The Dolly Mixture — “Spend Your Wishes” (click to listen or download).

With all the appropriate attention given this weekend to the opportunity to re-engage in collective bargaining  (if you haven’t weighed in the Board, there is still time:  board@madison.k12.wi.us) another and very important item on the Madison Metropolitan Board of Education’s agendas for Monday, September 24 2012 has slipped somewhat under the radar.  I’m talking about the Administrative Recommendations related to the unanticipated state aid, involving $8.1 M in taxing/spending.    Matt DeFour has a story up at the State Journal, but I haven’t heard much from anyone else on this (except some chatter that I solicited on my Facebook page).

First some general observations then to the specifics of the recommendations.

General Observations

The timeline is too tight.

The district has till the end of October to finalize their 2012-13 budget; the recommendations were made public Friday (9/21)  and the Board is being asked to give “preliminary approval” to these recommendations  on Monday.  An earlier document said the recommendations would be presented to a committee on September 17.  They were not (see about the 90 minute mark and note Ed Hughes asks if they will be asked to act on 9/24 and is told “no,” but never-the-less they are being asked to act…hmm).  I understand that these are somewhat special circumstances, but think the spirit of the statutorily mandated open budget process with required timely public disclosures and formal opportunities for public comment should be honored as much as possible.  A preliminary approval on Monday would be about as far from that as you could get.  Use the time available to give careful consideration and to allow the public to give consideration also.

The Board Member Amendments and other things considered during the regular budget process — including unfunded portions of the Achievement Gaps Plans — do not seem to have been given special consideration.

You could argue that these have been considered and rejected (back in July Ed Hughes made a related case here and here more recently), but I would counter that those rejections were based in part on tax levy considerations that have changed.  I would further argue that revisiting things is more respectful of the spirit of an open budget process than is bringing in “new” items this late in the game.  They also probably could be dealt with relatively fast.  I have a particular fondness for the amendment Maya Cole put forth on Library staffing and think it should come back; others may want to reconsider parts of the Gaps Plans or other things.  I think these should be the starting point.

Five votes are needed to do anything.

Once the Preliminary Budget is passed, changes need a super majority.

The pie hasn’t grown any larger, only the mix of where the ingredients are coming from has changed.

The Revenue Limit for MMSD  — what I’m calling “the pie” –  is the same as it had been in June, but more state aid means less local property taxes.  All the potential revenues contemplated in the Recommendations have been there since the start of the budget process.  It was a choice not to use them.   Many factors — including “efficiencies” (good and bad), significant cuts in state aid,  and the 2008 referendum have made the levy limits almost irrelevant in Madison budget talks recently.  This is not the case in most districts, may not be the case in MMSD in the future, and in terms of state policy Rev Caps remain a big problem.

The calculations around minimizing tax levies seem to be changing, but I’m not sure how.

As noted above and (indirectly in the documents from the district), the Preliminary Budget for 2012-13 (like the 2010-11 and the 2011-12 budgets) was arrived at by giving great weight to the size of the tax levy, and (as I’ve argued here and elsewhere) perhaps not enough weight to the needs of the students (and no consideration of the way the levy credits shape the impact of the  levy on taxpayers).  The administrative recommendations return to the days of “taxing to the max.”  This doesn’t seem to be a change in the principles used, but rather a one time move, based on the fact that a levy higher than anything possible at this point has already been found acceptable.  It should also be noted that the administration isn’t presenting options for taxing to the max, the default for saying no to the recommended expenditures is to reduce taxes (as a general thing, not just budgets, I really think the role of the administration is to present a range of options and their analyses of these options).   What is clear from the recommendations (contingency allocations, IRTs, Assistant Principals  — and other things like the hiring of a Chief of Staff and the reorganization of the Equity/Parent Involvement Department — is that some of the efficiencies enacted in pursuit of lower taxes during the Nerad years have not been good for the district.  There is a lesson here.

Budgets are about choices; Choosing the items recommended by the administration means not choosing other things.

Basic, but a reminder is is always good.  The Rev Caps do limit the size of the pie and you can only get so many slices out of it.   If you are funding iPads, you aren’t funding Librarians with that money (or raises, or repairs, or software, or social workers, or smaller classes, paying off loans, or tax relief….).  Current choices also shape or limit future choices, money committed to an ongoing expense this year won’t be there next year for anything, including the staff raises that almost all Board Members seem interested in exploring.  $8.1 million in choices to be made.

The Recommendations (mostly in order with comments and initial — mostly tentative — opinions)

Requirements (headings from the Recommendations)

Property Tax Relief (state revenue limits), $3,700,000

This is  required by the Rev Caps.  As noted above, the default to more tax relief is problematic.  It should also be noted that this is listed as being the same for the following year, when we really have no idea at all what the Rev Caps or the state aid will be.

WRS Increase, $1,200,000

Not really required, but seems like a good idea.

Short Term for Long Term Good/Closing Gaps

Second Year of Achievement Gap Plan, $3,700,000 (in 2013-14)

If I read this correctly, this recommendation is to hold off taxing this amount this year, in order to fund Achievement Gap(s) Plan (AGP)  initiatives next year.  Again, this assumes some things about what the state will do with the next budget.  It also kind of assumes that after a year the initial results or other considerations  will warrant continuing or expanding initiatives.  Last it sort of commits the Board to this.  I say “sort of” because the there really isn’t a separate pot of money (or revenue authority) being created and come 2013-14 Budget the Board (in office at that time…three seats up in April 2013) can do whatever they want with a majority vote.

My feeling has always been that if there are things that there are good reason to believe will have a significant positive impact on a significant number of students,  and we have the revenue authority to fund these, we should, now, not later (I know the “significants” raise other questions).   This late in the game, finding good ways to spend $3.7oo,000 may be hard, but I think it is worth a try.  If ideas are lacking at this time, the levy could be approved and a process could be put in place to generate and vet initiatives for the Spring semester (or the Summer).   This of course could create lots of confusion and uncertainty, so maybe the best thing to do would be to pay off some loans early and/or fund maintenance/capital improvements this year with the authority.  Those would free up money in future budgets.

4K from DPI Grant, $624,186 (in 2013-14)

This is another set aside for the next budget.  Some related things here.  Similar comments as above, except that the “need” for the funded items in 2013-14 is more certain.

Technology – iPads, $1,580,000 and (under “Closing Gaps“) iPad Coach, $74,927 (and $77,924 2013-14 and what looks like an ongoing expenditure)

Side note — this looks like an assumption of the generic teacher FTE allocation cost increasing by $2997 or 4% next year).

I don’t like these recommendations.

Larry Cuban (who has written extensively and insightful on technology and education) has asked “”What is the pressing or important problem to which an iPad is the solution?”   I don’t think the answer from the administration justifies the expenditure:

Provide one to one use of iPads for teachers. Using iPads can make the work of teaching more effective, more efficient, and more rewarding. Our teachers will have one of the best tools to improve instruction, communicate with students and colleagues, develop or adopt digital learning tools and manage their classroom. If we recognize the teaching staff can benefit in these ways using this technology we make a bold statement to our staff and our community. (emphasis added)

I tend to be skeptical of both “bold statements” and handheld technologies in education.  A couple of teacher friends saw some good in this, the one that was more convincing to me was a gym teacher who saw a means to do attendance and assessments while still engaged with students.

That seems like a good use, but the question remains are there enough “pressing or important problems” to justify buying this many more iPads?  I was told the district has 1,500 now; all I could find was this purchase of 586 in January 2012 and the  Technology Acquisition Plan to purchase 900 in 2011 (this document is the fullest explanation of the vision for iPads in the district there is also an iPad page for the District, and the MMSD 2009-2013 Information (Library Media) & Technology Plan: Draft).

I’m not 100% sure how many the District has now or who has them.  At $500 per,  the recommended purchase would bring the total to at least  3,500 and maybe to 4,500.  There are about 2,700 teachers (including social workers, counselors, psychologists).   So while I have come to see a place for iPads, I don’t see a place for that many and think the allocation procedure described in plan to purchase 900 should work to get the iPads in the hands of those who will make good use.

Some other people have weighed in with me on the iPads, bringing up issues of support 9that go beyond coaching), choice of hardware (iPads are not the only or necessarily the best tablets, only the ones that make the boldest statement), obsolescence,  the top-down nature of this initiative, and pulling teachers away from active engagement during class time.  All good points that reinforce my inclination to urge a “not now” vote.

Interim Chief of Staff Funding, $100,000

The recommendation says the money is currently coming from Title I.  That isn’t what was said at the time it was approved.  I think Steve Hartley brings many good things to the position and is an asset, but I still don’t like the way this went down and the funding confusion only adds to this.  Back on the levy, fine.  I’ll add that as the Superintendent search and hire goes forward, in the light of this and the whole rereorganization of the Nerad reorganization, there should be an attempt at clarity of Doyle organization, expenses and positions, especially at the “Cabinet Level.”

Technology – Wireless $650,000

All reports are that the current wi fi is overloaded.  This seems like a good capital expenditure.

Closing Gaps

2.0 Teacher Leaders,  $149,854 (for 2013-14, $155,848)

Here’s the explanation:

The AGP recommended 1 Elementary Teacher Leader for on-going support of Elementary Instructional Resource Teachers (supporting the implementation of Mondo) and 1 Secondary Teacher Leader as a member of the School Support Team for high schools to increase fidelity of literacy across the content areas/disciplinary literacy and English. We are recommending the restoration of these positions as critical to the literacy focus for our students.

You want to give initiatives a good shot at working and I mostly support this.  My only problem is with the designation for Mondo.  Last year Mondo was piloted and the results weren’t good (and here) yet the Board voted to expand. Now it looks like additional funding and a two-year commitment is being asked for.   This looks like doubling down on doubling down.  There should be a do-or-die moment for Mondo as part of the next budget cycle.

Assistant Principal and Clerical,  $156,940 (and $163,218 in 2013-14).

More leftovers from Nerad’s penny wise and pound foolish reorganizations.  This looks OK.  One note, the explanation indicates hat 550 pupils is now the tipping point for adding Assistant Principals.  I believe it used to be 500.  When did this change?  Was the Board aware?  This is like class size, a creeping erosion of quality done quietly.   It also should be noted that these expenditures were never part of the AGP and should be assumed to be ongoing expenditures.

Math Teachers .93, $69,682 (and $72,469 for 2013-14)

This seems to be to support Sch0ols of Hope (btw — when are we going to see a real evaluation and cost out of Schools of Hope?).   The job description is strange, especially the last line:

.93 FTE Teacher Allocation: The HS math interventionist will work with math staff to identify appropriate students, provide PD and assistance to the tutor coordinator and tutors, analyze assessments via Renaissance Learning (we already are using this but not to its full potential) and communicate with math teachers. A big plus is that the Math Interventionist will be able to generate a roster of students in IC, this has been a huge barrier for the community partners.

Generating a roster hasn’t been possible and we need a highly skilled interventionist to do this?  Still, I support (but I do want that cost out and evaluation, if student and staff time are being spent with Schools of Hope and it isn’t helping much, that is important to know).  Assumed to be ongoing.

Security Assistant (3), $132,731 ($138,187 for 2013-14)

There were no additional allocations for Security Assistants in any of the iterations of the AGP, so how this ended up being listed as part of Closing Gaps is a mystery.  It is also indicative of something I’ve observed before with MMSD and (in the world at large) and that is treating social problems as policing problems.  In fact, if you read the explanation it comes out something like, “Our Principals are too busy doing educational work to deal with discipline issues, so let’s throw some paraprofessional security assistants into the mix.”  I’d be much happier if the recommendation was to throw more social workers and psychologists into the mix.  I fairness, there are some references to size of schools and mix of programs as a justification, but I’d like to know more in detail  about what the needs are and how the security assistants are expected to help.  Without that, I say spend some of the set asides and get the social workers.  Assume to be ongoing.

High School REAL Grant Coordinators (nothing in 2012-13, $155,848 in 20114).

These have been grant funded and the grants are going away.  I don’t object to the allocations at this time, but do think that this presents an opportunity to reassess the work and job descriptions before extending via other funding.  Assumed to be ongoing.

Secondary Unallocated 5.0, $374,635 (and $389,620 in 2013-14)

I strongly support this and perhaps an increase in Elementary Unallocated (the recommendation isn’t clear on the needs there, but lacking any good data from the district anecdotal reports of bigger class sizes in the last few years incline me to believe there may be a need) .  The cuts to these have limited the flexibility, created closed sections and larger classes.  They should not have been cut as deeply as they were and restoring is a good idea.  Assumed to be ongoing.

PBS Coaches, (nothing in 2012-13 and $498,714 in 2013-14)

Positive Behavior Support is a very good idea and a good program.  It should be funded for every school. Assumed to be ongoing.

Seed to Table $74,927 (and $77,924 in 2013-14)

This was presented at a Committee meeting recently.  It seems like a good program.  Assumed to be ongoing.

Final Thoughts

As I said, most of these opinions on the individual items are tentative.  There simply has not been time for anyone to reach firm, grounded conclusions.

The process is another matter.  I’m firm and grounded in my opinion that both the Board and the public should be given more time before decisions are requested.  I’m firm and grounded in my opinion that more options should be presented, including things suggested but not funded during the Preliminary Budget work.  Last, I’m firm and grounded in my opinion that leaving levy authority unused under these circumstances is a mistake and at very least ask that Board consider early loan payments. maintenance needs and capital improvements as possible one-time expenditures, rather than under-levying.

Thomas J. Mertz

The Replacements – “I Don’t Know” (click to listen or download).

The biggest item on the Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education committee agendas this week is  the “Expeditionary Learning Model at Toki Middle School and Timeline” before the Planning and Development Committee (Monday, October 15, 2012, 6:30 p.m. Doyle Administration Building, Room 103, there are Public Appearances on the agenda).  The proposal is to convert Toki Middle School from a district  school to a district instrumentality charter school.

This is the start of a long process of weighing the pros and cons of the proposal, with various decision points along the way.  If the proposal gets that far, the final decision by the Board would be in early 2014 and if the vote is for approval the conversion would happen in September of that year.

Having first seen the proposal only a couple of days ago, I have many questions, concerns and observations, but am nowhere near having decided whether to oppose this.  For the record, that’s exactly where I was at at this point with both Badger Rock (which I did not oppose) and Madison Prep (which I did).  Also for the record, I can’t see myself actively supporting any charter school proposal (it could happen, but it is doubtful).  Mostly I see charters as a distraction from improving the district schools that will for the conceivable future continue to serve the vast majority of students (see this recent post from Deb Meir for some related thoughts).

So on to the “questions, concerns and observations.”

A desire for Federal money appears to be driving the decision to seek a charter.

I’ve written about this before (worth rereading, really), but have never seen such a transparent example.  Some excerpts from the documents, first from the introduction by the district administration (the pdf doesn’t cut-and-paste as text, you can click on the images to enlarge):

Note the “do more with less,” and the “need to look beyond the District allocation process” and remember that in the recent past MMSD has not used the full levy authority available and that the administrative recommendations to not use the full levy authority have been accompanied by assurances that the quality of education was not suffering due to the lack of resources.  If that was true, then the statements here aren’t.

From the proposal itself:

More references to “budget constraints” past and anticipated in the future.  A distinction should probably be made here that there are two related parts to the proposal.  One is the proposal to continue and expand Expeditionary Learning at Toki (more on this below) and the other is to do this as a Charter School.  It is clear that the desire to do the Expeditionary Learning is strong among some, and that chartering is primarily a financially driven means to that end.  Here is what I wrote previously about these aspects of chartering:

The “we can’t do it without a Charter” attitude seems lazy.  First I’d like to know in some detail why it supposedly can’t be done without a Charter.  If that proves to be the case,  than in most instances wouldn’t the best policy be to figure out why and change things so that the benefits of innovation could be achieved through district programs?  It is sad that so many have given up on the reforms that would benefit all students in order to pursue those that will only touch very few (even the staunchest Charter advocates understand that for the foreseeable future the vast majority of American children will attend district schools).

I’ll offer one answer to the titular question: Money!  Unfortunately Federal policy-makers, foundations and many others are all acting on the unexamined assumption that innovation or even diversity of educational programing requires Charters.   I have a friend who is a Superintendent of a small district.  He is justly proud of an environmental Charter school he helped create.  We’ve never talked about it much, but a  couple of months ago he started describing how the only reason to have it be a Charter was the money.   This is pragmatic, but it only shifts the question to “Why is money available for Charters and not district-based creative programs?”

In the bigger picture, with Race to the Top (and the NCLB waivers), we have seen how chasing Federal money has led to less than stellar education policy-making.  Much less than stellar.

The budget numbers assume maximum Federal Grants.

I don’t know if this is realistic.  In order to qualify for the maximum, the Charter must have at least 50% free/reduced lunch enrollment.  That has been the case with Toki only one of the last 11 years (2010-11).  Beyond that, I’m not clear if the maximum grants have changed recently or if DPI awards grants below the maximums, but I do know that no grants given in 2012 were this large.

The dollar amounts cited in the proposal are over three times as large as those cited in a previous request.

On January 31, 2011 the Board was presented with a funding appeal (apparently directed at private donors) for Expeditionary Learning exploration and implementation at Toki, with a 4 year budget that totaled $310,000.  In the pending 2012-13 budget MMSD will provide $60,000 for planning.  It would be good to know why the numbers have changed.  The proposers are probably correct that MMSD can not fund $975,000 for their purposes, but another $250,000 ($310,000 minus $60,000) over 2-3 years is possible.

At this point there is no indication of what the ongoing costs will be.

That’s fine, that information is required at later points in the process, but being aware that there may be extra costs that continue after the Federal money goes away seems wise.

They appear to be proposing a school that is both a charter and and an attendance area school.

On page 13, the proposal says the Charter School students will be “reflective of the current neighborhood,” that “all students within the Toki attendance area will attend,” but also includes references to a lottery to meet numbers.   I would assume that some arrangements would be made for attendance area students who do not want to attend the Charter School, who would prefer to have the policies of their school set and implemented by an elected Board of Education instead of a self-selected Governing Board.

The research cited on Expeditionary Learning is less than convincing.

The proposal (in a very sloppy manner) cites three  studies and one meta analysis in support of Expeditionary Learning as a means of addressing persistent gaps in achievement.  I’m reproducing this entire section below in order to emphasize the centrality of achievement gaps  to the proposal and what the research claims are:

The research citations here seem to come straight from the Expeditionary Learning organization that would be in line to receive most of the $975,000 being requested, so it seems worth looking a bit closer (it is also worth noting that the three studies all appear to have been commissioned by that organization, although I am not 100% sure of that).

Another important caveats is that these are all based on standardized tests and those offer very limited insight into school quality.

Two of the studies  — “Expeditionary Learning: Analysis of impact on achievement gaps,” and “Impact of the Expeditionary Learning model on student academic performance in Rochester, NY” — were done by the Donahue Institute at UMass.  I can’t find the first online, but both were submitted to the What Works Clearinghouse and found not to meet their standards for review.  More on the Rochester study below.    The third study — “The relationship between Expeditionary Learning participation and academic growth” — was done by Mountain Measurement (analysts for hire) and includes few — if any — schools comparable to Toki 9more on this study below, also).  The meta analysis is from 2002, focused on whole school reform models (not achievement gaps  or Expeditionary Learning) and categorized Expeditionary Learning among the programs that were “Highly Promising…but did not have research bases that were as broad and generalizable as those of the models that met the highest standard.”

The Rochester study includes two Expeditionary Learning schools.  The Genesee Community Charter School, serving grades K-6, with a Free/Reduced Lunch rate of 17%, and 0% student mobility,  18% African American, 9% Hispanic, 2% ELL (can’t find Special Ed numbers).  For all these reasons, I don’t see it as comparable to Toki (grades 6-8, not a charter, 48.9% Free/Reduced, most recent mobility factor of 15.8, 28.1% African American, 13.8% Hispanic, 11.5% ELL, 16.4% Special Ed).  the other is the World of Inquiry School.  This is not a Charter, but it may be a magnet or choice school (there is an “Admissions” page on the website, but the click through ends up at a page that isn’t working).  World of Inquiry is a K-8 school, and appears to face similar challenges as Toki, some more pronounced (63% Free/Reduced, 76% African American, 9% Hispanic, 3% ELL).  I’ll be returning to World of Inquiry.

The first part of the report on the Rochester schools cited in support of Expeditionary Learning seems legitimate, as far as it goes (I’d like more details on some of the steps and choices). It is a “quasi-experimental design, involving matching students in Expeditionary Schools with students in other schools by various characteristics (poverty, race, ELL, gender, grade, special education status).  There is some manipulation around the score distributions, involving a regression analysis of the various characteristics, but the regression coefficients aren’t given.   The found statistically significant, positive effect sizes for reading across the board, and in math only for elementary school.  Here’s the table:

Statistically significant doesn’t always translate into significance for policy.

The next step in the attempts to address this by converting the effect sizes into “implied shifts” in proficiency percentages.   The shifts in some of the categories (the same ones as the above chart) are large — about a 30% gain in proficient students for middle school reading in 2007-9, for example and bigger gains with elementary (along with losses for middle school math — so large that they make me doubt the whole analysis. remember that it did not meet the Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse standards.   I’ll look closer later and consult with people who know more about quantitative work than I do (as I said at the top, this is going to be a long process), for now I want to keep this in mind and shift to looking directly how middle school students at World of Inquiry have been doing.

The short answer is, not very well, worse than Toki.  No doubt at some point in the future I’ll produce nice charts and graphs on this, but here’s the quick and dirty numbers, only one year (2010-11), one grade (8th), and only Reading, percentages proficient or better (Toki data from WINNS, World of Inquiry data from here):

Note that state proficiency measures vary greatly, according to the NAEP mapping project, Wisconsin’s are lower than New York’s.

In every category, World of Inquiry is doing worse than Toki, far worse.   This raises many questions about all the promises made in the proposal.

Even quicker and dirtier on the “The relationship between Expeditionary Learning participation and academic growth” report.  It is a similar quasi-experimental design, but includes many more schools and students.  Some are rural, some are suburban, some are charters, some are private, some are k-5, some include 6-8…only two seem to be comparable at all to Toki.  MAP testing is at the center of this study, for what that’s worth.  The results are all over the place (as they probably should be).  I haven’t had time to dig into it too much, here’s the summary table:

Again, much here that doesn’t support the confidence of the citations or tone of the proposal.

King Middle School  in Portland,ME seems to be one of the more comparable schools in this study, and one that many supporting the proposal seem to be pointing to as an example of success.  It isn’t exactly comparable, having similar poverty numbers, but much different racial and ethnic percentages (more on that at another time)  With that in mind, here is another chart comparing Toki and King (same years, grades…as above, King data from here):

Note that state proficiency measures vary greatly, according to the NAEP mapping project, Wisconsin’s are lower than Maine’s.

Students at King seem to be doing roughly the same as students at Toki, with African American students doing substantially worse.

These initial forays into the research and data find little or nothing to support the implementation of Expeditionary Learning (with a charter or otherwise) as the solution to the challenges and struggles Toki has been facing.  There is much more to be done before a firm conclusion either way is arrived at.  I hope that unlike with Madison Prep, the MMSD administration does their duty to thoroughly analyze the educational aspects of this proposal, so that the Board and the community have something more than my explorations to go by.

Closing

There are many other concerns and questions I have at this point, these include the present and future roles and thinking of those Toki staff members who don’t support the initiative, the way this all interacts with the recently approved Urban League program, how people at Toki came to champion Expeditionary Learning (and how much independent research have they done or looked at), why the “Equity” section of the administrative portion is blank …many, many questions and concerns.  Plenty of time to air them; this is a long process.

I want to close by saying that I admire those behind this proposal for working to improve their school, for not accepting the frustrations of seeing students struggle and fail, for taking the initiative to find a way to try to make things better.   I may not end up agreeing that the way they have chosen is a good way, a way worth trying, but that doesn’t change my admiration.

Thomas J. Mertz

Professor Longhair, “Bald Head” (click to listen or download).

Educational “accountability” is in the news and on the agenda again this week.  It seems it is always in the news and on the agenda these days.  I have many problems with most conceptions of educational “accountability,” especially those that are based largely on standardized tests (a visit to the National Center for Fair  and Open Testing is in order if you don’t agree, or even if you do) and are proudly dubbed “data driven,” (the link takes you to old AMPS posts, Esther Quintero has an important post up on the topic this week at the Shanker Blog: “The Data-Driven Education Movement,” read it).  I’m not going to take on the big concepts here and now, but instead say a few things about the new Wisconsin Report Cards and offer some thoughts about imposing some accountability on those concocting and implementing educational “Accountability” systems, about cutting the barbers’ hair.

The new Wisconsin Report Cards are the product of the “School and District Accountability Design Team” led by Governor Scott Walker, State Superintendent Tony Evers, Senator Luther Olsen, and Rep. Steve Kestell and featuring a decided over-representation of privatizers and deformers (those friends of education at Wisconsin Manufactures and Commerce had a seat), and an under-representation of educators (one teacher, no union reps).  The final version is a centerpiece of  Wisconsin’s successful effort to garner a waiver of  NCLB strictures from Arne Duncan.

A school rating system like this should do three things.  First it should with some accuracy and transparency  rate school quality.  Second, it should honestly and effectively communicate what the rating means and doesn’t mean to policy-makers, educators, parents, and citizens.  Last — and assuming that the ratings are accurate — it should direct appropriate resources to those schools that need improvement.  The Wisconsin system does none of these well.   In fact, because of the complexities of assessing school quality, I don’t think it is possible to do all of these well and know that it is very difficult to do any of them well.  The whole enterprise is in many ways a fool’s errand.

 A recent must-read post by Gene V. Glass for the Washington Post captures some, but not all, of the problems (I’ve touched on the use of NAEP cut scores previously, will be saying more about some other things below and will be writing more on the waiver, the abuse of NAEP cut scores, “accountability,” and “educator effectiveness” issues in the future;  as I was writing this another fine critique came my way, this one from Steve Strieker, called “Another Distractor: School Report Cards,” it is a must read also).

In the introduction to Glass’s piece Valerie Strauss calls the Report Cards “another cockamamie way to grade schools for “accountability” purposes.”  Glass refers to the Report Cards as  “a dog’s breakfast of numbers,” and writes:

The report card for Wisconsin K-12 schools currently making the rounds is a particularly opaque attempt to grade the quality of education that Wisconsin’s children are receiving at the hands of their teachers and administrators. It is as though the Department of Public Instruction has decided to weigh cattle by placing them on a scale to get their weight in pounds then combining that with the wealth of the farmer who raised them, the number of acres of the farm, and the make of car the farmer drives.

The Report Cards combine multiple and often complicated measures in complicated ways.  It takes 62 pages to explain how it is all done.  If in order to understand the choices made you want to dig deeper into the nature of standardized test construction (hint, they are designed to sort students, not measure skills, knowledge or ability), or the controversies over graduation rate calculations, or the limitations of the Student Growth Percentiles ( the link takes you to Bruce Baker posts on SGP and related things) used in the “growth” calculations, or any of the other concepts and tools employed , you are probably looking at  at least the equivalent of a graduate school seminar’s worth of work.   The system fails the transparency test.

All this information is interesting, but what it means for any particular school or district is far from clear, even after the graduate seminar and that’s how it should be, that’s reality…all the test score data, and graduation rate data, and attendance data in the world isn’t going give you a full and true picture of schools and districts.  That’s the first way it fails the accuracy test, a little more below.

With “accountability”  the order of the day, the “accountability” mavens know that people want something easily swallowed (if not digested), so the Wisconsin team has given each school a score, based on those calculations that take 62 pages to introduce.   That score is what everyone looks at, everyone remembers and everyone seems to think has some profound meaning.  What you really have is a Rube Goldberg machine of black boxes inside black boxes that spits out a number.  That number hides all the questionable choices in the measures and manipulations, as well as all unmeasured and unmeasurable things that contribute to or detract from school quality.  Some in Wisconsin were proud that we didn’t assign letter grades like Florida has, but the number is just as bad, or even worse because superficially something like 66.7% seems to have more scientific accuracy., an a B-.  It doesn’t.   Superintendent Tony Evers and others have said many of the appropriate things about over-interpreting the scores given schools, but they put the score there and because of the inclusion of the score, the system fails the communication test.

This failure reminds me of the misuse of NAEP cut scores that is central to the accountability system, used for sorting individual students and in the growth scores sores that only recognize movement between NAEP based levels, not within them.  This is what the National Academy of Sciences publication, “Grading the Nation’s Report Card: Evaluating NAEP and Transforming the Assessment of Educational Progress,” says about these cut score in chapter 5, “Setting Reasonable and Useful Performance Standards (I’ve quoted this before here, “The news from Lake Gonetowoe“):

Although standards-based reporting offers much of potential value, there are also possible negative consequences as well. The public may be misled if they infer a different meaning from the achievement-level descriptions than is intended.  (For example, for performance at the advanced level, the public and policy makers could infer a meaning based on other uses of the label “advanced,” such as advanced placement, that implies a different standard. That is, reporting that 10 percent of grade 12 students are performing at an “advanced” level on NAEP does not bear any relation to the percentage of students performing successfully in advanced placement courses, although we have noted instances in which this inference has been drawn.) In addition, the public may misread the degree of consensus that actually exists about the performance standards and thus have undue confidence in the meaning of the results. Similarly, audiences for NAEP reports may not understand the judgmental basis underlying the standards. All of these false impressions could lead the public and policy makers to erroneous conclusions about the status and progress of education in this country. (Emphasis added)

The NAE-based cuts scores (WKCE scores “mapped” to NAEP are also being used with the results of individual students.  Here’s what the people at NAEP say about that:

Does this mapping method allow us to link student scores received on state test to the NAEP scale? If not, why not?

No, student scores cannot be linked to the NAEP scale because the NAEP does not generate reliable scores at the individual student level, only average scores for groups of students (e.g. males, females).

I would hope that at least the DPI staff working on the “Accountability” system knew this.   If they didn’t, that’s a problem; if they did and went ahead anyway, that’s a bigger problem.

In terms of accuracy, the Report Cards do one thing well, they sort schools by their relative poverty.  Here is what Gene V. Glass wrote on this:

What emerges from this dog’s breakfast of numbers? A measure of the wealth of the community in which the school is located. The correlation between the OAI and the “% Economically Disadvantaged” in the school is nearly -.70. That means that the poorer the children in the school, the lower is the school’s number on the Overall Accountability Index; and the relationship is close. In fact, a correlation of .70 is even tighter than the relationship of adults’ height to their weight, and both measure a person’s size. So what the DPI has created is a handy measure of a community’s wealth (SES, Socio-Economic Status) without ever having to ask anyone their income.

Steve Strieker observes that this isn’t news to many of us:

DPI’s own school report card data proves what Social Context Reformers have been trying to highlight for years: Poverty is the eight ball for public education.

Even an amateur’s analysis of the state’s school report card data is telling.

• A supermajority of Wisconsin’s public schools with over 70% economically disadvantaged students were graded “Failed to Meet Expectations.”
• Almost all below-standard schools had at least 45% economically disadvantaged students.
• In contrast, almost all graded schools with less than 10% economically disadvantaged students were considered by DPI’s measurement to surpassed expectations.

Social Context Reformers must not be shouted down by the “no excuses” reformers who will surely shame Wisconsin schools graded below expectation by showcasing the few schools with high poverty rates and high-test scores.

The Zombies – “Tell Her No” (click to listen or download)

The WKCE testing and related assessments are scheduled for next week in the Madison Metropolitan School District schools (full schedule of MMSD assessments, here), but your child doesn’t have to be part of it.  You can opt out.  Families with students in grades 4,8, & 10 have a state statutory right to opt out of the WKCE; I have been told that it is district practice to allow families to opt out of any and all other, discretionary, tests.  We opted out this year.  In order to opt out, you must contact your school’s Principal (and do it ASAP, (contact info here).

The WKCE does your child no good.  Just about everyone agrees that even in comparison to other standardized tests, it is not a good assessment.  Because results are received so late in the year, it isn’t of much use to target student weaknesses or guide instruction.  There are no benefits for students.

There are also no benefits for schools and the district, and some potential for harm.  The WKCE is central to the new Wisconsin “Accountability” system (discussed here) and will be part of the new “Educator Effectiveness” system, being implemented.  Both of these are built on the — likely false (see: “Snookered by Bill Gates and the U. S. Department of Education“) — promise of  “SMARTER Balanced Assessments,” but because the Report Cards include a “growth measure” and the educator evaluations include a Value Added component, the WKCE will be part of the calculations for at least two more years (this will be accomplished by pretending that the WKCE is essentially the same as the new test, which in fact it likely is, in that it will no doubt measure scocio-economic status better than it measures anything else).

Way back in 2007, a DPI staffer wrote to a Monona Grove School Board Member that:

A large-scale, summative assessment such as the WKCE is not designed to provide diagnostic information about individual students. Those assessments are best done at the local level, where immediate results can be obtained. Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum (emphasis added).

But in the mania to compare and rate and evaluate that is the new Status Quo, this is almost exactly how the WKCE is being used.  Not the WKCE alone, but in the Report Cards the WKCE dominates and in the Educator Evaluation the WKCE test scores may be decisive (test scores only account for a small part of the evaluations, but if the other portions show little variance, the test score portion will be determinative).  No good can come from this and the mis-impressions created  –  about districts, schools, educators and students  –  are harmful, if only because they create confusion and make it more difficult to have productive policy deliberations.

I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that opting out can have consequences for schools and districts.  The new Wisconsin system takes away points based on low participation, so there will be an impact there.  If your child is likely to score in the higher ranges, their absence will lower the scores used to produce the “accountability” measures.   If the school consequently falls into one of the two lower tiers,  extended day programs and school improvement plans are required.  If it is in the lowest tier, then the plans must include out-sourcing to an approved “turnaround” vendor.  As I noted before, this is privatization of public services and turnaround specialists do not have records of success that inspire confidence.  A school or district that fails to “turnaround” is subject to further intervention by the State Superintendent.  A school or  that does not cooperate with these directives “will close.”

Although school administrators have criticized the system,  I doubt districts will choose the noncooperation option.  Too bad, that would be a fight that would shine a bright light on the this conception of “accountability.”

Opting out is a smaller version of noncooperation that is available to every family.  You don’t have to be part of the madness.

It can also become something larger. Without all of childrens’ test scores, the machine grinds to a halt.  There is a national Opt Out movement.    Here are some places to find out more (including opt out rights and procedures in other states and districts):

The “Opt Out” page from the National Center for Fair and Open Testing

The Opt Out of Standardized Tests Site

United Opt Out National

Parents & Kids Against Standardized Testing (Facebook)

OPT OUT OF THE STATE TEST: The National Movement (Facebook)

In closing, I want to point to an alternative to the over-use and abuse of standardized testing.  Thee are many;  this one — New York Performance Standards Consortium’s  performance-based assessments — was featured in a Washington Post post, “An alternative to standardized testing for student assessment,” by Monty Niel today.  Check it out.  We can do better.

Thomas J. Mertz

The Isotopes – “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” (click to listen or download)

A recent post  –  Who cuts the barber’s hair? or Whither “accountability”?  — centered on some of the failings of the new Wisconsin “Accountability” system designed by team led by  Scott Walker and Tony Evers and adopted in order to gain an NCLB waiver from Arne Duncan and what we as citizens can do to hold them accountable for the bad choices they have made.  With the second iteration of the “Accountability Requirements for Achievement Gap Plan“(online version ahs been updated on pages 58-9 ,see here) on the agenda of the Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education Student Achievement and Performance Monitoring Committee this Monday (11/5, 5:30 PM, rm 103, Doyle Blg) I thought it would be a good idea to do something similar on the “Accountability” work being done by MMSD.  This time via an extended and at times strained baseball metaphor.

Who’s at bat?

Or who should be held accountable for the accountability design work being done by MMSD? These aren’t easy questions.  Accountability is confusing, maybe not as confusing as the Abbott and Costello routine, but confusing (who should or should not be held accountable for the results of accountability measures is even more confusing….add teachers, families, the economy, inequality, …. to the list below).   The chain of accountability goes from the voters who elect Board Members, to the Superintendent who the Board hires, fires and evaluates, to the administrators the Superintendent hires (with the consent of the Board, but for better or worse this has been a rubber stamp consent), supervises and evaluates.  It also loops back to the Board, because they are responsible for making sure administrators have the resources they need to do good work, but this chain continues back to the Superintendent and the administrators who prepare draft budgets and should communicate their needs and capacities to the Board.  The Superintendent is the bottleneck in this chain each time it loops around because the the MMSD Board has almost entirely limited their action in evaluation, hiring and firing to the Superintendent.  Right now MMSD has an Interim Superintendent, so evaluation, hiring and firing  is moot and the key link in the chain is broken.  Like I said, confused.

What is clear is that the only lever of accountability community members hold is their vote in school elections.  Three seats are up in April (Board President James Howard has announced his intent to run for re-election; Maya Cole and Beth Moss have not publicly stated their plans).

The impetus for creating the “Accountability Requirements” was a budget amendment from Board Member Mary Burke.  I believe it passed unanimously.   For the purposes here, I’m saying “The Administration” is at bat and the Board of Education is the manager sending signals from the dugout.  I didn’t count, but there are at least a half dozen administrator names listed on the “Accountability Requirements for Achievement Gap Plan,” if you want to get more personal with who should be accountable, feel free.

Swinging for the Fence or “Small Ball”?

The public loves power hitters; the long ball is a crowd pleaser.   Baseball insiders and aficionados understand that swinging for the fence increases the likelihood of striking out and that often the situation calls for “small ball,” like trying to draw a walk, attempting a sacrifice bunt, hitting behind the runner, or lining a single in the gap. the key to small ball is that you do many little things and they combine to produce runs.

With educational “accountability” I would argue that setting “goals” (any goals at all, but especially unrealistic ones like the NCLB 100% proficiency, or the “goals” listed in the draft MMSD”Accountability Requirements,” more on the latter below) is the equivalent of swinging for the fence.  This is part of the “data driven” mentality.  I think the situation calls for an educational version of small ball, something not as crowd-pleasing, demanding a higher level of engagement by all involved, and more likely to produce a productive unerstanding.  What I have in mind is monitoring multiple measures, or “data guided” decision making.

Although the reporting has not been good, MMSD tried something like this with the Strategic Plan “Core Performance Measures.”  Unfortunately there seemed to be collective agreement among Board Members and administrators at a recent meeting that these measures would be set aside in favor of the “Accountability Requirements” now under consideration and by implication that all the Strategic Plan work would be left to gather dust.  There were targets associated with “Core Measures”  but the main idea was that the Board and the Administration pay regular attention to multiple measures and their movement, individually and collectively.   This is far different than stating as a goal that 90% of students will score in the proficient range by year 3.  The first thing  policy makers need to know is whether things are getting better or worse and at what pace.  The use of standardized test score goals  (and goals for many other measures)  in “accountability” doesn’t help with that and creates difficulties.

What is the “accountable” action if some measures go up and some go down?  What if demographics or the tests themselves change along the way?  And then there are the uncomfortable questions of who will be held accountable and how  if none of the goals are met. We should have learned from NCLB that this approach is not what the situation calls for, but apparently MMSD administrators did not.

At a previous meeting on the   “Accountability Requirements” Board Member Ed Hughes moved closer to the small ball position by suggesting that instead of absolute goals, the goals be presented in terms of change or growth.  Better, but the problems identified remain.    The whole goal oriented approach could be called “Strike One,” but I’m not going to do that.

Strike One

The first draft of the “Accountability Requirements“  was presented to the Student Achievement and Performance Monitoring Committee on September 30th and appeared essentially unchanged on the full Board October 29th agenda as part of a Committee Report.  In baseball parlance it was a unbalanced, badly mistimed swing for the fences at a ball well outside the strike zone.  It isn’t pretty.  Strike one.

Some managers would have been tempted to pull the batter and send up a pinch hitter, but instead Board Members  sent some signals from the dugout, pointing out some of the mistakes and offering tips for improvement.

Mary Burke noted that the left hand and the right hand didn’t appear to be coordinating.  To be more specific, she pointed out that on page 15 (of the pdf) there is a chart with the stated goal “95% of all 11th graders will take the ACT in 2012-13,”  but chart itself  shows  annual incremental increases, culminating at 95% for all groups in 2016-17.   It was long ago decided that all students would take the ACT in 2012-13, whoever prepared the left part of the chart knew this, but whoever did the increments on the right did not (and apparently didn’t read the left part).  Here it is:

Other problems with the swing are more subtle.  There is also another section where ACT goals are expressed in terms average scale scores.  This appears to be another case of lack of coordination between the two hands.  As discussed below, the sections related to students reaching the ACT “College Readiness” benchmarks are left mostly blank in recognition of the fact that increased participation due to the test-taking mandate will almost certainly lower the starting point.  The people doing the average scale score section don’t seem to have understood that.   Their chart shows steady and unrealistic growth (except a 0.1 drop for white students in the final year), with all reaching 24 after five years.  Here it is:

This is absurd.   At Hersey High School in Arlington Heights IL, a much less diverse school with much lower poverty  than MMSD (14% low income) that since 2001 has become the Mecca for those who worship at the alter of the ACT/EXPLORE/PLANN system of placing ACT prep at the center of school activities, no doubt starting above the MMSD full participation benchmark, it took six years to get the composite average  to 24.0 (the current is 25.2).  Closer to home, the temple for ACT worshipers is (much less diverse, at 15.8% Free/Reduced Lunch, much less impoverished) Monona Grove.   They joined the ACT religion in 2008-9.  That year their ACT composite was 21.7; it is now 22.3.  Nationally, only 26% of (mostly self-selected) test-takers achieve a 24 composite.  Absurd and incompetent.

You may think this is nitpicking, but these are highly paid professionals who didn’t do their homework to arrive at realistic goals and have made the kind of stupid errors that would cost students serious points on the standardized tests that these same highly paid professionals are employing in the name of “accountability.”  Shouldn’t they be accountable?

Despite some coaching from the Board that resulted in fixing the above issues, problems related problems remain the second version.  Those are covered in the “Strike Two” section.

Strike Two

The second swing  — the version of the ”Accountability Requirements for Achievement Gap Plan” on the 11/5/12 agenda –  is much expanded (61 pages in comparison to 31), but not much improved.  Another wild, unbalanced and mistimed lunge at an almost unhittable pitch.  Like the first (and so many of the things produced by MMSD administration) much space is devoted to documenting that staff are very busy (of course repeatedly documenting this helps keep people busy) and very little to what is going on with students (I’m not sure why this is “accountability’).  Like the first, the actual “accountability” focus is on “goals.” Like the first, many of these goals (and many of the benchmark starting points) are left blank or labeled “TBD.” Like the first, where there are numbers attached to the goals, they are wildly unrealistic.

As the play-by-play announcer, I’m going to limit detailing how this swing misses to two places where numbers are attached to standardized test based goals.  The first involves the ACT; the second the state achievement tests (now WKCE, soon to be  “SMARTER Balanced Assessments”).

As explained above,  I  don’t like “goals” in standardized test based “accountability systems” (I’m not very fond of standardized test based “accountability systems” in general, but no room for all that here), but if you are going to have goals, they should be realistic, they should be based on in-depth knowledge of the tests, the performance of comparable students on these tests, and the improvements achieved elsewhere using similar programs.  As one Board Member pointed out at a recent meeting, this is exactly the kind of expertise that the Board expects from their highly paid professional administrators.  They ain’t getting what they paid for (in baseball terms, we are approaching  Alex Rodriguez in the last post-season).

The error Mary Burke pointed out with ACT participation has been corrected..  At the previous meeting there was a discussion of how expanded ACT participation will yield new baseline starting scores, and this was (in the first version) and is (in the second version) reflected by leaving blank most those portions  covering percents of students scoring at or above the college ready benchmarks set by the ACT.  For the same reasons,  the ACT “Average Composite Score” section discussed above is now blank.  All this is good,  but in the left hand column of the benchmark charts in both versions ,for each subject area there is a 40% goal (page 32).  I’m going to leave aside important criticisms of the ACT Benchmarks, to address why the 40% goal is problematic.   Nationally last year, only 25% of the mostly self-selected test-takers met the benchmark in all four subjects.  The percents varied greatly, from 67% in English to 31% in science.   At Hersey High (with their test friendly demographics and over ten years of emphasizing the ACT) only 39.2% of test-takers made all four benchmarks.   The goals for MMSD should reflect this reality, (and similar evidence on subgroups;i it should be noted that you can reach the 40% goal in each individual subject and still not have 40% meeting all four benchmarks, but my point is that the data we have shows that 40% is easier or harder for different subjects , and that 40% in any may be  out of reach in some subjects).

There are similar, but more pronounced and complex problems with the section that sets goals of 90% “proficiency” on state tests in Mathematics and Literacy at the end of five years (page 17).  Here is the chart for literacy (sorry for the bad reproduction):

Although the WKCE is referred to, the numbers in the far right column reflect the very problematic “WKCE as mapped to NAEP cut scores” (see “The news from Lake Gonetowoe” for some of the problems with these cut scores) and the WKCE is on the way out to be replaced by “SMARTER Balanced Assessments,”   Some confusion here that I’m going to avoid by simply saying “state tests.”  Since the NAEP derived cut scores are the order of the day, I guess MMSD has to use them, but they have a choice about which levels to concentrate on and “Proficient” is the wrong level.

My preference would be to do the multiple measures, small ball thing and track movement among scale scores, or failing that movement among the various cut score defined levels (which is what the “Growth”  calculation in the new Report Cards does).    If you are only going to use one level and are going to set goals, “Basic” is the level you want.  It is where you will see the most movement and get the most useful information.

Eventually I hope to do a few more posts about the meaning of NAEP cut score levels and how they compare to the old WKCE levels and many related things.   For now I’m going just repost my new favorite quote from National Academy of Sciences publication, “Grading the Nation’s Report Card: Evaluating NAEP and Transforming the Assessment of Educational Progress,”

and add the general NAEP level descriptions (there are more detailed ones for the grades NAEP tests, 4, 8, and 12).  Here is the quote (again):

Although standards-based reporting offers much of potential value, there are also possible negative consequences as well. The public may be misled if they infer a different meaning from the achievement-level descriptions than is intended.  (For example, for performance at the advanced level, the public and policy makers could infer a meaning based on other uses of the label “advanced,” such as advanced placement, that implies a different standard. That is, reporting that 10 percent of grade 12 students are performing at an “advanced” level on NAEP does not bear any relation to the percentage of students performing successfully in advanced placement courses, although we have noted instances in which this inference has been drawn.) In addition, the public may misread the degree of consensus that actually exists about the performance standards and thus have undue confidence in the meaning of the results. Similarly, audiences for NAEP reports may not understand the judgmental basis underlying the standards. All of these false impressions could lead the public and policy makers to erroneous conclusions about the status and progress of education in this country. (Emphasis added)

Here are the descriptions:

I think that at this time the “Achievement Gaps” work in MMSD should concentrate on getting students to the “Basic” level, as defined by NAEP.

This belief is reinforced by national data on student NAEP performance.  This first chart shows the 8th grade NAEP level distribution for all students (NAEP tests a sample of students and adjusts reporting to reflect the entire population, charts from here):

In 2011 42% were in the “Basic” level.  This is where the median and mean are.  If we are most concerned with the students who aren’t reading and can’t do simple math, that means moving them from “Below Basic” to “Basic.”  I have no problem with also monitoring “Proficient” and “Advanced,” but the heart of this is in the basic category.

Two more graphs to show a little more of this and transition to the goals being set.  This one shows the distribution of scores for those students not eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch:

The next is for Free Lunch students (NAEP reporting here does not combine Free and Reduced):

I’m not going to deny that the “proficiency” gap between these two groups of 28 points isn’t worthy of attention, but I will argue that the gap in “Basic” or above of 26 points and the gap of 22% in those reaching “Basic” are more important and more likely to be narrowed by the programs in in the Achievement Gaps Plan.  This is where the action should be and what we should be watching (if we are only going to watch one level).

If it isn’t already obvious from these charts, the 90% “Proficiency” in five years set as a goal in versions  1 and 2 is a pipe dream, like the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series.  No competent education professional familiar with NAEP cut scores and performance levels and MMSD would put this before the Board of Education for consideration, yet some combination of MMSD administrators signed off on it, twice.  Strike two.

The Next Pitch

I wanted to get this finished and posted before the 11/5 meeting, but I didn’t.  I also wanted to attend the meeting, but it is/was my son’s birthday.  I hope that some of these issues and some others were raised at the meeting (I’ll watch the video and find out).

There are many other issues, like the fact that the AVID section doesn’t appear to recognize that if the other “goals” are reached, the comparison group will be an upwardly moving target; that “Stakeholders” is most often defined as district staff and not students, parents or community members; that the Cultural Responsiveness work has no academic results attached to it; that in Madison — a Union Town — the Career Academy section has no role for organized labor in planning or implementation, but business interests have the best seats at the table (and some will be paid for being there, this is what you expect from Scott Walker, not MMSD);  and to repeat what was said above that much of this is documenting staff being busy and in many key places where measurement of one sort or another is called for the lines are blank or say ‘TBD.”   On this last (with the exception of the ACT where the mandated participation warrants holding off) , the idea of attaching a requirement to have an accountability plan was to have a plan, not a promise to come up with one at some future date.  I could go on (and on), but I think I’ve made the point that the quality of  thought and work that has gone into this by the administration thus far has been lacking in many areas.

It looks like another draft (the third pitch)  will be coming back to the Board on November 26th.   I very much hope that draft is much better than the work we have seen to this point.  I hope it isn’t strike three.  The administrators have demonstrated that they can make corrections when problems are pointed out to them (like the inecusable errors with ACT participation in the first draft), when they get good coaching from the Board.  That is a good thing, but expectations should be higher.  It isn’t the Board’s job to know the distribution of NAEP scores, and it certainly isn’t their job to educate the administration on this (it goes without saying that there is something very wrong when it falls to me — an interested community member  –  to point out their apparent ignorance in the very areas they are being paid to be experts in).   There needs to be some accountability here,  the Board and the community have a right to expect better work.  If we aren’t getting it from those now responsible, we need to find people who can provide it.   The Board is not going to make good decisions without good information. The improvements our students and community need and deserve are not going to happen without competent people at the top.  There needs to be some accountability.  The Board needs to hold the administration accountable , and we need to hold the Board accountable for doing that.

Three Board seats on the ballot in April 2013.  Could be a whole new ballgame.

Thomas J. Mertz

Digna Lewis, 2004. Click through here for more of this collection:

Chis Stamey and Yo la Tengo, “Vote” (click to listen or download)

Check the Wisconsin League of Woman Voters for all your voting information, including your rights, your polling place, the candidate answers, referendum information, and same day registration.

VOTE TO BE HEARD!

Thomas J. Mertz

Sly & the Family Stone, ” Everyday People” (click to listen or download).

How one person’s abilities compare in quantity with those of another is none of the teacher’s business. It is irrelevant to his work. What is required is that every individual shall have opportunities to employ his own powers in activities that have meaning.

John Dewey

Democracy and Education, 1916

The current “accountability” madness is almost all based on misusing metrics of questionable value to make comparisons among students, among teachers, among schools, among districts, among nations (see here and here for two recent manifestations).  If we are going to be “holding people accountable,” I’d prefer the metric be whether they are providing all students with the “opportunities to employ his [or her] own powers in activities that have meaning.”

Related:  National Opportunity to Learn Campaign and Opportunity to Learn Wisconsin.

Thomas J. Mertz

Eyeball sculpture by artist Tony Tasset from the Eye Si(gh)t blog.

Mavis Staples, “Eyes On The Prize” (click to listen or download).

Update: Still haven’t seen the details, but according to the Press Release, the answer to question number three is a partial yes, with calls for “full funding” of SAGE (it isn’t really “full funding,” see here on the complexities of SAGE funding), increased sparsity aid, increased Bilingual/BiCultural aid in the second year, increased special education aid in the second year, new grant programs around STEM and vocational education, “educator effectiveness, ” and more).  No poverty aid.  For overall state funding  the combined  “categorical and general school aid”  Evers calls for would be  “a 2.4 percent increase in the first year of the budget, the same as the Consumer Price Index, and 5.5 percent in 2014-15.”  I don’t see anything on Revenue Limits.  More later.

Update #2: From a second Press Release, on Revenue Limits: “The plan restores revenue limit authority to all districts. It calls for an increase in the per pupil revenue limit to $225 per student in the first year of the budget and $230 per student in 2014-15.” More details on Fair Funding and other matters in this Press Release also.  A district by district tally may be found here.

Wisconsin State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers will reveal the remainder of his 2013-15 budget proposal on Monday (the first portion was released in September, but it lacks full school finance information;  WisconsinEye will be covering the event).  Evers has also announced he is seeking re-election next April (campaign website here; see here for thoughts on elections and holding Evers and others accountable for their actions and inaction).

We know that Evers budget will be based on the Fair Funding For Our Future framework.  We know that in outsourcing how our state defines what it means to be educated to  American College Testing (the ACT) it will call for an increase in spending of time and money on standardized testing and the processing of standardized test based data (for a horror story outsourcing testing related things in Florida, see “The outsourcing of almost everything in state departments of education,” from Sherman Dorn.  We know that it will in most ways be better than what Governor Scott Walker proposes, especially if the rumors that the Walker proposal will include Tim Sullivan’s “Performance Based Funding” are true ( by design this would direct resources away from those students and schools that are struggling and toward those that are thriving, an incredibly bad idea and the essence of the Republican philosophy).  But there are some essential things we don’t know.  Here are three things I’ll be keeping an eye on.

1. How much of an increase in State Aid will Evers call for?

Wisconsin school have endured huge cuts in state aid in both the last budgets.  Depending on how you count the combined dollar total is close to $2 Billion.  According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,  the per pupil cuts in Wisconsin have been the fourth largest in the nation.  Here is their chart:

The vast majority of districts have experienced cuts in state aid (the most recent figures from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, here).  How much of this lost ground will Evers try to make up?

2. What increases in Revenue Limits will Evers call for?

The FitzWalker gang essentially froze cut Revenue limits for 2011-12 and provided a $50/student increase for most districts for 2012-13.  Revenue Limits matter.  Higher Revenue Limits give local district the power to make up for lost state aid and more.  To what extent will the DPI budget restore this local control?  As the bar in expected achievement keeps getting raised, through a combination of state and local resources, we need to give the schools the resources they need to meet their challenges.

3. Will the DPI budget direct resources to those students and schools with higher needs?

In particular, will it call for increases in aid for English Language Learners,  for Special Education, for SAGE reimbursements, for Sparsity (see this column for Kathleen Vinehout on school budgets in general and sparsity in particular)?  Will it direct real aid to those schools identified as needing improvement by the new “Accountability” system (see here for a discussion of that system, including this issue).

One thing the new State Report Cards confirmed is that poverty is a great predictor of which students and schools are struggling.  Will the Evers budget address this in a real way by providing additional resources instead of the property tax cuts to based on student poverty that have been in every other iteration of the Fair Funding plan?  Property tax cuts don’t help students; students need help.  For more on school funding “fairness,” see this report from the Eduction Law Center (Wisconsin doesn’t rank very well).

Last Thoughts.

Those are the big three.  I’ll also be looking at the size of the guaranteed state funding per pupil (which in essence replaces the levy credits in Fair Funding), what kind of “hold harmless” provisions Evers includes, and like all of us I’ll be looking at the impact of the package on my school district (along with a variety of other districts I’ve been informally tracking for years).

This is step one; the next steps involve key players like WEAC and WMC, advocates in general, the Governor and the Legislature.  Much of what will happen with these is predictable.  I can say with great confidence that I will consider whatever Tony Evers proposes to be better than what comes out of the Republican controlled budget process.

One thing I don’t know is how advocates and Democratic Legislators will react.   If past actions and the recent press release from Senator Chris Larson  are indications, they will follow Tony Evers lead and take up Fair Funding as their own.  Depending on the answers to the questions offered here, I hope that people who care about our students, inside and outside the Legislature, keep an open mind to advocating for something better than Fair Funding, something that does make up the ground lost over four years of cuts, something that does give real local control, and most of all something that does a better job directing resources to the schools and students who most need the opportunities of quality public education.  Penny for Kids would be a start, perhaps in conjunction with Fair Funding.

It’s Madison Time Part 1 & 2 Ray Bryant Combo

In December I announced my candidacy for the Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education, Seat #5 (announcement below).   There will be a primary election February 19, 2013 and the general is April 2, 2013.  I hope I have earned  the support of the readers of this blog.  You can find out more about my campaign, endorse, volunteer and donate at MertzforMadison.com.  I am not sure if I will be doing any blogging during the campaign, but if I do things directly related to the Madison schools will be posted at MertzforMadison.com, and anything posted here at AMPS will be more about state and national matters.

Prepared, Progressive, Passionate

I am excited to announce my candidacy for the Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education, Seat #5.

Our public schools are the backbone of our community, the wellspring of our democracy, and the best means we have of providing a better future to all our children. As a parent, scholar, advocate, activist and organizer, I have worked with parents, professors, students, school boards, administrators, legislators, educators, and their unions to better understand and strengthen public schools. I don’t think there has ever been a time when the challenges to our schools have been greater. I want to help Madison meet these challenges by serving on the Board of Education.

I have stood against the pressures of privatization, worked against the expansion and misuse of standardized testing, and have fought for adequate and equitable funding based on the idea that all of our students deserve broad and rich opportunities.

These struggles will continue and expand. As Madison prepares to welcome a new Superintendent, I see opportunities to do more than react. Madison is a community and district where we have the means and the will to show that diverse public education can live up to its promises. To do this we must honestly assess those failings illustrated by the achievement gaps, but also listen to voices of our classrooms and community to understand what is working and build from our strengths.

None of this will be quick and none of this will be easy. I ask for your help and support. Visit www.mertzformadison.com to endorse, donate, or volunteer; and “like” the TJ Mertz, Madison School Board, Seat #5 Facebook page to keep updated.

Thomas J. Mertz

Solomon Burke — “Now Is The Time” (click to listen or download)

See also “Quotes of the  — Martin Luther King Jr. — Day.”

Thomas J. Mertz

Funkadelic — “No Compute” (click to listen or download).

The Firestones — “Buy Now, Pay Later” (click to listen or download)

Update 7:45 PM, 6/8/15: There was little or no support for this proposal expressed by Board Members and it is “off the table.”

 On the MMSD Board Operations Work Group agenda for Monday June 8, 2015 (5:00 PM), a proposal (pages 19 & 20 of the “2015-16 Budget Review and Input” here)  to delay $4,115,000 in debt payments till 2026 and 2027, and add $1,428,348 in debt service payments, all in order to “Make it Possible to Support Annual Increases in the Tech Plan thru 2019 without Drawing Away Funds from Other Areas of the Budget” (the latest version of the Tech Plan budget has full implementation in 2022). For many reasons (too many to go into here), this seems like a very bad idea. In general, I think we should begin again and create a Tech Plan that we can afford without these kind of shell games.

Here is the key page:

The right hand column has the ugly details.

This not an item up for a formal vote. I will be advising against pursuing this option in the strongest terms (there will be public testimony at the meeting where you can share your thoughts, and the Board can always be contacted via board@madison.k12.wi.us).

Leaving aside the dubious merits of tech purchases as a priority (at a time when we are cutting classroom staff, deferring building maintenance, and looking at more cuts next year and beyond), it is simply bad policy to push debt into the future at a cost of $1.4 million in order purchase or lease items that will not even still be in service when it comes time to pay the bill.  The Tech Plan originally had a three year replacement cycle on most items; more recently that has been changed to a four year cycle (page 126 here, and more here, except the most recent expenditure — voted in April to be placed on hold brought before the Board were for a three year lease on Chromebooks and Tablets, so it is hard to say what the current thinking is).  Whether a three year cycle or a four year cycle, items purchased or leased in 2015 through 2019 will be out-of-service by the time the $2 M+ payments are due in 2026 and 2027.

Even if this “buy now, pay later” scheme made sense, it would only cover the annual expenditure increases through the year 2019 for a plan that now is not supposed to be fully implemented until 2022 and has projected ongoing costs of $6 M or more each and every year thereafter.  It is a very expensive temporary band-aid.

What Next?

Given the reality of depressing prospects for school budgets in Wisconsin in the foreseeable future, it is hard not to conclude that the Tech Plan adopted by the MMSD Board of Education in 2014 is unaffordable (I was the lone vote against, joined by Luke Gangler, the student Rep).  Instead of tinkering with changing three year replacement cycles to four year replacement cycles, or five year implementation timelines to seven year implementation timelines, and trying desperately to make the existing plan “work” in this reality,  we need to start again.

It is past time to create a plan that we can afford. I have been pushing for this, and getting (almost) nowhere.

Continuing down the path of attempting to salvage an unaffordable plan wastes both staff (and Board) time, and has a high likelihood of creating new inequities among our schools. If we do one, or two, or three years of purchases under the existing plan, those schools will get the full treatment, the Cadillac version. The schools further back in the queue, after the schemes run out and the realities of having to cut staff to buy tablets hit again, will probably not be so fortunate.

I am not against increased tech spending. I was the one who pushed including tech infrastructure in the recent referendum (and when I pushed for other tech expenditures to be included via short term bonding, I was told that they did not want to borrow to pay for ongoing expenses. Presumably that position has changed.  I do believe that any Tech Plan must be affordable, in the sense that using conservative budget assumptions, proposed spending is weighed against the prospect of budget cuts in other areas (including cutting staff).  It also must be equitable, in that it provides a realistic way to provide equivalent access to technology in all of our schools in a reasonable time.

In my opinion,the best place to start on a new plan would be with a needs assessment.  I asked about this when the plan was being approved about a year ago, involving the budget for the assessment, and finally it appears to be in the works.  Let’s put everything on hold, do the assessment, combine it with budget projections, and then move forward.

There will almost certainly be more Tech Plan expenditures on the June 29th Board  agenda (probably the tablets and Chromebooks that were put on hold in April) and the ones that follow. In the absence of an affordable and equitable Tech Plan, I will be voting against these.

TJ Mertz

Note:  Prior to this post, I had not blogged since being elected to the Board of Education. I have started a few times, but never posted.  Recently I decided it was time to make a real effort to write and post blogs again.  I had hoped that my return entry would be something more positive, but a number of people have asked me for more information on the state of Tech Plan in general and this proposal in particular.  I am not sure how often I will be posting; watch this space and the Progressive Dane site.

“Are What You Eat What You Are” or “Hand to Mouth.” by Mark Wagner

“Money Talks,” Alex Chilton (click to listen or download)

Update:

The materials for Monday’s meetings (Budget Input and Operations Work Group)have been posted on BoardDocs.  I’ll list and link here, but first there are some things that were not posted that need to be addressed.

A choice was made to exclude from the meeting materials all of the suggested cuts/funding sources that were part of the the Budget Amendments submitted by Board Members (at this time it is not clear who made that choice). The full Amendments are in the original post below.

This is unprecedented.  It is absolute and basic that proposed amendments submitted in advance be included in the materials distributed to the public and Board Members.  They must be part of the record, they will  be part of discussion, and the public has a right to know what is on the table (especially in advance of a “public input meeting). 

It should also be noted that those Board Amendments that are present in the meeting materials, are present only in summary form.  My Amendments did not include extensive rationales, but Anna Moffit’s did, and to not share these with the public is wrong.

Additionally, the full Title I chart included in this post (below) is not posted, with only an explanation of the process provided.  There is also no further information on Title III and tuition for Ell certification (listed in my Amendments as something I would “like to explore”).

An earlier Budget Presentation included the “Goal” of “Greater transparency in budget development.”  The choices that have been made to not include Board Member Amendments take us further from that goal.

Here is what is there:

• PowerPoint, with (among other things) revised Health Insurance contribution proposal.
• Memo of Equity Charts.
• 2016-17 Proposed Budget Equity Charts.
• 2015-16 Equity Charts (for comparison).
• (Partial) Budget Amendments (from Board and Administration, with Administrative recommendations against all Board Amendments included).
• Three page response recommending against Intensive Support Team Amendment (as stated above, the rationale for the amendment is not posted).
• Expulsion Abeyance memo, with Budget information (revised expulsion process appears as a separate agenda item in the meeting materials here, here and here, and will be voted on June 27).

Starting next week, there are a few important meetings for the Madison Metropolitan School District Preliminary Budget (much budget info at the link, a bit more below).  Here are the key meetings:

• Public Input on Proposed Budget, Monday, June 13, 5:15 PM, Doyle Blg, Rm 103.
• Operations Work Group Meeting, (Budget Discussion on the agenda), Monday, June 13, 6:00 PM, Doyle Blg, Rm 103.
• Regular Board of Education Meeting with public input, and votes on Amendments and Preliminary Budget, June 27, 6:00 PM, Doyle Blg, Auditorium.

If you can’t make these, you can always write the Board: board@madison.k12.wi.us.

A couple explanatory things at this point.  First, detailed agendas and materials for these meetings will be posted on BoardDocs in advance, usually at some point on Friday for a Monday meeting.  Second, the final Budget is not passed until October, after many things — especially the state aid certification — are set.  Amendments and changes are possible up to that point, but the Preliminary Budget is what is in place when schools open in September, and for this and other reasons is important.

From my point of view there are three major places where there may be action: 1)Budget Amendments from Board Members (Anna Moffit and I both submitted amendments, more below); 2)Title I funding (Federal poverty aid, more below in the discussion of my amendments, with some linked documents and  information previously not posted by MMSD); 3)The structure of employee health insurance contributions (because my spouse is employed by the district, I recuse myself on this).  The latest on this is here (expect more before the meetings listed above).

May as well start with my Amendments.  Here is what I submitted for consideration (I may or may not make motions on individual items).

Initial Budget Amendments

TJ Mertz

May 23,2016

I understand that in the current budget situation any additional spending must come from reallocations, but believe that it is counterproductive to match each proposed addition to a cut. Instead I have listed cuts and additions separately, with a final item on Title I and Title III.

Items to Be Cut

1. Eliminate Assistant Principals at Allis, Kennedy, Stephens and Cherokee.

Note: 4k at Allis may mean that numbers justify this position. [Note:  My understanding is that traditionally an Assistant Principal is added when school population is above 500; these are all below.  I asked about this at a meeting and did not get an answer.]

2. Cut Tech Plan Spending by $300,000.

The Baird projections show an initial $8.74 Million gap for 2017-18, and this assumes the continued $250/student categorical aid, and an additional $100/student. Under these circumstances I do not believe that increasing Tech Plan spending by $625,000 is sustainable.

3. Eliminate Special Assistant To the Superintendent for Special Projects.

4. Cut Employee Travel Conferences (0344) from $468,803.63 to $300,000.

5. Cut Space Rental Events/Meetings (0328) from $175,875.99 to $111,774.14.

The proposed budget includes an increase, this amendment returns the amount to that in the 2015-16 budget. The Badger Rock rental was moved to object 0329 and is not impacted.

Additions

I support Anna’s proposals on expanding Intensive Support Team staffing and targeting class size at “intensive touch” schools, (as well as the reallocations she proposes).

1. Add Board Research and Data NUP, $70,000

This position would work for the Board of Education and assist in fulfilling data requests, researching policies, and preparing analyses and briefs independent of administrative structures.

Strategic Framework Priority Area – Accountability.

2. Restore Middle School Staffing (to the extent possible)

According to the March OWG presentation, 12.000 FTE, budgeted at $1,181,679 will be cut from Middle Schools. Without the detailed information in the Equity Chart, it is impossible to know what these cuts might be, but I would like to explore restoring some or all. Many of our Middle Schools are struggling with a variety of issues, and I think we need to make sure they have the capacity to be successful.

Strategic Framework Priority Areas – Coherent Instruction, Thriving Workforce, (and perhaps Personalized Pathways and Family and Community Engagement).

Title I

I may be offering amendments addressing the Title I Reserved budget (funds not allocated to schools), the poverty measure(s) used to allocate Title I to schools, the formula used to determine the allocations to schools (my understanding is that we can allocate a higher dollar amount per student to schools at higher poverty levels, I don’t know if we are doing that, but would like to explore the possibility).

Title III

It is my understanding that that $300,000 three year budget for ELL certification tuition reimbursement appears to be much more than anticipated spending (Mike provided me with a summary). I believe this is Title III money, which means there are limits on how it might be reallocated. I would like to explore the possibilities, especially using some of this money to replace unrestricted funds, or to improve direct services for ELL students.

I would be glad to answer any questions about any of these, but am going to mostly forgo long explanations and justifications here (the bracketed note on the Assistant Principals was added as an explanation for this post).  The two exceptions are Middle School Staffing and Title I.

On Middle School Staffing, just a couple of things.  First, budget pressures and choices made in drafting the preliminary budget led to school-based cuts at all levels.  At the Elementary level, there were two big factors.  The first was decreased enrollments; the second was what might call a “relaxed” approach to class sizes in the early grades (Anna Moffit has an Amendment on this, below).  The Middle School cuts were pretty much straight out budget based.  At this point — less than a week before we have the penultimate meeting to discuss the Budget and less than a month before we vote — I don’t know how these cuts were decided (other than the phrase “Equity-based” has been used, whatever that means), nor what schools got what cuts.  We have some info (below, and it may be out dated), but not much.  This make it hard to do the job we were elected to do.   I believe school based staffing allocations are at or near the top of budget issues and have been asking for information on the processes and results since at least February.  I hope we get this in the “Equity Chart” this week, and if changes seem like a good idea, I hope it isn’t too late.

Here is a staffing chart, with Title I information as of late March (read the notes in the link, about what this chart represents).

The “Equity Chart” should provide more detail and be more up-to-date.  In reference to Anna Moffit’s second Amendment below, it is also worth noting that some of the Elementary School cuts do not seem to align with (projected) enrollment changes, this may be due to the interactions of grade level projections and desired class sizes (I have not looked closely, but will try, and would appreciate it if anyone else would like to make the effort, and share their findings). Depending on what I learn (and what else happens), I may or may not go ahead with an Amendment on Middle School staffing.

We do have new information on Title I since I offered the Amendments and it is good news.  Some background, first.  You can find everything you would want to know and more about Title I at the Department of Education page.  Essentially, it Federal aid to schools serving students in poverty.   It is also the biggest source of Federal money in k-12 education, so from a policy perspective, it gets used as a carrot and a stick.  In fact there are all sorts of of controversies about how Title I will be distributed under the new Elementary and Secondary Education Act.   Local districts have a number of choices to make with Title I.  We decide (with some limits) how much is allocated to schools, and how much is “reserved” for district initiatives (see here for information on MMSD “Reservations”).  We decide what measure or measures of poverty will be used to distribute funds to schools.  We decide (with limits) what the poverty percentage cut-off will be for designating a school Title I.  We decide what levels — Elementary, Middle, High —  we will fund via Title I.  We decide how we will allocate to schools on a per qualifying student basis (do we give higher poverty schools more per student)?  All these decisions and more.  In Madison four things have brought Title I to the fore.  First, in 2014-15 MMSD expanded Title I to Middle Schools.  Second,  because some Madison schools are participating in the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) which provides free meals to all students, the traditional Free/Reduced Lunch poverty measures have been impacted (see here for much much more on Title I and CEP, including analyses of some of the decisions listed above, worth a read).  In response, MMSD, like many districts is using what is called “Direct Certification,” a method that matches students to family enrollments in other government aid programs to arrive at student poverty numbers.  Third, for the first time since the 2008 referendum MMSD does not have unused revenue authority, this budget is especially tight.  Last — and this is the good news — recent reallocations show MMSD receiving $788,000 in additional Title I funding.  The initial Title I allocations (similar to the above chart) showed many schools with funding cuts (often on top of other staffing cuts).  With the $788,000 this has changed.  See here:

You can see almost all schools received an increase, and that the schools are tiered, with higher poverty k-5 schools getting more per student, and Middle Schools getting a flat (and low) $750 per student.  More on the process MMSD used here.

But questions remain.  Is direct certification the best way to estimate poverty?  Are the tiers, the cut points, and the differences per student between them the right things to do? Is the Middle School/Elementary difference good policy (remember k-5 schools also have SAGE (now AGP) for the early grades)?  I am not committed to any changes from the proposed allocation, but I do want to think about these questions, hear from the community, and discuss the choices with other Board Members.

Here are Anna Moffit’s Amendments.  As stated above, I support them.  I am not going to say more at this time, Anna Moffit has already published a strong op ed on the first, and I am sure she will be equally eloquent on the other at the appropriate time.

#1 – Intensive Support Teams

Budget Amendment
Increase the Intensive Support Team staff by 3.5 FTE (1 FTE for the Autism /Significant Developmental Delay team/ 2 FTE for the behavioral health team and .50 for a clerical assistant).

Rationale:

Based on community feedback and staff input there is an increased need to support   our students with intensive behavioral and mental health needs. According to   anecdotal information and district data there are a small number of students that are currently receiving a disproportionate amount of behavioral referrals (about 1% of our students make up 95% of behavioral referrals). Many of these students have documented or undocumented diagnoses, learning difference or a trauma history that require an acute and elevated levels of support in order to be successful in our schools.

Rather than restrict eligibility criteria that create more barriers for students to accesss specialized services, we should be proactive and prevent escalating disciplinary measures that lead to exclusionary practices by increasing our capacity to serve more students in a timely matter. By investing in programs that prevent suspension and expulsion, hundreds of thousands of dollars can be saved for our district.

Building the capacity at the district level to provide immediate help and ongoing professional development to non-Student Services staff via our Intensive Support Team is more cost effective in comparison to paying for expensive, outside consulting services and trainings. Based on staff feedback, there is an increased need for professional development in the area of working with students that have intensive mental health and behavioral challenges in our district.
Currently, the Intensive Support Team doesn’t have the capacity to organize, schedule and provide professional development in an efficient and effective manner due to limited capacity. By providing additional team members and a clerical position, scheduling professional development during educators’ planning time would be more consistent across the district. This increase would also of-set some of the the cuts made in the previous year to Students Services staff (21 Student Services staff).

Possible funding streams:
BEP professional development:
Based on anecdotal data from one-on-ones with staff and Board presentations,
opportunities for professional development have been limited and difficult to attend due to other commitments, not due to lack of interest or need. There was no additional information provided to the Board that would support lack of interest or need as the basis for not utilizing professional development funding. In fact, Behavior Education Plan surveys continue to indicate their is a high interest in increased professional development in order to meet the diverse and dynamic needs of our student body.

Access to bilingual education:

The district will not be expanding the DLI program to all schools put forth in the ELL plan which should lead to a decrease in FTE by .50 for an additional DLI planner. This would provide about $43,755 dollars in additional funds. There are very few students and families (currently 4 families based on feedback from Principal) that have shown interest at Thoreau Elementary in the DLI program at a to-be-determined school, therefore $36,000 dollars appears to be an excessive amount of money set aside for transportation costs for busing. In total, there would be about $70,000 dollars in additional funds.

Other possible funding sources:

TID 25 loan

Reduce spending on Technology Plan

Reduce spending on Educational Resource Officers

Utilize funds saved from not filling the position of Special Assistant to the Superintendent ($125,000 dollars).

#2 Elementary School Staffing

Provide additional FTEs to all of our “intensive touch” elementary schools in order
to ensure that all K-2 classrooms can begin the year 16 students in each classroom. The funding source is undetermined at this time due to lack of information in regard to Employee Premium Compensation limits for district staff members, as well as resolution in regard to TIF 25.

Rationale:

Based on extensive research, class size has the most significant impact on student achievement in the early childhood years. Smaller class sizes have shown to have a greater impact on academic achievement than aligned curriculum, as well as instructional coaching. Smaller class sizes also ensure that students and teachers have the time to develop strong, positive and reciprocal relationships which lay the foundation in developing a child’s resiliency. Resiliency has been shown to counter-act the effects of Childhood Trauma that is a direct result from children experiencing toxic stress at home, school and community. Students that experience chronic toxic stress are more likely to develop learning disabilities, maladaptive behaviors, as well as an increased risk of substance abuse issues and mental health challenges.

Although Governor Walker has provided district a “tool” called AGR to increase class sizes for our most vulnerable students, I believe that it has a detrimental effect on student learning for our youngest learners. With large numbers of black students, students receiving Free and Reduced Lunch, English Language Learners and students with disabilities not reaching adequate reading and math outcomes, leading to huge disparities, it is critical to invest our resources in high leverage strategies that can close these gaps.

Lower class sizes has also been a priority identified within our budget feedback from schools and the community.

There may be other ideas that lead to late amendments, or revisions of these.  Please remember, these are our schools, our children, and the School Board Members are your representatives; be part of “the village” by participating, making your voice heard at (or prior to) the meetings listed at the top.  I’ll be listening, and others will too.

Thomas J. (TJ) Mertz

Chuck Berry — “Thirteen Question Method” (click to listen/watch)

At 5:45 on Monday, May 8, 2017 the Madison Metropolitan School District Operations Work Group will hold our first extended discussion of the the 2017-18 Budget since receiving the draft Budget Book.  Also on the agenda is the first of two scheduled discussions of possible changes to the Behavior Education Plan (summary here, many other related files attached to the agenda on BoardDocs, linked above).  It will be a busy evening.

In anticipation of these meeting, and this phase of the budget work, I sent two communications to the rest of the Board, and the Administration (here and here).  The first concentrates on some of the areas where I am thinking about offering amendments (there may be other areas, but I wanted to start with these); because the it appears the meeting will focus on the administrative “Priority Actions,” the second is on these.

In the interest of transparency and public awareness, I am posting these here, annotated with some extra commentary, notes, and links.  First up are the “Questions Related to Possible Budget Amendments.”

Wright Uniforms

• What would be the cost to provide all Wright staff with 3 shirts/tops, 2 pair of pants or skirts, and one sweater or fleece in compliance with the uniform policy and the Handbook requirement that “In the event that any employee shall be required as a condition of his/her employment to wear any particular kind of uniform or other special clothing…clothing….shall be furnished by the District”?
• What would be the cost to provide all Wright students with 3 shirts/tops, 2 pair of pants or skirts, and one sweater or fleece in compliance with the uniform policy?

I was one of two votes against this policy, but believe that if this is the will of the Board the burden should not fall on the staff and students.  As far as staff goes, I am not inclined to revise the Handbook to exempt Wright.  With students, despite the claims of the uniform industry, the best academic research I could find indicates that school uniforms do not save families money through decreased clothing purchases.   Wright is our highest poverty school, imposing added costs on the school’s families renders a bad idea even worse.

Class Size

• What would be the costs and the additional FTE required to achieve each of the following class size caps:
  • AGR (formerly SAGE) schools, K-2, leave as is (soft cap at 20, hard cap at 22).
  • Non-AGR schools, K-2, soft cap at 22, hard cap at 23.
  • AGR schools 3-5, soft cap at 23, hard cap at 24.
  • Non-AGR schools, 3-5, hard cap at 25.
  • MS, English and Math, soft cap at 27, hard cap at 29.
  • HS, English and Math soft cap at 30, hard cap at 32.
• Note: My understanding is that initial allocations are done based on the soft cap and projected enrollments, but that additional staff allocations are not done unless the hard cap number is exceeded. This may not be exactly how it works, and any corrections would be appreciated.

Class size matters; it matters for academics, it matters for behavior, it matters for family involvement, it matters for climate, it matters for working conditions and retention…class size matters.  There is a growing recognition in Madison (thanks Cris Carusi), that too many classes are too large.  These questions are intended as the beginning of a conversation about class sizes, not an end point.  I would like smaller classes across the board (all subjects, all grades),  and even smaller classes in high poverty and/or struggling schools, but you have to start somewhere.

Here are some links that provide important local context for these questions:

• January and February Operations Work Group Presentations with discussions of staffing process.
• “Equity Charts” showing current (2016-17, not projected for the 2017-18 Budget…updated staff projections have been requested) staffing, as well as which schools  receive state Achievement Gap Reduction program and federal Title I funding, as well as other information.
• Tableau interactive presentation showing Fall 2016 class sizes with filters for schools, subjects, and more.  The questions I asked concern the maximums allowed, but the distributions are of interest too.

The other items on this list are less concrete and don’t contain questions.  They were shared with the Board and the administration in order to alert them to possibilities that may develop into proposals/amendments.  They also are not exhaustive; the “Line Items” could lead many places and there are things like the “Special Assistant for Equity and Innovation” position, that I am not sure what to try to do about (I heard interviews were done last week, but no hire is final till the Board approves).

• BEP Staffing and Implementation (including PBIS, Social Emotional Learning, Security…)
  • The May discussions of the BEP and answers to some of the questions on Priority Actions may lead to a proposed amendment. I continue to see a need to have more consistent professional supports and educational services available for students who have been removed from classes (suspensions, and less lengthy removals).

Not much to add to this, except I would love to hear ideas for how we could better deploy the millions of dollars we are spending on BEP implementation and related things.

• Title I
  • The current Title I school Budget Allocations use Direct Certification and shift about $120,000 from K-5 to Middle Schools. Some of my Priority Action questions address district level Title I spending. Upon receipt of answers to those questions, I may want to work with staff to develop an alternate plan.

I have a lot to say here, but I am going to try to keep it brief.

Title I is a federal program that provides funding to improve the education for children in poverty.  Within the Title I regulations, districts have some choices on how this funding is used.  These choices include which schools are designated Title I (and receive funds), how those funds are allocated among the schools, and what measure of poverty is used in these processes (other choices include some of the “Reservations” and district level expenditures, some of which are related to the questions in the “Priority Actions” section).

These choices became more complicated when MMSD was able to enroll some schools in the “Community Eligibility” program that provides free lunch funding for entire schools that are high poverty.  One result is that the numbers and percentages of families at those schools filling out the Free/Reduced lunch paperwork decreased compared to other district schools.  Upon the recommendation of DPI, MMSD began using what is called “Direct Certification” for the Title I poverty counts (MMSD still uses “traditional” poverty counts for things like achievement data, adding to the confusion).  Direct Certification involves cross checking enrollments in other state and federal programs and using the result to estimate poverty counts.  Among other things, this produces much lower counts (when Milwaukee went to Direct Certification the percentage of students in poverty dropped from 82.7 to 67.3).  It also changes the distribution among schools  It isn’t clear what accounts for these changes.  I looked at the possibility that Direct Certification results in an undercount of undocumented students, but the results were inconclusive and indicated that although that may be part of the answer, there are other things going on. More on Community Eligibility, Title I, and Direct Certification, here and here, plus a post by me from last year covering some of this.

Here is the most recent information given to the Board on the proposed Title I allocations.

Here is some information I sent to the Board and administration earlier this year, highlighting the impacts of the choices made on borderline schools (and the possibilities of using a different poverty measure):

Note that any changes would involve altering the “dollars per Title I student” numbers and levels, and unless there are reallocations from the district level Title I spending, “cuts” to some schools.  I am not committed to making changes, but I would like to explore the possibilities.

The “Possible Budget Amendments” note ended with this:

• Line Item Issues
  • I will be setting up an appointment to meet with [Assistant Superintendent for Business Services] Mike [Barry] on some line item questions (like the shift of Salary Savings budgeting between Fund 10 and Fund 27, the budgeting for Substitutes…I don’t have the whole list yet). My guess is Mike’s explanations will satisfy my curiosity and concerns, but if they don’t, I may make some requests or amendments.

Nothing to add at this time.

That leaves the questions on “Priority Actions.”  Before sharing the questions, I’d like to offer some context.  The Board consideration of “Priority Actions” began in November 2016 (minutes here).  In part because of the inclinations of Board Members, in part because of the Budget process, and in part because the way Health Insurance issues have dominated meeting after meeting, the “Priority Actions” have thus far received little sustained attention from the Board.  That should change at the May 8th meeting.

The discussion of “Priority Actions” begins on page 24 of the Budget Book. Here is a chart from the Budget Book:

Here are the questions I submitted (some items  — including big ones like $625,000 for the Tech Plan — I had no questions for), with some links inserted (and dollar amounts added where appropriate).

Priority Actions

• Intensive Support for Reading Intervention (LEXIA) – $190,000.
  • Can we get an update on current implementation (which schools, which students, how often…) and results?
  • Which schools (specific names)/students would this expand to if funded?
  • [Related] – Can we get a detailed accounting for the use of Title I Reserved Funds, highlighting any changes from the 2016-17 Budget?
  • In the past we have been told that MMSD does not use or classify LEXIA as an “Intervention” as defined by Response to Intervention mandates, has this changed?
• Race and Equity Professional Development — $200,000, $80,000 new.
  • What are the associated release/sub costs for this (days and dollars, in total, inclusive or exclusive of the item under Accelerated Priorities)?
  • [Note: The Board was provided with a proposed process/method for assessing the impact/success of this work, but we have not discussed or approved this, yet.]
• Principal Leadership Coaching
  • It isn’t clear how much of this is for “online module” development and deployment, and how much is for “face-to-face coaching,” nor who will be doing the work. A budget or a more detailed description which addresses these is requested.
• New Teacher Mentoring and Forward Madison Sustainability Plan — $350,000 total.
  • What 2016-17 Title II activities/programs/personnel will be re-purposed or cut in order move $200,000 to this?
  • Is the March/April summary evaluation report referenced here available?
• Bilingual Education and ESL Support — $349,000 total.
  • If the 2 OMGE Teacher Leaders are approved, would they only be working with Title I DLI schools?
  • See note above about changes in Title I Reserved Funds budgeting.
  • The deadline for DLI and the Lakeview Hmong program applications was 4/28. Can we get an updated estimate for transportation costs and numbers of students, including home school and school they applied to attend?
• Middle School Report Card Redesign and Infinite Campus Customization — $40,000 total.
  • Why are we doing this before (very) possible broader Middle School redesign, not after?
• AVID Expansion — $40,000.
  • What are the projected class sizes for AVID sections with and without this increase?
• School Based Support for Implementation of Personal Pathways — $460,000 total.
  • Are the Learning Coordinator Learning Liaison positions 0.2 at each high school, or single district positions?
  • Will the ACP Coordinators serve all students, or only Pathways?
  • Is the Lead Counselor position 0.0825 at each school, or a single district position?
  • Is there a projection for how these positions will increase as Pathways expands (can we expect to add the equivalent each year in proportion to new students entering Pathways)?
  • What are the current FTE’s devoted to Pathways for the people listed here (some appear to have partial Pathways assignments and partial assignments in other roles): https://pathways.madison.k12.wi.us/contact-us
• Pathways Professional Development — $200,000 total.
  • Can we get a breakdown for how much of this is release time/extra time (Summer?)/subs, how much is contracted services, how much is other?
  • Is any of this covered by the Joyce Grant?
• Experiential Learning Coordination and ACP Support  — $90,000 total.
  • Can we get a budget that breaks down student transportation, release time, and other?
  • Is there any evidence that the GMCC [Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce] Foundation has improved their work on behalf of our students since the November 2016 update?
• Developing Future Teachers — $18,000 total
  • Approximately how many students are expected to be enrolled in TEEM in 2017-18?
  • Who is doing this work now?
  • Who is expected to fill these Coordinator roles (current positions if MMSD employees)?
  • As TEEM takes on new cohorts is it expected that the stipends will increase?
• Expansion of Grow Our Own— $100,000 total
  • What are the 2016-17 allotted and expended budgets for each of our “Grow Our Own” programs (I know there is one for staff wishing to become teachers, and at least one for teachers seeking Special Ed, ESL, or Bilingual certification; I don’t know if there are others)?
  • What are the numbers and demographics of 2016-17 participants in each?
  • I know there was a problem and the Fall cohort for one program were told they had to wait. Can we get an update on that (is this budget line related to that issue)?

The Budget Book designates some of the “Priority Actions” as “Accelerated.” Here are my questions related to those:

Accelerated Priority Actions

• Quarterly Grade Level Release for Teachers — $100,000 total.
  • Is this in addition to the $135,000 for Intensive Support Schools Quarterly K-2 release days approved as a Priority Action in the 2015-16 budget?
  • Can you confirm that the $400,000 increase under Required Allowances is separate from this and other Priority Action Substitute budgets?
  • Are this and other Priority Action Substitute expenditures reflected in lines 3 and 122 of The Fund 10 Expenditures?
• Reading Software to Supplement Core Instruction for Students — $60,000 total.
  • See the question above under Intensive Support for Reading Intervention, requesting updates on LEXIA use and results.
• Student Led Conferencing  — $116,000 total.
  • I think projections are for 305 non-Pathways 9^th Graders at East, and 479 Pathways 9^th Graders district-wide, yet the Funding for East non-Pathways is more than double the district-wide Pathways funding. Is there a difference in design that accounts for this?

And last comes “Innovative Priority Actions.”

Innovative Priority Actions and TID #25

• Reservation for Innovation Opportunities
  • Note: Here and elsewhere a $800,000 multi-year reservation for “innovation opportunities” is mentioned. This concept was presented at the 10/17/16 OWG meeting, but neither my memory nor the minutes reflect a consensus in favor of this.
  • If we are going to set aside a reserve sum for Innovation Opportunities to be funded this year, there should be a process for proposals and decision-making.
• TID #25 Budget (p 152)
  • Can we get an update on expenditures to date for the items listed for 2016-17?

Here is the TID #25 Budget from the Budget Book:

A few words on the TID #25 funds and “Innovation.”  First, the rule of thumb with one-time funds like the TID #25 money is that you don’t spend them for ongoing operating expenses.  In general, that makes sense, except it fails to account for the uncertainty around all school funding.  This week possible cuts to Medicaid reimbursements are in the news; a couple of weeks ago it was Community Learning Center funding, nobody is confident the proposed $200 per student categorical aid increase will survive intact till the end of the state Budget process.  Uncertainty everywhere, yet because we know it will eventually run out, TID #25 money is in some ways treated as more uncertain than money we may never see.  The other side of the picture is that what is an ongoing expense is also uncertain.  Yesterday’s “Strategic Priority Action” may become tomorrow’s ongoing expense, or it may end up a one-time experiment.  With all that in mind, I believe we should be cautious when using one-time funds for what we believe to be ongoing expenses, but not categorically eliminate this from consideration.

Generally, due largely to my training as a historian, I am an “Innovation” skeptic and a firm believer in “The Conservationist Ethic” in education reform.  As David Tyack wrote:

In reform circles enamored of change and inclined toward Utopian solutions to improve schooling, a belief in progress can obscure the task of conserving the good along with inventing the new. In mitigating one set of problems, innovations may give rise to new discontents.

This skepticism is reinforced when the attraction of “Innovation” leads to a lack of critical thinking and careful vetting.

More specifically, I am not clear how the notion of dedicated “Innovation” funding (and the whole TID #25 budget) came to be included in the Budget.  Hence, my question.

On to next steps.

After Monday’s discussion, and receiving answers to my questions, I will start working on any Budget Amendments I would like to have considered.

Feel free to contact me (tjmertz@madison.k12.wi.us) or comment here with any questions or thoughts.

As with any matters before the Board, there are opportunities to make your voice heard.  Take advantage of them.

• Write the Board — board@madison.k12.wi.us
• Use the comment form on the Budget web page
• Come and testify at one of our meetings

These our your schools; make your voice heard!

Thomas J. Mertz

From NYC Educator

Betty Everett — “Getting Mighty Crowded” (watch and listen).

On Monday June 12, the Operations Work Group of the Madison Metropolitan School District received an update on the 2017-18 budget, and discussed amendments submitted by Board Members (video here, meeting materials may be found at BoardDocs, here; it appears a second cost analysis on class size prepared by the district has not been posted on BoardDocs, it may be found here, a cost analysis prepared by community members is somewhat lower).

An amendment I submitted establishing “hard caps” on class sizes, and differentiating among classes and schools by grade span and a different poverty calculation than participation in the state Achievement Gap Reduction program (AGR, formally SAGE) has garnered much attention and more than a little support.  My amendment, with an explanation of poverty measure may be found here (a little more below).  The next step is preparing a “final” amendment for submission and vote (with the understanding that the amendment may be amended at the June 26, 2017 meeting, prior to a vote).  That process is the topic of this post.

The intent of my initial amendment was three-fold.  First, I wanted to get some sense of the costs involved.  Second, I wanted to shift thinking away from average class size to maximums, and away from AGR as the only means to differentiate between high and low poverty schools in this context.  Last, I wanted to give people opportunities to think, and talk, and write about class size in our district.  The numbers I used were not my ideal class sizes, and not intended to be final.

I have learned a little more about costs; made some impacts in how class size is being considered; and learned much about all aspects of class size impacts from the many staff, parents, and teachers who have opined in public and private.  Thank you all.

I want this discussion to continue, but soon the focus must shift to making concrete progress in addressing the most important class size issues in our district.  To do this I have to draft a budget amendment, and try to get it passed.

This involves prioritizing among the many issues and actions that have been discussed, and finding mechanisms to budget according to those priorities.  In an effort to be transparent, and as a plea for one more round of feedback and ideas from our community, I am presenting here what I see as the choices involved, and much of my current thinking.

Big Picture — Class Size Matters (in a Multitude of Ways)

No single education policy or practice will fix every area of concern with our schools, but research and experience have consistently demonstrated that small class sizes can help bring improvement in many of the most important areas, including student achievement, opportunity gaps, behavior, school climate, inclusion and differentiation, staff morale and retention, and family engagement.  This isn’t the place to work through the research, but I do want to point people to the Class Size Matters web site; recent local op eds from Cris Carusi, Andy Waity, and Jennifer Wang; and offer one excerpt from a recent evaluation of the SAGE program by the Value Added Research Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (if any of the people who have written the Board or testified — or others –would like to share your communications wider, I encourage you to use the comments on this post):

When comparing characteristics of students in SAGE versus non-SAGE schools, the Value-Added Research Center (VARC) observed large differences in their respective demographic profiles. The selection process into the program explains these differences and precludes simple comparisons across the two groups. Thus, VARC used statistical methods to control for these differences with the goal of estimating the impact of the SAGE program on student growth in mathematics and reading. Results from the statistical analyses of growth yield:

• An estimated positive effect of the SAGE program on reading academic growth in kindergarten as compared to students in non-SAGE schools, and

• An estimated positive effect of the SAGE program on mathematics and reading academic growth from kindergarten through third grade as compared to students in non-SAGE schools.

New to this year’s evaluation is an analysis of the effect of SAGE on students’ high school completion outcomes and on their choice of dropping out of high school. The results show:
• A positive effect of the SAGE program on students choosing to stay in high school in both ninth and tenth grade, and

• A positive effect of the SAGE program on students completing high school and not dropping out for students from African-American and economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Finally, this year’s SAGE evaluation also included results from the SAGE End-of-Year Report survey to examine non-academic outcomes. The results from the survey show increased flexibility with classroom design, benefits for students unrelated to standardized testing such as having more individual time to work with students, and benefits for teachers in recruitment and retention.

Choice # 1 — How Many Positions (FTE — Full Time Equivalent)?

It is clear that at this point in the budget process it would be impossible to reallocate or find enough money to achieve what I would consider reasonable class sizes throughout the district.  The best option seems to be to offer an amendment budgeting an increase in the number of unallocated classroom positions and setting rules for how they are to be allocated.  I need to do some more digging and thinking, and have some more conversations with budgeting staff and other Board Members before arriving at the number for the final amendment.

What happens with the state budget — especially the “per pupil categorical aid,” but also equalization aid — will make a huge difference.  For that reason, I am leaning to linking the number of unallocated positions in the amendment to state budget provisions.

Choice # 2 — Where Are Class Size Limits Most Needed and What Should They Be?

This is where the feedback I have heard has been most valuable in opening my eyes to the myriad of experiences, viewpoints, and ideas.  It is also where I most want further feedback.  If we can’t do everything, what should we do first (and second, and third…)?

Everything here begins with the assumption that previous allocations remain in place (hold harmless), and that existing guidelines or standards are not preempted in order to achieve the new priorities.   I am not proposing that already allocated positions be moved, but that new allocations be used in this manner.

Below is my current list of priorities, in order.  Whatever the number of unallocated positions added, or the mechanism used to allocate them, it is highly unlikely that any will end up being allocated for any of the priorities after #5 or #6 (maybe not even these), but I do think it is essential to be comprehensive, to make a statement about (almost) every class in every school. All are for maximum limits, or “hard caps.” As before, it isn’t my ideal, and it isn’t final (but it does need to be final soon):

1. High Poverty, K, 18 students.
2. High Poverty 1-3, 19 students.
3. Other Schools, K, 20 students.
4. Other Schools, 1-3, 22 students.
5. High Poverty, 4-5, 23 students.
6. Other Schools, 4-5, 25 students.
7. High Poverty, 6th Grade, Core Academic Classes (Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies), 25.
8. Other Schools 6th Grade, Core Academic Classes (Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies),  27.
9. High Poverty, 7-8, Core Academic Classes (Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies), 27
10. Other Schools, 7-8, Core Academic Classes (Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies), 29.
11. 9th Grade Core Academic Classes (Reading/English, Math, Science, Social Studies), 28.
12. 10-12 Grade Core Academic Classes (Reading/English, Math, Science, Social Studies), 30.

These priorities recognize the research that has found differential impacts of class size reduction, with greater impacts for students in poverty and African American students, and in the early grades; as well as the general equity principal that resources should be directed toward higher need schools and students.  As mentioned above, I want the district to use a more expansive definition of “high poverty” than currently employed.  Here is the explanation from my initial amendment:

Defining “High Poverty”

The AGR designation does not reflect current demographics of our K-5 schools, and other than via Title I MMSD has not designated Middle Schools as “High Poverty.” MMSD currently uses both self identification (traditional) and Direct Certification to designate students as “Low Income.” These methods produce very different results (see spreadsheets here for K-5 and here for 6-8). It is impossible to say if one is a “better” measure than the other. I would suggest using an average of the two to rank our schools, and 35% (rounded up) as the “High Poverty” cut point for K-8.  By this method the following schools are designated ‘High Poverty”

K-5 (non-AGR schools marked with *; non-Title I schools marked with #)

Allis Elementary Emerson Elementary Falk Elementary Glendale Elementary Gompers Elementary Hawthorne Elementary Huegel Elementary# Kennedy Elementary* Lake View Elementary Lapham Elementary*# Leopold Elementary Lincoln Elementary*

Lindbergh Elementary Lowell Elementary Mendota Elementary Midvale Elementary Muir Elementary# Nuestro Mundo Elementary Orchard Ridge Elementary Sandburg Elementary Schenk Elementary Stephens Elementary*# Thoreau Elementary#

6-8 (non-Title I schools marked with #)

Badger Rock Middle Black Hawk Middle Cherokee Middle Jefferson Middle# O’Keeffe Middle

Sennett Middle Sherman Middle Toki Middle# Whitehorse Middle# Wright Middle

Looking closer at the K-5 spreadsheet brings to light some of the issues involved.

First is that Lincoln — a high poverty school by any calculation — and Lapham, Stephens, and Kennedy — relatively high poverty schools — are left out of the AGR/Not AGR scheme, but included here.  Depending on how you count, these schools educated either 848 or 533 low income students last year.  This points to another observation, which is that there are a substantial number of low income students in our non-low income schools — by one method 180 at Chavez alone — and that these schools and students cannot be completely left out of our equity efforts.  It should also be acknowledged that one current AGR school — Crestwood — doesn’t make the cut.  I would be open to retaining that school.

Choice #3 — How To Allocate the New FTE?

If you want to make sure that the maximum number of the new sections go to the highest priority grades and schools, and maximize the likelihood that none of the classes in the highest priority categories exceed the designated limits, all allocations to lower priority categories would have to be delayed until after the Third Friday Count, and the end of allocations.  I am open to that idea (if you support it, let me know), but it isn’t my first choice (at this time).

In order to hire the best teachers, have the least disruption in class assignments, deal with physical and other logistics, best integrate faculty into school communities, and many other reasons, allocating earlier is better than allocating later.

What I am proposing for consideration here (and may end up proposing in the final amendment, depending on the feedback I receive), is an allocation process that seeks to balance the competing desires of maximizing addressing the highest priorities, and timing the additions in the way that makes the most sense.  Here goes version #1 (dates, details, and percentages, as well as the whole concept open for discussion and change).

1. Beginning July 1, 2017 allocations of the new FTE will be made on a weekly basis, in order of and according to the priorities listed above, using then current enrollment or roster data.
2. No more than 50% of the new FTE may be allocated prior to August 1, 2017.
3. No more than 80% of new FTE may be allocated prior to the Third Friday Count.
4. Middle and High Schools may address large sections via partial FTE and overload authorizations.
5. The Board of Education will be provided bi-weekly updates on allocations made under this amendment, and any and all grades or courses at any school that exceed the limits above where there has not been an allocation made.  These reports shall be public.

I was tempted to make it even more complicated by having X% at this date, and Y% at the next date, and Z%, and on and on, with a new percent (almost) every week, but I decided not too.  I am still tempted to try to adjust the dates around the enrollment/registration week (August 14-18), or the opening of school (September 5 & 6).  As I said above, I am open to adjusting any part of this, or abandoning the attempt to balance.  I like it, but I don’t love it.

What Next?

To be fair to my fellow Board Members and our hardworking staff, I should finalize and submit this early next week (end of the day Monday 6/19 or mid day Tuesday 6/20 at the latest).

Between now and then, I hope to hear more from our well-informed and creative community (that means you!).  You can comment on this post, send an email directly to me — tjmertz@madison.k12.wi.us, or the entire Board — board@madison.k12.wi.us, I promise to read them all, but may not be able to respond individually.  You can even call me (the number is on the Board page).

Once I finalize this amendment, I will post it here, at AMPS.  Then you can weigh in and tell me what I did wrong.

If you think I did more right than wrong, please let the Board (and the world) know about your support for the amendment.  As usual, you can email us, or testify at the June 26th meeting where we will be voting on this and the entire preliminary budget.  Talk to your neighbors, co-workers, and friends, write a letter to the editor, post on Facebook. Instagram, or tweet something, draw something, dance…be creative.

Thanks in advance for the feedback and support.

Thomas J. Mertz

I had joked that the previous post should have been illustrated with a picture of sausage being made, but that I didn’t want to alienate vegans and vegetarians. The amendment is now finished, and the sausage pictured here is vegan.

“Step by Step” — The Boyer Brothers (click to listen/watch)

Yesterday afternoon I submitted the final version of an amendment on class sizes to the Madison Metropolitan School District 2017-18 Preliminary Budget.  The Board of Education will consider and vote on this (and other amendments), as well as the Budget at our meeting on June 26, 2017 (6:00 PM, Doyle Building Auditorium).  In my previous post I presented my then current thinking about the amendment and asked for feedback.  This post is a brief walk-through of the final version, highlighting (and to some extent explaining) changes.

In general, the legislative process requires compromise, and tempering idealism with realism.  I have tried to keep that in mind throughout the budget work, but at this penultimate step compromise and realism become more prominent.

From top to bottom, excerpts followed by comments.

Amend the 2017-18 MMSD Preliminary Budget by immediately allocating an additional $500,000 to expand the number of budgeted unallocated classroom teacher positions, and

Dependent on the per pupil categorical aid provisions of the biennial Wisconsin State budget allocating up to an additional $1,000,000 to expand the number of budgeted unallocated classroom positions proportionately with no additional allocation if the categorical aid increase is $100 or less, up to $1,000,000 if it is $200 or more, and

Both compromise and realism are present here.  Reviewing the Budget, previous and pending actions; talking and listening to budget staff, Board Members, community members, I have concluded that the present Budget can support targeted class size allocations of $500,000, and that a favorable State Budget would justify an increase to that amount of $1,000,000.  I am sure we will hear more on this from all parties prior to and at the June 26 meeting.

I try to be forthcoming and transparent, so I want to acknowledge that the best projections indicate that spending the $1,000,000 which is dependent on the State Budget will push the property tax levy increase beyond the 3.97% projected in relation to the November 2016 referendum, to approximately 4.3% (there won’t be final numbers till October).  I should also note that my proposed increase in levy is only one half of the projected $2,000,000 that would be available.

One other thing of importance here is the shift from talking about the number of positions to talking about dollars.  Being a budget amendment, that is necessary.  Translating dollars to FTE is an inexact calculation.  MMSD makes wide use of a figure of about $80,000 to budget full time teachers, inclusive of benefits, payroll taxes and everything else.  However, teachers hired late tend to be less experienced, have lower levels of post-graduate education, and are less likely to enroll in “family” insurance plans, making them somewhat cheaper.  If I had to guess, I would say that the probable cost per FTE hired under this amendment would be about $60,000, so $1,500,000 would yield 25 FTE, but it could be higher and the yield could be fewer than 20.

Establishing the following guidelines for the prioritizing the allocation of these new positions to schools: setting standards, but allowing for flexibility based on unique circumstances, local knowledge, and professional judgment, with primary consideration to be given to allocating positions to meet the standards in the order listed below:

1. High Poverty, K-3 not to exceed 18 students.
2. High Poverty, 4-5, not to exceed 23 students.
3. Other Schools, K, not to exceed 20 students.
4. Other Schools, 1-3, not to exceed 22 students.
5. Other Schools, 4-5, not to exceed 25 students.
6. High Poverty, 6th Grade, Core Academic Classes (Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies), not to exceed 25 students.
7. Other Schools 6th Grade, Core Academic Classes (Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies), not to exceed 27 students.
8. High Poverty, 7-8, Core Academic Classes (Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies), not to exceed 27 students.
9. Other Schools, 7-8, Core Academic Classes (Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies), not to exceed 29 students.
10. 9th Grade Core Academic Classes (Reading/English, Math, Science, Social Studies), not to exceed 28 students.
11. 10-12 Grade Core Academic Classes (Reading/English, Math, Science, Social Studies), not to exceed 30 students.

For the purposes of this amendment designating the following schools as High Poverty:

K-5 (non-AGR schools marked with *; non-Title I schools marked with #)

Allis Elementary Emerson Elementary Falk Elementary Glendale Elementary Gompers Elementary Hawthorne Elementary Huegel Elementary# Kennedy Elementary* Lake View Elementary Lapham Elementary*# Leopold Elementary Lincoln Elementary*

Lindbergh Elementary Lowell Elementary Mendota Elementary Midvale Elementary Muir Elementary# Nuestro Mundo Elementary Orchard Ridge Elementary Sandburg Elementary Schenk Elementary Stephens Elementary*# Thoreau Elementary#

6-8 (non-Title I schools marked with #)

Badger Rock Middle Black Hawk Middle Cherokee Middle Jefferson Middle# O’Keeffe Middle

Sennett Middle Sherman Middle Toki Middle# Whitehorse Middle# Wright Middle

There are two significant changes here.  The first is in the composition and ordering of the priorities. The second is moving from “hard caps” to “guidelines” or “standards.”

On the presentation of the priorities, the feedback I received was crucial.  Overwhelmingly, people were most concerned about the early grades in high poverty schools, and advocated a “the smaller the better” policy for these grades.  My personal preference for something more nuanced (read complicated) and giving more attention to (what I consider) extremely large classes in some of our lower poverty schools remains, but these are compromises I can endorse.

Budgeting hard caps is difficult, amending a budget that wasn’t built on hard caps is even more difficult (especially when proposed hard caps are smaller than the numbers used to make initial allocations).  Going forward, revising the current (weak) MMSD Class Size Policy, and giving more attention to class size at every stage of the budget process may create a more favorable environment for hard caps in future budgets, but not this one.

While understanding that (almost) any absolute rule will on occasion lead to less than optimal choices, I am wary of calls for flexibility.  Some years ago I wrote about the introduction of “flexibility” in SAGE and other policies:

Remember warnings about your face getting stuck in some ugly expression? I think the champions of “flexibility” in Wisconsin and elsewhere need loud and repeated warnings that their “flexibility” in educational policy (along with privatization, cuts in funding, destruction of local control…) in fact constitutes a possibly permanent acceptance of declining educational quality and is an ugly betrayal of our traditions and our responsibility to our children. They are bending our schools out of shape and our children will be stuck with it.

The events of the last six years have only reinforced my wariness.

My ideal method for balancing mandates and flexibility is to mandate default choices, but simultaneously create a process by which deviations from the default are justified and approved.  Although the amendment doesn’t go that far, I do think the reporting requirements (below) embody some of this concept and will create opportunities for accountability.

Requiring that public reports be made to the Board of Education, which include the amount of funds remaining from this allocation, the number of sections or classrooms added to date from this allocation for each of the listed priorities, the number of sections or classrooms remaining that exceed the guidelines for each listed priority based on then current enrollments.

At minimum three public reports be made,

1. A Baseline Report to be issued as soon as possible after the passage of the Preliminary 2017-18 Budget, but no later than July 14, 2017.
2. A Start of School Report, to be issued no earlier than the completion of registrations (August 21, 2017) and no later than the end of the second week of school (September 15, 2017).
3. A Report, to be issued with the October/November Enrollment Reports.

I hope these reports accomplish two additional things.  First is increased transparency in school and classroom staffing.  I think these are the most important part of our Budget, and MMSD has been more translucent than transparent with them.  Second, I think the reports will contribute to the ongoing discussion of the costs and impacts of spending on class size reduction.

Before closing I want to note that I left out any mandate tying the allocation of the new positions to specific dates.  The main purpose of that was to give greater weight to the highest priorities, but the process was awkward, and the reconfiguration of the priorities accomplished some of this.

In closing I am going to cut-and-paste the closing of my previous post, once again urging participation in this process:

If you think I did more right than wrong, please let the Board (and the world) know about your support for the amendment.  As usual, you can email us [board@madison.k12.wi.us], or testify at the June 26th meeting where we will be voting on this and the entire preliminary budget.  Talk to your neighbors, co-workers, and friends, write a letter to the editor, post on Facebook. Instagram, or tweet something, draw something, dance…be creative.

Thanks in advance for the feedback and support.

Thomas J. Mertz

Pigbag — Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag (click to listen and watch).

Update: Yesterday evening the Board was provided with a number of new documents related to IMA. Among these is a different (or clarified) plan for 3K and 4K which renders moot much (or all) of the section below on Tuition.

I have not looked at all of the rest yet, but am posting them here, now: Memo, Budget, Cost Per Pupil, Enrollment Model, Attendance Area.

I will probably be posting on these — especially the attendance area transportation issues — within the next week.

Monday July 31, 2017, The Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education will consider and vote on a contact for an Isthmus Montessori Academy Charter School (IMACS).  This will be the third time the Board has voted on a version of this proposal.  The previous two times the Board and the Administration agreed that the proposal did not meet the requirements of the MMSD Charter School policy (related concerns about state statutes were also expressed by some Board Members).  Each time, a majority of the Board voted to advance the proposal in order to provide opportunities to address the shortcomings (I voted no each time).  Among the questions before the Board on July 31 is whether this has been accomplished; whether a sow’s ear has been transformed into a silk purse.  I think it is still a sow’s ear.

In this post I detail how I reached that conclusion by looking at three big areas: charging tuition to place students in public school classrooms; a staffing plan that does not meet Association Montessori International standards (and perhaps violates state Administrative Rules; and most importantly, will not serve students well), and a budget that is not sustainable.   These overlap with, but are not identical to the areas where the Administration and the Board previously concluded that the proposal did not meet expectations.  It should also be noted that it is my understanding, and according to MMSD policy, all proposals must meet the terms of our policy and statutes. They are minimum requirements, and are not the basis for an automatic approval. There are other aspects of the proposal that I find wanting. But these are not the focus of this post.  Before proceeding, some background is in order.

Where We Are, and How We Got Here

The first time the Board voted on IMACS was on September 26, 2016 (minutes here, Initial Proposal here, memo here, reviewers’ rubric here, budget key factors here, video here;  related September 19, 2016 Operations Work Group minutes here, video here). Contrary to the Administrative recommendation, by a 5-2 vote (Anna Moffit and I voted no) the Board requested that IMA develop a “Detailed Proposal” to be submitted by November 1, 2016.  According to the MMSD policy, the detailed proposal is to be analyzed by a (staff) Charter Application Review Committee, and forwarded to the Board, along with a recommendation, for a January vote.  Many of the areas of concern identified in September — finances, staffing, attendance area,  transportation, inclusion of 3K and secondary students, services for students with special needs, services for English Language Learners, enrollment…  — remained areas of concern in January, and — for me — those concerns have yet to be satisfied.

IMA was given two opportunities on the detailed proposal, an initial version due at the deadline set by policy, and a revised or final version due three weeks later. There is nothing in the MMSD Policy either allowing for two detailed proposal submissions, nor explicitly disallowing. But this seems to be contrary to the intent of the policy (“Detailed Proposals must be filed in the Office of the Secretary to the BOARD by 3:00 pm on the due date set forth in Section II.A, above. No exceptions shall be made to the timeline. Late submissions will be returned unopened to the applicant”).   Memos on IMA refer and link to a “revised charter school process,” and that document does include an opportunity to revise, but it has not been approved by the Board.

A version was submitted on November 1 (at the time, my requests to district staff and IMA for a copy of this version were refused; it was only provided to the Board after I made an open records request).  This version was found to not meet expectations in 9 categories: Vision, Mission Goals; Values and Instructional Theory; Student Body/Demographics; Academic Achievement Data and Analysis; Student Access to Opportunities; Curriculum; Instructional Design;  Financial Operations; and Facility Plan (rubric here, letter here).  The subsequent version is the one the Board considered and voted on in January.

Confusingly, the subsequent and “final” version of the proposal also bears the date “November 1, 2017.”  This proposal also did not meet the established criteria ( (memo here, rubric here, rubric including both the November 1 and the “final” version here).  In 5 of the areas the reviewer found the changes made to be sufficient, in the areas of Student Body/Demographics, Academic Achievement Data and Analysis, Instructional Design, and Financial Operations, the rating remained “Fails to Meet Expectations.”  Based on this, the Administration memo from Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham stated that she “cannot recommend that the Board of Education approve the IMA application for school year 2017/18.”  However, the memo continued:

This is the what a majority of the Board chose to do (see below, I was the lone no vote).  It should be noted that as with a second detailed proposal, the MMSD policy neither explicitly allows nor disallows contingent or delayed approvals, and this action took us into uncharted territory outside of our policy.  Because of this, it is essential to look closely at all the documents and records, and what actions the Board has taken so far.

There were two votes related to IMA on January 30, 2017.  Here is the wording for first (from the minutes):

[A]pprove(d) the proposal for the Isthmus Montessori Academy Charter School and that the District enter into a contract, consistent with applicable Board policy and state law, to establish the Isthmus Montessori Academy Charter School as an instrumentality charter school for a period of five (5) years from July 1, 2018 until June 30, 2023. Such approval shall be contingent on the Isthmus Montessori Academy Charter School supplementing their current proposal to address the following areas of concern by no later than May 31,2017:

● Student Body and Demographics

● School Data

● Curriculum, Assessment and Instruction

● Financial Operations

and the second:

It was moved by Ed Hughes and seconded by James Howard that, consistent with BOE Policy 10,000, the Board of Education approve the following actions:

1) upon the successful satisfaction of all outstanding contingencies, the

District will notify the State Superintendent of Public Instruction of its

intention to establish the Isthmus Montessori Academy Charter School

as an instrumentality charter school on or before March 1, 2018;

2) by no later than July 1, 2017, the Board will approve a contract with

Isthmus Montessori Academy Charter School to operate the charter

school for a five-year period beginning with the 2018-2019 school

year;

3) the District will collaborate with Isthmus Montessori Academy Charter

School to minimize expenditure impacts on the District’ budget and to

maximize revenue-generating opportunities including grants, state

aids, and other sources resulting from the implementation and operation

of the charter school; and

4) the District will collaborate with Isthmus Montessori Academy Charter

School to assist the school with its planning and preparations in order

to ensure the successful implementation and operation of the school

consistent with the terms of the charter (contract).

(13) PREKINDERGARTEN CLASSES. Establish and maintain classes for children less than 4 years of age under such regulations as it prescribes. The school board may accept and receive federal funds for such purpose and expend such funds in conformity with the purposes and requirements thereof. The school board may charge a reasonable fee for attendance at such classes but may waive the fee or any portion thereof to any person who is unable to make payment.

In making its decision, the BOARD shall, at a minimum, consider the information included in the detailed proposal, the information provided by the SUPERINTENDENT, whether or not the requirements of BOARD Policy have been met, the level of employee and parental support for the establishment of the charter school, and the fiscal impact of the establishment of the charter school on the DISTRICT. [from MMSD Policy 1000]

Junior Wells — “Messin’ with the Kid”(click to listen/watch).

This is an almost everything, including the kitchen sink, post on updates for the Monday, July 31, 2017 Madison Metropolitan School District vote (agenda and materials here) on the Isthmus Montessori Academy Charter School Contract (previous post here provides essential background, I am not going to re-cover most of that material).   I am not making an attempt to link this all together or make it flow, only identifying some topics and providing information and opinions for each.  Here goes:

New Materials

There were some new materials provided to the Board after the last meeting and those have been posted as an update to my previous post.  This week we were given a new version of the contract; a draft version of the contract with IMA Inc (the private school); a memo/email from DPI on the 3K arrangements, lottery, attendance area and more; and a summary of contract changes.  Most of what follows is in reference to these materials, and is no real order (as I draft, I keep thinking of the Bob Dylan line — “I need a dump truck baby to unload my head“).

A New Budget?

The memo from DPI required a change in the language related to 3K payments from IMA Inc.  The contract now reads ” IMA, Inc. shall provide reimbursement to the District for one-third of the cost of the 3K-5K classroom including staffing costs, space rental costs and instructional supplies,” and there is a note that reads “Impacts the wording in the budget document.” I have asked three times since Thursday evening for a new budget, but less than 24 hours before the meeting I don’t have one [12:22 PM, 7/31/17, a budget has now been posted with the meeting materials, but both the language and the finances are unchanged).

The note indicates that they are only contemplating a language change, but this also necessitates financial changes.  The $53,901.33 in year one, and the amounts in later years, do not come close to covering the total costs for the 3K students.  My rough and conservative calculation for year one is as follows:

Count 3K and 4K students at the state count for 4K of  .6 FTE (although you could make a case that because the 3K and 4K students at IMACS will be in class about 40% more time than our other 4K students, that should be much higher, say .6 *1.4 or .84).  Using the .6 IMACS will have 174 FTE students in year one (150 K-9, 12 3K, and 12 4K).  Total budget for year one is $1,391,501.08, which produces a cost per student of $7997.13.  Multiply that by 12 (3K FTE) and you get $95,965.59, or $42,064.26 more than IMA has promised for year one reimbursement.

My guess is that any change will simply involve a shift from the “Financial Support from the parent organization, IMA, Inc” lines, but I would at least like that level of honesty and transparency.

What’s with the 3K Tuition Arrangements?

Even with DPI saying the arrangements are “OK” (in a memo that also says “DISCLAIMER: The content of this email is for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney to obtain legal advice, including compliance with state and federal laws and regulations.”), major issues remain.  As before, for me the biggest one is a matter of principle — I don’t think MMSD should allow a third party to charge tuition to place children in our classrooms.  However, I also think the legal matters are still not clear.

I asked that the Board be given a draft contract with IMA Inc in order to understand what MMSD is selling them.  Strangely, the draft contract doesn’t really say.  It says somethings about what IMA will do (and therefore what MMSD will not be responsible for):

IMA, Inc. agrees to govern and oversee all financial aspects of the IMA educational facility and three – year – old kindergarten programs and afternoon four – y ear – old kindergarten wrap around care and programming . IMA, Inc. further agrees to incur all financial liabilities and costs associated with the IMA educational facility , three – year – old kindergarten program and afternoon four – year – old kindergarten wraparound care and programming.

And it says this about (part of) what MMSD is agreeing to do:

Three – year – old kindergarten: As set forth in Exhibit A (IMACS Five – Year Expenditure Budget Model) , IMA, Inc. shall provide reimbursement to the District for one – third of the cos t of the 3K – 5K classroom, including staffing costs, space rental costs and instructional supplies . The District does not provide three – year – old kindergarten and will not take on any financial responsibility for providing such programming. However, the practical considerations regarding hiring, evaluation and pay roll for this position have resulted in the District agreeing to perform the HR functions on behalf of IMACS. The amount set forth in Exhibit A in the row identified as “3 K Tuition/IMA reimbursement (cover 3K classroom %),” which shall be directly payable to the District, includes a two and one – half percent (2.5%) annual administrative fee. If at any point during the term of this Agreement, IMA, Inc. ceases offering three – year – old kindergarten programming, the Parties shall meet to identify budgetary and programmatic impact.

What is missing is anything about providing educational services, putting kids in classrooms, …how many kids? …how many hours? …what services?…what classrooms? …do teachers do conferences?…are the students enrolled in MMSD? …who will provide transportation? …do they have access to MMSD social workers? ..are they subject to MMSD rules? ….MMSD student and family rights? …who keeps their educational records?…who has access to those records?…what about liabilities other than financial?…I could keep going…

Leaving aside the bearing some of these questions have on the legality of the arrangements, as a Board Member, I want to know what we are agreeing to.  I would think IMA Inc. would also want to know what they are paying for.

I would not  find a reference to the detailed proposal satisfactory on this.  As a general rule, this is the contract and it should say what MMSD is accepting responsibility for.  More specifically, the detailed proposal was — in vague terms — found wanting, and has been (at least partially) superseded.  The detailed proposal says many things about 3K, but I don’t know which are meant to be implied by the contract.

I also think that if some version of an arrangement allowing IMA Inc to buy spaces in  MMSD classrooms and resell these spaces goes forward, MMSD should include in the contract some limit on how much of a markup they can take for this activity.

Why is the Charter School Policy Funding Formula Being Ignored?

I don’t know, but it is a bad practice and precedent.

The current IMACS 5 year budget projects expenditures $516,157.01 greater than the amount set by policy.

MMSD Policy 1000 reads in part

Charter School Funding Formula. All charter schools developed and initially chartered after July 1, 2013 shall receive annual funding pursuant to the following funding formula: The number of students (based on projected enrollment set forth in the charter contract) multiplied by the Department of Instruction’s open enrollment per student transfer amount.

There is no ambiguity, yet the MMSD administration found that a budget which included MMSD funding in excess of the open enrollment amount met expectations and satisfied the contingencies required by the January vote.

I went back and looked at the minutes and documents from the drafting and passage of the policy (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here) to see if there was any hint that this was intended to be advisory or optional.  There was not.

In fact, the “Charter School Original Proposal Application Applicant’s Guide” says “In order to ensure sustainability and feasibility, budget proposals may not exceed the per pupil cost allocation unless accounted for by fundraising. ”  IMACS has not met this requirement.

This policy was passed by a 7-0 vote at the last meeting before I took office.  In the time I have been on the Board, I can recall no effort to change, or even a discussion of changing the Charter School Funding Formula.

A Board may change our policies, I guess we could waive a policy (but doing so in the middle of a process is a really bad idea), but I don’t think we can just ignore them or violate them.  Like I said, I don’t know what is going on with this.  I plan to try to find out at the meeting.

What about the Staffing?

There are two major, related issues with the staffing.  One is the waivers from Statutes and the MMSD Employee Handbook that are in the contract (this is new); the other is the mater of adequacy (which is continuing).  Here are the waivers:

20.01 Statutory Waivers: Pursuant to Wisconsin State Stat. sec 188.40(7)(b), “[e] xcept as otherwise explicitly provided, chs. 115 to 121 do not apply to charter schools. ” IMACS shall exercise the flexibility afforded by this statutory provision to offer special programming, including physical education, art and music, in an integrated, student – led manner. Additionally, such programming will be guided by Montessori certified staff. Such staff may or may not also hold additional DPI licenses and /or supplementary licenses.

20.02 MMSD Handbook Waivers : IMACS will provide a standard school day , except for early release days, and abide by the established District calendar. IMACS will not implement early release days at any instructional level as set forth in sections 4.01 (Middle and Senior) and 4.02 (Monday Professional Collaboration Time (Early Release)) – Elementary) of Addendum A of the District ’s Employee Handbook. This information shall be included in any postings for IMACS teacher positions.

Elementary – level teachers will have the amount of planning time set forth in section 4.02 (Planning Time) of Addendum A of the District’s Employee Handbook; however, the time may be divided into units smaller than thirty minute blocks.

The pedagogical orientation of the Montessori model does not rely on or use tradition al Carnegie units of instruction. The model relies on sustained work blocks. IMACS will not implement the teacher contact time limitations for middle school and high schools teachers as set forth in section 4.01 (Middle and Senior) of Addendum A of the District’s Employee Handbook. This information shall be included in any posting for IMACS teacher positions.

Parent engagement and parent – staff relationships are an important aspect of the IMACS school design. The eight (8) hour limit on evening parent – teacher conference time set forth in section 4.03 of Addendum A of the Employee Handbook shall not apply to IMACS. Information related to parent – conference participation shall be included in IMACS teacher position postings.

The first issue here is how this is being done.  In this post Act 10 world, the Handbook process is an essential part of the effort to create trust with our staff, and both the process and trust are very fragile.  With this contract that process is sidestepped, and trust is strained.

The second concerns the quality of education.  In general, teaching conditions are learning conditions, and things like planning time and some limit on workload are essential (the waiver eliminates the “the teacher contact time limitations for middle school and high schools teachers,” but does not establish new ones).

More specifically, the statutory waiver has great potential to marginalize Art, Music, and Physical Education by placing the burden for these on non-specialist classroom teachers.  As I noted in my previous post, my broad but unsystematic survey of staffing at Public Montessori schools found that almost all included Art and Physical Education teachers.  A 2012 Evaluation of Montessori schools in Milwaukee said this:

Which brings us to other major staffing issue, which is the lack of Assistants in the budget.  In a move reminiscent of Kellyanne Conway citing alternative facts, the contract simply eliminates the Assistants from the AMI Standards (the budget still includes the minimal and likely insufficient BRS and SEA allocations).

Wow.

Attendance Zones, Transportation Zone, and Demographics

When IMA was being considered in January, multiple Board Members stressed the importance of the potential to serve a diverse population, with an emphasis on our low income students and students of color.  With a Charter School it is impossible to absolutely control who applies and enrolls, but there are ways that we can influence this.  The most effective way is by creating an attendance zone that is dominated by the target populations.  Instead the contract for IMA declares the entire school district as the attendance zone (this was done in part in response to a new understanding of lottery rules, but it is not required by that understanding).  Another, less effective way is to only provide transportation within an area dominated by the targeted population.  The IMA contract makes a half-hearted attempt at this.  If this is to go forward I think we should try to do better.  My first move in that attempt would be to eliminate Maple Bluff from the transportation zone.

How Will the Success (or Failure) of IMA Be Judged?

As I detailed in my previous post, the IMA contract does not meet the requirements in this. I have also pointed out that I don’t particularly like this requirement.  I have been thinking more about this, and have a little more to say.  I still don’t like it, but have come to understand that the need for “Performance Based Contracting” is intrinsic to Charter Schools.

…[C]harter contracts that plainly:

• Establish the performance standards under which schools will be evaluated, using objective and verifiable measures of student achievement as the primary measure of school quality;

• Define clear, measurable, and attainable academic, financial, and organizational performance standards and targets that the school must meet as a condition of renewal, including but not limited to state and federal measures;

What Now? What Next?

Note:  I began this post in January 2017, and then set it aside.  As a result, some of the introductory material has been superseded.  For better coverage of events since January (and some prior to January), see this post and this one. More recently I finished the sections on footnotes 5 & 7, added the section on footnote 27, and wrote the conclusion.  I like the conclusion, so I am going to quote it here: “ If the people behind IMA can’t do better with their proposal, how can we trust them with our children and our money?“

Update (8/13/17):  This week, the MMSD Board of Education will have at least one, and maybe two important meetings on Charter Schools.  On Monday 8/14 the Operations Work Group will be discussing a new, much more “Charter-friendly” policy.  It is being recommended that the Board approve this at the end of the month.  The last time the Board revised the Charter policy, it took six months and many meeting.  We may not want to take that long, but there are too many things  — involving both what is there and what isn’t —  that need examination and (Board and community) discussion to cover in two meetings, with a vote at the second.

The second meeting, for a vote on the IMACS proposal on Wednesday 8/16/17  does not appear on the legal notice (despite my request to add it).  Board Members are now being told this may be rescheduled (to my knowledge no Board Members were asked about their availability before this meeting was scheduled by the Board President, and none have been asked about their availability in relation to a possible rescheduling).  At this time we the Board do not have any update on a revised contract in response to the votes in July (the language of those votes is here).  We have been told “The goal is to get a draft document out prior to the meeting,” but there is no guarantee that will happen (we have also been told by the President that no public comment will be scheduled).  I am not clear why there is a rush.  Our policy calls for contracts to be concluded about five months prior to the school opening, IMA will have about twelve months if approved.  I do know that it would be a huge mistake to approve any contract without sufficient time for the Board and community to review.  Stay tuned.

Foot(note) Stompin’ Post

Foot Stompin’ by the Flares (click to watch/listen)

During public discussions of the Isthmus Montessori Academy (IMA) proposal to open a charter school with the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD), I repeatedly stated that the matter before the Board of Education was a the proposal submitted, not the role of charter schools, the value of Montessori education, or a host of other things.  Other issues may contribute to our thinking, but as a Board we have an obligation to follow our policy (possible revisions of the MMSD Charter School Policy are scheduled for discussion and vote in May — Note: Now August, see update at the top) and state statutes, which means considering each proposal on its own strengths and weaknesses, according to set criteria (the required National Association of Charter School Authorizers Guidelines here).  The majority of this post concerns weaknesses of the IMA proposal in the area of citation and footnotes, but first some background.

It is undisputed that the IMA proposal did not meet the established criteria (nor did the initial proposal meet the criteria to go to the next step). On this basis MMSD staff did not recommend approval (memo here, rubric here, minutes here).  However by a vote of 6-1 (I dissented) the Board (emphasis added)

[A]pprove(d) the proposal for the Isthmus Montessori Academy Charter

School and that the District enter into a contract, consistent with applicable Board policy and state law, to establish the Isthmus Montessori Academy Charter School as an instrumentality charter school for a period of five (5) years from July 1, 2018 until June 30, 2023. Such approval shall be contingent on the Isthmus Montessori Academy Charter School supplementing their current proposal to address the following areas of concern by no later than May 31,2017:

● Student Body and Demographics

● School Data

● Curriculum, Assessment and Instruction

● Financial Operations

With a second vote (6-1 also, I dissented again), the Board took care of some housekeeping requirements, and set July 1, 2017 as the contract deadline.

[See the update and the linked posts at the top for more accurate information on how events have unfolded] This is where things stand now, by May 31, 2017 MMSD staff — without a formal role for the Board — will decide whether the requested supplementary materials are sufficient to meet the requirements, if they are deemed sufficient, contract talks will begin and prior to July 1, 2017 that contract will come to the Board for approval (not amendment, this is a yes or no vote).  Among my objections to this process was that many (perhaps all) of the criteria are subjective, and although I respect the professional opinions of our staff, with subjective criteria I believe the Board should decide.

The Board and the public have also been provided with only minimal information related to the staff analysis of the proposal (this is something I think we need to address in the looming policy revision).  In addition to the memo and rubric linked above, a three-page “Financial Analysis” and a one-page (financial) “Key Factors” document were distributed.  All total this comes to nine pages of analysis for a 121 page proposal (and given that the financials and rubric have much white space, that is a generous count).

The use of citations or footnotes is among the things not referenced in any of the materials provided.  As a college instructor and (recovering) academic, I can’t help but look at and consider the references and how they are employed (part of subjectivity is that different things are important to different people).   For me, footnotes serve two important purposes.  First, they allow the reader to verify the information provided in the main text.  Second, they provide some clues to the intellectual journey of the author(s).

On my second read of the final IMA proposal, I began making notes for myself on this topic.  What follows is revised version of those notes.

The general format is a cut & paste of the passage from the proposal that contains the footnote (because of formatting issues, these are mostly images, not text), the footnote with a link to the source material, followed by a brief discussion of the source material and how it does or does not support or shed light the passage (there is also a digression on Lumin Education included for reasons that should be clear).  Here we go.

Passage and Footnote #1

1 Efimova, V., and F. Ratner. “Integrating the educational principles of Maria Montessori in the process of pedagogical support for pupils with learning disabilities.” International Review of Management and Marketing. (2016).

Discussion

For many reasons, the small study — 30 students, 80 minutes a week, for three months —  is not impressive.

The authors are Russian academics, and the journal appears on this list of “[p]otential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers” (see also the Calling Bullshit project). Although the Journal title indicates a marketing and management focus, they appear to publish in a wide array unrelated of fields.

In relation to the passage the footnote is applied to, there is nothing at all in the paper about “differentiated curriculum,” “well-rounded education,” “achievement gaps,” “socioeconomic status,” and very little about “self-initiated exploration,” or even “ability backgrounds” (the classification/definition of “learning disabilities” is limited to those without “any evident deviations in functioning of the nervous system, … no marked motor, sensory impairments or intellectual impairment”).

The “educational principles of Maria Montessori” used in the study are described here:

One section of the objective environment in Montessori approach to education was described as the exercises of practical life. The work of the child under the exercises of practical life program entails the fulfillment of various “household” affairs: Sweeping, washing hands, washing a table, shoe-polish and so forth. Any of these exercises mean the solution of direct and indirect tasks. Even if direct tasks (to learn to wash a table, to clasp buttons, to sweep away garbage from a table, to wash dishes, etc.) aren’t connected directly with educational activity, then indirect tasks solved in the course of a child’s activity, are important to the preparation for writing, reading and the development of other learning skills.

Among the conclusions of this “study” is that students with disabilities should be educated in “special centers.”:

The educational principles of Maria Montessori, in our view, fully meet the requirements of the new standards of education adopted in our country. However, the presence of the class-lesson system limits the possibilities for the application of the educational principles of Maria Montessori in a regular school. It seems to us that the process of pedagogical support for children with learning disabilities can be managed in a more flexible manner on the basis of special centers.

IMA has explicitly presented their version of Montesori education as inclusive for students with disabilities, (however it appears that some public Montessori schools in Milwaukee  employ staff for “More Restrictive Placements,”examples here and here).

I can discern no good reason why IMA included a citation to this article.

Passage and Footnotes #2 and #6

2“[The Montessori] child-centered classrooms provide for a greater level of student engagement possibly due to more positive teacher-student relationships. It is also possible that students at child-centered classrooms participate at a greater proportion, complexity, and intensity in class work than students in more traditional educational settings do because alternative curricula provides more opportunities to develop higher levels of competency.” Franczak, 2016.

The full cite for Franczak appears elsewhere (the first use should include the full cite): Franczak, Iwona. “Comparative Analysis of Behavioral Engagement and Transferable Skills in Conventional and Montessori Schools.” 2016 NCUR (2016). The passage from the IMA proposal that cite annotates reads:

Discussion

At the time of the study Ms Franczak was an undergraduate student at Eastern Illinois University, Charleston (the journal publishes the proceedings of an undergraduate research conference held annually in Asheville, NC). As far as undergraduate research goes, it is fine work. There are, however, a number of issues.

First, the study says nothing directly about “test scores,”or “achievement gaps,” or even “achievement” (it does make a case – based on other work – that engagement and transferable skills increase academic achievement), very little about “opportunities to follow their own interest and develop deep understanding,” but much on “transferable skills.”

With the second passage, the biggest problem is that this is not a “longitudinal study,” but rather for three non-randomly selected schools, “[o]bservations were conducted at site in three thirty minute intervals during the first three hours of a school day for five days.” Referencing observations that took place over five days as “longitudinal” is a big problem.

It should be noted that the statements on “self control, team work, and problem solving” in the study were not based on anything “measured,” (the word used in the IMA proposal) in the research, but rather are presented as “additional qualitative data” (teacher surveys – no survey instrument is provided – are said to “confirm” these observations, but elsewhere it is noted that there were no differences found among the schools in the parent survey). These are also big problems.

The quality of the research is questionable and IMA mischaracterizes the findings.

Passage and Footnote #3

3 “[The] benefits of parental involvement in school… include: improved parent–teacher relationships, teacher morale and school climate; improved school attendance, attitudes, behavior and mental health of children; and, increased parental confidence, satisfaction and interest in their own education.” Hornby, Garry, and Rayleen Lafaele. “Barriers to parental involvement in education: An explanatory model.” Educational Review 63.1 (2011): 37-52.

Discussion

This is generally fine. The authors are recognized scholars, the journal is respectable, and the information being annotated is generally related to the source cited. The article itself says nothing about Montessori, so it is a little off,  but there isn’t anything egregious with this citation.

Passage and Footnote #4

4  Abigail Jordan, Bailey Fern, Chelsea Morris, Rebecca Cross, and Smita Mathur,“Critical Thinking in the Elementary Classroom: Exploring Student Engagement in Elementary Science Classrooms through Case-Study Approach” Journal of Emerging Trends in Educational Research and Policy Studies 5(2014) 6: 673-678, 665.

Discussion

Undergraduate research once more, this time published by an organization on the ““[p]otential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers” list linked above.

Again it is a fine as undergraduate research, but overall not very impressive, and it has little or no relationship to the passage it supposedly supports. The words/phrases “Montessori,” “customized learning plans,” or “systems of support” do not appear. The article does endorse “Constructivist” education, and the relationship between Constructivism and Montessori is complicated and controversial (see here). Here is the conclusion

Through our research, we have found that male students in the elementary classroom often need multiple forms of engagement to learn. Specific examples of engagement include physically stimulating opportunities and moments that involve emotional engagement such as personal connections to material. It is important for teachers to remember that behavioral engagement does not always relate to cognitive success. For students to truly understand and connect to science material, a layered engagement approach must be administered.

I can discern no good reason to cite this article here.

Passage and Footnote # 5 and Uncited Statistics

5 See: www.public-montessori.org/sites/default/files/resources/EDCS%20Outcomes%20Charts%20and%20Graphs.pdf (note: The link from the application no longer works, the document has been archived here).

The “increasing research base” turns out to be two pages of a 2010 newsletter from an organization now called Lumin Education.   There is a “research base” on Montessori (parts of which appear elsewhere in the IMA application), but that’s not what this is.

The same organization and statistics from the same two pages appear elsewhere (without a citation) in the IMA application  to support of IMA’s projections for student achievement. Here is that passage:

For the last thirty years a public Montessori Charter in East Dallas, where the area has a 50% high school drop out rate, has boasted third grade student math and reading scores in the top 36% nationwide, graduation rates of 94% of high schoolers, with 88% going on to college. The school has a higher than district-average percentage of ELL students and economically disadvantaged students, and  a per-pupil expenditure 14% less than the district level. IMA believes in the power of the method to produce similar results for Madison. For these reasons, our academic achievement goals are ambitious.

Lumin began 38 years ago as a small private (Montessori) school; in 1999 they opened a pre-K to grade 3 charter school. There was no Charter School 30 years ago.  They also operate two pre-natal to age three programs, one of which now has toddler and primary classrooms, and is slated to add elementary (as far as I can tell these are private, not charter or public).

Many more problems here. The first is that there is no source given for this data, no footnote, although it appears all of the figures are from the same 2010 newsletter cited above.. Next is the comparison of drop out rates with graduation rates, without defining either. There are many ways to calculate drop out rates and graduation rates, but only rarely do they lend themselves to simple comparisons between the two. This mistake appears to be the work of the IMA team, because the newsletter states both in terms of “graduation rates.” It isn’t clear from the source which schools or students are included (does this combine the private school with the charter, are any students who attended for any length of time included or only those who attended for a certain number of years), nor how data was obtained and for what percentage of students (neither school goes past 4th grade and it can be difficult to track outcomes for mobile students over time). All these things matter. One thing that distinguishes quality research from promotional materials is that quality research provides these sorts of details.

Whatever the sources or quality of data behind the assertion about graduation rates, the numbers involved appear to be very small. The private school currently has a total pre-K to 3d grade enrollment of 72, with only 9 3d graders. The public charter has 272 students with the vast majority in pre-K and Kindergarten and only 32 in grade 3 (the single tested grade).

The achievement statistics from the newsletter  — which form the basis for IMA’s aspirational projections —  come in two forms.

One is characterized as being based on “a ten-year study of standardized test scores (1993 – 2003),” with no further information given.  Since the Charter school opened in 1999, at most 3 years of this unavailable study could include that school.  Again, IMA misrepresents the figures they are citing.

The other statistics are clearly from the state TAKS tests, however there is also some confusion and misrepresentation with these.  This graph from the newsletter does not indicate whether the data is from the Charter or the Private school, or a combination of the two:

Further investigation appears to show it is from from the Charter.  In 2008-9 there were 20 students from the Charter tested in reading, so the number was very small.  Further investigation also reveals how this graph is misleading.  Note that the Charter students are all in grade 3, but the comparisons are to the “Sum of all grades tested.” If you only include 3d grade, in Region 10 for 2008-9, the percent meeting standard was 94%, or within 1% of the Charter school.  This fits with a 2011 study by NWEA which showed that the TAKS cut scores were generally very low, and that 3d grade had some of the lowest.  It is also worth noting that the newsletter says nothing about math scores, probably because only 76% of their students met the standard in 2008-9 (compared to 84% in Region 10).  Add to this well-reported findings that “suggests they [the TAKS tests] are virtually useless at measuring the effects of classroom instruction,” and problems present become even greater.

It should be noted that those who “analyzed” the IMA materials  for the Board displayed little or no awareness of any these issues with the single newsletter IMA referenced as an “increasing research base” (nor any of the issues raised here with any of the other citations)  That’s a problem too.

Passage and Footnote #7

7. Sara Rimm-Kaufman and Lia Sandilos,“Improving Students’ Relationship with Teachers to Provide Essential Supports for Learning” American Psychological Association, (2011).

Discussion

This is another case of a perfectly fine presentation, by respected researchers, published on a respected forum, being presented by IMA as supporting assertions about Montessori, when the article says nothing about Montessori.  Nothing.

As far as attribution and “increased achievement” goes, here is what the authors have to say “Solely improving students’ relationships with their teachers will not produce gains in achievement. However, those students who have close, positive and supportive relationships with their teachers will attain higher levels of achievement than those students with more conflict in their relationships.”

It would be fine if the authors of the IMA proposal took Rimm-Kaufman and Sandilos’ work and in a systematic way drew parallels between their findings and Montessori practices.  Failing this, it would be acceptable to simply include something in the footnote like “for more on relationships and child-centered environments in general, and outside of Montessori, see:…).  To imply that these authors “attributed” “increased achievement” to the “Montessori method,” is dishonest.  See also the section on footnotes #2 & #6 above.

One More, Passage and Footnote #27

Note:  When I was first drafting this post back in January, this is where I intended to stop (at some point you hit diminishing returns, and it becomes increasingly clear that you have put more work into critiquing the research cited than went into doing the cites in the first place).  However, in recent weeks I found one more instance I would like to include.

27 Diamond, A., “The Evidence Base for Improving School Outcomes by Addressing the Whole Child and by Addressing Skills and Attitudes, Not Just Content.” Early Education and Development, 2: 780-793. (2010)

Discussion

On the surface this is simply (yet) another case of IMA placing a citation to a perfectly fine article as supporting evidence for assertions about Montessori that the article does not make (there are no mentions of Montessori in Dr. Diamond’s article).  Certainly misleading, and to me dishonest.  What makes this one special is that in the IMA proposal it comes with a “hot link,” that doesn’t take you to the article, but rather sends you to this (Walton funded) Public Montessori advocacy organization.  That’s a whole new level of misleading.

Conclusion

As Mark Twain wrote, “Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest.”  After the citations examined here, I stopped my systematic researches.  With the others I did look at, I found some that were fine, and many that were problematic.  Regardless of what the scorecard for the entire proposal might be, the clear failings revealed in those covered here are beyond troubling.  If the people behind IMA can’t do better with their proposal, how can we trust them with our children and our money?

Owen Gray — Give a Helping Hand (click to listen/watch).

On Monday, October 30, 2017 (6:00 PM, Doyle Bldg. Auditorium), the Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education will finalize our 2017-18 budget.  Late information received from the state shows that based on the expenditures from the Preliminary budget passed in June, our district will have about $3.7 Million in unused revenue authority, and significantly lower property tax increases than anticipated (2.96% vs 3.97%).  At the October 23, 2017 Operations Work Group meeting, this information was discussed, and there is interest among some of the Board in using some of this authority to increase Special Education expenditures, specifically to add Special Education Assistants, or SEAs  (video here).  I intend to support (or propose) a budget amendment to do this.

It is probably worth noting that prior to passing the June budget, the Board passed an amendment devoting up to an extra $1 million to class size reduction, but because the terms of that amendment, the delay in passing a state budget meant that this money was not spent.

At the October 23 meeting I said I was comfortable using about half of the authority, or about $1.8 Million total (there was also some support for collecting and “banking” some of the revenue for future use, and for applying to physical plant maintenance).  We are still waiting for some more information on current special education staffing and recent trends; based on the information I have now, I am thinking in the $750,000 to $1,000,000 range for special education staffing, which would mean about 15 to 20 FTE SEAs.

In posting a news story related to this on Facebook, I wrote that I “have been hearing from both staff and families that the unmet needs are greater than they have been in the past.,” since that posting I have heard much more.

I am not under the illusion that this increase will allow all needs to be met (we are far from that), but I do think it will help in multiple ways.

I also fully understand that these kind of last minute budget fixes are not a good practice, and that real help (and good budgeting) involves deliberate analysis, redesign, and implementation.  This is in the works, with a Special Education Delivery redesign process (including money for those — often correctly — dreaded consultants) in the budget.  I hope that process brings improvement, but right now we know there are needs, and have the means to address some of those needs.  I think we would be remiss if we did not do this.  What follows is some background and more detail on why I believe this, why I support using some of this revenue authority for special education staffing.

Staffing Trends

Data taken from October Budget Update,  April Budget Book, and MMSD (internal) DataDashboard.  The school based teacher staffing is an estimate, no data is readily available for 2014, and 2015.

The most obvious trend is a shift from SEAs to teachers, resulting in fewer total school based staff, despite generally increasing numbers of special education students (FY 2017 to 2018 doesn’t fully fit this trend, if my estimate is correct, with a total staffing increase of 1.37, for an increase of students of 38).  This appears to be deliberate, and also appears to be based on (among other things) a misapplication of the work of Special Education Scholar Michael Ginagreco (more on that below).

The April Budget included an increase of 7.7 EAs, the June budget had a net cut of 13 EAs (this includes all categories of EAs, not just SEAs), this is a reduction of 57 from 2015-16.  As of the 2017-18 third Friday count there were 82 more special education students than there had been in January of 2016,  and 38 more than in January of 2017. 

This, from a 2011 Wisconsin State Journal article (discussed in this AMPS post) provides some longer term context:

Graph from the Wisconsin State Journal, click image for accompanying story.

Why SEAs Matter and Why this Can Help

Probably best to start here with a disclosure: my spouse is a SEA in MMSD.  Chris Rickert and others of his ilk may think that because of this I should not involve myself in this area as a Board Member.  I disagree.  If this amendment passes, the odds are it will have little or no direct impact on my spouse’s working conditions (the program she works with is extremely unlikely to see any staffing changes), and even if it does have a small direct or indirect impact, it would not be anything that could be considered special treatment based on our relationship.  There would be no monetary impact for our family.

The staff in our schools and the families of students in special education can do a much better job explaining why this matters than I can (please do let the Board hear your stories); their direct experiences are much more powerful than my observations and interpretations.  That said, I would like to try.

Safety: All students; all staff.  Whether it is students who “run” from classes, buildings and playgrounds, or students who express their frustrations in physical ways,  experienced SEAs who know their students can be a key factor in keeping students and staff safe.

Well-being: All students; all staff.  With students, some of this comes down to having basic needs (feeding, toileting….) consistently attended to.  This is not happening with some students now.  With all — students and staff — the stress factors related to understaffing are huge.  It is no accident that we had an approximately 20% turnover of CC teachers last year.  I don’t have a figure on SEA turnover, but I know more than a handful of good, experienced SEAs who burned out and left.  Additionally, about 40% of Cross Categorical (CC, Special Education) teachers hired last year lacked full certification (they were working on emergency permits), and over 25% of those hired did not have general education certification either (emergency licenses). The presence of unqualified and inexperienced CC teachers increases the workload and stress of our experienced staff, making other supports more necessary.  SEAs can help.

Student learning. Unless safety and well-being are taken care of, learning is going to be minimal.  One of the criticisms of SEA staffing is that they end up doing teaching work that should be done by highly trained and qualified teachers; I know in some of our classrooms we have highly qualified teachers doing support work that should be done by support staff.  This is not a good use of our resources, either human or fiscal, and it is not good for our students’ progress.

Relationships:  Relationships are a point of emphasis this year in MMSD, and this could be a good thing.  Common sense and solid research shows that strong relationships between staff and students, and among staff can contribute student and staff well-being, staff retention, and most important student academic progress.  I anticipate hearing from our administration that there is already enough staffing/money in the budget, and the current system of plugging in emergency and short term staff to address crises is working.  Even if by deploying in this manner we do have enough staff, it goes against everything we know about the importance of relationships.  It isn’t a good idea to move staff in and out of schools and classroom, and this is especially true in relation to students with complex needs, that often include great unease with change.   Adding staff will allow more of the late allocations to be permanent, and subject fewer students and staff teams to instability.

The Misuse of Research

It is no secret that much of the consulting class and the professoriate  are hostile to Educational Assistants (what they tend to call paraprofessionals).  Bottom line minded budget-cutting hacks, find Special Education in general, and EAs in particular easy targets.  Others appear to be out of touch with the realities in our schools, and/or over reacting to past or isolated mis and overuse of Educational Assistants.  Michael Giangreco, who was one of the keynotes for the MMSD Summer Teaching & Learning Institute, appears to be very well-intentioned, but somewhat out of touch and in the over reaction mode.  Unfortunately, it also appears that MMSD staff have not realized the aspects of his work that make it problematic when applied to our district and have been using it to justify cuts to SEAs (accompanied by reallocations to Cross Categorical teachers).

I have been digging into his work, and there is much to like.  Generously he links to many of his articles and materials on his website (see the link with his name); I have also explored some things that are behind firewalls.

One of the big lessons from his work is that staffing for inclusion should be done with a whole school approach (General Education and Special Education), and that it should be done by design, not through piecemeal tweaks.  I know that the special education budget amendment will be a tweak, but I also believe the shifts that contributed to the need for this amendment were done piecemeal.

For what follows I am going to (mostly) rely on the article that was linked in the Summer Learning Institute materials, “Precarious or Purposeful? Proactively Building Inclusive Special Education Service Delivery on Solid Ground” by Michael F. Giangreco and Jesse C. Suter.

Here and elsewhere, Giangreco does a fine job identifying (what I would call) preconditions for successful inclusion models; delineating the interactions of various factors tied to creating positive school cultures and successful student learning; offering multiple measures useful in assessing staffing allocations, and much more; in this article he includes these measures for what he calls “the exemplar model.”  I am confident that a school that both met his preconditions and followed his model would be a wonderful school for both students and staff.  Unfortunately, MMSD is very different than the exemplars.

At the October 23 meeting (and previously in private conversation) Anna Moffit alerted me to one issue, that of class size.  Giangreco’s exemplar (K-8) has class sizes of 17-21.  MMSD has some very small classes, but many, many well over 21.  Elsewhere — in an article titled “Constructively Responding to Requests for Paraprofessionals: We Keep Asking the Wrong Questions” (behind a firewall) Giangreco and his co-authors write about Middle and High School teaching loads:

Research in middle and high schools suggests understanding total student load (TSL, i.e., the total number of students with whom a teacher interacts) is a service delivery variable of importance related to teacher–student interactions and achievement (Ouchi, 2009). TSL levels about 80 allow teachers opportunities to know their students, respond to student work, and have sufficient time out of the classroom to make themselves available to students for individual assistance. This allows students to know their teachers understand and care about them—a key foundation of the learning process and ultimately to student achievement. Exploring general and special education service delivery variables allows schools to establish a baseline and provides a wealth of information in considering how they might contribute to school system health.

All good and true.  I believe MMSD High School TSLs are generally over 120, or half again as large as Giangreco recommends.

Also of note are the demographics for his Exemplar.  Here is a comparison with MMSD (September 2017,  third Friday count):

MMSD is significantly higher in all but one measure.

Leaving aside these other factors, the kicker is that the exemplar model calls for huge increases in SEA, Cross Categorical, and General Education Assistants.  Huge.

Date Notes: MMSD date from (internal) Datadashboard (I used current instead of third Friday here), October Budget Update, June Budget, CC = “Cross Categorical.” MMSD school based CC estimated, and this estimate was used for caseloads, ratios, and density.  Caveat, the Exemplar model should be compared at the school level, it was done here at the district level because time and data access limitations did not allow for a school by school analysis.

So to meet the exemplar model, MMSD should add 267.97 school based Cross Categorical teachers, and 359.64 SEAs (along with 144.2 other EAs).  OK, let’s do it!

The one thing MMSD should not do based on this model is to cut small numbers of SEAs to allocate even smaller numbers of Cross Categorical teachers, but that is exactly what has been done.   We are and were relatively more understaffed with SEAs and EAs than we are and were with Cross categorical teachers (according to this model).  Adding some SEAs for the short term seems like a reasonable correction.

Conclusion

The Board has an opportunity to make investments NOW that will improve the experiences, safety and well being of our students and staff.  The scholarship that has been used as one of the justifications for decreases in SEA staffing was misapplied.  Allowing things to continue to deteriorate will only make implementing systematic changes more difficult.  For these (and other) reasons, I will by supporting a special education staffing budget amendment.  When you can give a helping hand, you should.

Thomas J. (TJ) Mertz

On April 30th and May 7th, 2018, the Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education met to consider “negotiations strategy regarding collectively bargaining base wages for all MMSD bargaining units. ”  Because I have what may be considered a conflict of interest related to my spouse’s membership in one of the bargaining units, and strategies related to contracts with all units were agendaed together, I recused myself and did not participate.

TJ Mertz