Monthly Archives: June 2008

New Library Public Hearing

Via Brenda Konkel, This Side of Town… Here’s your chance to tell the decisions makers what YOU want! The Library Board and the Surplus Property Committee will be holding a meeting solely to solicit public input prior to issuing a … Continue reading

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Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, Local News, Take Action, Uncategorized

A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education

As promised, a task force associated with the Economic Policy Institute has released a framework for improving education. Here are the highlights from the press release: 1. Continued school improvement efforts. To close achievement gaps, we need to reduce class … Continue reading

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Filed under Accountability, AMPS, Best Practices, education, Equity, National News, nclb, Take Action, Uncategorized

Too Late the Truth?

From “The Impact of the Adequate Yearly Progress Requirement of. the Federal “No Child Left Behind” Act on Schools in the Great Lakes Region,” a study released by the Great Lakes Center for Educational Research and the Education Policy Studies … Continue reading

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Filed under Accountability, AMPS, Best Practices, education, finance, Gimme Some Truth, Local News, National News, nclb, No Child Left Behind, Uncategorized

The Teacher Project Film

From Public Schools Insights: In this third and final installment of our interview, [Dave] Eggers announces his plans to create a new documentary depicting the professional lives of teachers. (You heard it here first.) Eggers and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Vanessa … Continue reading

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Filed under "education finance", AMPS, Best Practices, Budget, Contracts, education, finance, National News, nclb, No Child Left Behind, School Finance

Talkin’ Dropouts

James Brown, “Don’t Be a Dropout.” Lots of news about dropouts and graduation rates recently. Education Week just published their Diplomas Count report. It is pretty alarmist. Graduation rate scholars Jim Heckman, Paul LaFontaine, Larry Mishel, and Joydeep Roy raised … Continue reading

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Filed under "education finance", Accountability, AMPS, Best Practices, education, Equity, Local News, National News, nclb, No Child Left Behind, School Finance, Uncategorized

Equity Policies — Learning from Others

I’m still working through what did and did not happen with Equity at Monday’s MMSD Board of Education meeting (video here, starting at about the 2 hour and 25 minute mark) and how and why things did and did not … Continue reading

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Filed under "education finance", AMPS, Best Practices, Budget, education, Equity, Local News, Uncategorized, We Are Not Alone

Quotes of the day

From Milwaukee Public Schools, 2006-7 School Report Card (click to see full report card). When value added is implemented in MMSD, we can expect similar reporting. Note that the gray areas are “error bands,” indicating 95% confidence intervals. From an … Continue reading

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Part of the story on property taxes

The Cap Times picked up an A.P story on a Legislative Fiscal Bureau report on property taxes. The article says in part: Taxes paid to schools are by far the largest chunk of a homeowner’s tax bill. They increased 7.4 … Continue reading

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Filed under Elections, Uncategorized, We Are Not Alone

Gender inequality and the math gap

A very interesting study appearing last week in the journal “Science” relied on a test from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). It assessed over 275,000 15 year old teenagers in 40 countries. One of the most fascinating conclusions … Continue reading

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