“There is but one method of rendering a republican form of government durable, and that is by disseminating the seeds of virtue and knowledge through every part of the state by means of proper places and modes of education and this can be done effectively only by the aid of the legislature.”
Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration of Independence
“This is My Country,” Curtis Mayfield & the Impressions (listen)
“Back in the USA,” Chuck Berry (listen)
Thomas J. Mertz
Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, Elections, Gimme Some Truth, Quote of the Day, School Finance
“Stop this silliness about decreasing taxes, and let’s talk about how to increase the human potential of those students who are slipping through the educational cracks and becoming nothing more than a statistic.”
Salli Martyniak, Waunakee
Letter to the editor (read the full letter)
Capital Times, July 2, 2007
Thomas J. Mertz
Filed under AMPS, Budget, Elections, Quote of the Day, School Finance
School naming is very much on the radar in Madison. There is a new “study” on trends in naming schools. Too bad it is from Jay P. Greene and like most things associated with him (not all, even a stopped clock is right twice a day) , next to useless.
Greene is correct that what we name schools and how we arrive at those names is important. From there, he goes wrong. Greene identifies trends away from naming schools after people and presents them as seemingly both a cause and effect of a decline in civic values. Either way, acording to Greene the villian is the usual suspect: “progressive education.”
Leaving aside the irony of a proponent of charters and vouchers expressing concern about civic values, there are some big problems with Greene’s assertions (conclusions gives him too much credit). First, we all know that some names communicate more in the way of civic values than others, so the proxy metric is pretty lame. Beyond that, the progessive reforms Greene identifies happened about a century before the trends he identifies. Hell of a lag time. It is probably weakness of the study, but I was glad that Greene didn’t touch on another horrid trend: selling the naming rights to schools and facilities. I could go on, but why bother, I think I’ve already put more thought into this “study” than the author did.
Danny Rosenthal (the Quick and the Ed, hat tip to Sherman Dorn who has more to say) put in his a two cents and asked that we consider the educational possibilities of names such as “Roosevelt Amino Acids a2 + b2 i-before-e Hyperbole High School.”
Thomas J. Mertz
Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, Local News, National News
Hat tip to Living Brands and my spouse’s mother, Judy Schmidt.
Thomas J. Mertz
How children lost the right to roam in four generationsBy DAVID DERBYSHIRE – More by this author »
Last updated at 01:03am on 15th June 2007
When George Thomas was eight he walked everywhere.
It was 1926 and his parents were unable to afford the fare for a tram, let alone the cost of a bike and he regularly walked six miles to his favourite fishing haunt without adult supervision.
Fast forward to 2007 and Mr Thomas’s eight-year-old great-grandson Edward enjoys none of that freedom.
He is driven the few minutes to school, is taken by car to a safe place to ride his bike and can roam no more than 300 yards from home.
Filed under AMPS, Best Practices
From the Wisconsin State Journal
Olfson: Schools today have different objectives
by LEWY OLFSON
June 27, 2007In a guest column headlined “What a difference 100 years makes,” Rick Berg makes a false assumption that an eighth grade test given in 1907 demonstrates that schools today are failing to achieve acceptable levels of learning in their pupils.
The world in 1907 was a very different place from the world today, and schools then had very different objectives from schools today. In 1907, American society needed a small number of highly educated workers and a huge number of unskilled laborers and farmers. Only a fraction of young people went to college.
The test referred to by Berg was designed to weed out those who were not considered suitable for higher education.
Berg doesn’t tell us how many eighth graders actually passed the difficult test he describes. He suggests that the difficult questions in that test were well within the capacity of most students. I seriously doubt that. Moreover, academic failure in 1907 was not a barrier to a young person’s ability to earn a living, nor did it carry any significant social stigma.
Today, graduation, not merely from the eighth grade but from high school, is all but essential if a young person is to achieve even a modest level of financial independence as an adult.
Schools today are attempting to meet the needs of our society as it exists in 2007, just as schools in 1907 were designed to meet the needs of society as it existed then.
Which brings me to my next bone of contention with Berg, his misunderstanding of the principles underlying government-supported mandatory public education. He proposes that the state should give parents vouchers which they would be free to use to buy education wherever they like.
In Berg’s world, schools would flourish or fail depending upon whether or not they offered programs that parents were happy with. But the each-school-has-its-own- system model simply does not reflect the underlying purpose of publicly funded education.
Publicly funded education rests on the premise that we, as a society, have a collective notion of the public good. We have a body of values that we want to inculcate in the next generation.
We have needs, as a society, that we want the next generation to fulfill. If taxpayers, even those of us who have never had children ourselves, are going to pay for the education of other people’s children, we want that education to be in the service of an ideal, an image of a future we can agree with and support.
In a democratic society, we the governed have agreed to finance a system of education for the good of society as a whole, but we don’t write that check without requiring accountability.
That is why we have elected school boards to establish policy and to oversee administration. The school board members are accountable to us, the taxpayers.
In Berg’s model, accountability is an issue between the individual school and its constituent parents. But that is not enough.
I do not intend to suggest that I think the Madison School District is completely successful. And the system can only benefit from the thoughtful suggestions of interested, serious people like Berg. But in this case, I believe his suggestions are misguided and ill-informed.
Olfson, now retired and living in Madison, was an education journalist for 25 years and is the author of a number of books for young people.
Thomas J. Mertz
Filed under Accountability, AMPS, Best Practices, Gimme Some Truth, Local News, School Finance
From the Wisonsin State Journal:
Underwood: Federal schools measure is failing
Federal schools measure is failing
By JULIE UNDERWOOD
June 28, 2007No one can argue against the idea of holding our public schools accountable for the quality of education provided for our children. No one can dispute that we must do more to ensure that all children receive an excellent education.
But the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) does little to help either of those goals. When it comes to providing the constructive feedback necessary to help schools improve, the mechanism prescribed by NCLB fails miserably.
This reporting mechanism, the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), creates misperceptions that our schools are “failing,” when AYP often has little to do with the quality of schools.
Further, use of the label “failing” demeans the very educators who have dedicated their professional lives to improving schools in the face of complex challenges, many of which are outside the realm of the public schools.
Locally, the recent AYP reports (Wisconsin State Journal, June 13) — which labeled all four of Madison’s public high schools as “failing” despite state data much to the contrary — served only to mislead the public. They join a long and growing list of examples of the inadequacy and punitive nature of this so-called measure.
Under NCLB, a school can be labeled as “failing” for a number of reasons, including many that have nothing to do with actual achievement — for example, simply because fewer than 95 percent of its students within a single demographic subgroup took the test. It’s no wonder that many schools across the nation rate highly on state measures, yet fail to make AYP.
Despite the name, AYP reports do not actually measure “progress.” To measure progress (and get a truer picture of how our schools are doing), we need to look at how the same students perform over time — where they started and where they finished.
The AYP from year to year compares different groups of students. It does not follow a child’s learning from the beginning to the end of the year.
By 2014, NCLB has legislated that 100 percent of the students — including those who have special needs, lack English proficiency, come from disadvantaged circumstances, etc. — must be proficient in reading, math, and science or their schools will receive the dreaded failing grade. How absurd!
By ratcheting up AYP targets for what constitutes “adequate” achievement to unattainable levels and then shaming any school that fails even in one area, NCLB has set the stage to flunk our entire system of public education.
Nothing would delight educators more than to see dramatic increases in student achievement, especially our students from disadvantaged groups. The education community ardently supports high expectations that challenge children to excel.
It is clear that AYP merely masquerades as accountability and adds nothing of value toward the goal of providing the best possible education for all children. Genuine school improvement requires legitimate and meaningful assessments that provide useful feedback for educators and produce a fair and accurate picture for parents, policymakers, and the general public.
Underwood is dean of the UW-Madison School of Education.
Thimas J. Mertz
Filed under Accountability, AMPS, Best Practices, Local News, No Child Left Behind, School Finance
The first two questions in last night’s presidential debate were on education. Because of the one minute answer format there aren’t many devilish details, but I still think it is worth reading what they had to say. The education questions and answers are excerpted here, a full transcript has been posted by the New York Times.
Thomas J. Mertz
Filed under AMPS, Elections, National News
I’m going to be posting a lot more on the Seattle-Louisville decision, school integration, policy, history and my experiences, thoughts and feelings.
As I sort through the opinion, concurrences, dissents and reactions, I am struck by the contrasts in presentation (and content) between this decision and the Brown ruling and what these say about where we have been, where we have moved and where we are going as a nation.
The Brown decision was unanimous. The Court spoke with one voice; there were no concurrences or dissents. This was by design. Chief Justice Warren worked hard to make this happen because he wanted the Court to make a social or moral statement as well as a legal one. The Brown decision was short, about — 10 pages — because Warren wanted to speak to the American public and the world, not just lawyers, lawmakers and school policy people. The language was plain and the legalese minimal. Warren knew that this was a turning point in American history and he wanted that message to be clear to all. The Court was declaring that segregation was unconstitutional and wrong and that Federal power could be used to right this wrong. In the decades that followed Brown, Jim Crow apartheid fell due to the efforts of those who demanded that Federal power be used to redeem the promises of equality and equal access.
In part because of the desire for unanimity, the Brown decision left much unadressed, famously employing the contradictory phrase “all deliberate speed” in lieu of an actual remedy, but there was no question that the Court was telling states and school districts that they should act to eradicate segregation. This part of the message was clear. The lack of an explicit remedy was also in deference to the American tradition of state and local educational governance. This was made explicit in the 1971 Swann case:
School authorities are traditionally charged with broad power to formulate and implement educational policy and might well conclude, for example, that in order to prepare students to live in a pluralistic society each school should have a prescribed ratio of Negro to white students reflecting the proportion for the district as a whole. To do this as an educational policy is within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities.” 402 U. S., at 16.
The judgment of the plurality in the Seattle-Louisville (only four Justices concurred in full) radically differs from the Brown case in presentation, moral clarity and policy. Chief Justice Robert’s opinion is 48 pages long. With Justice Thomas’s concurrence, Justice Kennedy’s opinion, and the dissents from Justice Stevens and Justice Breyer, the package is 185 pages. With the exceptions of the historical section of Justice Breyer’s dissent and the introduction to Justice Steven’s dissent the writing is aimed at legal scholars. This is not a united Court seeking to communicate clearly to a broad audience.
As Justice Breyer makes clear, the issues before the Court are not much different than the issues the Brown court faced and nearly identical to those addressed in Swann and other cases, yet the plurality of this case offers justifications for equivocation instead legal and moral clarity. They say the “right things” about the value of diversity, but rule absurdly that school districts cannot use racial criteria to achieve racial diversity. Even Justice Kennedy (who joins in the judgment, but not the opinion) seems to demand that districts that desire racial diversity not employee racial-based means to achieve race-based goals.
It would be charitable to say that the lack of clarity and the contradictions and the legal nitpicking reflect the confusion of our society on racial issues, but I’m not feeling charitable. In 1954, when Brown was decided, at least half our nation was crystal clear on racial matters and the Court told them they were wrong (in the years that followed the Court also did much to clear up the “confusion” of the rest of the nation). So yes, I’ll grant that our society is confused, but I refuse to give the Supreme Court a pass on these grounds.
Writing in Slate earlier this week, Walter Dellinger and Delilah Lithwick made an important observation about the Roberts Court: “Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito—perhaps recalling their recent confirmation encomiums to stare decisis—have apparently decided to overrule cases without saying they are overruling them.” In his dissent, Breyer made a similar point: “The basic problem with the plurality’s technical dicta-based response lies in its overly theoretical approach to case law, an approach that emphasizes rigid distinctions between holdings and dicta in a way that serves to mask the radical nature of today’s decision.” The confusion is deliberate, cowardly and dishonest. Roberts will not say that Brown and Swann and decades of other cases have been overruled, but Swann certainly has (along with all the voluntary desegregation and de facto segregation cases and plans) and Brown hangs on by the thin thread of a “narrowly tailored remedy” to only de jure segregation subject to strict scrutiny. This deliberate confusion does our schools and those who govern them a disservice. In the wake of this ruling, much of the discussion has centered on the Kennedy opinion and what sorts of policies might satisfy Kennedy and therefore withstand a legal challenge. Scholars may have fun with that, but most districts can’t risk it. Most districts will abandon any use of race in assignment and the trends toward greater segregation will continue.
I’m going to close with a quote from Brown and try not to shed a tear for all that has been gained and lost since then and all that today the Court said we can no longer seek:
We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.
Thomas J. Mertz
Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, National News
“You Better Leave Segregation Alone” by the Nashville Quartet (listen)
(A reminder of what this is about and where we are as a country when the ironic protest song of 1960 becomes an accurate summation of views of the the narrow majority of the Supreme Court and thus the law of the land).
NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC
Teaching Brown: Reflections on Pedagogical Challenges and Opportunities
History of Education Quarterly, v. 44, Spring 2004
(A number of leading historians of education reflect on the Brown decision and how to communicate what it means to today’s students).
Supreme Court – School Integration
A national clearinghouse of Supreme Court School Integration information. Established by NAACP LDF.
(Some of the best information and opinions I’ve seen so far.)
Breaking: SCOTUS Strikes Down Voluntary School Integration
by The Maven (DailyKos)
Hillary [Clinton] on the School Desegregation Case
[John]EDWARDS EXPRESSES CONCERN ABOUT RADICAL SHIFT OF SUPREME COURT
Senator Barack Obama Releases Powerful Statement
Turning Brown Against Itself, Thomas Healy (more from Dorf on Law)
Shifting The Groundwork At SCOTUS (from firedoglake)
SCOTUS: Segregation Now, Segregation Forever? (from DailyKos)
Integrating Public Schools Not a Legitimate State Interest Says Roberts Court (from TalkLeft)
SCOTUSBlog
(Lots here)
More to come
Thomas J. Mertz
Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, National News
The Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 against the racial diversity measures used in Seattle and Louisville. The full opinion, with dissents is here. I’m going to be writing and linking more on this in the coming days, for now I just want to highlight this excerpt from Justice Steven’s dissent:
There is a cruel irony in THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s reliance on our decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S.294 (1955). The first sentence in the concluding paragraph of his opinion states: Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin. Ante, at 40. This sentence reminds me of Anatole France’s observation: [T]he majestic equality of the la[w], forbid[s] rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.1 THE CHIEF JUSTICE fails to note that it wasonly black schoolchildren who were so ordered; indeed, thehistory books do not tell stories of white children struggling to attend black schools.2 In this and other ways, THECHIEF JUSTICE rewrites the history of one of this Court’s most important decisions. Compare ante, at 39 (.history will be heard.), with Brewer v. Quarterman, 550 U. S. ___,___ (2007) (slip op., at 11) (ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting) (.Itis a familiar adage that history is written by the victors.).
THE CHIEF JUSTICE rejects the conclusion that the racial classifications at issue here should be viewed differently than others, because they do not impose burdens on one race alone and do not stigmatize or exclude.3 The only justification for refusing to acknowledge the obvious importance of that difference is the citation of a few recent opinions none of which even approached unanimity grandly proclaiming that all racial classifications must be analyzed under strict scrutiny. See, e.g., Adarand Constructors,Inc. v. Peña, 515 U. S. 200, 227 (1995). Even today, two of our wisest federal judges have rejected such a wooden reading of the Equal Protection Clause in the context of school integration. See 426 F. 3d 1162, 1193.1196 (CA9 2005) (Kozinski, J., concurring); Comfort v.Lynn School Comm., 418 F. 3d 1, 27.29 (CA1 2005)(Boudin, C. J., concurring). The Court’s misuse of the three-tiered approach to Equal Protection analysis merely reconfirms my own view that there is only one such Clause in the Constitution. See Craig v. Boren, 429 U. S. 190, 211(1976) (concurring opinion).4If we look at cases decided during the interim between Brown and Adarand, we can see how a rigid adherence to tiers of scrutiny obscures Brown’s clear message. Perhaps the best example is provided by our approval of the decision of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in1967 upholding a state statute mandating racial integration in that State’s school system. See School Comm. of Boston v. Board of Education, 352 Mass. 693, 227 N. E. 2d729.5 Rejecting arguments comparable to those that the plurality accepts today,6 that court noted: .It would be the height of irony if the racial imbalance act, enacted as it was with the laudable purpose of achieving equal educational opportunities, should, by prescribing school pupil allocations based on race, founder on unsuspected shoals in the Fourteenth Amendment. Id., at 698, 227 N. E. 2d,at 733 (footnote omitted).
Thomas J. Mertz
Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, National News
Fund a Classroom Project in Madison
AMPS 