This is a practice that I think is wrong (see here and here) and I apologize for having done this.
I still believe that the scores at Nuestro Mundo are cause for alarm.
Standardized test scores are of limited utility in judging the quality of a school or assessing educational experiences, but they aren’t of no use. I think of test scores as one tool that can indicate some success or call attention to problems. Most of the time fair, good or even great test scores don’t tell us much but “proceed with caution,” (because caution is always in order when dealing with kid’s futures). Sometimes the test scores tell us to slow down and pay attention, look for what is going wrong and for ways to fix it. I believe that the results of Nuestro Mundo fall into this category.
On a related topic of using educational statistics, see Sherman Dorn’s recent post “Grokking Social Science Statistics” (well worth reading).
A very nice story by Anita Weier on school and community work to create and maintain gardens at some of Madison’s East Side elementary schools is posted on the Cap Times site.
The kids are taking responsibility, learning about sustainable practices, such as composting and from the story, obviously having fun.
Unfortunately, the Madison School Administration appears to be less than enthusiastic. Doug Pearson, director of building services for the school district raised reasonable, if not insurmountable, issues with expanded composting.
Less reasonable on the surface is Assistant Superintendent Sue Abplanalp apparent over-concern with the possibility that neglected gardens will detract from appearances. Unfortunately, the raised bin of mud (which once held trees and grass), the bare dirt, the crumbling wall and other unattractive features that greet me at Franklin School each morning as I drop off my son have not inspired the same level of concern.
According to Abplanalp, an expansion of the program will be at least partially dependent on the results of focus groups and may involve “centralization.” Focus groups. centralization, planning for failure…these are great ways to kill the great grassroots cooperative spirit that is flowering in these gardens.
Jasper Johns, "Target With Four Faces" (click on image for more information)
The Strategic Planning Committee set many laudable, if difficult to reach targets and the process of figuring out how to get to these targets has begun. This includes the first designated opportunities for members of the public to weigh in.
Tomorrow evening (March 25, 2009, 6:00 to 7:30) at the La Follette High School LMC there will be a “Community Engagement Session” on the Madison Metropolitan School District strategic planning. There will be another session at Memorial High School on April 16. According to the announcement: “These two sessions will give attendees an opportunity to receive an overview of the draft strategic plan and to give feedback on it in small groups.”
On the page linked above, there is a video linked where Supt. Nerad says “In the months after these three sessions in January, more members of the community will be involved in developing action plans for each priority area of need.” I sincerely hope that these sessions are not the extent of the reach beyond the appointed Committee Members. Supt. Nerad’s language fits with things that were said prior to the January meetings and indicates that the “Actions Teams” would not necessarily be made up exclusively of those appointed to the initial Strategic Planning Committee.
Thus far this has not been the case. The Committee members have been meeting as self appointed “Action Teams,” to “identify actions steps” based on the priorities set by the Committee as a whole and that the public has been welcome at these sessions only as “observers.” This means that the work has moved into step two before there has been any real attempt at engagement with any not part of the team.
The district did a good, if relatively secretive job in seeking diverse and varied representation on the Strategic Planning Committee. The sessions scheduled for 3/25 and 4/16 are also good things. However, if this planning and especially the implementation that will follow are to be successful, much more extensive openness, inclusion and outreach in all phases of the work would be advisable.
As noted last week, under Wisconsin’s broken school funding system, Spring is the season for budget cuts in districts around the state. The latest places the axe is falling are Minocqua-Hazelhurst-Lake Tomahawk, Kaukauna, and Oshkosh.
Minocqua-Hazelhurst-Lake Tomahawk (MHLT) is a K-8 district serving 550 students spread out over 350 square miles. It is a classic “small but necessary” district in dire need of realistic sparsity aid as one part of an improved system of funding schools. Governor Jim Doyle’s budget proposal cuts the already inadequate sparsity aid by 1%.
The Lakeland Times reports that the district voted to lay off two teacher, cut the employment of three others by 20%, lay off four educational support team members and discontinue funding for outside curriculum integration with the Lakeland Union High School (LUHS).
These were obviously painful decisions. One board member had this to say about the curriculum integration defunding:
“We’re facing decisions that you well know,” board member Billy Fried said. “We’re negotiating with teachers. We’re making cuts in staff, and it’s really hard to look them in the face and also look our taxpayers in the face when we’re kind of shrinking our own, yet maintain an outside service that a lot of us feel confident they [MHLT current staff] can do a good job.”
The probability of an operating referendum in the near future was part of the decision:
“If I had any thoughts or felt that from the administration that it would be detrimental to the students, I would do nothing [and continue the service] … I think, too, one thing to keep in mind is we are going, we know we have to go to referendum soon, and I think we need to show we’ve done every possible thing before we go to referendum,” [Board Member] Laura Ahonen said.
Administrators and others did weigh in on the issue. Principal Rob Way “admit(ted) that it would be a challenge, but one that they could handle successfully.” Tom Gabert, Lakeland Union High School Board Member said “The major concern with doing it internally, was that past experience has shown that when there is no money on the table, it often gets neglected.”
Combined with the layoffs and this decision means that MHLT staff will be asked to do more with less. The newspaper simply noted that the layoff notices were given with “much regret.”
The district plans to propose a freeze on administrator salaries and reduce at least one full-time equivalent administrator, said school district Human Resources Director John Sprangers.
The list includes 36 full-time teachers and nine part-time teachers primarily from middle and high school elective courses. Music and special education departments would take the biggest hit, losing six educators each.
Last year, “The district filled a $1.4 million hole in its budget… entirely by cutting non-personnel expenses such as maintenance and department funds.” These cuts are part of the reason that there is now a maintenance operating referendum on the ballot. What an insane circle of robbing Peter to pay Paul and then asking for money to pay back Peter while taking back from Paul…This has to end.
Note that both larger class sizes and fewer options will result from the cuts. According to the Northwestern the middle school schedule will be reconfigured “allowing each teacher to do more,” (I’ll add “with less” because that’s what is happening, and note that the “more” is in terms of classes and students taught and the the reality in terms of quality and learning will likely be that they are doing less).
Kaukauna serves about 4,100 students with a staff of approximately 500 and a budget of about $52 million. In order to meet the projected $2.9 million shortfall for 2009-10, the Board froze administrator salaries, and laid off over 10% of their teachings staff. The projections are based on very conservative estimates of future revenue caps, but past experiences with losing students due to open enrollment and underestimates of costs have taught the Board to be conservative. One Board member noted that the new cuts will probably lead to the loss of more students via open enrollment.
Delayed maintenance projects, threatening safety are also a factor in the layoffs.
Board President Jeff McCabe and clerk Cindy Fallona pointed out that because of cuts, administrators have had to tack on more duties without being compensated. Among them are financial officer Bob Schafer, who is overseeing buildings and maintenance, and human resources director Mary Weber, who is serving as Park principal. Randy Hughes, special education and pupil services director, has helped with administrative duties at an elementary school. Eric Brinkmann, Haen principal, tracks student academic performance for the district.
Superintendent LLoyd McCabe correctly identified Wisconsin’s dysfunctional system of educational investment as the source of all these troubles:
McCabe is hoping state lawmakers will tackle the school funding issue to relieve pressure on districts.
“I think that there’s pretty good agreement that state funding has to be revised and the problem that the state has is that they don’t have the money to do anything about it,” he said.
“Wisconsin schools cannot continue to produce students who rank at the very top of the nation with the funding structure that exists today.”
This leads directly to my “join the fight” plea.
If we don’t put/keep the pressure on, nothing will happen except more cuts, more referendum fights, more kids not getting the education they need and deserve, fewer kids reaching adulthood with the tools to be successful…we all need to get and be active.
Use your own experiences to write your own letters to the editor:
Don’t forget the April 1, 2009 MMSD “Legislative Informational Community Session” and the April 21 Assembly hearing on the School Finance Network (SFN) plan (details on both, here).
By Ricardo Levins Morales from the Northland Poster Collective, click on image for more information.
Most states’ NCLB tests are, sadly, essentially insensitive to instruction, that is, those tests are unable to detect the impact of improved instruction in a school or district even if such improvement is unarguably present. The chief cause for such instructional insensitivity stems directly from the test-construction procedures employed to create almost all NCLB tests. Those procedures turn out to make scores on NCLB tests more directly related to students’ socioeconomic status than to how well those students have been taught. Instructionally insensitive NCLB tests simply can’t distinguish between effective and ineffective instruction. (Emphasis added)
These profiles emerge as an artifact of how items are selected. Test developers include in their respective proprietary item pools only those items shown to sort students in the same relative order in terms of their likeliness of getting an item correct. (In other words, ideally for each item in a given area, Student Q should always be more likely to get it right than Student S.) When high-stakes tests are then assembled using only the items that fit with these internal sorting profiles, the tests themselves also end up being remarkably robust in keeping students in the same relative order in terms of their overall scores (Student Q’s overall test score is very likely to be higher than S’s).
Using this approach, test scores will continue to predict other tests scores in ways that will remain remarkably insensitive to the quality of content-specific instruction. And just one of the unintended consequences of this insensitivity to instruction may be that those schools feeling the most pressure to improve test scores will resort to emphasizing test-taking skills, as opposed to meaningful academic content, as a compelling alternative strategy for attaining immediate, if short-lived, results. (Emphases added)
I came across this phrase a few times recently and I really think it captures one huge flaw with the reliance of standardized tests. By design they do not measure learning, instead they sort into a bell (or other) curve. If all students learn something, no matter how important that something is, it will not be included on a standardized test because it doesn’t sort.
This inescapable truth seems to be lost on President Obama, Sec. Arne Duncan and all those in Congress, state legislatures and local school districts who keep calling for more money to be spent on testing and data systems. Although there is potential for better testing I fear that this will only expand the inappropriate uses of the existing testing, testing that for the most part hinders real accountability by this “insensitivity to instruction,” and harms education by wasting time and money on things that don’t help students be successful in anything but taking tests. Garbage in, garbage out.
The short version is that the first step in spinning a story is to ignore any information that undermines your position; the second step is to include information that supports your biases, and throughout use every trick in the book to evoke sympathy for your cause. This is to be expected from Public Relations flacks and political spokespeople. It is more problematic when spin of this sort comes from one of the leading educational columnists in the United States, Jay Mathews of the Washington Post. In a recent post that pretends to explore problems at Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools — including physical and emotional abuse, questionable financial management and insecure testing protocols —, Mathews does all of the above, with the twist of appearing to include and address the negative information.
It is no secret that Mathews is a charter cheerleader and champion of KIPP schools. His columns and recent book have made that much clear. Opinions and a viewpoint are to be expected from columnists. However, I think an ethical line is crossed when — as in Mathews “Turmoil at Two KIPP Schools” — that biased columnist leaves out crucial information while giving the appearance of examining developments contrary to his or her well-established positions. It is a line of trust that is broken and line between journalist and flack that is crossed.
Mathews can assume most of his readers are not familiar with the disturbing doings in Fresno and this allows him to pretend that he is giving and objective overview. The national media has barely touched the story, but the Fresno Bee has been very thorough and Jim Horn at Schools Matter has been posting news and opinion on the case (Schools Matter is how I learned of the situation).
The basic story is that after extensive allegations of abusive discipline, punishments and practices by the principal, Chi Tschang, and staff dating back to 2004; requests for help by the local Charter Board; the resignation of four of six Charter Board members, an investigation by the Board of Education that documented many undisputed incidents of what read like psychotic abuses of power by an unstable control freak (the principal has disputed some of the allegations and given a blanket denial of all since the report gives indisputable documentation for many things the blanket denial lacks credibility), uncredentialed teachers, massive violations of mandated testing procedures including open access to tests by students. extra time given and teachers telling students to correct answers, not following rules for student suspensions, and violations of student and family legal privacy rights; the principal resigned and under a new KIPP appointed principal the school and KIPP are fighting to avoid closure.
I’m going to skip over most of the gory details (some will be included to document what Jay Mathews left out and you can read rest yourself by clicking the links above), but I do want to echo Jim Horn in noting that much of the abuse and deliberate humiliation reported at the Fresno KIPP school is only an extreme manifestation of the authoritarian KIPP philosphy and add that humiliation as an educational strategy is at the heart of the No Child Left Behind Act.
Early in the Mathews piece (before any details of the titular “turmoil”) we are treated to this report about academic achievement:
At the end of 2007, 80 percent of KIPP Fresno’s seventh-graders scored proficient or advanced in algebra, compared to only 17 percent of students in regular Fresno public schools. In English Language Arts, 81 percent of KIPP seventh-graders scored proficient or advanced while the regular students were at 29 percent.
Nowhere does Mathews even allude to the testing problems found by the Board of Education investigation. These included (all quotes from the Notice to Cure and Correct issued by the Board of Education).
“They stated that tests were not placed in a secure environment.”
“Robin Sosa, a teacher at the Charter School, stated in an interview that in the first couple of years, tests may have been left out during the day and the tests were stored in Mr. Tschang’s office, but that they have since corrected this.”
“Kim Kutzner and Marcella Mayfield stated that the school adopted a policy that students were required to check their answers again and again after they had finished their tests and were not allowed to do other activities.”
“Ms. Kutzner also witnessed teachers record students’ answers during testing, review students’ tests, and tell students which page to correct.”
“Mr. Tschang stated that he possibly gave students extra time on more than one day on a test that was to be completed in a single sitting.”
“In a staff meeting in May of 2006, Ms. Kutzner, who had five years of experience as a test-site coordinator, reviewed with the entire staff the violations that she had witnessed during testing and presented the written testing protocol materials to Mr. Tschang. The staff actively opposed any changes in procedures which would potentially lower lest scores, and Mr. Tschang and Mr. Hawke slated that the legal and ethical requirements for testing were, in fact, only guidelines that could be ignored”(emphasis added).
“The violations were knowingly in disregard of state testing procedures in that Mr. Tschang signed the STAR Test Security Agreement and the Charter School’s teachers signed the STAR Test Security Affidavit in which they agreed to the conditions designed to ensure test security. Mr. Tschang also failed to report the testing irregularities to the District STAR Coordinator.”
Much of the case for KIPP, as made by Mathews and others, rests on standardized test scores (at one point in this piece Mathews writes: “All they have to do is show, with test scores, that their students are showing significant achievement gains that will put them on a path to college”). If the Fresno KIPP “actively opposed” following the required protocols because of the potential to lower scores then I believe it is inappropriate to use these tests results in defense of that school and unethical to boast of the test scores without giving this context, as Mathews does. I’ll also add that when the policy — be it KIPP’s or California’s or the NCLB’s — is all about test scores and not education, that some unscrupulous people would willfully disregard procedures in pursuit of higher scores is to be expected.
I’m going to give Mathews full paragraph on the “turmoil” in Fresno and follow it with some more quotes from the “Notice to Cure and Correct.”
At KIPP Fresno, school leader Chi Tschang, who founded the school in 2004, resigned in January in order, he said, to remove himself as a barrier to the school’s continued operation. Shortly after the Fresno school district released a report based on interviews with current and former parents, students and KIPP board members accusing Tschang—among other things– of making a student crawl on his hands and knees while barking, keeping students outside in the rain as a disciplinary measure and yelling “all day” at students caught shoplifting near the campus. Tschang told me these accusations were either false or ripped out of context. Many of KIPP teachers and parents have backed him up. But national KIPP leaders have not criticized the district’s report and instead have supported the school’s new leader, William Lin. The school district has the power to close the school by refusing to release a letter KIPP Fresno needs to access a state charter school facility grant. As of yesterday, the district had not issued the letter. [Editors Note: The letter has been issued, but it contained “qualifications” that the KIPPsters are not happy with].
Mathews makes it look like the accusations are serious but also raises doubts in numerous ways. He also does not touch on the actions of the Charter Board (including mass resignation), the questionable financial practices, the interactions with the Board of Education prior to the report, the problems of authority among KIPP, the local Board and the school district or any other of the facts that would reflect badly on KIPP or the idea of charter schools. He also glosses over much of the abusive behavior. Here are some allegations Mathews left out (names of students and parents deleted).
“In her interview, Kia Spenhoff stated that she witnessed Mr. Tschang put his hands on students. She witnessed Mr. Tschang pick a student up off the ground, hold the student by the neck against a wall, and then drop the student. When asked about this incident Mr. Tschang stated, “I don’t remember picking up and dropping a student, I do remember shaking a kid.”‘
“_____ mother of student _____ witnessed Mr. Tschang push her son’s face against a wall.”
“_____ also reported witnessing Tschang push another student’s face against the wall and saying, “Put your ugly face against the wall, I don’t want to see your face.”‘
“Student reported witnessing Mr. Tschang draw a circle on the ground and force a student to stand in the circle for two hours in the sun during the summertime.”
“____ reported that Mr. Ammon admitted to intentionally humiliating her son and that in a meeting between Mr. Ammon, Mr. Tschang, and _____ Mr Ammon said, “I thought he needed to be humiliated, that it is my job to do this.” and “I just really think he needs to be humbled, he reminds me of me at that age, and I know he has no dad at home.” When asked about the incident, Mr. Tschang stated, “No, I don’t remember this. What I do remember is that _____ was repeatedly acting in a defiant and disrespect way [sic] to Mr. Ammon and other teachers.'”
“Parent reported that Mr. Tschang took student glasses away from him because _____-was constantly adjusting his glasses. _____-is totally dependent on his glasses and cannot see without them. Mr. Tschang admitted to taking _____-glasses away.”
“Vincent Montgomery, former Chief Operating Officer for the school, reported that he observed several incidents in which he felt Chi Tschang was emotionally abusive toward students, such as requiring students to stand outside in the rain. Mr. Montgomery also stated he felt that any gains made by kids were offset by the emotional abuse they experienced.”
Student reported witnessing Mr. Tschang draw a circle on the ground and force a student to stand in the circle for two hours in the sun during the summertime.
“_____ of _____ stated that _____began to get physically sick from the abusive discipline and a counselor told her to get out of KIPP.”
“When asked about his yelling at students Mr. Tschang stated, “If parents are not happy with the school program, it is a school of choice.'”
Mr Tschang is correct that it is “school of choice,” but it is also a school paid for by taxpayers. These excerpts are just the tip of the iceberg of the allegations in the report. I don’t know if the allegations are true, but I do know that the School Board thought the evidence was sufficient to demand Mr. Tschang’s removal or that he attend very extensive training in child and adolescent development, psychology, anger management and unlawful harassment before having any further role in discipline at the school and the Board also required extensive changes in and monitoring of school operations. You wouldn’t know any of this or the extent of the allegations from Mathews’ spin job.
Instead, Mathews vaguely notes that the Fresno superintendent “has praised KIPP’s achievements” and later falsely asserts that “all sides appear to support what KIPP has been doing to raise student achievement to rare heights” (no one who has read the district report can possibly believe that this is a true statement).
It took almost four years to his rein in the excesses while Tschang resisted the efforts of local Charter authorities and the local school board to exert control and find remedies. Part of the “public” in public education is public accountability; with Fresno KIPP the only accountability for principals was to the corporate office and all they apparently cared about was test scores (however they were “achieved’).
The press is also part of the system of accountability. I respect Mr Mathews freedom to make the case for what he believes in (as I make the case for what I believe in here), but I also expect something more than unrelenting spin from a major newspaper columnist. I guess my expectations are too high.
Using the definition of partial school revenues as it existed prior to the repeal of the two thirds funding commitment and including the proposed federal general aid funding, the administration estimates that state support of partial school revenues would decrease from 65.8% in 2008-09 to between 63.8% and 65.1% in 2009-10 and to between 62.0% and 63.2% in 2010-11. The low end of the ranges identified by DOA assumes school districts levy to the maximum allowed under revenue limits, while the high end of the range assumes that school districts use all of the increase in their federal Title I and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funding to reduce their levies. All of these DOA estimates assume the current law revenue limit per pupil adjustment (estimated by DOA to be $277 in 2009-10 and $286 in 2010- 11), the proposed revenue limit modifications, and the state support funding in the bill, which is presented in Table 1 (emphasis added).
Not only is one time revenue being used for ongoing expenses (which may be acceptable in these economic circumstance), but all this revenue is being used to offset state funds. When combined with the “current law” revenue cap increases estimated at $277 and $286 per member for the two years, this shifts the burden to local property taxpayers in significant ways.
There are also some positives. Revenue cap increases are included at past levels, school safety, nurses and transportation are eased; the low revenue ceiling is raised, Special Education isn’t actually cut, SAGE and 4 K are given increases, albeit insufficient ones. It could be worse.
In other areas across the board 1% reductions are called for. This will tough to deal with, but Title I and IDEA stimulus money may fill some gaps. See this chart:
I know that this biennial budget could have been much worse for education in Wisconsin and I am grateful that the “death by 1,000 cuts” status quo was not expanded to “death by 2,000 cuts, or 3.000 cuts…”
I also know that there are a multitude of revenue options that have not been proposed (see the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future (IWF) and the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families (WCCF) Catalog of Tax Reform Options for Wisconsin). Mostly I know that for 15 years education has been eroding in our state because of a broken system that privileges property tax control over education, that “it could of been worse” means little to a student whose educational opportunities are limited by inadequate investments and I know that in two years the stimulus money will be gone and if our state elected officials (they need to earn the term “leaders”) don’t act now to put in place a system of school funding that works for all of Wisconsin’s students things will be much worse than any of us want to imagine.
Charter Schools are successful for the same reasons some traditional public schools struggle.
Charters sometimes focus on one group of children; traditional schools accept children no matter what their needs are. Charters have more parental participation; traditional schools sometimes lack that support. Charters usually have more autonomy; traditional schools are sometimes run by disconnected “top down” management.
Charter schools can be a threat to some already marginalized children. Does Nuestro Mundo accept all disadvantaged students? How will it operate when the federal funding runs out?
Charter schools traditionally have a high level of parent participation. The Madison School District eliminated an effective parental involvement tool — the Ready Set Goal conferences — yet they try to think of alternative but less effective ways to involve parents to save money.
Charters are more successful because of their autonomy. The whole country is now suffering from years of economics based on top down management.
Madison schools suffer, too. A lot of the top down, mandatory administrative tasks we do in our schools are “bureaucratically significant (BS)” — they do things to the child instead of for the child.
Sometimes we seem to be comparing apples and oranges.
— Gary L. Stout, Madison
Seek innovations to benefit all students, not just charters
Your editorial pushing for more charter schools in Madison lacked two critical components: a break-down of the cost of Nuestro Mundo versus other schools in the district, and data on student performance in that school in relationship to other schools, disaggregated for income and other variables.
No one on the Madison School Board is, to my knowledge, against innovation in our schools. Their position has been that charters are an expensive, and so far not very data-driven, way of innovating.
Many parents would love to have their children go to a language immersion school, or an arts immersion school, or one with all the latest technology. But shouldn’t all of those components be our aim for every student, not just those who “win” the lottery into a charter?
Other strategies beyond charters exist for improving our students’ performance. Please spend some time examining other promising strategies that are elevating achievement in the district.
By the way, you completely ignored Madison’s other charter — Wright Middle School.
Despite a large group of people testifying and an editorial on the topic in the Wisconsin State Journal (my earlier comments on that editorial here). I have seen no news coverage of this decision. Strange and not good.
An interesting idea presents itself through an experiment conducted at Liberty Elementary in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The school is now using the web to send information to parents that would otherwise have gone home on paper. The school built a website through a platform that allows users to create free sites.
Students would take home a folder once a week with information for parents.
“We were busy stuffing the folders one day and someone said, ‘We have to figure out how to do it electronically,’ ” said Jean Hudson, the school’s administrative assistant.
They found an easy to use platform to execute their plan.
“It’s a great way for the school to promote going green,” according to Hudson. The use of less paper also has saved the school money. The school, which is the largest of the district’s three elementary schools with 520 students, is saving $1,521 this year, Liberty Principal Tanja Pederson said. “We wanted to save money, but we are really more excited about being greener,” Pederson said.
Less than 10% opted to receive paper handouts, either because they preferred that form or more likely because they do not have Internet access. Important communications such as report cards and special announcements have continued to be sent home.
I’m agnostic about the potential efficacy and cost savings of such efforts and would be interested to hear the opinions of others. I do know that our principal puts quite an effort into producing a wonderful newsletter to families every month. The hurdles in placing it online may initially be a little vexing but in the long term, probably not too taxing. I can see a number of plusses, including a quicker relay of timely information. But I can also envision some minuses. There are many good things to be said about a paper document that you can refer to quite easily, especially when it is attached by a magnet to the side of your refrigerator, like ours. I worry too about the families without internet connections, which will vary from school to school. However, if, like the Harrisburg school, a choice could be offered to parents, this could be a model of both saving money and being greener that Madison schools could emulate.
AMPS 