The grades are out – Wisconsin is the worst in the United States when it comes to science curricula in the classroom. In the words of a recent study, our state’s science standards are “simply worthless.”

A 2012 report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute gauged the strength of science programs across the nation. With several different approaches to teaching science in the classroom, every state presented a different challenge to students and analysts. This study, authored by a cabal of notable researchers, broke down the difference in science standards throughout the country. Without a “Common Core” of data standards for scientific studies, each state has a significant amount of freedom with which to determine what their students learn about science in the classroom.

However, many of these state-mandated standards leave students behind when it comes to comprehensive knowledge about the subject. Wisconsin’s is one of them.

The Badger State earned a failing grade when it came to the science standards that students are supposed to be held to, posting a 0/10 score and a “F” grade. This was the lowest recorded score in the entire study.

Wisconsin earned marks so low that they were practically nonexistent. The Fordham Institute study put blame on the state for tying their standards to the outdated National Science Education Standards (NSES) and failing to elaborate or personalize these guidelines to better fit its students.

The authors’ distaste for Wisconsin’s approach is apparent in the study:

Any educator who might hope to create a curriculum from the Wisconsin science material would be stranded in a dismal, content-free desert. True standards are provided for just three grades, and the content provided for those grades is almost nonexistent.

Scientific Inquiry and Methodology

Like most of the content standards, the standards for inquiry and methodology are devoid of any real substance. For example, a fourth-grade standard tells students, “When studying a science-related problem, decide what changes over time are occurring or have occurred.” What this is meant to signify—or what skills are intended for mastery—is impossible to know.

All Content Areas

It’s virtually impossible to evaluate the content of the Wisconsin science standards because almost none is presented. Of the eight strands, only three—physical science, earth and space science, and life and environmental science— address bona fide scientific content. (The other five are devoted to process and inquiry). Moreover, all the content that students are expected to learn at each grade is presented in less than a page. Thus, all the science content Wisconsin students are expected to learn is presented in fewer than ten pages.

These shortcomings were responsible for Wisconsin’s ranking of 51^st out of 51 states and Washington D.C.. The Badger State’s closest competitors at the bottom were Montana and North Dakota.

Science has been a subject that has fallen to the wayside in America. In 2009, only one-third of American students scored “proficient” or better when it came to scientific studies in the fourth grade. By eighth grade, this score sunk to 30 percent, and in 12th grade it was just 21 percent. All figures come courtesy of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as “The Nation’s Report Card.”

However, despite the lax science standards, Wisconsin performed above the national average when it came to NAEP testing in fourth grade, where 42 percent of students taking the test rated out at “proficient” or above. In eighth grade, the state’s results were the same as the national average. State data in 12th grade was not available.

Across the country, only five states and districts – California, Virginia, South Carolina, Indiana, and Washington D.C. – received “A” grades. Wisconsin was one of 10 states to earn a “F,” alongside Alaska, Wyoming, the Dakotas, and others. Michigan and Minnesota each earned a “C,” while Iowa and Illinois recorded “D”s. For the Badger State, this grade maintained the status quo of years past – Wisconsin also graded out at “F” in the 2005 version of this same report.

The Fordham report deals a damning blow to the state’s science standards. While many have often focused on the state’s reading and mathematics results, it appears that science has taken a back seat when it comes to creating a defined and comprehensive curriculum for Wisconsin’s students.

This lack of foundation may have a significant effect on the state’s lagging test scores in the subject. It could be leaving pupils behind the curve as they grow. Though some students will be able to go above and beyond the vague standards that Wisconsin puts out when it comes to science, others will be caught up in a less stringent system that provides little direction in this area of study.

[Madison, Wisc...] More than a year after it was introduced, legislation that will bring unprecedented school choice to families who wish to enroll in Wisconsin’s public schools passed the Assembly Thursday.

Senate Bill 2, which expands the timing and options behind the state’s open enrollment policies, will allow parents and children more freedom than ever before when it comes to choosing the school that is right for them.

The legislation, now on its way to the Governor for his signature, will change the process of open enrollment. The law will allow for a freer transfer of students between public schools across districts. This legislation expands the formal application process from a three week span to three months and include provisions for year-round transfers for students that aren’t happy with their current schools.

The sweeping reform comes at the conclusion of  National School Choice Week and the new policy is a major victory for educational freedom for parents and schools alike. Families will now have greater options to find the public school that works best for their children.

This will have a significant impact reaching from regular public schools to charter and virtual schools across the state. Along with the labor reforms enacted in 2011, this legislation has the potential to dramatically change the education landscape in Wisconsin. By creating a free market within Wisconsin’s public schools the new law is expected to foster competition between school districts and increase the influence of parents in areas as far reaching as curriculum development and school operations.

Currently, families have a three-week window in the beginning of February during which they can apply to attend a public school other than their local neighborhood school. The resident school board can prevent students from leaving by rejecting their application and informing parents by April.

Parents will now have the ability to apply to up to three districts in an expanded timeline for open enrollment transfers. The application period will now run from the beginning of February to the end of April and families will know whether or not their transfer has been approved by June – in time for the upcoming school year. This means that parents will have a better idea of the options available for their children and in a more timely manner than the previous system.

Moreover, stipulations exist that will allow students to transfer outside of this window as well. If students meet certain conditions parents can apply for their transfer at any time during the year. If the receiving district has room available for the student, then they will be compelled to accept the transfer unless the district and the Department of Public Instruction both rule that the transfer does not have the student’s best interests at heart.

In short, parents disappointed with their child’s school will have more options for transfer – and they won’t have to wait for that three-week period in February to act. This means greater freedom for parents and, ideally, fewer instances of students being trapped in schools that don’t fit them for long stretches of time.

School districts will have to determine the number of open slots for all students – both regular and special education based – in January. These limits will be determined by criteria such as class size, student-teacher ratios, and enrollment projections. Students that are excluded from transferring thanks to these limits will be put on a waiting list, and parents will know whether or not they have been accepted by the third Friday in September.

The legislation had the support of educational groups across the state. The Wisconsin Coalition of Virtual School Families was the legislation’s leading proponent and the American Federation for Children, the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, and the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators all rallied behind the plan. The expansion is not expected to have a significant fiscal effect on public education, but will reach thousands of parents and families across the state. It is expected to be signed into law by Governor Scott Walker within days.

Parent advocates boast that this bill amounts to is the passage of year-round public school choice for Wisconsin’s families. Parents will have more flexibility and a greater awareness not only of their schooling options, but also over when their children can transfer if they decide that their neighborhood school is not for them.

]]> http://maciverinstitute.com/2012/01/statewide-public-school-choice-coming-to-wisconsin/feed/ 1 http://maciverinstitute.com/2012/01/what-the-wisconsin-school-accountability-program-should-look-like/ http://maciverinstitute.com/2012/01/what-the-wisconsin-school-accountability-program-should-look-like/#comments Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:59:23 +0000 MacIver Institute http://maciverinstitute.com/?p=8815 By Christian D’Andrea
MacIver Institute Education Policy Analyst

In the near future the final recommendations of three task forces dedicated to improving public education in Wisconsin are expected to be unveiled. This includes the work of the Wisconsin School Accountability Design Team, a group saddled with creating a metric by which the state’s schools will be graded.

The ultimate goal of this task force is to create a comprehensive and transparent system that helps parents, students, and citizens better understand the quality of their neighborhood schools. Ultimately, it would gauge the progress of both students and teachers and provide performance comparisons across districts, states, and even countries. It will take the place of the beleaguered No Child Left Behind program, a federal mandate that often failed to create meaningful positive change in the state’s public schools.

However, creating a metric to include all these goals is the difficult part. Issues like the inclusion of different subjects, determining which tests will be used to gauge progress, and how to weigh low-performing and underprivileged students has caused turmoil design team meetings that have occasionally become contentious. Some school leaders are concerned that they could be unfairly graded and carry the stigma of low-performance into the future. Others worry that a lax accountability system will offer little differentiation and obscure the transparency that the program is aiming to create.

Ideally, the school accountability program would include:

• Transparent grades that the public can easily digest. This means an A-F system that people can understand, rather than more cryptic terms. This will allow for an easy comparison across the state and across districts themselves. This will empower parents and help families find the right schools that fit their children best. While this will add an element of competition to the grading process, schools in danger of losing students thanks to low grades may find extra motivation for improvement.

• Extra attention – potentially through additional grading weight – for the lowest performing students. Florida’s school grading system, considered to be a model for Wisconsin’s school accountability program (or at least a starting point) emphasized the performance of the students that needed the most help. They essentially double-counted the reading and math scores of the pupils in the bottom 25 percent of their schools when factoring them into a school’s grade. This ensured an additional focus on students that are struggling without abandoning the performance of a school’s top students.

• Considerations to the amount of low-income students in a school. This would effectively curve the grading system to reward schools that are making progress with economically disadvantaged students. Wisconsin is a very unbalanced state when it comes to per capita income. The state’s 426 school districts often swing wildly from region to region when it comes to the economic backgrounds of students. Most often, areas with the highest concentrations of low-income pupils fare the worst when educational progress is measured.How to implement such a program has several moving parts. However, it’s clear that, in order to create comparisons that can be accurately gauged across the state, this is a necessary piece in ensuring fair, easily comparable grades from Milwaukee to Superior.

• Value-added testing data to gauge student progress and a teacher’s value over the course of a school year. Tests taken in the fall and spring could measure how students are learning at each grade within an institution. Not only would this show Wisconsinites how its students are progressing, but also fall in line with the upcoming Educator Effectiveness program, which will grade a teacher’s performance in the classroom. It would give parents a better idea of just what an educator has added to their child’s education.The idea behind value-added testing is that students that enter a grade behind their peers won’t drag down their classroom’s average. Instead of an overall grade level, this testing will measure the growth of a student – so if a student that has fallen behind is motivated and taught well enough to meet the class average, he or she would produce a higher value-added score than a student that maintains that average. In short, it rewards progression and penalizes regression beyond just what WKCE averages tell us.

• Proper standards for choice and charter schools. These schools should be held accountable as much as traditional public schools. The use of value-added testing and student data that tracks progress rather than benchmarks will ensure that these institutions are fairly graded and given more direct comparisons to the regular public schools in their regions.

• Turnaround measures for failing schools. So now that we know how schools are performing, what do we do with them? Policy needs to be put in place that allows these schools to remove ineffective educators and administrators and bring in the talent they need to make strides towards a better education. This should align with the upcoming teacher evaluation systems in order to help these schools identify which individuals are bringing value to their classrooms. This intervention will put an onus on underperforming institutions and highlight the need for real reform when students aren’t learning in Wisconsin’s schools.

• Data measurement systems that can sync with national and global rankings. This metric needs to be able to measure up from state to state and even across countries. Adopting Common Core of Data standards should help create a comparable and accurate system of measurement that allows us to compare Wisconsin’s schools with other across the country. Global comparisons are a bit trickier – but PISA or TIMSS testing, even on a limited basis, could provide valuable information when it comes to stacking Wisconsin’s public schools against those of worldwide leaders.

• Revisable options to accommodate a new breed of teachers and students. The accountability system has to have a dedicated board to track results and address any shortcomings the program may have. This includes adopting new measures and self-reporting flaws and problems that may arise and negatively affect schools.

Ideally, the school accountability design team will create a program that presents clear and understandable data for parents and students so they can better understand the quality of their public schools. This needs to go beyond an insulated neighborhood level to work beyond districts, into other states, and even to other countries. Wisconsin’s educational outcomes have hit a disappointing era of limited growth and even regression. Increasing the public’s awareness of just how strong their neighborhood schools are will not only empower parents, but pressure underperforming institutions to improve.

It will be a large task to undertake, and the debates that have raged at design team meetings suggest that consensus outside of major topics has been hard to find. Still, the successful implementation of a program that accurately grades Wisconsin’s public schools and delivers more information to citizens will be powerful. It will give legitimacy to the state’s more successful schools and spur improvement in ones that are falling behind. However, this metric must be comprehensive and fair to ensure that grades are earned properly rather than just being the product of a potentially gamed system.

This is a major task for the design team, but with members ranging from almost every aspect of Wisconsin’s public education, it’s something that can be done. If these groups can work together, we’ll soon have a comprehensive system by which we can grade schools. If these groups can’t agree or exercise too much caution in their system, we may just end up with another set of standards that tell us little about Wisconsin’s classrooms – almost like the WKCE.

If the system is well constructed and implemented properly, students, teachers, parents, and Wisconsinites everywhere will benefit.

Over a year ago, many Wisconsinites were disappointed when the state not only failed to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grant money in the Race to the Top (RTTT) program, but also fell in the national rankings. While Wisconsin’s inability to embrace the RTTT reforms was troubling, experiences in winning states like Florida, New York, and Hawaii suggest that the state may have struggled to implement new programs with this funding thanks to the system’s stipulated timeframe.

We previously explored how federal oversight is causing problems in state educational agencies (SEAs). Since public education is so localized at the state level, places like Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) and other SEAs wield most of the power when it comes to public schools. Dr. Frederick Hess’s study showed that federal mandates and interference can limit the efficiency of these organizations and ultimately cause more harm than good.

This is a trend that we are seeing again in 2012, this time with RTTT funding and regulations. RTTT has been a series of national competitions that has awarded billions of dollars in funding grants to states that are willing to embrace educational reform in areas like school intervention and rehabilitation, the emergence of charter schools, and addressing new methods in early childhood education. Wisconsin has applied for all three rounds of RTTT grants, and been rejected by grant coordinators each time.

For many, these failures were disappointing. Reasons for this failure included local educating agencies that failed to consent to changes that would increase teacher and schoolwide accountability as well as opposition when it came to increasing student access to charter schools. However, problems that are arising in Florida this winter suggest that the Badger State may have struggled to implement these RTTT statutes – especially if other key reforms, such as Read to Lead and the school accountability program were enacted at the same time.

Florida received a grant of $700 million in 2010, behind a different governor and education commissioner that they have now. They were given four years to implement the goals they laid out in their application, which includes items like enhanced teacher testing to ensure quality schools and an expansion of quality charter options. Unfortunately, despite a strong history of reform in recent years, the state was one of three – along with Hawaii and New York – that was identified by the U.S. Department of Education as having problems meeting their timeline.

A failure to enact the reforms promised could result in a redaction of the $700 million in federal money. New education commissioner Gerard Robinson has stated that Florida has put 22 new plans in motion to address the shortcomings. Issues such as contracting and the turnover in leadership within the state have led to the delay, but officials are confident they’ll be able to fulfill the grant’s requirements. However, it has yet to be seen if this will be enough to not only keep the significant amount of federal money in the Sunshine State, but also enact meaningful reform in a state that has been a pioneer in the past decade.

In Wisconsin, this could have been catastrophic. One of the major issues in the state’s application for RTTT funds was an illusion of buy-in at the local level. While the application made the state appear to have a vast majority of local districts on board for some significant reforms, many district teachers’ unions balked at requirements like those that tied student results to educator evaluations.

While 2011’s reform to the collective bargaining process between school boards and teachers’ unions would have helped expedite some of the policy changes contained in the state’s application, it’s easy to see how Wisconsin could have ended up in a similar position as Florida had they received RTTT funding. Major change in the classroom has been a slow moving process in the Badger State since significant reform dotted the 1990s. Even the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination – the state’s main standardized test – has had a slow road to replacement despite being outdated nearly from the day of its inception.

Other states are struggling to meet the federal timeline, and its possible that Wisconsin could have befallen the same fate had they been held to the same standards. Fortunately, upcoming reforms like Read to Lead and the school and teacher accountability programs will give the Badger State the opportunity to show that timely, effective reform can again be a reality in local classrooms.

So, is Wisconsin better off without Race to the Top funding? Probably not. But it’s not a stretch to suggest that the state could have struggled to enact sweeping reforms. Past problems with federal interference and issues with the efficient application of statewide policies would have made the application of RTTT’s changes a difficult one. The state’s final grant application made it clear that not everyone was on the same page. Add this disjointed status to the slowing effect of nationally mandated reform, and it’s entirely possible that Wisconsin could have ended up a loser even if they had won the $250 million they applied for in round two of the contest.

ZBB Energy, a Menomonee Falls based green energy company, is in a race to bring new green technologies to market as it finds itself in the center of the debate over whether government financial assistance can launch and sustain a green economy here in the United States.

President Obama visited ZBB Energy back in August of 2010 to promote the green economy and why the federal government should step in to get this sector of the economy off the ground.

“At this plant you’re doing more than making high-tech batteries.  You’re pointing the country towards a brighter economic future,” Obama said.

During his visit, President Obama vowed to create 800,000 green energy jobs by 2012.

ZBB Energy makes batteries specifically designed to store electricity from renewable sources. At least, that’s the plan.  ZBB Energy is in the middle of a major overhaul and currently does not have any products on the market. It plans to launch a new line within weeks.

“The product we’re developing will be the only storage device like it in the world,” Will Hogoboom, CFO, told MacIver News. “We’ve already closed orders for the new product even though it’s not in production.”

Investors and the stock market have not always appeared to share in the President’s optimism.  ZBB Energy stock ended the year at 71 cents a share. The day of Obama’s visit, the stock closed at $.70. Some believe investors are generally weary of green energy companies, especially startups, because these companies have high risk: they incur high overhead and generate low revenue while they attempt to develop new technologies that may or may not be profitable.

That’s where federal and state governments step in, providing those companies with massive tax breaks and loans. Many companies state in their SEC filings they could not survive without this preferred treatment. However, as we’ve seen, government favoritism is not a guarantee of success.

Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer in California, received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy in 2009. Two years later the company was out of business.

ZBB Energy has received significantly less help from the federal government than Solyndra. In June, the IRS awarded it a $14.7 million Clean Energy Tax Credit.  In 2009 it received a $1.3 million stimulus loan.

The stock market has been a consistent challenge for ZBB Energy. In December 2010, AMEX notified ZBB its shareholders’ equity was below the minimum $4 million required to continue being listed. This December, the company announced its shareholders equity was at $4.1 million and it was back in compliance.

However, ZBB’s stock still trends downward. It closed at $5.80 on June 18, 2007, three days after the company executed a 1:17 reverse split. Since then, it’s been downhill. On December 20, 2011 it closed at 74 cents a share and has not broken $1/share since September.

Courtesy of NASDAQ.com

ZBB’s market trouble is reflected in its SEC reports. Its Q3 revenue was at $1.637 million. ZBB’s payroll alone was $60,000 more than that. The total operating loss was $1.696 million.

The company hopes to turn all this around with the release of a new line of batteries, which are in the final stage of testing.

“Once we start actually producing and shipping, it will mean the world to us,” Hogoboom said.

The company has also added a number of new employees. At the time of its overhaul two years ago, ZBB employed 25 people. Today it employs about 60 people and has 7 open positions.

Over the past few months, while developing its new product, the company has also been forging new partnerships. In fact ZBB is opening a new factory in China in the next few weeks.

On December 15th, ZBB announced a new joint venture partnership with an unnamed “global technology company,” to help in product development. That partner is investing $800,000 in the project, and bought $700,000 of ZBB stock.

Company insiders appear to be confident. Hogoboom bought 14,000 shares on December 13. Buoyed by the government investment in the firm, investors purchased 1,307,860 shares over the last six months, all at market value.

To achieve President Obama’s goal to create 800,000 green energy jobs by 2012, the federal government has invested heavily in companies like ZBB. Yet, there is presently no official way to verify the success of such job creation efforts since the Labor Department does not track green jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is in the process of conducting a survey to find out exactly how many green jobs there are in the country and hopes to have that complete by the middle of this year.

Meanwhile, announced expansion projects, a new product line, and large stock purchases have not been enough to give non governmental investors in the market confidence in this green energy “startup.” ZBB’s stock opened at 78 cents a share on December 15, 2011 and closed at 81 cents a share on Jan. 13, 2012.

Share

A merit pay program that incentivizes teachers is about to get a test run at the local level. Two Wisconsin school districts are moving forward with a plan that would reward good teachers with salary bonuses in the 2012-2013 school year.

The Cedarburg and Hartland-Lakeside School Districts will be amongst the first to institute merit pay programs for educators in the Badger State. Bonuses will be tied to teacher evaluations – instructors that earn high marks from administrators will be eligible for extra compensation in the following school year. In Cedarburg, these additional payments range from $1,700 to $2,200.

The ability to institute bonus systems on a district-to-district basis is a new one in Wisconsin. In previous years, most plans would have been wiped out by collective bargaining between the school district and their local teachers’ union. Since Act 10 removed most of these bargaining scenarios, school boards now have more freedom to enact reforms like merit pay in their classrooms.

The district’s hope is that pay-for-performance bonuses will make the area more attractive to the state’s best teachers. An influx of new talent would not only bolster the teaching corps, but also raise the bar for the city’s existing teaching staff. However, previous studies suggest that merit pay programs can be a mixed bag, especially when they are enacted as the centerpiece of educational reform.

A recent study in Nashville’s public schools showed that teacher bonuses alone had no significant effect on student performance in the classroom. This report – the first ever scientific study on teacher merit pay in America – evaluated three years of tracked data across the metropolitan area’s middle school math teachers. Annual performance bonuses for qualifying educators were either $5,000, $10,000, or $15,000.

While there was a significant benefit for fifth graders between years two and three of the program, the experiment’s overall results showed no significant effect linking student test scores to teachers that were participants in the merit pay program. This suggests that Cedarburg and Hartland-Lakeside’s programs may have trouble getting the desired results that they are aiming for out of this program.

Another interesting point about this Vanderbilt study is the participation rate for the voluntary program. Approximately 70 percent of the targeting teaching population that the study was offered to decided to take part. This differs from what we’re seeing in Wisconsin’s pilot districts, where local union leaders like Terry Grogan of the Oak Creek Education Association have expressed concerns. This may be tied to the fact that teachers here were participating in an experiment rather than a lasting reform effort.

Despite the lack of visible results in Nashville, a modest bonus system has been part of sweeping reform that has paid dividends in Florida. Over a decade ago, merit pay became part of a legislative program that enacted special needs scholarships for disabled students, transparent grading for schools, and an increased focus on reading in early childhood education. This reward program gave modest bonuses to teachers and schools based on students taking and passing Advanced Placement exams in order to earn college credit.

This program has seen considerable success, especially amongst minority students. The number of Hispanic and African-American students passing AP exams has more than tripled in the state over the past decade. However, the exact effect of this merit system is not fully known since these gains could be related to any of the other significant reforms that were passed in the same era.

These pilot programs in Cedarburg and Hartland-Lakeside will provide an interesting case study in the continuing debate over merit pay programs. They’ll add to the existing research that has helped fuel the discussion over whether or not performance bonuses have a place in public schools. However, studies suggest that the implementation of merit pay alone may not be enough to produce significant improvements in the classroom.

These districts are taking a brave step forward to change the environment in their schools. Will Cedarburg and Hartland-Lakeside be a breakthrough for merit pay? Will the expansion of teacher bonuses across a greater scope of subjects and classrooms have a greater positive effect for students? Or will they fall victim of the same issues that left little lasting reform in other test situations in America? It’s far too soon to tell now, but this won’t be the last that we hear about these districts in terms of educational reform in the near future.

It’s a whole new world in Wisconsin thanks to Act 10.

On Wednesday, Governor Scott Walker and Superintendent Tony Evers unveiled the state’s plan to boost fading reading scores in Wisconsin’s public schools. The Read to Lead program will increase literacy in young students through a combination of early intervention and a better prepared teaching body.

But will it be enough?

Read to Lead is aimed to better educate students through early literacy screening and stronger professional development amongst teachers. It will emphasize reading at an early age and make it the cornerstone of Wisconsin’s public education.

The program is based off a series of successful reforms in Florida. There, students that couldn’t read proficiently by the end of the third grade were held back, effectively ending social promotion until a child could demonstrate that he or she was able to read well enough to learn other subjects. It fell in line with an old saying – by third grade, you are learning to read; after third grade, you are reading to learn.

In Wisconsin, the responsibility for greater reading standards will be placed firmly on the teachers without the increased threat of grade retention for students and families. The state is betting hard that early screening tests to gauge reading ability and that a comprehensive preparation system for reading teachers will be enough to overcome stagnant literacy growth over the past two decades.

While Wisconsin still ranks in the top half of all states when it comes to elementary school reading, they’ve fallen from 2^nd overall to 16^th between 1994 and 2010. While the state hasn’t gotten observably worse over this span, they’ve been passed by other states that have made big strides producing educational gains. After nearly two decades with statistically similar NAEP scores, it became clear that action needed to be taken.

Enter Read to Lead, which will provide extra attention in literacy techniques in early childhood. Students from pre-kindergarten to third grade will now focus more on their reading studies. Teachers in these grades will have more strenuous licensing procedures in order to ensure that they better understand how to gauge a child’s progress and incorporate new methods of teaching into their reading process. This includes more comprehensive professional development programs for current teachers and new coursework for potential teachers.

Indeed, the program is aimed at getting to students through their teachers. Read to Lead is a proactive program that is aimed at making all teachers experts in learning – something that some task force members suggested was a problem in Wisconsin’s classrooms. The new system is designed to give educators an answer for every problem that a student has in school, along with the methods to bring children of all reading levels to a point of better understanding. It will strengthen the core of the state’s public school teachers and introduce new techniques to a population of ever-diverse students.

This accountability will course across the state’s other educational task forces as well. The Read to Lead report recommends tying these higher reading standards into a pair of upcoming reforms. The Educator Effectiveness Design Team and the Wisconsin School Accountability Design team have both been encouraged to include reading outcomes to the way that they will grade teachers and schools, respectively. Best practices will include methods devised to help struggling students achieve more when it comes to reading.

However, failing to tie consequences that can reverberate back to a student’s home may represent a missed opportunity. Unlike the Florida model the plan is partially based on, Wisconsin’s literacy efforts don’t tie in social promotion concerns. While the task force discussed the retention of students that cannot read well in third grade at length, the plan was ultimately dismissed.

This takes some responsibility away from parents and children, and could allow for some underprepared pupils to advance through their elementary schools without the necessary reading background to succeed. While teachers will be better equipped than ever before, there is little beyond the current grading system to keep students any more accountable than they were before. A summer-school reading program is mentioned in the report’s findings, but is passively suggested as something that districts “should consider” rather than a requirement.

While parents will be engaged by programs sponsored by Read to Lead, such as Reach Out and Read and other programs targeted to help low-income families, there is little else that put more responsibility in the hands of students and parents.

This is a tricky subject to begin with. How do you engage parents and students when there is little support at home? Read to Lead is betting strongly that better informed teachers and early intervention are the key rather than holding the threat of grade retention over a student’s head. However, what happens when a students has the grades to progress through school but not the reading skills? What happens if parents refuse an optional booster course in summer school? Will this added focus lead more teachers to recommend holding students back a grade that they normally would pass? These are difficult questions – and ones that will have to be answered in Wisconsin’s classrooms in the 2012-2013 school year.

Read to Lead is going all-in on the strength of Wisconsin’s school teachers. If the program follows through with its promises of early intervention for students and unprecedented access to professional reading development for teachers, it will be a major asset for the state’s public schools. However, it will require buy-in from families as well to have a truly significant impact.

Will the program be enough to engage parents and students even without additional schooling for students that fail to grasp the concepts they need to learn in the later grades? Unfortunately, we won’t know for sure for years.

.

Madison Has Few Charters, But These Schools Educate More Poor Students, Produce Stronger Reading Results in 4th Grade

By Christian D’Andrea
MacIver Institute Education Policy Analyst

Madison is Wisconsin’s third-largest school district, but it has fewer charter schools than places like Oconto Falls, Wisconsin Rapids, and La Crosse. However, the city’s existing charter schools are making strides when it comes to educating low-income students and producing reading results.

Charter schools have made recent news in the capital city. Last month Madison Metropolitan School Board rejected a charter application from Madison Prep, a pair of single-sex charter schools that would have been the first of their kind in the state. These schools would have catered to low-income students and offered an alternative to regular public schools – which dominate the city’s educational landscape.

The state’s capital has nearly 25,000 students enrolled in these public schools. However, the presence of charter schools within the district is distinctly lacking. There are only two institutions – James C. Wright Middle School and Nuestro Mundo Community School – that operate under a charter in Madison. Comparatively, Milwaukee has 55 of these schools to serve just over three times the amount of students.

These two schools provide a very small sample size of how charter institutions are performing in Madison. What we see when comparing them to the city’s traditional public schools is that they are educating a higher concentration of students from low-income families. In elementary school reading, they are producing stronger returns than the citywide average as well.

Both of Madison’s charter schools educate a greater percentage of low-income students than the citywide average. This reflects a trend that we also saw in past reports that examined the charter student population in Milwaukee. An “economically disadvantaged student” is defined as a pupil that receives free or reduced lunch benefits due to their financial background.

A look at Wisconsin Student Assessment Data (WSAS) provides a look into how pupils are reading at these schools. However, since the data set is limited to just the two institutions governed by the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD), it’s difficult to suggest that these results would hold true beyond these specific schools. This observational data does seem to fall in line with some of the results that were apparent in Milwaukee.

First, students at Nuestro Mundo are outperforming the city’s average, albeit by a slim margin. Children there are 2.4 percent more likely to score “Basic” or higher on this standardized test and .2 percent more likely to earn a label of “Proficient” or better.

However, this advantage does not hold up at James C. Wright, which houses a larger population of low-income students but lags behind the MMSD average amongst sixth-graders in reading. Students there fell approximately 10 points behind the Madison average in terms of literacy skills.

Similar statistics were seen on a larger scale in Milwaukee. There, charter schools outperformed the regular public school average when it came to reading. However, those higher scores fade as grade level progresses. This difference was much larger in Madison than what we observed in Milwaukee, but may be attributable to the small sample size.

These data show that Madison’s charter school population may be small, but these schools are educating a significant portion of the city’s economically disadvantaged students. At Nuestro Mundo, an elementary school, students are performing above the city average when it comes to reading in fourth grade. James C. Wright Middle School, which has a concentration of low-income students more similar Milwaukee than Madison, is trailing the MMSD average student in sixth grade literacy skills.

MacIver News Service | January 4, 2012

[Greendale, Wisc...] Governor Scott Walker and State Superintendent Tony Evers unveiled the findings of the Read to Lead task force Wednesday morning. The report – a culmination of nearly nine months of collaboration between teachers, legislators, the Department of Public Instruction, and the Governor’s office – stresses early intervention for reading skills amongst Wisconsin’s youngest students.

The move comes in response to U.S. Department of Education data that suggests Wisconsin is failing to improve when it comes to teaching students literacy skills. Where the state was once a national leader, it has fallen down the ranks thanks to improvements made in other states across the country. Wisconsin was once second in the country in fourth grade reading in 1995 – now, the state ranks 16^th.

“I’m really pleased with the recommendations of this task force,” said State Superintendent Tony Evers.  “Reading is a foundational skill that all students must have in order to graduate prepared for success in college or career. Our reforms support students, parents and educators with a statewide focus on instruction to improve reading achievement.”

This foundation will be addressed in several ways under the new reforms. They include:

• Early literacy screening for students in kindergarten and pre-kindergarten to better understand a child’s reading level.
• Greater teacher training in the fields of early reading, including more rigorous preparation and exams for reading instructors.
• More – and better – professional development and learning opportunities for current reading specialists in public schools.
• A reaching out to the state’s philanthropic organizations to promote stronger reading programs before third grade.

Legislators were hopeful that elements that needed legislative approval – including the screening tests – would be voted in before the 2012-2013 school year.

Read to Lead will also stretch into other reforms that were introduced in 2011. The teacher and school accountability programs, which aim to bring a transparent and open grading system to educators and institutions, will both emphasize third grade reading scores when evaluating public education in Wisconsin.

The goal here is to empower teachers that may have previously struggled and increase the amount of support for both educators and students when it comes to literacy. A strong network of education for teachers – from learning how to properly assess students to finding new ways to intervene and improve student comprehension – will be the backbone of this reform.

“For Wisconsin students to know how to read by fourth grade is critical to their education and their success in the future,” said Governor Walker.  “I am proud of the work of this non-partisan taskforce.  Working together I believe we have developed an important plan to improve reading in Wisconsin, laying the foundation for our students to excel.”

The Read to Lead program was unveiled last spring in an effort to bring sweeping reform to the state’s public schools. It has roots in similar policy that helped reform and improve Florida’s public schools over the past decade. However, it strays from the Sunshine State’s program in a few dramatic ways that could alter the impact it has on students and parents in Wisconsin.

Part of what made Florida’s reforms so successful is an added emphasis on ending social promotion for students that cannot read proficiently. If a pupil cannot demonstrate reasonable literacy skills by the end of third grade, they are not allowed to move on to fourth grade. This has reduced the number of Florida students that entered middle and high school with diminished reading abilities and put an onus on both children and parents alike to perform in the classroom.

As a result of this reform – and others – Florida is now one of those states outperforming Wisconsin when it comes to reading in fourth grade.

This element is not a piece of Wisconsin’s Read to Lead program. As a result, the extra push towards greater literacy from the state’s teachers may not meet the same response from parents and students. However, the task force is betting that stronger intervention methods at an early age, combined with stronger teachers and more effective teaching maneuvers, will be enough to kick start the state’s reading scores and improve the quality of education in the Badger State.

Today’s release was the end result of months of hard work and meetings to create a comprehensive program that addresses the literacy shortcomings that have grown in Wisconsin over the past two decades. It’s a dedicated move forward in the scope of improving public education. However, questions remain over whether it will go far enough to improve the state’s stagnant reading scores.

Read to Lead will empower teachers and put an onus on literacy skills throughout early childhood education. Every student from Hudson to Milwaukee will get more attention when it comes to reading – from early screening tests in the first year of school to more comprehensive interventions through third grade. This is a major commitment to reading for the state of Wisconsin, but it’s a necessary one for the future of the state.

The entire Read to Lead report can be found here: http://walker.wi.gov/readtoleadtaskforcereport.pdf

Milwaukee’s charter schools outperform the regular public school standard when it comes to reading – but these returns appear to diminish as students progress, according to state data

Milwaukee’s charter schools have been a topic of discussion lately in the face of educational reform across Wisconsin. Earlier in the month, we have covered the economic backgrounds of the students that attend these schools. We have also examined the educational trends behind reading scores in the city’s independent 2R charter schools. It showed that these schools – which are authorized by either the city of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee rather than the city’s school board and enjoy more autonomy than their counterparts – produce greater educational returns than the regular public school average.

When you expand this scope to reading across all public charter schools, this result holds true in elementary schools. However, these results regress as students get older and advance to high school. While charter schools hold an edge over the city’s regular school students when looking at students scoring “basic” or better in core reading concepts, these traditional schools are more likely to have students scoring towards the higher end of the metric in both high school and middle school.

The city’s independent 2R charter schools outperformed regular charter school students at fourth grade, though not by a significant amount. Charter schools, as a whole, outperformed their regular school MPS counterparts at all observed grades when accounting for students scoring “basic” and higher. However, when the bar is set at “proficient” or better, students in traditional public schools recorded a stronger score.

In grade 10, the only representative 2R school, Tenor High School, outgained the regular charter school average, especially at the higher levels of achievement. However, since this sample size is limited to just one school, it’s difficult to make a significant comparison between the two charter types.

The metric used to compare student performance comes from the state’s Department of Public Instruction. It measures outcomes in reading on a pair of tests – the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE) and the Wisconsin Alternate Assessment for Students with Disabilities (WAASwD). Combined, these are referred to as the Wisconsin Student Assessment System (WSAS). While these exams are a poor indicator of value-added information for students, they do allow us to made school-to-school comparisons within a district relatively well.

This report deals with reading results across three different grades. In elementary schools, a fourth-grade score was chosen. A sixth-grade mark was used to gauge middle school progress and a 10^th grade score was chosen for high schools.

These results show that students in the city’s charter schools are demonstrating stronger learning skills than their regular public school classmates. However, these data also suggest that the city’s charter institutions may not be as effective in higher grades than they are in elementary schools. Furthermore, even with this improvement, it is important to note that these scores still rank amongst the worst in the state. In fact, recently released NAEP results suggest that Milwaukee is regressing when it comes to literacy in its public schools.

These results from the WSAS are observational. That means that they cannot tell us why students between these schools are performing in this manner. However, they do paint a telling picture of just how the children in these schools are performing. Students in a different, charter-driven environment from the traditional public school are outscoring their colleagues, particularly at a younger age. While this effect is reduced as students grow up, it’s an encouraging sign for Milwaukee’s charter schools, even though these test results trail the statewide averages.

At a time when Milwaukee’s educational system is posting stagnant returns when it comes to student achievement, this puts some hope back in the city’s public school system. The state has recently authorized the ability to sell vacant MPS buildings – something that could only have been done with Milwaukee School Board approval in the past. This could open opportunities for more of these schools, schools that educate more economically disadvantaged students and often post better reading scores, to operate within city limits. The upcoming arrival of Rocketship Schools – an independent charter that has seen strong successes in California – will provide another strong option for Milwaukee’s families.

The results are encouraging. However, there is still much work to be done. The next decade will provide a strong litmus test of how effective these schools can be. The differentiation between regular, non-instrumentality, and independent 2R charter schools could play a key role in showing what methods and missions work best in Milwaukee’s classrooms. Deeper looks into changing the culture of failure within the city’s high schools – across all schools – will also pay dividends. The end goal will be to provide a new layer of quality education in Wisconsin’s urban center. When that happens, the city’s children will be better prepared for the future than ever before.

Data for Milwaukee’s Independent 2R Charter Schools:

Data for Milwaukee’s other Charter Schools: