes in special education allocations and school consolidations on the near east side.

Other recommendations include increased hockey fees, the elimination of the elementary strings program and increased student-to-staff ratios at the high school and middle school levels.

UPDATE 3: Roger Price kindly emailed the total planned 07/08 budget: $339,139,282

Madison Superintendent's 2007-2008 Proposed Budget Changes

Art Rainwater on the reductions in increases to the proposed 2007-2008 MMSD Budget [1.4MB PDF]:

Dear Board of Education,

The attached is my recommendation for the service reductions required to balance the budget for 2007-2008. They are provided to you for review in advance of my Recommended Balanced Budget for 2007-2008 which will be available on April 12, 2007. You requested that the service reductions be presented to you in advance to provide sufficient time for your study and analysis.

After 14 years of continuous reductions in our services for children there are no good choices. While these service reductions are not good for children or the health of the school district they represent our best professional judgment of the least harmful alternatives.

The process that we used to study, analyze, consider and finally recommend the items presented was done over a period of weeks. We first reviewed each department and division of the district and listed anything that could be reduced or eliminated legally or contractually. We narrowed that list to those items which we believed would do the least harm to:

• Our academic programs,
• The health and safety of our schools,
• The opportunities for student involvement,
• Our ability to complete our legal and fiscal requirements

The document presented to you today is the result of those discussions. The items are broken into four categories:

1. Reductions to balance the budget ( Impact Statements provided)
2. Reductions analyzed, discussed and not included (Impact statements provided)
3. Reductions reviewed and not advanced
4. Possible revenues dependent on legislative action

The administration is prepared to provide you further analysis and respond to questions as we continue to work to approve a final working budget in May.

2006/2007 Citizen's Budget ($333M+) for 24,342 students. I did not quickly notice a total proposed 2007/2008 spending number in this document.

UPDATE: Overall spending will grow about 3.4% from $333M to $345M per Doug Erickson's article.

Links: NBC15 | Channel3000

Madison's Reading Battle Makes the NYT: In War Over Teaching Reading, a U.S.-Local Clash

Diana Jean Schemo has been at this article for awhile:

The program, which gives $1 billion a year in grants to states, was supposed to end the so-called reading wars — the battle over the best method of teaching reading — but has instead opened a new and bitter front in the fight.

According to interviews with school officials and a string of federal audits and e-mail messages made public in recent months, federal officials and contractors used the program to pressure schools to adopt approaches that emphasize phonics, focusing on the mechanics of sounding out syllables, and to discard methods drawn from whole language that play down these mechanics and use cues like pictures or context to teach.

Federal officials who ran Reading First maintain that only curriculums including regular, systematic phonics lessons had the backing of “scientifically based reading research” required by the program.

Madison officials say that a year after Wisconsin joined Reading First, in 2004, contractors pressured them to drop their approach, which blends some phonics with whole language in a program called Balanced Literacy. Instead, they gave up the money — about $2 million, according to officials here, who say their program raised reading scores.

“We had data demonstrating that our children were learning at the rate that Reading First was aiming for, and they could not produce a single ounce of data to show the success rates of the program they were proposing,” said Art Rainwater, Madison’s superintendent of schools.

Much more on Reading First and Madison, here.

Notes & Links:

• UW Psychology Professor Mark Seidenberg:

  Whole Language was a massive, uncontrolled experiment, with millions of children as unwitting subjects.

  How it's done: Someone gets an idea

  • Often a Guru. Many Gurus in reading instruction.
  • Guru has brilliant insight about how children learn, how to teach reading - Their own personal theory
  • The idea may be personally promoted by the guru, with direct appeals to teachers
  • The idea is implemented on a vast scale, based on intuitions that it is good.

• Ruth Robarts on Madison Schools' Reading Progress.
• Mark Seidenberg: Madison Schools Distort Reading Data.

UPDATE: Joanne Jacobs:

In part one of his response, Ken DeRosa of D-Ed Reckoning provides a reading passage altered to force readers to guess the meaning from context. Struggling this way does not inspire love of reading.

In part two, DeRosa analyzes the statistics to argue Madison students aren’t doing better in reading compared to other Wisconsin students; if anything, they’ve slipped a bit. Because the state reading test was made easier and the cut score for proficiency was lowered, all Wisconsin students look better. However, there was no progress in fourth-grade reading on the federal NAEP test.

With help from Rory of Parentalcation, who’s great at finding data, Ken shows that claims of fantastic progress by black students are illusory. Their scores improved on the easier test at a slightly slower rate than white students. It looks like to me as though blacks nearly caught up in basic skills but remain far behind at the proficient and advanced level. Perhaps someone who knows more statistics than I do — lots of you do — can find flaws in Ken’s analysis.

NYT Letters to the editor. Finally, others have raised questions about the MMSD's analysis and publication of test score data.

Andrew Rotherham:

Diana Schemo's NYT story on Reading First is not surprisingly sparking a lot of pushback and outraged emails, especially from the phonicshajeen. But, they have a point. There are problems with Reading First, but this may not be the best example of them at all...but, while you're there, don't miss the buried lede in graf eight...it's almost like Schemo got snowed by all sides at once on this one...

3/5/2007 Madison School Board Candidate Forum: West High School

The Madison West High School PTSO held a school board candidate forum Monday night. Topics included:

• Madison High School Comparison
• A candidate's ability to listen, interact and work successfully with other board members
• Past and future referenda support
• Candidate views on the $333M+ budget for our 24,000 students
• Extensive conversations on the part of Marj and Johnny to lobby the state and federal governments for more money. Maya wondered how successful that strategy might be given that our own State Senator Fred Risser failed to sign on to the Pope-Roberts/Breske resolution and that there are many school districts much poorer than Madison who will likely obtain benefits first, if new state tax funds are available. Maya also mentioned her experience at the state level via the concealed carry battles.
• The challenge of supporting all students, including those with special needs. Several candidates noted that there is white flight from the MMSD (enrollment has been flat for years, while local population continues to grow)
• Mandatory classroom grouping (heterogeneous) was also discussed

I applaud the West PTSO for holding this event. I also liked the way that they handled questions: all were moderated, which prevents a candidate supporter from sandbagging the opposition. I attended a forum last year where supporters posed questions before local parents had the opportunity.

Video and mp3 audio clips are available below. Make sure you have the latest version of Quicktime as the video clips use a new, more efficient compression technique.

Opening Statements: Video mp3 audio

Question 1: For Seat 3 Candidate Beth Moss (vs. Rick Thomas) regarding Madison's High Schools: Video mp3 audio

Question 2: What did you do to pass the last referendum and what will you do for the next? Video mp3 audio

Question 3: What values do you bring to the ($333M+ budget) decision making process? Video mp3 audio

Question 4: The MMSD's demographics are changing with more students with special needs while many families feel that they have less resources available for their "normal" students. How would you balance the needs of these various constituencies so that the families without special needs students don't leave the Madison Metropolitan School District? Video mp3 audio

Question 5: for Marj Passman (opposed by Maya Cole); Answering a recent Isthmus question about "How do you play with others", you said that you saw your role as convincing fellow board members as to the correctness of your views. You didn't say anything about listening to others. What role does listening play in your new board member job description? Video mp3 audio

Question 6: Given the statistics in Sunday's paper that only about 30% of Madison households have kids, how does that affect your approach to "selling" another referendum? Video mp3 audio

Question 7 – All Candidates
Please explain your views on additional charter schools given the success of Nuestro Mundo here in Madison and several offerings in Appleton just to name a few?

Question 8 – All Candidates
How can the school district provide for second languages to be taught to all students starting in Kindergarten and continuing through all grades?

Question 9 – All Candidates
The Board will be hiring a new superintendent. Please discuss what you believe is the top 3 criteria for a superintendent. You are free to ignore my request to address communication between Board and Administration/Superintendent, Boards communication with public, Superintendent and Public.

Question 10 – All Candidates
What role should School Board, Parents and Educator play in changing state law which adversely affect our schools?

Question 11 - Rick and Maya
What accountability mechanisms do you envision?

Question 12 – All Candidates
What is your position on the health insurance issue for teachers, that is the WPS option versus HMO’s?

Candidate responses to these questions can be found here.

School Board Candidate Video Chat: Seat 3 Candidate Rick Thomas

Watch a video conversation with Madison School Board Seat 3 Candidate Rick Thomas [8MB]. Pam Cross Leone, Beth Moss and Thomas face off in the February 20, 2007 primary election.

Much more on the election, here. Rick's literature has a handy Sudoku puzzle on the back.

School Finance: K-12 Tax & Spending Climate

School spending has always been a puzzle, both from a state and federal government perspective as well as local property taxpayers. In an effort to shed some light on the vagaries of K-12 finance, I've summarized below a number of local, state and federal articles and links.

The 2007 Statistical Abstract offers a great deal of information about education and many other topics. A few tidbits:

	1980	1990	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004
US K-12 Enrollment [.xls file]	40,878,000	41,216,000	47,203,000	47,671,000	48,183,000	48,540,000	NA
US K-12 Deflated Public K-12 Spending - Billions [.xls file]	$230B	311.8B	$419.7B	$436.6B	$454.6B	$464.8B	$475.5B
Avg. Per Student Spending	$5,627	$7,565	$8,892	$9,159	$9,436	$9,576	NA
US Defense Spending (constant yr2000 billion dollars) [.xls file]	$267.1B	$382.7B	$294.5B	$297.2B	$329.4B	$365.3B	$397.3B
US Health Care Spending (Billions of non-adjusted dollars) [.xls file]	$255B	$717B	$1,359B	$1,474B	$1,608B	$1,741B	$1,878B
US Gross Domestic Product - Billions [.xls file]	5,161	7,112	9,817	9,890	10,048	10,320	10,755

Related Federal Spending Links:

• A recent book: Taxes, Spending, and the U.S. Government's March Towards Bankruptcy by NYU's Daniel Shaviro:

  The United States is moving toward a possible catastrophic fiscal collapse. The country may not get there, but the risk is unmistakable and growing. The "fiscal language" of taxes, spending, and deficits has played a huge and underappreciated role in the decisions that have pushed the nation in this dangerous direction. This book proposes a better fiscal language for U.S. budgetary policy, rooted in economic fundamentals such as wealth distribution and resource allocation in lieu of "taxes" and "spending" and in the use of multiple measures (such as the fiscal gap and generational accounting) to replace misguided reliance on annual budget deficits.

• Fed Chairman Bernanke's recent speech on the national debt problem:

  The large projected increases in future entitlement spending have two principal sources. First, like many other industrial countries, the United States has entered what is likely to be a long period of demographic transition, the result both of the reduction in fertility that followed the post-World War II baby boom and of ongoing increases in life expectancy. Longer life expectancies are certainly to be welcomed. But they are likely to lead to longer periods of retirement in the future, even as the growth rate of the workforce declines. As a consequence of the demographic trends, the number of people of retirement age will grow relative both to the population as a whole and to the number of potential workers. Currently, people 65 years and older make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population, and there are about five people between the ages of 20 and 64 for each person 65 and older. According to the intermediate projections of the Social Security Trustees, in 2030 Americans 65 and older will constitute about 19 percent of the U.S. population, and the ratio of those between the ages of 20 and 64 to those 65 and older will have fallen to about 3.

• Washington Post:

  Bernanke noted that the federal deficit has declined in the past two years but said that was "the calm before the storm" of skyrocketing expenses for an aging population. He cited Congressional Budget Office projections that spending on the big entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- will equal 15 percent of the nation's gross domestic product by 2030, double last year's level.

• and the debt spiral.
• "The Budget Illusion" NY Times editorial.
• Competing in the Global Economy by Michael Porter:

  When I was working on The Competitive Advantage of Nations, it became clear to me that seeing economic and social issues as separate agendas was not only wrong but counterproductive. To have a productive economy, you need people who feel safe at work, who are healthy, and who have a sense that if they work hard, they'll have the opportunity to do better. Productivity is also consistent with a clean environment. Environmental pollution normally is a sign of inefficient and unproductive use of resources and is almost always a reflection of inadequate technology. Countries with toughening environmental regulations, then, are not necessarily at an economic disadvantage; in fact, the opposite can be true. Finally, an independent national organization has grown out of my 1995 HBR article "The Competitive Advantage of the Inner City," which is included in this collection. I find that the only sustainable solution to our distressed communities is to improve their economic competitiveness by building on their competitive advantage. We must shift from a poverty-reduction mentality to one of creating income and wealth through the market economy.

Wisconsin Spending Links:

Jerry Eykholt:

Madison is not alone in seeing large increases in public school funding in the last 10-15 years, and one reason is relaxed federal supports to the states. Another reason is inflation on elements that hit schools harder than most other sectors of the economy (school costs are primarily staffing, health insurance, energy, and building/construction costs - all have seen higher rates of increase than the CPI).

Rising school costs were considered to be the design of greedy and inefficient school districts - and the property tax revolt did little to advance an understanding of why costs were increasing in the first place. However, during that period, Wisconsin schools were regarded very well by national experts in education. Several anti-tax legislators got elected primarily for their stated anger over property taxes. Tommy Thompson's popularity was buoyed by anti-tax rhetoric. That we are pretty much at the same point with the legislature (in terms of understanding) is no surprise to me.  We should also understand that the revenue caps were designed to fail at a certain point. If we lead by the sound bite, we are bitten.

MMSD is one of the most expensive public school districts in the state (per pupil spending is highest among the largest school districts). It has been for decades. However, the annual rate of increase in per pupil spending has been very close to the Wisconsin average. While per pupil spending for the average Wisconsin public school district has increased at an annual rate of 5.10%, it has increased by an annual rate of 5.25% in MMSD (see table below).  That MMSD costs have risen more should be no surprise, because of cost of living, the loss of students to the growing suburbs (subsidized by state taxes), and the relative portion of special education needs and classroom support needs have risen significantly. The raw data indicate no significant fiscal mismanagement of the MMSD relative to the Wisconsin norm.  Like any large public institution, there are likely more efficient ways of doing things, however MMSD is investing a large fraction of its internal brain power on trimming budgets - the total cost of this on education (including the negative effects on learning by diverting talent away from teaching and stimulating creative learning environments) is much greater than the temporary budget savings, in my opinion.

One very important grounding point is that, while MMSD costs per pupil have increased significantly, the MMSD portion of school taxes has not increased that much for the average homeowner. Most of us are helped greatly by the large increase in property valuation in Madison. In our case, school property taxes on our near westside home went from $2229 in 1996 to $2435 in 2006.  This is less than a 10% increase in 10 years, although the value on our home has increased more than 65% in the same period.  For my wife and I, raising 3 kids, that's a pretty good value.

In my opinion, there are several factors we should be looking at when we consider MMSD's long-term budgeting:

• the value to our economy from the perception (and continued demonstration) that we have one of the best public school districts for communities of our size.
• the value that and staff to the Madison economy. This is the multiplier effect. Think about it - for every dollar spent on public education, a large fraction of that ($0.50 or more) comes back to the Madison area economy from what teachers spend. More comes back to support our health care infrastructure, more comes back to construction and other maintenance, transportation services.  The jobs we have through MMSD is a major boost to the local economy.
• the rate of increase in per pupil spending is not likely to continue at the same rate. Woes in other state and national school districts are mounting, and there likely is to be some greater effort placed on reducing the factors leading to increased costs (health care reform, for one).
• the rate of per pupil spending in our neighboring school districts (Verona, Middleton/Cross Plains, Sun Prairie, ...) is likely to increase at a greater rate than Madison - because the ratio of the rate of growth of students (a major factor in state support) and the demand for services is declining.  There may be greater economic forces in the area that promote a larger percentage of the student growth in Dane County to be within MMSD's boundaries
• the rate of increase in special needs and bilingual services is declining - and benefits gained from services delivered in the past have lasting value. MMSD has done a stellar job addressing a large change in its demographics - it has adapted dynamically, with great energy and staff devotion to meeting early childhood and elementary education needs.  This will likely have a great benefit for the long term, and we should expect a declining rate of increase in the levels of need because we are doing a good job of addressing them early.
• service to educational standards and national service. MMSD is seen as a leader nationally - it is referenced regularly by other school districts as one to emulate. We do an important service to the nation by doing things well here - and it is a national value.  We need to pay attention to the creation and stimulation of educational best practices and the effects it has nationally on public education.the nation will be experiencing some very difficult fiscal challenges in the near future, due to a retiring baby boom, large federal debt, declining rates of productivity growth, and a decline in personal savings to debt ratio. We should be seeing education now (as well as building community around the coming challenges) as a major preparation for the future.

Thanks for following my rather long note - and thanks to those who look at this carefully, advocate for strong public schools, and respond dynamically to the challenges.

According to the Wisconsin DPI, per student spending in Wisconsin has increased by 5.1% annually, since 1987. The Madison School District increased at a 5.25% rate during that time. Clearly, our public schools are attempting to address more issues than ever, from academics to breakfast, special education and health care.
Annual K-12 Per Student Spending: 1987 - 2005

Year	Wisconsin Average	Madison School District
1987-1988	$4,781	$5,450
1988-1989	5,105	5,769
1989-1990	5,425	6,189
1990-1991	5,854	6,551
1991-1992	6,135	7,083
1992-1993	6,497	7,561
1993-1994	6,681	7,837
1994-1995	6,964	8,163
1995-1996	7,226	8,800
1996-1997	7,592	9,065
1997-1998	8,013	9,121
1998-1999	8,354	9,616
1999-2000	8,376	10,162
2000-2001	8,765	10,870
2001-2002	9,571	11,586
2002-2003	10,006	11,493
2003-2004	10,590	12,342
2004-2005	11,044	12,732

Source: Wisconsin DPI.

The Wisconsin School Finance and Education System by Allen Odden [2.8MB PDF]:

In 2004–05, Wisconsin public schools educated 880,000 students in 425 districts. Wisconsin schools were funded with $7.9 billion from local and state sources (Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction [WDPI], 2005).

The state used a three-tiered guaranteed tax base (GTB) system of school finance. For the first tier of the system, the primary aid level, the state guaranteed a tax base of $1.93 million to all districts, allowing them to tax themselves as if their tax base were $1.93 million for revenues up to $1,000 per pupil. Just about every public school received some aid because the $1.93 million level was above almost every district’s property valuation per pupil. This tier required a local property tax rate of 0.52 mills.

The second tier, the secondary aid level, provided a GTB of $1,006,510, called the secondary guarantee, for spending from $1,000 to $7,782, the latter called the secondary cost ceiling. Fully accessing the $7,782 per pupil required an additional local property tax rate of 6.74 mills, for a Tier 1 plus Tier 2 tax rate of 7.26 mills.

For the third tier or tertiary level, the state guaranteed the statewide average property value per pupil, or $407,300. Districts with a tax base at or lower than this guarantee could use the guarantee to spend at any higher level they chose and still receive positive state aid. Districts with a tax base above this level could also spend at a higher level, but their state aid would be a
negative number, and that number would be subtracted from their Tier 2 aid until that tier was reduced to zero. This tier was designed to discourage spending above the secondary cost ceiling for high-wealth districts (WDPI, 2005).

In 1993, the Wisconsin Legislature enacted a revenue cap on spending to thwart the continuous increases in education spending that had occurred during the previous decade. Allowed to increase generally at a rate of inflation, the revenue limit recently has been set at a fixed level; in 2004–05, the limit was $241 per pupil (Reschovsky, 2002; WDPI, 2005). Districts can exceed the revenue caps through a local referendum. There is no cap on the top amount a district can choose to spend.

Simultaneously, the state also eliminated binding arbitration, made teacher strikes illegal, and adopted the Qualified Economic Offer (QEO). The QEO was adopted to ensure that bargained agreements could be financed within the allowable cost increases. Districts can bargain with unions over salaries and benefits, but if the two sides cannot agree, the district can impose a settlement if it offers a QEO, which is defined as an offer that increases salaries and benefits by at least 3.8%. Over the past several years, we conclude that the QEO has been responsible at least in part for reducing the rate of teacher salary increases.

Additionally, in fiscal year 1997, the state made a commitment to pay two thirds of school funding—a figure that does not include federal revenue but does include $469 million in property tax relief each year (Norman, 2002). In 2003–04, state funds, excluding the property tax relief, accounted for about 61.6 percent of district revenues, and during the 2003 legislative session, the two-thirds guarantee was reduced to 65 percent.

A longer explanation and analysis can be found in Andrew Reschovsky's policy primer [350K PDF]

Thanks to Peter Gascoyne for these links.

Illinois thinks about cashing in their future lottery revenues today - shades of Wisconsin's trade of future tobacco settlement proceeds for money today (2001).

NY Governor Spitzer Ties Increased School Funds to Performance:

Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York said today that he would allocate more money to the state’s public education system in his 2008 budget proposal, but he said the increased spending would be tied to better results from schools, educators and students.

“There will be no more excuses for failure,” Mr. Spitzer said. “The debate will no longer be about money, but about performance.”
The governor, in office for less than a month, did not tip his hand today on how much the public school system will get in the budget that he will submit to the state Legislature on Wednesday. But in an address to school leaders and legislators, he said that every school district that receives at least $15 million more this year in his new budget, or 10 percent more than in the previous year, would be subject to a new “contract for excellence” that will dictate how they can spend those funds.
Schools that do not perform well, he said, would be shut down. Educators who do not meet performance goals would be dismissed. A new accountability system would monitor how schools are performing academically and whether they are making the best use of their money, he said. Also, the schools will be judged on whether their academic programming is helping students perform better.

• James Wigderson on the QEO:

  That number is growing, not shrinking. School aids, school tax credits and Medicaid have all been growing as a percentage of the state budget, while the next eight of the top 10 budget items have all been shrinking as a percentage of the budget.

  Given how much of the state budget is consumed by education spending and how almost all of the local school districts are claiming to be short the necessary funding, taxpayers should be outraged that the state is seriously considering eliminating the largest cost control for local districts, the qualified economic offer.

  The QEO means that school districts can avoid going to binding arbitration in labor negotiations with the teachers’ unions if the districts offered wage and benefit increases that total 3.8 percent per year.

  It’s not a perfect system. As the Waukesha Taxpayers League showed last year with their study of the Waukesha School District, the actual average salary increases the last three years were 6.8 percent, 4.6 percent and 6.9 percent.

• Amy Hetzner has more on the Waukesha School District's budget.
• New Jersey considers a Property Tax annual increase "cap".
• Wisconsin's $2.15B structural deficit.
• Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle's State of the State Address:

  Called for a mandatory third year of math and science for high school graduation.

  Announced he will triple funding to give kids access to the school breakfast program. Right now, Wisconsin ranks 50th in school breakfast participation.

  Urged the Legislature to approve a major investment to reduce class sizes from kindergarten to grade three.

  "Smaller classes, higher standards, good nutrition, a strong start in life, and a ticket to college for every kid willing to work for it," Governor Doyle said. "That's our education agenda, an agenda of opportunity."

• Wisconsin Senator Scott Fitzgerald's response noted the State's $2B deficit.
• Andy Hall's Wisconsin School Finance Series:
  • Key School Finance Terms
  • Small Class Sizes in Jeaporday
  • A New System of Wisconsin School Finance
  • An Increased Sense of Urgency

Madison (Property Tax) spending links:

Locally, city school property taxes have been relatively stable while overall school spending continues to grow. In other words, state and federal income and sales tax and fee redistribution are paying a growing percentage of local K-12 budgets. In addition, the dramatic growth in new construction in and around Madison over the past decade has softened the spending growth by spreading the costs across more parcels. A new construction slowdown will have an affect on property taxes, and assessments. Paul Soglin's January, 2006 article on Madison's tax base is well worth reading. Fred Mohs notes that there is a growing number of tax exempt parcels in Madison.

A 5 Year Approach to the Madison School District's Budget Challenges; or what is the best quality of education that can be purchased for our district for $280 million a year? by Peter Gascoyne and 2007/2008 Madison School District Budget Outlook: Half Empty or Half Full?

Former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin suggests a .25% increase in the sales tax to grow K-12 funding along with another .25% for cities.

Madison School Board Discusses an Independent Math Curriculum Review

The Madison School Board's 2006/2007 Goals for Superintendent Art Rainwater included the "Initiatiation and completion of a comprehensive, independent and neutral review and assessment of the District's K-12 math curriculum". Watch the discussion [Video] and read a memo [240K PDF] from the Superintendent regarding his plans for this goal. Much more here and here.

Barbara Lehman kindly emailed the Board's conclusion Monday evening:

It was moved by Lawrie Kobza and seconded by Ruth Robarts to approve the revised plan for implementation of the Superintendent’s 2006-07 goal to initiate and complete a comprehensive, independent, and neutral review and assessment of the District’s K-12 math curriculum as presented at this meeting, including extension for completion of the evaluation to the 2007-08 school year. The Board of Education shall receive a report in 2006-07 with analysis of math achievement data for MMSD K-12 students, including analysis of all math sub-test scores disaggregated by student characteristics and schools in addition to reports in subsequent years. Student representative advisory vote * aye. Motion carried 6-1 with Lucy Mathiak voting no.

Madison Parents' School Safety Site

Within moments of reading Chris Anderson's "The Vanishing Point Theory of News", a link to the Madison Parents' School Safety Site arrived in my inbox. The site includes a useful set of questions that all parents should use to evaluate their children's school.

RSS Feed.

Notes and Links on the Madison K-12 Climate and Superintendent Hires Since 1992

Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater's recent public announcement that he plans to retire in 2008 presents an opportunity to look back at previous searches as well as the K-12 climate during those events. Fortunately, thanks to Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web, we can quickly lookup information from the recent past.

The Madison School District's two most recent Superintendent hires were Cheryl Wilhoyte [Clusty] and Art Rainwater [Clusty]. Art came to Madison from Kansas City, a district which, under court order, dramatically increased spending by "throwing money at their schools", according to Paul Ciotti:

In 1985 a federal district judge took partial control over the troubled Kansas City, Missouri, School District (KCMSD) on the grounds that it was an unconstitutionally segregated district with dilapidated facilities and students who performed poorly. In an effort to bring the district into compliance with his liberal interpretation of federal law, the judge ordered the state and district to spend nearly $2 billion over the next 12 years to build new schools, integrate classrooms, and bring student test scores up to national norms.

It didn't work. When the judge, in March 1997, finally agreed to let the state stop making desegregation payments to the district after 1999, there was little to show for all the money spent. Although the students enjoyed perhaps the best school facilities in the country, the percentage of black students in the largely black district had continued to increase, black students' achievement hadn't improved at all, and the black-white achievement gap was unchanged.(1)

The situation in Kansas City was both a major embarrassment and an ideological setback for supporters of increased funding for public schools. From the beginning, the designers of the district's desegregation and education plan openly touted it as a controlled experiment that, once and for all, would test two radically different philosophies of education. For decades critics of public schools had been saying, "You can't solve educational problems by throwing money at them." Educators and advocates of public schools, on the other hand, had always responded by saying, "No one's ever tried."

Cheryl Wilhoyte was hired, with the support of the two local dailies (Wisconsin State Journal, 9/30/1992: Search No Further & Cap Times Editorial, 9/21/1992: Wilhoyte Fits Madison) by a school board 4-3 vote. The District's budget in 1992-1993 was $180,400,000 with local property taxes generating $151,200,00 of that amount. 14 years later, despite the 1993 imposition of state imposed annual school spending increase limits ("Revenue Caps"), the 2006 budget is $331,000,000. Dehli's article mentions that the 1992-1993 School Board approved a 12.9% school property tax increase for that budget. An August, 1996 Capital Times editorial expressed puzzlement over terms of Cheryl Wilhoyte's contract extension.

Art, the only applicant, was promoted from Acting Superintendent to Superintendent in January, 1999. Chris Murphy's January, 1999 article includes this:

Since Wilhoyte's departure, Rainwater has emerged as a popular interim successor. Late last year, School Board members received a set of surveys revealing broad support for a local superintendent as opposed to one hired from outside the district. More than 100 of the 661 respondents recommended hiring Rainwater.

Art was hired on a 7-0 vote but his contract was not as popular - approved on a 5-2 vote (Carol Carstensen, Calvin Williams, Deb Lawson, Joanne Elder and Juan Jose Lopez voted for it while Ray Allen and Ruth Robarts voted no). The contract was and is controversial, as Ruth Robarts wrote in September, 2004.

A February, 2004 Doug Erickson summary of Madison School Board member views of Art Rainwater's tenure to date.

Quickly reading through a few of these articles, I found that the more things change, the more they stay the same:

• Pamela Cotant, in a September, 1992 article:

  Hanson said the shortfall is partly due to about $1 million in underestimated expenditures. The largest of these are health, dental and othertypes of insurance costs that came in $300,000 over estimates; extended employment and extra duty costs, $300,000; and teacher salaries, $250,000.
  In addition, the district did not receive as much as expected in areas suchas disabled tuition, Chapter I aid, food service income and interest income.

• Pam Cotant, writing in a May, 1991 article:

  School board President Nan Brien also said the board and district are in a tough spot because so many programs have been cut to bring the budget proposal ($149M) under the cap.

  ``The cuts he made are going to give the board some real difficult times,''Brien said.

  Brien said she was satisfied that Travis appeared to make his cuts across the board rather than in one area of the budget.

  Travis cut $2.3 million in staff requests. Cuts include a phasing out of the birth to age 2 program for children with special needs and $86,000 in funding to the Bootstrap program for students at risk of not graduating.

  Other cuts include 11 regular teachers and seven special education teachers, four positions in health services and about 10 custodial positions. Reductions also include $157,000 for a new child care program that would have helped students in the district's School-Age Parenting Program, more than $35,000 for staff training and professional improvement, and $33,000 for an after-school program (AIMS) for minority students.

• December, 1992: Citizen / School Board call-in to discuss the then $180M budget by Gail Perry.
• April, 1999: Budget Cuts Likely for Madison Schools: Declining Enrollment and Special Ed Costs Blamed by Doug Erickson.
• Capital Times & Wisconsin State Journal archive searches (many articles):
  • Cheryl Wilhoyte
  • Art Rainwater
• April, 1999 Wisconsin State Journal Editorial: Rainwater will Face Tough Choices
• October, 1992; Joyce Dehli's Wisconsin State Journal article: Travis, Matthews: Schools' New Boss Must Create Unity
• October 1994 Wisconsin State Journal Editorial: Either Back Wilhoyte or Fire Her
• School safety and spending were the topics of this September, 1992 article
• SIS comments on Art's public retirement announcement

Fascinating. Perhaps someone will conduct a much more detailed review of the record, which would be rather useful over the next year or two.

Mayors and Public Schools

There's been a great deal of activity vis a vis Mayoral control and influence over local public schools:

• Los Angeles
• Washington, DC
• New York
• Chicago

Locally, Mayor Dave has been, as far as I can tell, very quiet vis a vis substantive public school issues, other than periodically meeting with MTI's John Matthews. I'm unaware of any similar parental meetings on what is a critical issue for any community: raising our next generation with the tools necessary to contribute productively to our society (and I might add, support a growing economic/tax base). Madison has long strongly supported it's public schools with above average taxes and spending.

Former Madison Mayor (and parent) Paul Soglin weighs in on this topic:

For over thirty years I said, "There is nothing a mayor can do that has the impact on a city that is as great as the public school system."

The mayor needs to be a partner, a protector, an advocate for the public school system. Any mayor who lets a week go by without having some contact, involvement or support with public education is not doing the job.

Perhaps the April, 2007 Mayor's race will include some conversations about our $333,000,000; 24,576 student K-12 system.

Local School Budget Tea Leaves

The Madison School Board Communication Committee's upcoming meeting includes an interesting 2007-2009 legislative agenda for state education finance changes that would increase District annual spending (current budget is $333,000,000) at a higher than normal rate (typically in the 3.8% range):

4. 2007-09 Legislative Agenda

a. Work to create a school finance system that defines that resources are necessary to provide students with a "sound basic education." Using Wisconsin's Academic Standards (which is the standard of achievement set by the Legislature), coupled with proven research that lays out what is necessary to achieve those standards, will more clearly define what programs and services are required for students to attain success.

b. Support thorough legislative review of Wisconsin's tax system; examining all taxing.

c. Provide revenue limit relief to school districts for uncontrollable costs (utilities, transportation). [ed: This shifts the risk to local property taxpayers, which has its pros and cons. The definition of "uncontrollable" would be interesting to read.]

d. Allow a local board of education to exceed the revenue limits by up to 2% of the district's total budget without having to go to referendum. [ed: $6,660,000 above the typical 3.8% annual spending growth: $333,000,000 2006/2007 budget + 3.8% (12,654,000) + 2% (6,660,000) = $19,314,000 increase, or 5.8%]

e. Allow school districts to exceed the revenue limits for security-related expenses by up to $100 per pupil enrolled in the district. [ed: about $2,400,000]

f. Modify the school aid formula so negative tertiary school district (Madison) taxpayers aren't penalized when the district borrows. (Madison Schools' taxpayers have to pay $1.61 for every dollar borrowed.) [ed: This will cost other districts money]

g. Improve Medicaid reimbursement from state to school districts (current law allows the state to "skim" 40% of the federal Medicaid reimbursement dollars for school-based services).

h. Support state aid reimbursement for 4-year old kindergarten programs, similar to the reimbursement for 4-year old kindergarten in Milwaukee choice and charter schools.

i. Support increasing state aid for public school transportation costs.

j. Support allowing a declining enrollment school district to use the highest enrollment in a 5-year period for purposes of calculating its revenue limit. [ed: I wonder if the MMSD perceives itself as a growing or declining district, given the attendance projections used to support new schools over the past several years? Perhaps this item is the answer? The current state funding scheme rewards growing districts. Barb Schrank noted the enrollment changes in surrounding districts last fall.]

k. Support additional resources for mandated special education and English as a Second Language programs, currently reimbursed at 28% and 12%, respectively (when revenue limits began, the reimbursement was 45% and 33% respectively).

l. Maintain current law for disbursement of resources from the Common School Fund for public school libraries.

m. Support increase in per meal reimbursement for school breakfast programs.

There are some good ideas here, including a thorough review of Wisconsin's tax system. Many of these items, if enabled by the state, would result in higher property taxes (Wisconsin is #1 in property taxes as a percentage of the home's value) for those living in the Madison School District. Any of these changes would likely help address the District's $5.9M structural deficit.

I trust that there are some additional budget scenarios in play rather than simply hoping the state will change school finance to help the Madison School District (unlikely, given several recent conversations with state political players). Madison already spends 23% more per student than the state average.

Related:

• A 5 Year Approach to the Madison School District's Budget Challenges; or what is the best quality of education that can be purchased for our district for $280 million a year?
• 2007/2008 Madison School District Budget Outlook: Half Empty or Half Full?
• Budget notes and links
• Sarah Kidd's historical charts on District staffing, attendance and spending.
• Italian Minister of Economy & Finance Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa:

  I now come to the last and conclusive theme of my argument. Controlling expenditure always has to balance technical arguments and constraints, with the legitimate and competing claims (often drawing on very different ideological Weltanschauungen) on the resources managed, directly and indirectly, through the political processes. Balancing the two elements is a difficult exercise, as I experience on a daily basis.

  Political economists have blamed the difficulty on the fact that the time-horizon of a typical political cycle is shorter than the one relevant on average for the society as a whole, in turn leading the legislature to attribute a smaller weight to the long-run implications of public expenditure policies than it would be socially desirable. Empirical evidence shows that discretionary public expenditure tends to rise before the elections irrespective of the political orientation of the incumbent government, and also in spite of the weak evidence of a relation between the size of pre-election spending and the election outcomes. The politicians’ short horizons and the long lag between reforms and their beneficial effects gives rise to a pervasive tension in expenditure control.

  For Faust, the lure of Mephistopheles’ services is greatly enhanced by the fact that the price – albeit a terrible one – is to be paid later. For politicians, the lure of the support obtained through public expenditure is similarly enhanced by the fact that public debt will be paid (o reneged) by next generations, often well after the end of one’s political career. As to myself, having inherited a public debt larger than GDP, and having committed myself and my government to comply with sound fiscal principles, I scarcely can afford even to contemplate the possibility of accepting Mephistopheles’ services.

Tea Leaves.

Update: I recently learned that the MMSD's Joe Quick wrote this list, which was not voted on by the Madison School Board.

Reading Between the Lines: Madison Was Right to Reject Compromised Program

Jason Shephard:

From the beginning, Mary Watson Peterson had doubts about the motivations of those in charge of implementing federal education grants known as Reading First. As the Madison district’s coordinator of language arts and reading, she spent hundreds of hours working on Madison’s Reading First grant proposal.

“Right away,” she says, “I recognized a big philosophical difference” between Madison’s reading instruction and the prescriptive, commercially produced lessons advocated by Reading First officials. “The exchange of ideas with the technical adviser ran very counter to what we believe are best practices in teaching.”

The final straw was when the district was required to draft daily lesson plans to be followed by all teachers at the same time.

“We’ve got 25,000 kids who are in 25,000 different places,” says Superintendent Art Rainwater. The program’s insistence on uniformity “fundamentally violated everything we believe about teaching children.”

In October 2004, Rainwater withdrew Madison from the federal grant program, losing potentially $3.2 million even as the district was cutting personnel and programs to balance its budget. Rainwater’s decision, made without input from the school board, drew intense criticism and became an issue in last year’s board elections.

From a public policy perspective, the School Board should have discussed the $3.2M, particularly given the annual agony over very small changes in the District's $333M+ budget.

The further concern over a one size fits all Reading First requirement (“We’ve got 25,000 kids who are in 25,000 different places,” says Superintendent Art Rainwater.) is ironic, given the push toward just that across the District (West's English 10 [Bruce King's English 9 report] and the recently proposed changes at East High School).

Barb Williams noted that other "blessed by the District" curriculum are as scripted as Reading First in a December, 2004 letter to Isthmus. More here via Ed Blume and here via Ruth Robarts.

It will be interesting to see what Diana Schemo has to say about Reading First.

Local Politics: Zig and Zag with the Madison Studio School

Steven Elbow's Tuesday article in The Capital Times on the proposed Madison Studio School included a rather tantalizing opening quote from organizer Nancy Donahue:

When Nancy Donahue began her effort for a charter school in Madison, she had no idea she would be wading into a world of politics.

"It's a campaign," said Donahue, who hopes to have her arts- and technology-oriented Studio School up and running next fall. "And before this I was very apolitical. But I've learned if you believe in something you do what you have to do."

A couple of close observers of Madison's political tea leaves emailed some additional context:

Former teacher and Progressive Dane education task force member Kristin Forde is a member of the Madison Studio School's "core planning group". In the past, Forde has participated in School Board candidate interviews and a Progressive Dane (PD) candidate Forum.

Madison School Board President Johnny Winston, Jr. has been and is supported by PD along with recently elected (in one of the closest local elections in memory - by 70 votes) board member Arlene Silveira.

PD reportedly requires any candidate they endorse to back all of their future candidates and initiatives. [ed: Shades of "with us or against us". Evidently both Russ Feingold and Barack Obama have not read the memo.]

I find PD's positions interesting. They recently strongly supported the Linden Park edge school [map] (opposed by a few locals who dislike the sprawl implications, though it handily passed in November, with 69% voting in favor). I do think Madison is behind the innovation curve with respect to online learning and possibly charters. Appleton has 12 charter schools, including an online school.

Background documents:

• The Madison Studio School Proposal 256K PDF.
• Philosophy, staff and Board information 256K PDF.
• Budget documents 1 [jpg] [PDF] [.xls] | 2 [jpg] [PDF] [.xls] | 3 [jpg] [PDF] [.xls]
• SIS notes and links

The timing and politics are a challenge, given the recently disclosed 7 year Madison School District structural deficit which will require larger than normal reductions in the 2007 / 2008 budget increases.

I have very fond memories of Madison's Preschool of the Arts.

It will be interesting to see if the Studio School supporters endorse PD's spring, 2007 candidates, which include Johnny Winston, Jr who is standing for re-election.

Madison Studio School Public Hearing Today @ 5:00p.m.

Will you have an opportunity to register SUPPORT for The STUDIO SCHOOL at today’s (5:00pm) public hearing by the Madison School Board?

With the approval of the school board, the public charter school of arts and technology would open next fall in Madison. See more about The STUDIO SCHOOL (SIS Links) here:

• Cap Times
• WSJ
• Isthmus

Please contact school board members to voice your support for creating this new educational opportunity, within the public school system, for children in Madison. Thank you.

Spring 2007 School Board Election Update

I've added 3 additional declared candidates to the election site, via the City Clerk's office:

• Seat 3 (Shwaw Vang's seat): Pam Cross-Leone vs Beth Moss vs Rick Thomas.
• Seat 4: Johnny Winston, Jr. (Incumbent)
• Seat 5 (Ruth Robart's seat): Maya Cole vs Marj Passman.

Links and notes on running for School Board can be found here. It's great to see these active citizens participating in our democracy.

Comments on BOE Progress Report for December

Madison School Board President Johnny Winston, Jr. (thanks!) posted a rather remarkable summary of recent activity today. I thought it would be useful to recall recent Board Majority inaction when reviewing Johnny's words:

It's remarkable to consider that just a few short years ago, substantive issues were simply not discussed by the School Board, such as the Superintendent's rejection of the $2M in Federal Reading First Funds (regardless of the merits, $2M is material and there should have been a public discussion).

Reductions in the District's annual ($332M+ this year) spending increases were thinly discussed (May, 2004).

Today, we know that the School District has been running a structural deficit for years, something previous Board Majority's were apparently unaware of or certainly never discussed publicly.

The Board failed to review the Superintendent for years, until two incumbents were defeated in recent elections.

The Community has expressed extensive concern over a variety of curriculum issues. Previous Board majorities said that they "don't do curriculum" despite their responsibility under Wisconsin law (February, 2006). There's a difference between policy and implementation.

The most recent Superintendent review includes the requirement for an open, unbiased analysis of the Madison School District's controversial math program.

A vast majority of UW Math department faculty wrote an open letter to the Superintendent about the MMSD's Coordinator of Mathematics.

Health care costs were simply not discussed.

The District recently negotiated and implemented savings with custodians and Administrators.

All of these issues, and more, affect our next generation.

The Board's recent actions to stop the controversial curriculum changes at East High School (already in place at West) reflects thinking about our children first (see Gamoran discussion here and here [Jason Shephard] (discussion tabled in the Spring of 2005), rather than experimenting with their opportunities:

Discontent Brews over School Changes

Comments from East High Parents on Proposed Curriculum Changes

East High Student Insurrection Over Proposed Curriculum Changes?

MMSD to study high schools before "redesigning" them

East High School to Follow West's One Size Fit's All 9/10 Curriculum?

High School Redesign & Academic Rigor: East High United Meeting 11/9 @ 7:00p.m.

More Than English 10: Let's REALLY Talk About Our High Schools

Madison Schools Superintendent Art Rainwater Halts East High Redesign

On, Off and On Again 11/27/2006 Madison School Board High School Redesign Discussion

Madison School Board: Superintendent's High School Redesign Presentation & Public Comments [Audio / Video]

Revamping the high schools

One Small Step in the Right Direction at West HS ...

Public confidence and support of our K-12 system requires an ongoing, open dialogue. Thanks for helping to make this happen!

The April, 2007 School Board elections will be an opportunity to either continue this progress or roll back the clock....

Madison Partners for Inclusive Education Presentation to the School Board

The Madison Partners for Inclusive Education presented information to the School Board Monday evening. Watch the 38 minute video.

The clip begins about 5 minutes into the presentation (I missed the first few minutes).

Spring 2007 Madison School Board Election Update

I've added two declared candidates to the April 3, 2007 election page:

• Marj Passman for Seat 5 (Ruth Robarts is retiring)
• Beth Moss for Seat 3 (Shwaw Vang's seat)

Johnny Winston, Jr., in seat 4 has announced he is running again, but as of this afternoon, had not declared his candidacy according to the City Clerk's office.

Check out the video interviews and links from the April, 2004 election; the last time these seats were contested.

Learn more about running for school board here. (updated to reflect the correct seats via Marj's comments below).

A bit of Sunshine on the Madison School District's Budget Process: 2006/2007 Madison School District Budget & $6M "Structural Deficit" Discussions

video here

There's been a fascinating school board discussion over the past few weeks as the 2006/2007 $332M+ Madison schools budget is finalized.

(about 41 minutes into this 61 minute video clip) Lawrie Kobza:

"Why did our equity go down this past year since we, the board, passed a balanced budget in 2005/2006? Why did it go down by $2.8M (about a 1% variance in last year's $319M+ budget)?

Answer: "Negative expenditure of $6M in salaries (tuition income was down, special ed high incidence aid was down) $5.9M "structural deficit in place"."

Art Rainwater:

"The way we have attempted to deal with maintaining the quality of education as long as we could was to budget very, very aggressively, realizing that we had an out of fund balance ($5.9M in 2006/2007). We made the decision 7 years ago or so to budget aggressively and try to manage to that budget believing that we would use less fund equity over time than if we set aside a set amount. So that's been our approach. That fund equity has now come down to the point that we believe we can't do that any more and we will not bring you a balanced budget that is aggressive particularly where it gets into aggressive on the revenue side in how much efficiency we believe we can budget. So, what the effect of that is to increase the amount you have to pay.

Lawrie Kobza:

We budgeted under this CFO/COO account, we budgeted that we were going to find $6.1M somewhere without saying where, and we didn't. We found all but 2.7M of that. In this year's budget, we have the same type of thing. We have budgeted that we're going to find $5.9M somewhere. So, while we can look at all of our budget items, oh, we're doing great we're right on budget for salaries, transportation, for whatever. We can't just meet our budget, we have to do $5.9M better than our budget. We're going to take this up in the Finance committee to see if there is a different way we can present some of this, to be able to track it.

Roger Price mentioned that this was not a new item, but was in place when he arrived in the mid 1990's.

Ruth Robarts asked about a February 2006 consultant's forecast of the District's equity versus Roger Price's Numbers (52 minutes). Ruth also asked about the financial implications of the District's retirement buyout commitments through 2009. "I've been on the Board a long time and did not see in the documents I've seen that kind of structural deficit".

Watch the video here or listen to the mp3 audio.

Bottom Line: Thanks to Lawrie Kobza's digging, the public knows about the Madison School District's $6M "structural deficit". This also means that next year's balanced budget will require significantly greater reductions in spending increases, or "cost to continue approach" than we've seen in the past. It would also be interesting to see how our District's "equity" or cash reserves have declined over the years.

The good news regarding the budget's "Fuzzy Math, or the balanced budget that isn't" (there must be some)? The discussion happened publicly, on MMSDTV, and the community is now aware of looming larger budget changes than we've seen in the past. Unfortunately, I've seen no mention of this in the traditional media.

Run for school board!

Chartering Change: The push for alternatives underscores the need for school reform

Jason Shephard:

Many parents are actively researching educational options for their young children. Increasingly, they are expecting more from public schools than the one-size-fits-all model schools have traditionally offered. Across the state, school districts are opening more charter schools and boosting their offerings of online and virtual classes to diversify educational approaches.

Some see these alternatives as necessary for the future of public school districts — especially urban ones struggling to eliminate the racial and income achievement gaps while expanding opportunities for both struggling and high-performing students.

“While the system serves many children well, it doesn’t serve all of them well,” says Senn Brown of the Wisconsin Charter Schools Association. “By recognizing that kids learn differently, and by creating options to serve them, school districts do better for all kids.”

Vince O'Hern has more on Madison School Superintendent Art Rainwater:

Take away the glasses, and Madison Schools Superintendent Art Rainwater bears a passing resemblance to Rodney Dangerfield, the late comedian whose tag line was, “I don’t get no respect.”

The Madison Metropolitan School District has compiled an impressive record of student achievement through the years and has shown heartening progress in reducing the racial performance gap — a gap that has been documented in many districts across the land. But despite this, Rainwater has faced an increasingly restive constituency and a growing public perception, justified or not, that Madison schools are in decline

America on the cusp of education renaissance

Matthew Ladner:

In the past, a lack of data enabled stagnation. Armchair observations of real-estate agents were often the most sophisticated opinions regarding the quality of local schools. Today, online services like www.greatschools.net provide a mountain of comparative testing and parental review data in a few short clicks.
New technologies and practices, such as self-paced computer-based instruction and data-based merit pay for instructors, hold enormous promise which has only begun to be explored. That said, disadvantaged children in KIPP Academy schools, among others, have achieved phenomenal academic results not with new technologies, but rather with old-fashioned “time on task” hard work and extended school days.

In short, we now have the primordial soup of a market for schools.

Via Joanne.

No doubt. I've mentioned before that Milwaukee, over the next few decades (despite stops and starts) will have a far richer K-12 climate than Madison. Madison has the resources and community to step things up - I hope we do so (does it have the leadership?).

Edwize on the Poor Track Record of Small Learning Communities

Maisie adds notes and links to the recent Business Week interview with Bill and Melinda Gates on their Small Learning Community High School initiative (now underway at Madison's West High chool - leading to mandatory grouping initiatives like English 10):

Business Week has a cover story this week about Bill and Melinda Gates’ small schools efforts. The story starts in Denver, where the Gates folks made a mess of breaking up that city’s lowest-performing school, “a complete failure,” in the Denver superintendent’s words. Summarizing reporters’ visits to 22 Gates-funded schools around the country, the article finds that “while the Microsoft couple indisputably merit praise for calling national attention to the dropout crisis and funding the creation of some promising schools, they deserve no better than a C when it comes to improving academic performance…Creating small schools may work sometimes, but it’s no panacea.”

The article points to some real successes. Some are in New York City, and the article says part of the reason for the success is Gates’ partnership with New Visions for Public Schools, which has been in the small-schools business a lot longer than Bill and Melinda. Mott Haven Village Prep HS [pdf] is one example. But of all the Gates schools in NYC, the report says one-third had ineffective partnerships, many have rising “social tensions,” and suspensions have triped in the new schools over the last three years to reach the system average.
We are never snippy but we told you so. The UFT’s 2005 Small Schools Task Force found too many of the Gates-funded small schools have been started with little planning, inexperienced leadership, minimal input from staff or stakeholders and no coherent vision. Some are little more than shells behind a lofty–sometimes ridiculously lofty–name.

Announcement from Madison School Board President Johnny Winston, Jr. (and the 04 / 07 elections)

Via a Johnny Winston, Jr. MMSD email:

It is with great humility that I announce that I have been elected to serve as President of the Madison School Board. I am honored to have the opportunity to provide leadership to our school district and community. Serving as President is the culmination of part of a life long dream to be a public servant.

I was elected to the board in 2004. During my tenure, I have served as Chair of the Finance and Operations and Partnership Committees and most recently as role of Vice President. I welcome working with the entire elected school board. Some of the critical matters for us to address include but are not limited to: the building of new schools to accommodate our growing district, student achievement, parent involvement and strengthening communication and partnership efforts in our community. Together, we can identify and implement creative solutions to these issues.

Johnny, along with Shwaw and Ruth's seat are up for election in April, 2007. Today's public announcement by former Madison School Board member Ray Allen that he's running for Mayor [more on Ray Allen] (same 04/07 election) and MTI's John Matthews recent lunch with Mayor Dave mean that positioning for the spring election is well under way.

Another interesting element in all this is the proposed fall referendum for a new far west side elementary school [west task force] and the Leopold expansion (I still wonder about the wisdom of linking the two questions together...., somewhat of a do-over for Leopold linked to another question). Have the local prospects for passing a referendum improved since the May, 2005 vote where two out of three failed (including a much larger Leopold expansion)?

I think it's hard to say:

• I agree with Ed that Monday's civilized board meeting absent any bullying is a good sign.
• There's been some board turnover since that vote that may be helpful.
• On the other hand, there's the ongoing effort to kill 4th and 5th grade strings (5th year of the Administration's "onslaught" - not even a rounding error in the District's 332.9M budget),
• this year's distribution of 06/07 school allocations before any public budget discussion,
• the equity task force (the District's enrollment is basically flat or slightly declining and many current facilities have needs: some elementary schools don't have cafeterias for example)
• recent concerns over report card content (curriculum and school climate concerns and positive changes, which I hope to be able to post soon, not to mention the movement toward more mandatory grouping whether it's the playground or West High's English 10),
• health care costs ($37M - 11% of the budget)
• and food policy will certainly be on voter's minds.

Televising all board meetings and a more active district website may or may not help, depending of course, on what's being written or mentioned.

Jason Shephard's seminal piece on the future of Madison's public schools will resonate for some time.

It will be an interesting year. I wish the entire Board well as they address these matters. It's never too early to run for school board :) Check out the election pages for links and interviews.

I am a product of Madison schools thus believe in the vital role they have in our community. I welcome this opportunity to collaboratively lead the school board for the betterment of the Madison Metropolitan School District.

Johnny Winston, Jr.
President, Madison School Board
jwinstonjr@madison.k12.wi.us
(608) 441-0224

The Madison Metropolitan School District is located in Madison, Wisconsin and is the second largest in the state. It has 53 schools/programs including two charter schools and several alternative programs. Enrollment is 24,491 students pre-kindergarten thru twelfth grade. 44% are students of color. 42% receive free and reduced lunch. The district is one of the largest employers in Madison and Dane County with 5,921 employees. The budget for the 2006-07 school year is $332 million.

Capital Times Story on Muriel Simms

Muriel Simms was my 6th grade teacher at Lincoln Middle School. She is a longtime educator in Madison teaching elementary and middle school plus she was a central office administrator and principal for the Madison School District. She currently teaches at Edgewood College. She has now started a greeting card company. She is also a board member of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute.

http://www.madison.com/tct/features/stories/index.php?ntid=74375

Administrative Analysis of Referendum Scheduling

A note from Superintendent Art Rainwater to the Madison Board of Education on 2006 Referendum scheduling:

At Carol's request we have prepared an analysis of the possible dates to seek referendum approval for one or more new facilities. The analysis includes our view of the positives and negatives of three dates: April 06, June 06 and September 06

MMSD's Enrollment & Capacity Picture: A Perspective

The Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) is facing a significant challenge - growth. As a result of that growth - which is not evenly distributed across the district's region - some schools are facing, or will soon be facing, overcrowding. Other schools still continue to see languishing enrollment which calls into question the appropriate future use of their facilities. Two task forces were created to examine these issues, and to recommend up to three options to address them. The task forces were also asked to develop options so as to reduce concentrations of low-income students. This report endeavors to examine how the enrollment picture plays out over the next five years, particularly under the various options proposed by the task forces. Special attention is given here to the West Side task force options due to this author's greater familiarity with them, and his continued maintenance of a model tracking their proposals.

This report [121K PDF] first looks at the proposed options for the West & Memorial areas, and examines how projected enrollment and capacity compare over each of the next five school years. The report will then consider population projections over the next 25 years to try to get some sense of what one may expect as regards future demand for school facilities.

Disclosure, or why am I doing this?

• I recently moved to Madison and saw this issue as a way to get involved in the community and to understand "how things work" here.
• This particular issue is a complex problem, and therefore a rather interesting one to look at.
• I have two children attending MMSD schools, and therefore am especially interested in the well-being of this district, and community.
• Once I got started, it's been hard to stop (though my work and family demands have certainly constrained my efforts).

Conclusions

---

The following preliminary conclusions can be drawn from this analysis:
Elementary Schools	Some slight "tweaking" of the options may be warranted, particularly to address the near-term situation for Chavez.
Middle Schools	Jefferson & Toki are facing overcrowding risks in the next 5-10 years. In that light, particular attention will need to be given to the precise alignment of students attending a new school. If they are all aligned to attend only one of the middle schools, overcrowding will become an even greater risk. Cherokee's longer-term situation appears all right, but that will definitely depend largely on the level of growth in the Fitchburg area.
Long-Term Outlook	The demographics and growth picture for Madison, and the country, suggest there will be continued increase in elementary school enrollment for some time. The projected increase in enrollment over the next five years does not appear to be a temporary phenomenon that will soon reverse itself

PDF Version for printing [121K PDF] Please contact me at GascoyneP@aol.com if you have questions, or post comments here.

Proposal Would Send All Swan Creek Students to Lincoln

Kurt Gutknecht:

The plan advanced by Jerry Eykholt, a member of the task force studying ways to deal with overcrowding at schools on in west side of the Madison school district, would move students to Lincoln Elementary School.

Eykholt drafted the proposal in response to a letter signed by 185 households in Swan Creek who opposed moving students from Leopold.

One of the proposals had recommended moving Swan Creek students to Midvale and Lincoln elementary schools. Eykholt?s proposal would move them only to Lincoln, thereby reducing the length of the bus ride, which he said would address one of the major concerns of the residents.

Previous proposals would move elementary students to Lincoln (grades 3 through 5) and Midvale (grades K through 2). His proposal would require Lincoln to offer all elementary grades.

Eykholt called Lincoln "a very nurturing environment" that provided an exceptional level of assistance to students, a consequence of the district?s efforts to serve students from low-income families.

30 Years of Clout: MTI's John Matthews & the '76 Teacher's Strike

Susan Troller:

The key architect behind that transformation was the tough young executive director of Madison Teachers Inc., John Matthews, who had come to Madison eight years earlier from Montana.

Thirty years later, Matthews is still tough and, more than ever, still casts a powerful shadow across the public education landscape of Madison as a tireless and relentless advocate for teachers. With Matthews at the helm, MTI has remained a dominant force in education and labor.

Former Madison Mayor (currently with Epic Systems - Verona) Paul Soglin weighs in as well.

MAUE School Board Candidate Forum

Madison United for Academic Excellence [www site] held a Madison School Board candidate forum Tuesday evening, January 17, 2006. Maya Cole, Michael Kelly, Lucy Mathiak and Arlene Silveira participated (election website). Candidate statements and questions appear below:

Opening Statement video What strategies/ideas do you have that can elevate academic success for ALL MMSD students while avoiding the pitting of parent groups against each other? [Video] What is one of the most important things you want to accomplish as a board member? [Video] Many people in our group are concerned that the District's single-minded strategy for closing the achievement gap is to eliminate "high end" learning opportunities and give all students -- regardless of ability, motivation or interest level -- the same curriculum, delivered in completely heterogeneous classrooms. They see this approach being enacted, for example, in the West HS "small learning communities" restructuring and they fear that it will permeate and determine the results of the middle school redesign effort. Do you think that this is a sound strategy for closing the achievement gap? [Video] As a Board what oversight is currently in place to assess whether the district is sufficiently meeting the academic needs for gifted students? Do you believe the current oversight is sufficient? In particular for both the student population as a whole and on an individual student basis: How is/should progress be measured in the gifted context? [Video] The school district is once again faced with the dilemma of cutting between 6-10 million dollars from the budget. Where do you think these cuts should come from in the budget? Please tell me where the money is going to come from without suggesting that state or federal funds are not important for all programs. [Video] How would you address the often heard complaint that special education programs drain too much money from the budget? (Jeff): I later provided some additional information for this question: there are approximately 5000 special education students in the district and special education programs and services account for more than $15 out of every $100 that the district spends. [Video] Almost three years ago, during the public comments section of a budget-focused BOE meeting, a parent was asking the BOE to put "TAG" ("talented and gifted") services on the "do not cut" list. In response, a BOE member said to him, "Friend, this has nothing to do with minority students. Why should I support it?" Q: How do you react to that assertion/position/logic? Do you think the "TAG" dollars have anything to do with the District's minority students? [Video] Can you name five good things about the Madison [public] schools? [Video] Jeff's closing remarks: [Video]

Tim Olsen on Generating Cash from the Doyle Administration Land/Building

Tim Olsen's email to Madison Board of Education Member Ruth Robarts:

And below are the specifics you requested re calculating an estimated value for the Doyle site. You are welcome to share this email with anyone interested. And thanks for the opportunity to speak to the Board, for your comments, and for including Lucy Mathiak's blog-article. Someone told me about her article and I'm happy to receive a copy.

My estimate of the value of the Doyle Building is straightforward and based on current City assessments of the Doyle property and of Howard Johnsons just across the street. This public information is freely available via the City of Madison Assessor's site. Similar calculations can be made by anyone. The Excel spreadsheet I used (complete with embedded formulas) is attached as an example. Here's how anyone can make their own calculations:

1. Go to the Assessor's site.
2. Since the phone book etc. will show that the Doyle property is at 545 W. Dayton, you can "Query by Address"
3. Fill in 545, then W, then Dayton in the form and submit.
4. Click on the parcel number and you will then be shown the Assessor's records for the District's parcel.
5. You can do the same for the Howard Johnson property and compare the two. The Howard Johnson Motor Lodge street address is 525 W. Johnson and the back of the hotel is across the street from the front of the Doyle property (originally called Washington School when it was built).
6. The key calculation (per the attached spreadsheet [.xls file]) is figuring out the assessed value of Howard Johnson LAND (not including the "Improvements" i.e. building and parking lot etc) PER SQUARE FOOT. For HoJo's the calculation is $4,237,000 divided by 70,611 sq. feet in the parcel = $60 per square foot.
7. Then, to calculate an estimate for the Doyle property land value (ignoring the building value), simply multiply $60/sq.ft. * 115, 927 sq. ft. = $6,955,620.
8. Since the Doyle property is adjacent to the Kohl Center, and generally parcels in Madison sell for substantially more than assessed value, I'm guessing it's actually worth a lot more than $7 million.To sell, lease or develop the Doyle property, the zoning classification would have to be changed, which is not a trivial matter. But just as Ms. Mathiak points out with regard to City Landmarks, such obstacles have been overcome for good reasons many times in City history. The Hilton Hotel that was developed on Catholic Church property is a related example. It is quite unlikely that the Doyle property would ever qualify as a National Register of Historic Places landmark in my opinion but I'd suggest checking with the State Historical Society for a professional assessment.

   I think it would be great to get selling/leasing/developing the Doyle property formally on the table.

   My personal hunch is that the wisest option would be to develop the site, maintain ownership and lease space so that MMSD could continue to make money on it and maintain options for moving programs or administration in or out as enrollment changes over the decades. (Modeling needs for only the next 5 or 10 years is tremendously short-sighted. Extrapolating trends for such a short time is realistic in that projecting beyond that is highly speculative, but we need to recognize how just how limited our predictive powers are. That's the way it is.

   But the fact is, that the property will maintain, and likely greatly increase in value for a long time, given its incredibly valuable location. Why sell the cow that will produce for generations?

   But I'm sure that by putting it on the table, and giving it a thorough analysis with expert help would come out with very good, and well-prioritized solutions, that might even disagree my hunch.

   Meanwhile, I understand that the State Cap really puts MMSD in a box. And that 7 million would not pay off $10 million of shortfall each year. Referendums will need to be passed to maintain the same quality of education over the long term. And we can't wait for a huge change in the attitudes, or representation of legislators required for overturning or modifying the cap(s).

   Nonetheless, taking some initiative with the Doyle site could contribute positively to the district's inbalance in funding more significantly that reshuffling students among schools or building a new building. So, in sum I agree with you in that "we must take some steps of this kind to improve public confidence and build support for referendums that we will need in the near future."

   So -- keep up the good work Ms. Robarts.

   
   Cheers,

   
   Tim Olsen

   
   P.S. I would love to see MMSD Admin LEAD FROM THE FRONT by moving their offices to schools with space and low enrollments. That would be educational for all parties don't you think?

   P.P.S. A calculation of the value of the Wingra School property on Monroe St. can be made similarly to above. To be more accurate, average the value (land and improvements) per square foot value of all adjacent property around the three sides of the parcel, then multiply the ($ average value/sqft) * (the total square footage of the Wingra School) parcel. My guess is that $750,000 is still way, way less than its market value -- beneficial as maintaning its current use/zoning may be to adjacent property owners. A $750,000 sale price to the school subsidizes private education with public property value, while the green space etc. enhances adjacent and nearby property values. I'd vote for leasing the property to Wingra at a realistic rate for a shorter term (not $1 per year). Think that's a tough approach? Ask Edgewood how much it would cost to lease a similar amount of land and/or facilities from them. That would be the 'market rate' for a private school.

   Ms. Robarts, ..just some quick context for my 'specifics'.. Of course the City Assessor's Office, any good developer, or certainly a professional appraisor would point out that many more factors merit consideration in making an accurate appraisal. Factors as diverse as proximity to a freeway ramp, brown fields, street congestion, view, whether or not its on a lakeshore and non-linear relationships with parcel size are just a tiny tip of the iceberg. Nonetheless, a quick and fair calculation of the value of the LAND (excluding improvements which is more complicated; e.g. how would maintaining the exterior of a city landmark factor into developing the site) can be reasonably approximated the way I did it.

   And for more context -- How do I know?.. some further qualifications:

   dozen years on Tenney-Lapham Neigh. Assoc. Board with 2 as President inc. work on development,
   • building code and parcel assessment issues; most recently on the 800 E. Washington property (Don Miller autos) proposed for development by Gary Gorman (an excellent plan that deserves City support with TIF, in my opinion) -
   • PhD minor in Environmental Monitoring (remote sensing and Geospatial information systems science (as mentioned Monday eve. my PhD major is Curriculum & Instruction from Madison) GIS etc provides sophisticated means to estimate real estate value (along with many other applications).
   I'd be happy to help contact some developers to encourage them to look at the Doyle property. Have a great day

Terry Pristin discusses the University of Washington's rental income generated by 11 acres of downtown Seattle real estate. A great example of thinking different.

West HS English 9 and 10: Show us the data!

Here is a synopsis of the English 10 situation at West HS.

Currently -- having failed to receive any reply from BOE Performance and Achievement Committee Chair Shwaw Vang to our request that he investigate this matter and provide an opportunity for public discussion -- we are trying to get BOE President Carol Carstensen to put a discussion of the English 10 proposal (and the apparent lack of data supporting its implementation) on the agenda for a BOE meeting.  Aside from the fact that there is serious doubt that the course, as proposed, will meet the educational needs of the high and low end students, it is clear we are witnessing yet another example of school officials making radical curricular changes without empirical evidence that they will work and without open, honest and respectful dialogue with the community.

As the bumper sticker says, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention!"

• 11/7/2005: West PTSO meeting, where the plans for English 10 were first introduced. A videotape of the English 10 portion of the meeting (along with additional background information) may be found here.
  
  
• 11/9/2005: After hearing from two independent sources who attended the 11/8 West faculty meeting that West Principal Ed Holmes represented the parents who attended the previous night's PTSO meeting as very supportive of the English 10 proposal, I write Mr. Holmes a forceful, clarifying letter.
  
  
• 11/9/2005: I request a copy of the report written by SLC Evaluator Bruce King that someone mentioned at the 11/7 PTSO meeting. I am told by West Principal Ed Holmes that the report is a "confidential" and a "draft."
  
  
• 11/14/2005: After several days of investigation and writing to the proper District authorities, I obtain a copy of the SLC report from MMSD Attorney Clarence Sherrod. http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2005/11/evaluation_of_t.php
  
  
• 11/14/2005: I re-send to West Principal Ed Holmes the list of questions that several of us submitted to him and West English Department Chair Keesia Hyzer before the 11/7 PTSO meeting because most of the questions were not answered at the meeting. (Note: I have yet to receive a reply and we have yet to receive answers, studies or data.)
  
  
• 11/18/2005: Several West HS attendance area parents meet with Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Schools Pam Nash. We discuss many important issues pertaining to the English 10 plan and request data and empirical studies that support what is being done at West.
  
  
• 11/20/2005: I send Pam Nash a follow-up email of thanks, reinforcing our request for West and MMSD data -- as well as empirical studies -- that support the implementation of English 10 and the move towards heterogeneous classes in our middle and high schools. I include the list of talking points that our group generated before our meeting with her because we did not get to all of them in our meeting. (Note: I have yet to receive a reply and we have yet to receive answers, studies or data.)
  
  
• 11/21/2005: I pen a request to BOE Performance and Achievement Committee Chair Shwaw Vang (copying several other District officials), asking that he obtain the data that forms the basis for a couple of important points in Bruce King's SLC report, points regarding the apparent failure of English 9 to impact the achievement gap. Several others sign the request. We ask that the data be made public and that the P& A Committee hold a public discussion of the data. Knowing that Mr. Vang doesn't "do" email, I hand-deliver a copy of my request to him, along with a hard copy of the SLC report. (Note: I have yet to receive a reply from Mr. Vang.)
  
  
• 11/28/2005: I write a follow-up email to Mr. Vang and his committee members (Ruth Robarts and Bill Keys), asking about the status of our request and stressing the time urgency of the situation. (Note: I have yet to receive a reply from Mr. Vang.
  
  
• 11/28/2005: I write a follow-up email to Pam Nash, urgently requesting an update on the situation at West. (Note: I have yet to receive a reply from Ms. Nash.)
  
  
• 11/29/2005: I leave a message on Mr. Vang's answering machine asking for a status report on our request. (Note: I have yet to receive a reply from Mr. Vang.)
  
  
• 11/30/2005: I receive an email from Bill Keys, essentially a forward of a brief message from Art Rainwater.
  
  
• 11/30/2005: I write back to Bill, copying Art Rainwater, Pam Nash, and Mary Gulbrandsen.
  
  
• 12/02/2005: I write an email to Madison Board of Education President Carol Carstensen that the Board discuss plans for English 10 at West HS (and the question of whether or not West's English 9 course has been appropriately evaluated, and whether or not the results of any evaluation support the implementation of English 10) on the agenda of a BOE meeting as soon as possible.
  
  

---

Chronology with emails follows below:

11/7/2005: West PTSO meeting, where the plans for English 10 were first introduced. A video of the English 10 portion of the meeting (along with additional background information) may be found here:

11/9/2005: After hearing from two independent sources who attended the 11/8 West faculty meeting that West Principal Ed Holmes represented the parents who attended the previous night's PTSO meeting as very supportive of the English 10 proposal, I write Mr. Holmes a forceful, clarifying letter.

Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 08:15:05 -0600 To: eholmes@madison.k12.wi.us From: "Laurie A. Frost" Subject: English at West HS Cc: pnash@madison.k12.wi.us,arainwater@madison.k12.wi.us,wkeys@madison.k12.wi.us,lkobza@boardmanlawfirm.com,robarts@execpc.com,ccarstensen@madison.k12.wi.us,jlopez@madison.k12.wi.us,svang7@madison.k12.wi.us,jwinstonjr@madison.k12.wi.us

Dear Ed,

I have it on very good authority that you misrepresented Monday night's PTSO meeting at your full faculty meeting yesterday. It is not clear if this was a matter of positive spin, selective inattention, or willful calculation. Yes, parents were calm, well-behaved and non-combative, and they tried to compliment the good they saw in the proposed curriculum. There are some great books on the list (though someone has since pointed out that most are by male authors), plus we appreciate the goal of integrating the writing assignments with the literature being read. As I see it, though, our good behavior speaks to our respectfulness and willingness to collaborate, not to our support of the plan as presented.

More specifically, I would estimate that approximately 80%, possibly more, of the parent comments Monday night were not positive and accepting of the plans for English 10 as they currently stand. Almost every parent who spoke expressed concern about how the plan does not meet the needs of the students of high ability and enthusiasm in language arts. There was also concern that the curriculum is not a good match for students who struggle with reading. Parents were very critical of the details of the proposed honors designation and pessimistic about its effectiveness and success. You were asked several times to consider creating an honors section of English 10 in each SLC. (Same for English 9 and Accelerated Biology.) Why? Because, as parents pointed out, most any literary work can be taught at a wide range of levels, depending on the teacher and the students. Put another way, a student's experience of rigor, high expectation and intellectual stimulation in a class depends on the level, quality, depth and pace of the conversation in the room; and that, in turn, depends on who is in the room. There are very real limits on the number of grade levels across which even a masterful teacher can teach. It is also unfair to ask students who simply want to have their educational needs met to give up two lunch periods per week, along with the opportunity to participate in school clubs and other activities. That would not be necessary if the appropriate level of rigor were provided in their classroom experience.

Please stop the plans to implement the English 10 core as it was presented on Monday night until there has been a thoroughgoing, community-wide discussion about it and until you provide hard data -- from West and from the research literature -- that support it. (Note: this includes the recent report written by the SLC evaluator, Bruce King.) Otherwise, you risk alienating a large segment of the West community and hastening the "bright flight" that has already begun in our attendance area. (Did you know that almost one-third of the approximately 70 parents who attended the meeting were parents of elementary and middle school students in the West attendance area who are watching these developments very closely?)

Laurie Frost

Here is a link to a more complete report on what transpired at the West PTSO meeting on 11/7:

http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2005/11/report_from_wes.php

A videotape of the portion of the meeting dealing with the English 10 proposal will posted on schoolinfosystem asap.

11/9/2005: I request a copy of the report written by SLC Evaluator Bruce King that someone mentioned at the 11/7 PTSO meeting. I am told by West Principal Ed Holmes that the report is a "confidential" and a "draft."

Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 09:49:28 -0600
To: eholmes@madison.k12.wi.us,hlott@madison.k12.wi.us
From: TAG Parents
Subject: SLC report request
Cc: arainwater@madison.k12.wi.us,pnash@madison.k12.wi.us,csherrod@madison.k12.wi.us

This is a formal request for a copy (electronic, if possible, perhaps as an attachment) of SLC evaluator Bruce King's recent report on the progress of the SLC initiative at West HS.

Please send this report as soon as possible, as time is of the essence. If it is easier for you, I would be happy to pick up a hard copy in the West HS office. Just let me know by email or phone call (238-6375) and I will drop by.

Thank you.

Respectfully,

Laurie Frost

_____________________________________________
Madison TAG Parents
Email: tagparents@yahoogroups.com
URL: http://tagparents.org

###
X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise Internet Agent 6.5.2
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 13:42:52 -0600
From: "Ed Holmes"
To: "Heather Lott" ,
Cc: "Art Rainwater" ,
"Clarence Sherrod" ,
"Pam Nash"
Subject: Re: SLC report request
X-Spam-Flag: Unchecked
X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.41
X-RCPT-TO:

Dear TAG Parents,

The document you have requested is a confidential draft that was sent
to me by our Smaller Learning Communities Grant Evaluator, Bruce King.
Clearly the front cover of the document says DRAFT and CONFIDENTIAL. I
want to be clear that it is Bruce King who has requested that this
information be kept confidential and that I will be honoring his
request.

Bruce King is currently working on an Executive Summary that will
outline his findings regarding establishment of the 10th Grade English
course at West. That document will be distributed to anyone interested
in reviewing his evaluative statement regarding the merits of the
process and the plans for implementation of the course.

As soon as I recieve the aforementioned document I will be happy to
pass it on to you.

Thank you for your ongoing interest in this important curriculum review
process.

Ed Holmes, Principal
West High School

_____________________________________________
Madison TAG Parents
Email: tagparents@yahoogroups.com
URL: http://tagparents.org

11/14/2005: After several days of investigation and writing to the proper District authorities, I obtain a copy of the SLC report from MMSD Attorney Clarence Sherrod. http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2005/11/evaluation_of_t.php

11/14/2005: I re-send to West Principal Ed Holmes the list of questions that several of us submitted to him and West English Department Chair Keesia Hyzer before the 11/7 PTSO meeting because most of the questions were not answered at the meeting. (Note: I have yet to receive a reply and we have yet to receive answers, studies or data.)

Note: These questions were first sent on 11/3 -- several days before the PTSO meeting -- and again on 11/14. "Kathy" is West PTSO President Kathy Riddiough.

Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 09:38:15 -0600
To: eholmes@madison.k12.wi.us,ricciridd@tds.net
From: "Laurie A. Frost"
Subject: Questions for 11/7 PTSO meeting
Cc: pnash@madison.k12.wi.us

Hello, Kathy and Ed. Below are the questions a group of us submitted before last week's PTSO meeting. It seems to us that Questions 5, 8, 13 and 15 were answered, Question 10 was addressed by parents only (and constituted the bulk of the Q and A), but the rest were not addressed at all. Many of the parents who were present at the meeting would appreciate having the answers to the remaining questions asap.

We are especially interested in seeing West HS data that indicate the need for the structural/curricular change being proposed and West HS data and empirical studies from the education literature that indicate the likely success of the proposed change in addressing the problem. Please include, in particular, the studies you believe best indicate the effectiveness of heterogeneous grouping for educating well the full range of high school students.

We would also like to know what will be happening -- and when (there is some urgency, after all) -- to continue the dialogue that has only barely begun by the West administration and the parents of the children who will be affected by this change.

Thanks for your timely attention to this matter.

Respectfully,
Laurie Frost

I. Questions about 10th grade English

1) What are the West HS data that indicate there is a problem with the current system for 10th grade English?

2) What are the data that suggest the solution being proposed (i.e., a standardized, homogeneous curriculum delivered in completely heterogeneous classes) will fix the problem? (Are there empirical studies you can tell us about?)

3) What are the data that indicate all students' educational needs will be well served by the proposed solution? (Again, are there empirical studies you can tell us about?)

4) What are the data that indicate no students will be harmed or poorly served by the proposed solution? (And again -- empirical studies?)

5) If the 10th grade English core is implemented, will some English electives be dropped from the course offerings? If so, which ones?

6) Will advanced students be allowed to "test out" or be "teacher-recommended out" of the 10th grade English core? If so, when would this happen? When they register for their 10th grade classes? At the end of 9th grade? At the beginning of 10th grade? In between semesters in 10th grade? Some or all of these times?

7) Will you extend this option to advanced 9th graders and allow them to "test out" or be "teacher-recommended out" of 9th grade English? (It is our understanding that this used to be allowed.)

8) Would you consider keeping the current system in place and adding the new curriculum as an additional elective for those students for whom it is a good educational match?

9) Will the grant be jeopardized or lost if you do not implement a homogeneous 10th grade English core? (If you are not sure, would you be willing to check into it and get back to us?)

10) We fear that the plan to offer an honors designation in 10th grade English that requires two lunchtime meetings per week is likely doomed to failure for the following reasons: a) it seems highly unlikely that students who have just endured a year of required "freshman resource time" during their lunch hour will be willing to give up two-fifths of their hard-earned midday freedom as sophomores; b) the plan puts having an honors distinction (which is really not the point -- having an appropriately challenging curriculum and the opportunity to learn with similar-ability peers is the point) in direct competition with participation in clubs and other activities that meet during lunchtime; c) the plan forces students to choose between more academics and social time or "down" time. Because so many reasons for students not to choose the honors option are being built into the plan, we feel the plan is likely to fail and that you will then use that as justification for discontinuing the option due to "lack of interest." Would you please comment on our concerns? What are your thoughts about the potential success or failure of the proposed honors designation, as it is currently defined?

11) Who conceived of the proposal to restructure sophomore English by eliminating electives and implementing a standardized curriculum to be delivered in heterogeneous classrooms (i.e., what are their names, please)?

12) Were District TAG staff included or consulted in the development of this proposal?

13) Who is developing the 10th grade English core curriculum (again, what are their names, please)?

14) Were District TAG staff included or consulted in the development of the new curriculum?

15) What is the process the group is using to develop the English 10 core curriculum?

II. General -- but nevertheless relevant -- questions

16) Would you please explain to us the difference between "tracking" and "flexible ability grouping"?

17) Would you please share with us your understanding of the research on ability grouping?

III. SLC questions

18) What were the West HS data that were used to justify the need for a change this drastic at West?

19) What were the data and studies that were used to justify the selection of this particular smaller high schools model for West?

20) Whose idea was the SLC initiative originally? That is, what is the name of the person who conceived of the idea in the very beginning?

21) What are the specific outcome measures that are being used to assess the impact of the SLC initiative?

_____________________________________________
Madison TAG Parents
Email: tagparents@yahoogroups.com
URL: http://tagparents.org

11/18/2005: Several West HS attendance area parents meet with Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Schools Pam Nash. We discuss many important issues pertaining to the English 10 plan and request data and empirical studies that support what is being done at West.

11/20/2005: I send Pam Nash a follow-up email of thanks, reinforcing our request for West and MMSD data -- as well as empirical studies -- that support the implementation of English 10 and the move towards heterogeneous classes in our middle and high schools. I include the list of talking points that our group generated before our meeting with her because we did not get to all of them in our meeting. (Note: I have yet to receive a reply and we have yet to receive answers, studies or data.)

Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 23:10:50 -0600
To: pnash@madison.k12.wi.us
From: "Laurie A. Frost"
Subject: thanks, and more ...

Dear Pam,

Thanks so much for taking the time to meet with us on Friday to discuss the matter of English 10 and related issues at West HS. We greatly appreciated your time, your honesty, your patience and your perspective. We would very much like to continue the dialogue with you as things unfold at West in the coming weeks and months. I am happy to continue as your contact or "point person" for the group.

As a follow-up to our meeting, I cannot overstate parents' interest in seeing both West HS data and empirical studies from the education literature that support the District's increasing use of a homogeneous curriculum delivered in completely heterogeneous classrooms at both the middle and high school level. We want to know more about the research base that the Administration is using as the empirical foundation for this reform, as well as about the evidence from within the MMSD that attests to its effectiveness for all students.

We came on Friday with several talking points, but didn't get to all of them. I've pasted in the entire list below. If you have thoughts to share about any of the ones that didn't come up in our meeting, please feel free to respond.

Again, thanks so much for taking the time to start a dialogue with us.

Sincerely,

Laurie

Talking points for 11/18 meeting with Pam Nash

1. The SLC report makes it clear that English 9 – a standardized curriculum delivered in completely heterogeneous classes – hasn’t had the desired effect on the achievement gap at West, on the English 9 failure rates for certain groups of West students, or on the participation rates in the more challenging English electives of those same students. It thus makes no sense to us to expand the approach into 10th grade English. The first order of business should be to understand why English 9 is not working as hoped, and fix it.

2. The English 10 course – as currently planned – is a set up for failure for struggling and low achieving students for whom the reading and writing demands will likely be too great. It is also not fair to expect high performing and highly motivated students to get their need for challenge met during the lunch hour and through extra independent work. Students in honors classes report that the single most important feature of those classes for them is the high level of discussion, a result of who is in the class. Thus, students at the upper and lower most ends of the performance distribution will not be well served by this plan.

3. One way to modify the plan would be to have one honors section and one skills and enrichment section in each of the four SLC’s. Students would self-select into these special sections of English 10 and – in the honors sections – would have to maintain adequate performance in order to remain in the section. The special sections would be less exclusive than, for example, the single section of Accelerated Biology at West because four sections would provide significantly more access for a wider variety of interested students. According to the SLC report, having special sections like this in each SLC is not inconsistent with the SLC model.

4. Such a modified plan would also bring West in line with Madison’s other high schools. East HS, for example, has TAG, AcaMo and regular classes in English, science, and social studies, as well as several different levels of math.

5. Increasing the number of AP classes at West would address another important disparity between our high schools, one that affects the educational opportunities for West’s high performing students. (We hope the AP grant that the MMSD has just received, along with several other Wisconsin school districts, will be used to do this.)

6. In general, the significant differences across our four high schools with regard to how and how well the learning needs of the high performing students are met is of great concern to us. We are concerned about the “bright flight” that is occurring, from one attendance area to another and to neighboring districts.

7. Middleton HS was just named a Blue Ribbon School for its academic excellence by the U.S. Department of Education, one of only two in the state. Middleton HS offers a diversified curriculum in each content area and thus appropriate educational opportunities for students with widely varying interests, abilities, and career aspirations. It seems to us that Middleton understands that “equal” and “equitable” are not the same thing; that equal educational opportunity and heterogeneous grouping are not synonymous.

8. What are the major empirical studies upon which the District’s move towards completely heterogeneous classrooms at both the middle and high school levels is based?

9. Are you aware of the District’s dropout data for the second half of the 1990's? The data indicate that 27% of the dropouts for that period had a history of high academic achievement and that over half of this high achieving group of dropouts were poor and over 40% of them were minority students. Of the four high schools, West had the largest percentage of formerly high achieving dropouts. How do you understand those data? (I will bring hard copies.)

10. Can you provide us with an update on the plans for Accelerated Biology at West next year?

11. Is there any update since the 11/7 PTSO meeting we should know about?

12. A point about the process -- the lack of partnership -- the stonewalling -- which has become part of the problem. In contrast to the way things have unfolded at West, East had a community-wide meeting last week, at the beginning of their process, and has set up a task force to review high end curriculum.

13. Would we ever keep a talented 9th grade basketball player off of the varsity team? No. We'd celebrate his ability and be excited about having him play varsity for four years. And we wouldn't worry about hurting the feelings or self-esteem of any less capable or motivated students. Why is this attitude so acceptable in sports, but not in academics?

14. We would like to see honors/accelerated/more rigorous classes throughout the curriculum -- e.g., English 9, Accelerated Biology, social studies, etc. Why not one honors section per SLC?

15. What do the data show regarding how (matched samples of) students from Wright, Hamilton and Cherokee do at West? We think much could be learned by taking a look and seeing if there are differences.

Laurie A. Frost, Ph.D.
Isthmus Psychotherapy & Psychiatry
222 South Bedford Street
Madison, WI 53703
(608) 256-6570

11/21/2005: I pen a request to BOE Performance and Achievement Committee Chair Shwaw Vang (copying several other District officials), asking that he obtain the data that forms the basis for a couple of important points in Bruce King's SLC report, points regarding the apparent failure of English 9 to impact the achievement gap. Several others sign the request. We ask that the data be made public and that the P& A Committee hold a public discussion of the data. Knowing that Mr. Vang doesn't "do" email, I hand-deliver a copy of my request to him, along with a hard copy of the SLC report. (Note: I have yet to receive a reply from Mr. Vang.)

Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 20:02:40 -0600
To: svang7@madison.k12.wi.us
From: "Laurie A. Frost"
Subject: West HS SLC report -- request for examination and public discussion of 9th grade English data
Cc: robarts@execpc.com,wkeys@madison.k12.wi.us,jwinstonjr@madison.k12.wi.us,ccarstensen@madison.k12.wi.us,jlopez@madison.k12.wi.us,lkobza@boardmanlawfirm.com,arainwater@madison.k12.wi.us,pnash@madison.k12.wi.us,talkingoutofschool@isthmus.com,edit@isthmus.com

Dear Shwaw,

We are writing to you in your capacity as Chair of the BOE Performance and Achievement Committee to ask that you address a critical situation currently unfolding at West High School.

Enclosed you will find a copy of a report entitled "Evaluation of the SLC Project at West High School," written by SLC Evaluator Bruce King and dated November 2, 2005. The report focuses on the West administration's plans to overhaul 10th grade English.

For many years West sophomores -- like West juniors and seniors -- have chosen their English courses from an impressive list of electives that range in content and difficulty level. According to the report, the overarching reason for changing the existing system for 10th grade English is the concern that the elective structure contributes to unequal educational opportunities across different student groups. Specifically, there is concern that some groups of students do not sign up for the more rigorous, higher level electives. There is also concern that some West students complete their English credits without taking any literature courses. In essence, the proposal makes 10th grade English a lot like English 9 -- a standardized curriculum delivered in heterogeneous classes. The thing is, English 9 has not had the desired effect on these indicators of student achievement.

When you read the report, you will discover that English 9 -- which has been in place at West for several years -- has not done much to close the gap in achievement in English among West students. Thus the report recommends that "ongoing critical reflection and analysis of both the 9th and 10th grade English courses [is] needed [in order to] address ... concerns [such as] the failure rate for 9th grade English and which students are failing [because] it is not clear if a common 9th grade course has helped close the achievement gap" (emphasis added).

The report also states that "in addition, an action research group might be formed to evaluate the 9th grade course, including levels of expectations and differentiation, failure rates by student groups, and the extent to which it has helped or hindered students to take challenging English courses in subsequent years. Apparently, it hasn't helped some groups of students that much (emphasis added). Why? What needs to be changed so it does, and so the 10th grade course does, as well?"

In a word, we find it unconscionable to think that the West administration would expand a program into the 10th grade that has so clearly failed to achieve its objectives in the 9th grade. We can't help but suspect that a look at the hard data would convince any reasonable person that the appropriate and responsible course of action, at this juncture, would be to figure out why English 9 hasn't worked and fix it before making any changes to the 10th grade curriculum.

As Chair of the Performance and Achievement Committee, would you please take responsibility for obtaining from the MMSD Research and Evaluation Department the 9th grade data that goes along with the above statements from the report? Would you also please make these data public and schedule a public discussion of them at a Performance and Achievement Committee meeting?

We must stress to you the time urgency of this matter. At the November 7 West PTSO meeting -- when the West administration and English Department first introduced the proposal for English 10 -- it was mentioned that the West course catalogue is due at the printer in December. This leaves very little time for the public discussion that should have been an essential element of this curriculum change process. Consequently, we ask that you please obtain the data and hold a public discussion of them immediately.

Many thanks for your prompt attention to this urgent matter.

Respectfully,

Laurie Frost, Jeff Henriques, Larry Winkler, Jim Zellmer, Joan Knoebel, Michael Cullenward, Ed Blume, Kathy Riddiough, Jane Doughty, Janet Mertz, Stephanie Stetson, Nancy Zellmer, Jan Edwards, and Don Severson

11/28/2005: I write a follow-up email to Mr. Vang and his committee members (Ruth Robarts and Bill Keys), asking about the status of our request and stressing the time urgency of the situation. (Note: I have yet to receive a reply from Mr. Vang.)

Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:23:18 -0600
To: svang7@madison.k12.wi.us,wkeys@madison.k12.wi.us,robarts@execpc.com
From: "Laurie A. Frost"
Subject: West HS English 9 data request

Dear Shwaw, Bill and Ruth --

We are wondering about the status of our 11/21 request that the Performance and Achievement Committee obtain the West HS English 9 data that goes along with the comments in the text of Bruce King's report regarding the course's failure to impact the student achievement gap at West; make the data public; and hold a Performance and Achievement Committee meeting to discuss it?

The update from our end is that we have not heard from Pam Nash since our 11/18 meeting with her; we still have not heard from Ed Holmes about the answers to those questions we posed to him before the 11/7 PTSO meeting, but that were not answered at the meeting; SLC Evaluator Bruce King held two parent focus groups tonight; there is a 20-minute English Department meeting on Wednesday to discuss which English electives will be discontinued; and we understand English Department Chair Keesia Hyzer is working on an English 10 course catalog description.

Please, time is of the essence. Please get back to us. Please get those data. And please slow down the process that is unfolding at West, even as I write this email.

Laurie

P.S. I heard about yet another West family looking to move further west today.

11/28/2005: I write a follow-up email to Pam Nash, urgently requesting an update on the situation at West. (Note: I have yet to receive a reply from Ms. Nash.)

Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:33:42 -0600
To: pnash@madison.k12.wi.us
From: "Laurie A. Frost"
Subject: update?

Pam,

Is there anything to report on the English 10 situation at West? Any data? Any articles? Any news about follow-up from the West administration or with you?

Parents are getting increasingly agitated again. Although there were two one-hour focus groups held this evening, it's not clear they were anything more than an opportunity for parents to say their piece -- i.e., they felt much like the 11/7 PTSO meeting, in terms of not having any real impact on the process.

That's in part because we understand that the English Department is having a 20-minute meeting on Wednesday to discuss which electives will be discontinued, and that Keesia Hyzer (English Department chair) is working up an English 10 course catalog description. It appears that everything is proceeding as planned, as if parents had never said a word, as if the SLC report told a glowing success story about English 9.

What's going on?

Please get back to us asap.

Thanks,
Laurie

11/29/2005: I leave a message on Mr. Vang's answering machine asking for a status report on our request. (Note: I have yet to receive a reply from Mr. Vang.)

11/30/2005: I receive an email from Bill Keys, essentially a forward of a brief message from Art Rainwater.

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Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 07:46:39 -0600
To: "Laurie A. Frost"
From: Bill Keys
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Fwd: West HS English 9 data request
Cc: Art Rainwater
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Laurie,
This is what I intended to send: Art's response, in bold and italics.
Bill
Mary G, Pam and I met with Bruce King today. Bruce was very clear with us that his report did not say that the ninth grade English class had failed. What he actually said in the report was there was no data to make any kind of judgement about the success of the course. They would need to talk to Bruce about what data he has. My understanding was that he has none.
Art

11/30/2005: I write back to Bill, copying Art Rainwater, Pam Nash, and Mary Gulbrandsen.

Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 12:57:58 -0600
To: wkeys@madison.k12.wi.us
From: "Laurie A. Frost"
Subject: West HS English 9 data request
Cc: arainwater@madison.k12.wi.us,pnash@madison.k12.wi.us,mgulbrandsen@madison.k12.wi.us

Bill --

First, thanks so much for responding and getting involved in this urgent matter.

Second, we have Bruce's report!

In fact, the following paragraphs from my email request to Shwaw contain verbatim quotes (in bold) from Bruce's report:

When you read the report, you will discover that English 9 -- which has been in place at West for several years -- has not done much to close the gap in achievement in English among West students. Thus the report recommends that "ongoing critical reflection and analysis of both the 9th and 10th grade English courses [is] needed [in order to] address ... concerns [such as] the failure rate for 9th grade English and which students are failing [because] it is not clear if a common 9th grade course has helped close the achievement gap" (underline added).

The report also states that "in addition, an action research group might be formed to evaluate the 9th grade course, including levels of expectations and differentiation, failure rates by student groups, and the extent to which it has helped or hindered students to take challenging English courses in subsequent years. Apparently, it hasn't helped some groups of students that much (underline added). Why? What needs to be changed so it does, and so the 10th grade course does, as well?"

Speaking as a well-trained social scientist with that whole other career behind me, I guess I see two ways to interpret these statements. One is that the West administration has looked at the data for English 9 and it does not show any effect on the achievement gap -- i.e., there is no effect on either the failure rate of certain groups of students (presumably in English 9) or the participation rate of certain groups of students in the more rigorous English electives. The other way to interpret the statements is that it's not clear if English 9 has had an impact on the achievement gap (i.e., those two specific indicators) because they have not yet looked at the data.

Now, Art says his understanding is that Bruce has no data. In all honesty, that possibility hadn't occurred to me. Wow. If that's true, I am even more appalled and outraged than I was before.

Bill (and all those I've copied), please try to understand, this is the kind of professionally irresponsible decision-making behavior that parents across the District are so enormously frustrated with. Think about it. A radical school-wide change is being implemented at one of our high schools -- one that will affect thousands of students -- despite an absence of data supportive of the change, that absence apparently due to the fact that the appropriate and necessary data have not even been collected and examined! I see that as a serious violation of the trust we parents have put in all of you, the decision-makers of our school district.

Please, I implore you once again, put a stop to this English 10 business and figure out what's going on with English 9 first!

Laurie

Here are the unchanged verbatim quotes from Bruce's report:

from page 4 ---

"Ongoing critical reflection and analysis of both the 9th and 10th grade English courses are needed. This analysis should address different but interrelated concerns:

1) The failure rate for 9th grade English, and which students are failing. It is not clear if a common 9th grade course has helped close the achievement gap."

From page 6 --

"In addition, an action research group might be formed to evaluate the 9th grade course, including levels of expectations and differentiation, failure rates by student groups, and the extent to which it has helped or hindered students to take challenging English courses in subsequent years. Apparently it hasn't helped some groups of students that much. Why? What needs to be changed so it does and so the 10th grade course does as well? " p. 6

At 07:46 AM 11/30/2005, you wrote:
Laurie,
This is what I intended to send: Art's response, in bold and italics.
Bill
Mary G, Pam and I met with Bruce King today. Bruce was very clear with us that his report did not say that the ninth grade English class had failed. What he actually said in the report was there was no data to make any kind of judgement about the success of the course. They would need to talk to Bruce about what data he has. My understanding was that he has none.
Art

At 07:24 AM 11/30/2005 -0600, you wrote:
Bill -- I don't think you sent what you intended to send. This looks like my own message only. Thanks for sending Art's response again. --Laurie

P.S. We have Bruce's report. Do you mean contact him for the actual data?

At 10:38 PM 11/29/2005, you wrote:
Laurie,
Here is Supt Rainwater's response to your request for information. I encourage you to contact Bruce King for the report.
Bill

Dear Shwaw, Bill and Ruth --
>
>We are wondering about the status of our 11/21 request that the
>Performance and Achievement Committee obtain the West HS English 9 data
>that goes along with the comments in the text of Bruce King's report
>regarding the course's failure to impact the student achievement gap at
>West; make the data public; and hold a Performance and Achievement
>Committee meeting to discuss it?
>
>The update from our end is that we have not heard from Pam Nash since our
>11/18 meeting with her; we still have not heard from Ed Holmes about the
>answers to those questions we posed to him before the 11/7 PTSO meeting,
>but that were not answered at the meeting; SLC Evaluator Bruce King held
>two parent focus groups tonight; there is a 20-minute English Department
>meeting on Wednesday to discuss which English electives will be
>discontinued; and we understand English Department Chair Keesia Hyzer is
>working on an English 10 course catalog description.
>
>Please, time is of the essence. Please get back to us. Please get those
>data. And please slow down the process that is unfolding at West, even as
>I write this email.
>
>
>Laurie
>
>
>P.S. I heard about yet another West family looking to move further west
>today.

12/2/2005: I write an email to Madison Board of Education President Carol Carstensen that the Board discuss plans for English 10 at West HS (and the question of whether or not West's English 9 course has been appropriately evaluated, and whether or not the results of any evaluation support the implementation of English 10) on the agenda of a BOE meeting as soon as possible.

Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2005 08:32:36 -0600
To: ccarstensen@madison.k12.wi.us
From: "Laurie A. Frost"
Subject: West English
Cc: wkeys@madison.k12.wi.us,lkobza@boardmanlawfirm.com,robarts@execpc.com,jwinstonjr@madison.k12.wi.us,jlopez@madison.k12.wi.us,svang7@madison.k12.wi.us,arainwater@madison.k12.wi.us,pnash@madison.k12.wi.us,mgulbrandsen@madison.k12.wi.us

Dear Carol,

I am writing to request that you put a discussion of the plans for English 10 at West HS (and the question of whether or not West's English 9 course has been appropriately evaluated, and whether or not the results of any evaluation support the implementation of English 10) on the agenda of a BOE meeting as soon as possible.

I believe it is time for the BOE to step in and take seriously its responsibility to students by insisting that the West administration make a sound, empirically-based decision.

Many thanks,
Laurie

This is Not Your Grandchild's Madison School District

While viewing the MMSD web site I came across some data called District data profile that suprised me, and answered some of my questions concerning low income disparity. While sitting on the task force, I have been bothered by the districts solution for dealing with high numbers of low income students by rearranging school boundaries and/or paring schools, and wondered if you really solved the disparity issue or if you shifted the issue to another school or something that would have to be solved at another time.

Madison school district low income percentages per www.mmsd.org 1991 - 2005.

East High 2005 - 2010 Elementary Projections (click to view a larger version)	Memorial/West 2005 - 2010 Elementary Projections (click to view a larger version)

In 13 years, 1992 to 2005, MMSD low income percentage has gone from 24.6% to 42%.

1. Has the definition of low income changed during this time period?
2. Has the community as a whole really changed this much in 13 years?

   As a community member that hears and believes there is no low income housing, where do these people live if 42% of our community is now low income?

3. We have lost 1000 elementary students in the same time period and doubled our minority students. Is this a wave of low births or are we losing students?

Middle School totals

• In 1991 there were 4776 students with a 20.3% low income.
• In 2005 there are 5297 students with a 38.6% low income.

High School totals

• In 1991 there were 6435 students with a 12% low income.
• In 2005 there are 8429 students with a 28% low income.

The question about pairing two schools and whether it improves low income percentage numbers over time was also in the data.

• Lincoln in 1991 was at 51% low income, 1997 59%, and 2005 69%.
• Midvale in 1991 was 42% low income, and 2005 it is at 64%.

It does not seem to have improved the high percentage of low income numbers.

A History of Changes at West

Last spring a longtime parent at West HS was asked to write a description -- content area by content area -- of the curriculum changes that have occurred at West HS in recent years that have affected the academic opportunities of West's "high end" students. Below you will find what she wrote. It includes changes that have actually occurred; changes that may and probably will occur; and important questions about what else may happen in the future.

This summary was then forwarded to two other longtime West parents for their comments. Excerpts from those comments may be found just after the original description. Next, the description of each content area was sent to the appropriate department head at West, for their comment with the goal being to produce a brief, descriptive document that everyone would agree was factually accurate, for educational and advocacy purposes. Unfortunately, none of the department heads responded.

Here is the original description:

1. English

a. A few students gifted in English used to be permitted to begin taking upper-level English courses beginning 2nd semester of 9th grade, based upon their English teacher's recommendation, outstanding performance during their 1st semester at West, and the availability of open slots in appropriate courses that fit the student's schedule. (Note: this option involves no monetary cost.)

b. The two sections of integrated 9th-grade English/Social Studies were eliminated as of the 2003-2004 academic year. The primary purpose of these experimental courses -- very similar in philosophy to the SLCs -- was to provide an opportunity for one English and one social studies teacher to pair together to partially integrate their curricula and get to know the same group of students, along with the students having the same set of classmates for both classes. "TAG" students were among the ones who self-selected into these courses, creating cluster grouping within mainstreamed classrooms.

c. 10th-grade English core curriculum will likely be introduced in 2006-2007. This change will prevent highly motivated and capable students from having the opportunity to take appropriately challenging courses in English until 11th grade (currently, students get to start choosing from among the English electives in 10th grade). Ultimately, the effect will be a reduction in the number and variety of upper-level English courses West is able to offer.

2. Social Studies

a. 9th-grade Integrated English/Social Studies course was eliminated (see above).

b. The British version of 10th-grade European History was eliminated as an option a couple of years ago when the teacher of this course officially retired. (Note: this teacher still teaches some sections of 10th-grade European History at West.) As with Integrated English/Social Studies, "TAG" students were among the ones who self-selected into this variant of 10th-grade social studies, creating high ability cluster grouping within a mainstreamed classroom.

c. West's Social Studies Department decided this year that underclassmen will no longer be permitted to take 12th-grade elective courses prior to 12th-grade, not even on a space-available basis that would involve no monetary cost. No other department has this restriction. Might they follow suit?

3. Science

a. 9th-grade Accelerated Biology is restricted to one section despite there being approximately four classrooms worth of students who desire each year to take on the extra challenge this class entails (i.e., over 100 students choose to take the optional test for admission into Accelerated Biology each year, some years, many more than that). Budget constraints will likely lead to the elimination of even this one section in the near future unless West is willing to assign all of the students in this class to the same SLC (or have one section per SLC).

b. Will the implementation of a 10th-grade Core include science as well? If so, will everyone take the same Chemistry course in 10th grade, eliminating the variety of science options currently available to 10th-grade students? (Note: at the March 2005 West PTSO meeting, West HS Science Department Chair Mike Lipp stated -- in response to a parent question -- that they would not eliminate the regular Chemistry class because the lack of math content/rigor in Chem Comm ("Chemistry in the Community") would leave West graduates unprepared for chemistry at the UW and other universities.)

4. Math

a. West used to have a course called "Precalculus." It covered Algebra 2/Trigonometry Accelerated and Algebra 3 Accelerated in one year. It was eliminated last year (2003-04). The math staff were needed, instead, for "Algebra I Extended." In addition, it was a controversial course, in that there was disagreement as to how many students could really handle and benefit from it. All of West's remaining "accelerated" math courses are really honors classes, that is, they are not accelerated in pace, as exists at many high schools of excellence in the US. (Important note: the "new" class that will be called "Precalculus" next year is simply Algebra 3 Accelerated with a new name, not the old Precalculus.)

b. With old Precalculus gone, will West now end up having too few students to justify continuing to offer Calculus II starting in 2006-2007? (Note: in order to take Calculus II in high school, a student must take geometry before 9th grade or take a year of math over a summer.) If so, West could end up the only MMSD high school not offering Calculus II.

c. In the future, will most students at West be mainstreamed into "Core Plus" starting in 9th grade? (Note: this would fit well with the plan to have an SLC-based core curriculum in 9th and 10th grade; that is, to have all students take Core Plus from the beginning would make possible a 9th and 10th grade core curriculum in math.) If so, will none of these students be able to take Calculus in high school?

Here are excerpts from the comments of Person #1:

The institutional history corresponds well with my experience and my children's experiences at West.

One other point that is not made is that it used to be easier to take an Independent Study course for credit if you were a high achieving student. ... Also, the school people will point to the option of going to UW as a way of providing for high end kids. [Although this works well for some], I think it is a bad option since the calendars [and daily schedules] do not in any way correspond with one another -- on a daily basis, the UW offers courses on a MW, TR, or MWF schedule, while West offers their courses on a MTWRF schedule. The transportation time and the differences in the class start times means that, essentially, taking a single course at UW makes a massive hole in a student's schedule.

Here are excerpts from the comments of Person #2:

As for science, 10th grade students either take Chemistry acclerated or Chem Com. In 11th grade, there are two physics offerings, Advanced Math Physics or General Physics. In 12th grade, the advanced topics courses in these two areas -- as well as in biology -- are fairly subjective, dependent on teacher interest. By contrast, Memorial students have AP Chem, Physics and Bio, as well as a 9th grade earth science class; additionally, the sequence is taught in the more accepted order, chem, physics and finally, biology. Many Memorial students graduate with 25-45 AP credits; very few West students take any other than calculus, foreign language and/or statistics--10-15 credits. This can make a huge difference in college, either for placement and/or early graduation with its attendant reduction in cost.

Fundamentally, the problem lies with the SLC program. Its primary purpose, despite the social rhetoric, is to homogenize the student body across all variables, including academics. Most of the features that made West a haven for TAG students are eliminated. Taking courses out of the normal sequence will be very difficult and the clustering of students, unless it happens de facto as the result of changes in the middle school curriculum, will disappear. It was this menu of options and flexibility that offset West's weak to non-existent AP program. I would also be very concerned whether a student will be able to participate in UW's Youth Options program; coordinating the university and high school schedules is difficult under the current arrangement with West's variety of courses and times. Youth Options has been a tremendous opportunity for gifted students to expand beyond the typical constraints of the high school curricula. (Note: the State now limits the number of college credits for which a District must pay to 18 per student. Also, the Youth Options Program may well face threat of extinction again in the near future.)

Citizens Advocating Responsible Education C.A.R.E

Click to view the charts in further detail

After an eight year absence from analyzing data from the Madison School District, C.A.R.E., Citizens Advocating Responsible Education, has returned to the local scene with updates to the data profiles which it prepared through 1997. Current reports include a Ten Year Profile, 1994 through 2004, of MMSD’s school enrollment, full time equivalency (fte) staffing history, student to staff ratios, annual operating budgets, annual pupil costs compared to the state average, and tax levies in excess of spending caps. The second report is a profile of the same items but in snapshot form in ten year increments since 1980. (300K PDF)

Virgil and Sarah Kidd began to study MMSD annual budgets and district profile data after attending their first school board meeting in June of 1990. After a public protest demonstration led by Virgil Kidd in July of 1990 a small group of concerned citizens came together to form the new group known as C.A.R.E., Citizens Advocating Responsible Education. Previous presidents of the feisty citizen group after Virgil Kidd’s initial term were well known community leaders John Alexander and former school board president Nancy Harper.

Sarah Kidd, Virgil Kidd’s widow, has decided to update the data that has been compiled by C.A.R.E. over the past years and make it available to citizens in Madison who value factual data and historical perspective when making important decisions concerning public education.

C.A.R.E. data sources: The 2004-05 Budget & District Profile Book, June 2004, MMSD and DPI Websites and Annual MMSD Budget Documents from the years described.
Contact: careinfo05 at yahoo dot com