The Whitehorse story along with the spring elections for the Madison School Board, at times, tend to further a narrative that much is wrong with what takes place in the classrooms. But if we only pay attention to that narrative we would miss the good work that is happening in our schools. A teacher and her nineteen fifth-graders, while not making top of the fold coverage, is the flip side to the news we all have come to know.
Two weeks ago my partner, James, and I sat for an hour in a very busy and creative classroom at Falk Elementary School. Over the school year a number of adults sponsored a student so that each month a new book landed in their hands. The effort was made possible in tandem with Scholastic Books and related services. The school reached out to say thanks with Read Your Heart Out Day. What I witnessed made an impression that lifted my spirit about teachers, students, and our schools.
After 7 years of Scott Walker, the collapse of our state colleges has now begun:
Chancellor Bernie Patterson said UWSP is facing a “perfect storm” caused by declining enrollment, 15 years of state budget cuts, and the state imposed tuition freeze.
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point students held a sit-in in front of the chancellor’s office on to protest the planned elimination of academic majors in the humanities (like) American studies, art, English, French, German, Spanish, philosophy, political science, history, geography, geoscience, music literature and sociology. The cuts come as the school faces a $4.5 million structural deficit.
Via DemoCurmudgeon: Republicans leave Wisconsin’s Hollowed Out Education Carcass on Roadside.
Sixty-five percent more schools signed up to participate in the Wisconsin Parental Choice program (WPCP) in the coming school year, according to a School Choice Wisconsin press release. The number of schools increased from 82 in the 2015-16 school year to 135 for the next academic year.
More Schools Participating in Wisconsin Parental Choice Program @ MacIver Institute
Wisconsin has truly become a red state, not for elections, but for its college graduates. As recently as a decade ago this was a state where college graduates had a lower average level of debt. Not any more.From 2004 to 2014 the average debt of college grads in Wisconsin soared, rising from $16,560 to $28,810. That was a jump of 74 percent, a bigger hike than all but six states. Wisconsin now ranks higher than all but two states in the proportion of students — 70 percent — with debts.
Via Murphy’s Law: Wisconsin Student Debt Is Soaring @ Urban Milwaukee.
Discussions on race —
Harsh truth on campus: Wisconsin isn’t immune from nationwide crisis @ OnMilwaukee.com.
“John McWhorter writes, in a WSJ piece, “Closed Minds on Campus”: The idea that only the naive or the immoral would question issues connected to something as broad and protean as race and racism is hasty at best and anti-intellectual at worst. What qualifies as discrimination? As cultural appropriation? As aggression? What is an ethnicity?…
“You’ve heard it before; Republican Governors say they want to replace Common Core with a unique statewide educational policy. Local, local, local!!! Except when they don’t. Are ready for another right wing lie? What does a supposed Wisconsin “centered” curriculum really looks like under conservative authority rule: WSJ: A 6-year-old student went to school at…
Yesterday, the Wisconsin Senate Democrats unveiled a new progressive and forward-looking vision. After listening to citizens around the state, our fourteen State Senators outlined a pragmatic and growth-oriented agenda that will restore Wisconsin to national economic, educational, and environmental leadership.
Called The Badger Blueprint, the 14 page plan plan is divided into three general sections- Growth,Innovation, and Opportunity. Under these headers, there are thirty specific actions that show the direction that state Democratic leaders want to take us.
Look at us. There’s no bar exam in Wisconsin for graduates of Wisconsin law schools (that is, my school and Marquette). Are our lawyers worse than your lawyers?
1. The question whether the clock was an “invention” should be recognized as a debate about the meaning of a word. It’s ridiculous to badger a 14-year-old about a linguistic point.
2. The annoyance at calling the clock an “invention” should be recognized as a dispute with the adults who overplayed their enthusiasm over the child’s brilliance and technological prowess. A child whose self-esteem is not perfectly aligned with the level of his accomplishments might have a problem, but, if so, it’s nothing for strangers to be sticking their nose into.
Susan Engeleiter, chief executive officer and president of DRC, was the Republican Senate minority leader in the 1980s. She also ran an unsuccessful campaign against former U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, a Democrat, in 1988.
Engeleiter gave Walker’s campaign $10,000 in October 2014 and $500 to state Superintendent Tony Evers in 2013, according to Wisconsin Democracy Campaign records.
Two Minutes with Mitch Henck: Scott Walker’s Act 10 teacher example
In “Two Minutes with Mitch” local radio personality Mitch Henck gives his two cents on the teacher example used in Scott Walker’s speeches.
This week, after a tweet by feminist Abi Bechtel went viral, Target stores agreed to abandon gendered separation of kids’ toys and bedding. Word is getting out: Sex stereotyping will not fly in 2015. If you think gender-separation of toys is bad, what about sex separation of kids? Consider the following examples drawn from the Beloit Area School District in Wisconsin, which had separated boys and girls into separate academic classes….
Won’t take no for an answer –
Scott Walker ignores wishes of teacher who asked him to stop telling her story @ State Journal.
“Wake up, Wisconsin! Recover your history and your legacy. Become, once again, the state others aspire to equal. Don’t keep aiming to be number fifty out of fifty for taxes, regulations, education, infrastructure and everything else that matters. Some of these are things that matter much more to all of us, no matter how we…
“The Wisconsin Budget Project says that the state is now spending $1,014 less per public school student than it did in 2008 and more funds are slated to be siphoned off as Governor Scott Walker’s budget proposes an unprecedented voucher expansion, draining funds from public education and directing them to for-profit and religious schools.” Via…
“The timing could not be worse for new state-by-state faculty tenure rates to be released by the National Center for Education Statistics. Not just because tenure protection is a hot-button higher education issue in Wisconsin, but because the fall 2013 numbers incorrectly suggest the University of Wisconsin System has the highest percentage of full-time faculty…
“[R]eading and math growth in the city-authorized charter schools outpace not just the city average, but the entire state average in reading and math growth,” wrote Sean Roberts, executive director of Milwaukee Charter School Advocates, in a letter to the Common Council. “Clearly, the city-authorized charter schools are contributing to positive outcomes for Milwaukee students…
I have now finished How Lincoln Learned To Read by Daniel Wolff and much enjoyed it from start to finish. As with a book of this type there is much to debate and ponder—agree with and disagree with—but one thing is for sure. Via “How Lincoln Learned To Read” @ CAFFEINATED POLITICS.
But let’s face it, in what other occupation is “tenure” granted? Not in health care, financial services, agriculture, manufacturing, construction, or the news media. (Just ask Mitch Henck.) Only in education and, to an extent even after Act 10, in government service. Via Got tenure? Academic necrosis is in crisis! @ Blaska’s Bring It!
….I was trying to think about Walker’s plan for the University of Wisconsin System. He’s coming in for a lot of criticism, from people who are trying hard to stir up outrage and fear that the Republicans are out to wreck the University of Wisconsin. So where is the evidence that Walker has learned the…
