Category Archives: Best Practices

by | October 20, 2007 · 4:10 am

You Haven’t Done Nothin’

But we are sick and tired of hearing your song
Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong
‘Cause if you really want to hear our views
“You haven’t done nothing”!

Stevie Wonder (listen)

The state budget deal has been announced. There are some good things for the schools, but the basic structure — with all the problems it causes — remains. Madison will have about a $5 million annual gap between allowed revenues and the cost to continue the same services. The kids in Park Falls will still have to do without so much that that they deserve. Glidden will continue to experience “educational amputations.” Districts all over the state will engage in divisive fights about which cuts will do the least harm, while few will be able concentrate on finding ways to do more good.

In my heart I know many legislators and probably the Governor want to do right by the schools, want to give Wisconsin a system that puts education first, a system we can be proud of. However, right now I look at the band aids in the much delayed budget and start humming “You haven’t done nothin.”

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, Budget, Pope-Roberts/Breske Resolution, School Finance, We Are Not Alone

by | October 20, 2007 · 1:10 am

Principal for a Day

Dave Zweifel was one of the many “principals for a day” in the annual Foundation for Madison’s Public Schools sponsored effort to bring community leaders into the schools. The column he wrote is worth a look. The conclusion emphasizes a truth we don’t hear often enough:

The challenges Marquette and all our other schools face is to do their best with each one of those kids. The goal is to turn them all into responsible adults.

From what I saw on my tour as principal with Andrea Kreft, they’re doing more than their best.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, Local News

by | October 17, 2007 · 6:37 pm

Six Months and Counting

Yesterday marked six months since the Board of Education officially received the report of the Equity Task Force. At that meeting the Board noted the report required follow up. It remains listed as a priority for this year.

I understand the Board is busy, but six months is a long time.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, Equity, Local News

by | October 10, 2007 · 2:47 pm

MMSD Receives $710,000 in improvement grant from DPI

Madison schools will receive $710,000 from DPI to enhance principal leadership and to offer further professional development around curriculum differentiation. Read more here.

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Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, Budget

by | September 23, 2007 · 5:38 pm

Collaboration and Merit Pay

Nate at The Proletariat has a worthwhile post on how the metric of individual merit present in most (all?) proposals for instituting merit pay for teachers fails to recognize the collaborate reality of our schools.

Excerpt (full post here):

In the beginning of the school year you are likely to see ESL, Title, and Reading Recovery staff all chipping in to assess children in reading. You are also likely to see Title staff in your room delivering instruction along with the classroom teacher. It is also highly likely that in order to meet the academic needs of other students, a teacher will send students to other classrooms, and other students will come to yours.

This sort of collaboration is not limited to reading, but also occurs in math, science and social studies. It is that old Vygotskian proverb that the interaction or process of H20 can not be explained by isolating the individual elements. Isolating a classroom teacher from their larger ensemble or school culture is akin to examining a fish out of water. Meritocracy will discourage all the behaviors that educational school reform has been based on for the last ten years. Teachers will become resistant to collaboration with other teachers and staff which has been so essential to student progress.

This is yet another reason the business models for education reform don’t make sense.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, Contracts, Local News

by | September 20, 2007 · 11:38 pm

My Superintendent Profile Form

The whole thing is linked here (I know I didn’t spend enough time on the rankings). Previously I wrote that I was struggling with number 5. This is what I came up with:

Madison Metropolitan School District
SUPERINTENDENT SEARCH
LEADERSHIP PROFILE ASSESSMENT
Attachment
5. Tell us your vision for the School District for the future.

I believe that public education is our best means of creating a better future; a future with less inequality, more understanding, greater prosperity and a stronger sense of citizenship. I also understand that fulfilling this mission – especially at a time when public education is under attack from many quarters and under a state finance system that values tax relief more than education – is and will remain an ongoing struggle. Districts like MMSD have an important role to play in the national debates over the mission and assessment of public education. We are a district of high expectations, high needs and great inequalities. We are also a community that supports our schools and believes that students of all backgrounds can and must be successful. Like other districts in the Minority Student Achievement Network (the first place I would look for candidates), we are a proving ground and have the great opportunity to demonstrate that public education can fulfill its mission, can provide opportunities for all, and can create a better future.

The best statement of what the next steps in this direction would be can be found in the work of the Equity Task Force (http://www.madison.k12.wi.us/boe/equity/). I would ask that all finalists read and respond to the Final Task Force Report (and appendices).

At minimum, the profile should reflect a commitment to the Task Force’s definition of equity:

Equity assures full access to opportunities for each MMSD student to achieve educational excellence and social responsibility.

I attended one of the focus groups this afternoon and thought that the consultant did a very good job.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, Contracts, Equity, Local News

by | September 12, 2007 · 5:28 pm

White transfer story a stretch

Letter to the Editor,

White transfer story a stretch

The headline in Sunday ‘s paper — “You can’t transfer, white kids told” — could just as easily have been “School district refuses to re-segregate” or “School district complies with spirit of Brown decision.” Of course, that would not be nearly as provocative as the one designed to sell more papers and allow members of the white community to believe they have fewer privileges than families of color.

School district officials are not ignorant. They know that if every transfer request is granted, some of our schools will become even more racially segregated and inequitable.

Also, it is interesting that your story focuses on the 140 denials rather than the 286 acceptances and, more specifically, on the 77 out of 140 denials that used racial balance as a reason for the denial.

Incidentally, my own daughter was denied a transfer in 1999. I guess if she were white we could have had a feature story about it.

— Gloria Ladson-Billings, UW-Madison professor, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education

See also here:

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, Gimme Some Truth, Local News

by | September 8, 2007 · 1:42 am

Superintendent Search

From MMSD, BOE president Arlene Sliveira

Community input sought for new superintendent qualities

An Invitation to Our Parents, Students and Community

The Board of Education has initiated its search for a new superintendent of schools to replace Art Rainwater, who has announced his retirement as of June, 2008. To provide counsel to us in this important process, we have retained the services of Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, Ltd., a search firm that specializes in assisting boards with the identification and selection of superintendents.

A very important step in this process is the identification of the characteristics we will be seeking in our new superintendent. We invite you to participate in the identification of these characteristics by attending a Community Information and Input Session and/or completing a Leadership Profile Assessment form which can be found below.

The Community Information and Input Sessions, which will be facilitated by a member of the consultant firm, will be held on:

Wed. Sept. 19 at 10:00 a.m. at the Exhibition Hall at Alliant Energy Center (1919 Alliant Energy Center Way)
Wed. Sept. 19 at 7:00 p.m. in the auditorium at Memorial High School
Thu. Sept. 20 at 7:00 p.m. in the auditorium at La Follette High School
These sessions will likely be 60 to 90 minutes in length. Every effort will be made to provide Spanish and Hmong interpreters. You can avoid a parking fee by telling the parking attendant that you are attending a Madison School District function.

Thank you in advance for your assistance with this most important task.

Sincerely,
Arlene Silveira
President, Board of Education

Spanish of text above
Hmong of text above
Leadership Profile Assessment Form
The forms below are the same. You can either,

complete a form and submit it electronically,
or
print the form , complete it by hand, and either bring it with you to one of the Community Information and Input Sessions or mail/fax it to the address/fax number indicated on the form.
All forms must be submitted by September 20.

More information
Superintendent Search Process — news release
Community input sought for new superintendent qualities — news release

I just gave it my first try — this is hard!

The form is OK, although I have problems with some items and problems with the whole rank 1-14 approach (I’d much rather rank each item on a scale, say 1-5 than give an absolute 1-14 weight). This item:

Understands the respective, yet complementary, roles of the Board and the Superintendent

really bugs me. The implication is that this is fixed and absolute. It isn’t and it shouldn’t be. The individuals involved and the circumstances they face create a dynamic that continually changes. The line between undue deference to administrators and micromanagement by Board members isn’t clear and never will be. With only 14 items, this is a waste of space and time. What would it tell anyone if we all rated this #1 (or #14)? A waste.

The toughest one is:

Tell us your vision for the School District for the future.

That’s the one that made me give up and decide to go back later after some thought.

What’s your reaction (use the comments)?

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, Contracts, Local News

by | September 7, 2007 · 11:30 pm

No CEO Left Behind: A Teacher’s Fantasy

From Myriam Miedzian, posted on the Huffington Post (hat tip to Schools Matter)

Excerpt:

No mayor or other government official would ever dream of recruiting school teachers to help fix America’s corporations. But if corporate executives can be called upon to turn around our schools, then why not call upon teachers to turn around our corporations? Let’s dream on…

Teachers’ recommendations, based on their school experience, for turning around corporate America:

Sharing: No teacher on cafeteria patrol would allow a child to grab a bag full of chocolate chip cookies leaving other children to have to take a few nibbles off the leftovers.
Recommendation: CEO’s must learn to better share their corporations’ revenue with hardworking employees. It’s not fair for a CEO to be making $15 million a year while his hard working employees have to moonlight to make ends meet.

Cleaning Up: Whether it’s bussing your tray in the cafeteria, or cleaning up your desk at the end of the school day; kids are taught to clean up after themselves. No one else–teachers or classmates–will do it for them.
Recommendation: CEO’s must be held responsible for the messes they make. No more putting up with companies polluting our air, land, and rivers (like Welsh’s General Electric dumping PCB’s into the Hudson river), and then trying to make taxpayers pay for cleanup.

Bullying: Some schools now have programs to help teachers deal with bullies who boss children around, humiliate them, force them off slides or swings they want to take over, and generally make life miserable for their schoolmates. Teachers with anti-bullying training would be particularly well equipped to deal with corporations that specialize in hostile takeovers
Recommendation: Corporations must stop forcing themselves on other corporations which do not want to merge with them. (What part of “no” do they not understand?); and they must stop humiliating and making life miserable for the numerous employees they invariably fire when they take over.

Favoritism: Every teacher knows that systematically favoring one group of children–white over black? girls over boys? – and giving them better grades for the same work is a big no-no.
Recommendation: The practice of favoring white males over others, and paying them more for the same work must stop. Salaries must be made public within corporations so that favoritism can be eliminated.

Gifts and Teacher’s Pets: Because some parents try to get better grades or other favors from teachers by giving them expensive Christmas gifts, some schools have banned all gifts. Schools do not stand either for a teacher giving the child of a friend or a relative who happens to be in her class undeserved better grades. No “teachers’ pets” is a basic educational rule.
Recommendation: Our government must ban corporations from giving big gifts to politicians in order to win favors. It’s just not right that because HMO’s and pharmaceutical corporations shower politicians with such gifts, Americans don’t have the universal health insurance and affordable medication that people in other countries like us have. It’s also not fair for corporations to be “government pets,” and get billion dollar contracts just because they have a friend in the White House.

Conclusion: If CEO’s want to help improve our schools, they need to clean up their own act first. For starters, they should stop hogging taxpayer dollars through corporate subsidies and stop setting up off shore corporate headquarters to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Some of those billions in tax dollars could then be used to pay teachers enough to attract the best and the brightest to the profession.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under AMPS, Best Practices

by | September 7, 2007 · 8:12 pm

When Race Matters

As Susan Troller recently explored, the demographics of MMSD continue to move toward more minorities and more poverty (the story was quite good and the comments are worth a look too). This essay from the Teacher’s College Record by Sean P. Corcoran & Jennifer Booher-Jennings of New York University offers a nice overview of research that demonstrates the continued salience of race in the quest for equity or equality of educational opportunity — particularly in reference to teacher “quality” — in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision.

Excerpt:

The Court’s decision to ban the use of race in school assignment may only serve to exacerbate the unequal distribution of teachers across schools. Through teachers’ “preference for home,” the nation’s residentially segregated communities are already mirrored in the segregation of teachers and teaching talent across schools. Where racially isolated schools serve as a deterrent to new teachers, any decision that further isolates minority students in individual schools will only accelerate the loss of talented teachers from high-minority schools. In integrated schools, children of color benefit from a cadre of higher-caliber teachers they simply would not have access to were their schools racially segregated

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, Equity, National News