oflovefaithhopedream

I like my son's public school. I really do. He's in kindergarten this year. I find his school to be a nurturing environment with a solid focus on learning and a similar focus on community and respect for others. His school was recently recognized by the state for its overall academic achievement and for being in the top 10% of state Title I schools for achievement growth in math and reading. But his school - and the entire school district - made a curious decision last Friday. As a result of the high school boys' basketball team making it into the state tournament, school was released early (just after lunch), eliminating about 150 minutes of academic time. Parents were given four days notice that this was going to happen. I think it this was an attempt to encourage community pride. A note came home in my son's folder and an email was circulated encouraging families to support the high school athletes by attending the state championship game mid-afternoon on Friday. But...

UPDATED, 8/11/2011, 1:10 pm Thursday morning in Washington DC -- the only city that could host such a vacuous, inane event -- the Thomas B. Fordham Institute is hosting (the hopefully one-off) "Education Reform Idol." The event has nothing to do with recognizing states that get the best results for children or those that have achieved demonstrated results from education policies over time -- but simply those that have passed pet reforms over the past year. It purports to determine which state is the "reformiest" (I kid you not) with the only contenders being Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin and the only judges being: (1) a representative of the pro-privatization Walton (WalMart) Family Foundation; (2) the Walton-funded, public education hater Jeanne Allen; and (3) the "Fox News honorary Juan Williams chair" provided to the out-voted Richard Lee Colvin from Education Sector. With the deck stacked like that, Illinois is out of the running im...

I am appalled by this malicious attack on teachers and teachers' unions by Jay Greene. He claims that teachers are engaging in mob-like behavior, are seething anger and are intimidating politicians. The irony is that I've met few teachers who are nearly as angry as Jay himself comes across. But when the public face of the teacher unions is the Army of Angry Teachers, they no longer seem like Mary Poppins and begin to look a lot more like longshoremen beating their opponents with metal pipes. Giant mobs of yelling protesters and blogs filled with tirades may increase the intimidation politicians feel, but it seriously undermines the image of teachers as an extension of our family. Jay's "mob" is my "democratic gathering". Here in Wisconsin (the featured photo on Jay's blog post) there was an organic outpouring of disgust and determination as a result of Governor Scott Walker's attacks on collective bargaining and public employee and teachers ...

Eliminating collective bargaining for Wisconsin public employees was all about balancing the state budget. Until it wasn't . Expanding the Milwaukee voucher program was all about equal educational opportunities for low-income children. Until it wasn't . Howard Fuller is absolutely right to threaten to "get off the stage" and refuse to strike a deal with the devil. “I will never fight for giving people who already have means more resources. Because, in the end, that will disadvantage and squeeze out the possibility of poor parents having some of these options,” said Fuller. This is not to say that Fuller won’t consider raising the income threshold to serve more of Milwaukee’s working poor. In the interview, he talks about aligning the requirements for entry into the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program with those of Wisconsin’s BadgerCare program, which provides health care to state residents who earn less than 300 percent of poverty. “That would capture over 80...

A huge public thank you to Paul Krugman for his outstanding defense of academic freedom in Monday's New York Times . As an untenured professor and regular blogger, I am eternally grateful that he -- at least -- gets it. He is absolutely right about the risks of letting this kind of behavior go by-- "... less eminent and established researchers won’t just become reluctant to act as concerned citizens, weighing in on current debates; they’ll be deterred from even doing research on topics that might get them in trouble. What’s at stake here, in other words, is whether we’re going to have an open national discourse in which scholars feel free to go wherever the evidence takes them, and to contribute to public understanding. Republicans, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, are trying to shut that kind of discourse down. It’s up to the rest of us to see that they don’t succeed." Now if only UW-Madison Administration would take such a stance.

The witch hunt is on. Last night, my colleague William Cronon -- a highly respected, tenured professor of history -- revealed that the Wisconsin Republican Party made an open records request for his university email following the publication of his first-ever blog post . What was in that post? A thoughtful set of questions about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The investigation of Bill Cronon scares the crap out of me, quite frankly. And obviously, that's the intent. We are told as university faculty that we are state employees and our writing is subject to these requests, but many of us operate (have operated) under the impression we are living in a rational, civil society that understands the importance of academic freedom. No longer. I'm betting that a request is coming my way soon. I lack Cronon's long track record in academia, I lack his tenured status, I lack his measured way of saying things, I lack his status as a white male, I lack his apparen...

Interested in how the New Badger Partnership could affect the composition and quality of the student body? Of faculty? Please take a look at this memo I drafted for several campus committees, posted by Sifting and Winnowing .

The Badger Advocates formed this week to make sure the New Badger Partnership (NBP)--complete with split from the University of Wisconsin System--is passed in the Guv's budget this summer. Thank goodness someone is really digging into who these guys are -- this is a must read. My question is this: I have heard plenty of folks argue this is great for the research enterprise at UW-Madison. I have no doubt that's true. I've also heard some who think it's good for faculty. And plenty who think it's good for alumni. I also hear from current students who *think* it's good for them. But how, exactly? How does hiring 72 new faculty benefit students if teaching experience is not a requirement for hiring? If we continue to make tenure decisions based primarily on activities that don't involve students? Where is the evidence that any of the things we are dumping money into are causing improvements either in graduation rates, time-to-degree, gaps in degree com...

Jon Stewart makes a compelling defense of teachers on the March 3rd Daily Show . He juxtaposes numerous comments made on Fox News during the 2010 debate in favor of extending the Bush tax cuts for couples earning more than $250,000 against the "avarice" of teachers earning around $50,000 a year plus benefits here in Wisconsin. As one Fox anchor put it: "250,000 dollars is not rich for a family of four sending kids to college! It's actually close to poverty!" Indeed. Further, Tracy Byrnes, a "Fox business contributor," railed against reducing pay or rescinding bonuses for Wall Street CEOs whose firms were being bailed out by the U.S. government because of contractual obligations. But, recently, she favored reducing teacher pay and benefits regardless of whether they were promised under existing employment contracts. What's fair is fair -- or not. Very interesting. The Republican argument is that we shouldn't -- and didn't -- let the Bush t...

"I'm an optimist...tempers will cool." Scott Walker, delivering his big ol' budget speech, 3/1/2011 There are too many important words being co-opted around these parts lately (more on "flexibility" "tools" and "crisis" later). Optimism is one of them. Walker, when you rule the world, you cannot begin to know what optimism truly means. Optimism is the faith that good will prevail even when the world seems dead set against you. As the guy on top beating the heck out of us, you don't have a clue what optimism really means. It's us who have to be optimistic -- that, eventually, you will no longer be in charge.

Sometimes a story just writes itself: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker duped (on tape) by a liberal blogger posing as major right-wing Republican donor David Koch . Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel coverage Huffington Post coverage Ezra Klein (Washington Post) One Wisconsin Now

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is out for more than money . He's out for blood. He won't quit until he drives a stake through the hearts of public employee unions in the Badger State. That much is clear . How this current saga will end is anyone's guess. The amazing protests that have taken over the Wisconsin State Capitol and downtown Madison might wear down, if not Walker, the few moderate Republican state senators remaining. Or the GOP might try to eliminate collective bargaining without needing the "Wisconsin 14" -- the Senate Democrats who have crossed the Illinois border to prevent a vote on the budget bill -- by pulling the collective bargaining provisions out as separate legislation (which would require only 17 senators present; there are 19 Republicans). The outcome? A general strike perhaps. Wisconsin unions and Democratic lawmakers have already publicly agreed to accept sizable concessions on health benefits and pensions as demanded by Walker and...

Forward . That's the Wisconsin state motto . Our new governor is calling it into serious question. Since arriving in the governor's office in January, Scott Walker has directed his state driver to put the peddle of his gleaming new SUV to the metal ... in reverse. In my thirty nine years, I have never lived under such a retrograde governor. The likes of Mike Dukakis, Bill Weld, Madeleine Kunin, Dick Snelling, Howard Dean, Jim Doyle each stand in sharp contrast to the arrogance, spitefulness and wrong-headedness of Walker. I am ashamed that this man is the leader of our state. Nice going, Badgers. Walker's proposal to close Wisconsin's current fiscal year budget deficit includes a de facto salary cut of more than 8 percent (in the form of greater contributions into the state pension system and for health benefits) for all state and university employees. The impact on the state economy -- and on the Madison area, in particular -- from the enactment of such a proposal ...

If you haven't been reading the excellent "Building A Better Teacher" news series in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel , you should be. It really doesn't matter whether you're from Wisconsin or not, or particularly interested in this state's policy context. The series is taking an expansive look at the various issues related to human capital development, teacher effectiveness and teaching quality. And it's not quoting the same overused Beltway prognosticators to drive its points home. The fourth installment in the eight-part series, funded by Hechinger, ran this past Sunday and was entitled "Trying to steer strong teachers to weak schools." My main quibble with this particular article was that it gave short shrift to one of the most effective answers to the question posed: How do we steer strong teachers to weak schools? The answer: Improve the teaching conditions at those schools. Here's the extent of what the article offered on this issue: So ...

As a follow up to my post last September ( "Teacher Residency Requirements" ), there appears to be legislative movement in both Illinois and Wisconsin to eliminate such requirements in Chicago and Milwaukee, respectively. Both cities require teachers to be residents in order to be employed in the public schools. From District 299: The Chicago Schools Blog (Alexander Russo), 3/8/2010: It's an age-old question for Chicago, which is one of few big cities to require teachers to live inside the city limits. Teachers complain about it. Once in a while they get caught living outside the city and have to move or leave their jobs. The recession in making jobs scarcer and the city more expensive. And now State Sen. Steans has introduced language [Residency Bill SB 3522 (Amendment 1)] that, with the support of the CTU, would remove that requirement. From Wisconsin State Journal editorial , 3/10/2010: Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature and the state's big teachers ...

Education Next apparently has provided a platform for school choice advocate George Mitchell to shill for voucher schools outside of the state of Wisconsin. Here is his latest spin on a study that shows the high school graduation rate to be 12 points higher in seven Milwaukee voucher schools compared with 23 Milwaukee public high schools. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story by Erin Richards provides the crucial quote regarding causation from the study's author, John Robert Warren , a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota: "We still don't know whether it's going to the voucher school that causes you to be more likely to graduate, or if it's something about the kinds of families that send their kids to voucher schools would make them more likely to graduate," he said. Then there's the whole question of which and how the voucher and public high schools were chosen for purposes of comparison. More questions than answers. Unlike Mitchell, I ...

Today is the deadline for state applications in the first round of the Race to the Top grant competition. The easy prognostication to make is that the vast majority of the 39 states (and DC) that apply will have their initial applications rejected and all will reapply in round two, due in June. Most will fail then, too. Despite the publicly released application scoring rubric , it is difficult to know exactly how the application scoring will play out, based upon who the reviewers are, whether Gates Foundation consultant funding helped certain states frame more compelling applications, stated or implicit pressures to fund only a certain number of applications (especially in round one), the importance lent to district and union buy-in from an implementation and sustainability perspective, and the strength of big-state applications versus small-state applications. To the latter point, there's ONLY $4 billion to be spread around, and the largest states could suck up as much as $700 mi...

COLORADO RttT bill is fast-tracked ( Denver Post ) CONNECTICUT 75 school districts on board ( New Haven Register ) ILLINOIS Legislation revamps teacher evaluations; governor's signature expected ( The State Journal-Register ) INDIANA 93% of school districts join Race (Fort Wayne Journal Gazette ) IOWA Senate approves RttT bill ( Des Moines Register ) KENTUCKY Governor signs low-performing schools bill ( Louisville Courier-Journal ) MASSACHUSETTS School bill ready for final vote ( Boston Globe ) MICHIGAN State teacher's union won't sign onto application ( The Detroit News ) MINNESOTA Over 250 districts, charter schools on board ( Star News ) NEBRASKA Governor: State's $122 million application includes 'Virtual High School' ( Omaha World-Herald ) OREGON 112 school districts on board ( Statesman Journal ) PENNSYLVANIA Requiring local school board and union sign-off ( Education Week Teacher Beat) Editorial: Flexibility should accompany call for innovati...

NATIONAL AFT chief vows to revise teacher-dismissal process ( Education Week ) Strong applications versus stakeholder support? (Flypaper) RttT fire drills ignore the fact that 52% 0f state application is based on PAST reform and achievement (Eduflack) ALABAMA Governor Riley links charters, Race chances ( Dothan Eagle ) FLORIDA 53 of 67 school districts on board; only 5 with union backing ( Orlando Sentinel School Zone blog) GEORGIA Governor Purdue pitches performance pay ( Atlanta Journal Constitution blog) ILLINOIS Bill to strengthen educator evaluations passes state House ( The State Journal-Register ) IOWA Legislation needed to boost state's competitiveness ( Des Moines Register ) Governor Culver presses for RttT legislation in State of the State ( Des Moines Register blog) Bill passes first legislative hurdle ( Des Moines Register blog) KENTUCKY House passes low-performing schools bill ( Louisville Courier-Journal ) LOUISIANA State board endorses application ( T...

Playing catch up following the holidays and the birth of our second child ... here are the major Race to the Top updates a week before round 1 applications are due on January 19th... NATIONAL 39 States and DC to apply in round one (U.S. Department of Education) 'Race To Top' Viewed as Template for a New ESEA ( Education Week ) 'Race To Top' Driving Policy Action Across States ( Education Week ) Two State Unions Balking at 'Race To Top' Plans ( Education Week ) CALIFORNIA Assembly passes reform bill ( Sacramento Bee ) Governor signs bill to improve state eligibility in Race; opposed by teachers' unions ( Los Angeles Times ) Governor seeks to ease teacher firings ( Los Angeles Times ) COLORADO Summary of state plan ( INDenver Times ) FLORIDA Unions: State RttT plan is 'fatally flawed' ( Orlando Sentinel ) Editorial: Unions must not walk ( Miami Herald ) Editorial: Racing to the top ( Orlando Sentinel ) ILLINOIS Editorial: State legislature t...