cc >> ...the Alumni Research
Foundation, the UW Madison Chancellor's Office, M&I Bank
and Isthmus Publishing, and members of the
Wisconsin Academy. Also who make this possible are
the Wisconsin Academy Council, or board of directors for the
Wisconsin Academy. There are several of them here
tonight, and I hope you'll raise your hands.
Millard Sussman, Pat Brady, John Ashley, and I think,
President Jim Armstrong is here. A-ha!
Wouldn't want to miss that one. (laughter)
Welcome and thank you all for making these presentations
possible here tonight and I know there are many of you that are
members here tonight as well. If you've seen the yellow index
cards as you come in, I hope that you've had an opportunity
to fill those out to help us figure out how best to market
these programs. And also, if you fill them out
with your email address, we'd be glad to submit your name for a
drawing for a free membership in the Wisconsin Academy.
So we'd really appreciate your helping us with other ideas and
speaker topics for next year. Your membership does support
these Wisconsin Academy evening presentations, our quarterly
magazine, I think I've got a copy here, so that you can see
it. That's what your membership gets
for you and the James Watrous Gallery on the third floor of
the Overture Center here in Madison.
So please join this wonderful community of the mind that is
here tonight. All Academy Evenings this season
are listed in our season schedule and if you don't have
one of those, please feel free to take one on your way out and
of course, they too have membership information in the
back. So, we don't let you miss that.
This evening's presentation is being streamed live on the
Internet, and I'd like to thank Julie Underwood and the School
of Education for making it possible to do this and we'd
like to welcome the viewers that are online, for those that are
online, questions can be sent to the panel by emailing questions
at wisconsinacademy.org And there is one other person in
the audience that I'd just like to introduce and that is
state Senator Luther Olsen, who's Chairman of the Senate
Education Committee. Luther, thank you
for raising your hand. And thank you for being here.
(applause) The Wisconsin Academy is
dedicated to creating spaces for civil discourse and has been
for 141 years now on Wisconsin's most urgent challenges.
And we really appreciate that you're all here to participate
in that civil discourse. I am now pleased to be able to
welcome all of those that are maybe just joining us as part of
our live video stream. I am Margaret Lewis, Executive
Director of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and
Letters, and I'd like to welcome you all to tonight's panel
entitled, "Getting to A+: Wisconsin's Education
Challenges." And it is my pleasure to start
by introducing Dean Julie Underwood of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison School of Education who will introduce our
panelists and Julie is, as I mentioned, Dean of the School of
Education of the UW-Madison, has been for the last five years
and previously was employed for about seven years with the
National School Board's Association as General Council.
Thank you very much for joining us, Julie.
( applause )
Thank you, Margaret. Thank you, Margaret and thank
you to all of us, to all of you for joining us.
I want to welcome you as Margaret did to this evening's
presentation. This one's "Getting to A+."
It's one of a series of lectures about education and I
particularly want to thank the Academy for focusing on issues
of public education. This is a very important time in
public education. Personally, I believe that this
is absolutely one of the most critical topics in our society
today, K-12 education, and more specifically, the future of K-12
education. And I don't want to engage in
hyperbole or sound alarmist but I do believe that we're at a
watershed moment for American public schools.
Certainly, the challenges in American public schools have
been debated over the decades but right now, in the state, in
the nation, and even in our own hometown, we have issues about
public schools, policies that are being debated, changes that
are going on, that I believe will impact the path of public
schools if maybe not forever but for a very, very long time.
And tonight of course we have with us some education leaders
in our state who will address those issues.
We have Dan Nerad, Joan Wade, and Mike Thompson.
They're going to be discussing these issues, they're each going
to take a bit of time themselves and then we're going to
roll up that screen.. . ( laughter )
They're each going to make some comments themselves.
Then we're going to have-- I'm going to ask them
a couple questions. We encourage you all to ask
questions as well and we'll be taking questions from those of
you who are viewing at a distance and want to email in
your questions. We'll take those as well.
We hope to have a good conversation, a good exchange of
ideas since that's the history and the tradition of the Academy
here in Wisconsin. So first off, I want to do our
introductions. I'm going to do them all
to begin with, and then we'll take people in turn.
So, on the far right, my far right is Mike Thompson,
if you don't know him. Mike Thompson--
Oh wait, I want to make one disclaimer.
Actually, one boast. All three of these individuals
have degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison
School of Education. ( applause )
Now, I could say that individually, so I could say
that lots of time, but I will say that collectively.
So Mike Thompson is the Deputy State Superintendent
for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
He's been at DPI for over ten years in a number of positions
serving that institution well as the executive assistant to State
Superintendent Libby Burmaster. He's also been the department's
federal policy adviser and the director of student services.
He has also been a teacher, an educator in various ways in our
state before he went to DPI. Second, we have Joan Wade.
Joan is currently the director of CESA 6.
For those of you who don't know our CESA structure, CESA 6 is a
collective of about 42 districts in the Oshkosh area.
And she has been director of CESA 6 since 2001.
Before that time, she served in the Wisconsin State Legislature
as a representative for the 42nd district in the state of
Wisconsin. Joan Wade.
And finally we have Dan Nerad. Dan Nerad became Madison's
metropolitan school district's superintendent or district
administrator as we know them in the state of Wisconsin in 2008.
Previously he was a superintendent for the Green Bay
public schools, a position he held for about seven years and I
believe that that is more than the average tenure for a
superintendent in the United States.
He served in a number of positions in Green Bay and we
are pleased to have him join us in our community here in
Madison. So, I'm going to first turn this
over to Mike who's going to start with some opening
comments. >> Mike Thompson: Thank you,
Julie. Good evening, everyone.
First of all, thanks to the Wisconsin Academy for inviting
us to be here. It is a great pleasure to be on
this panel and especially with these two panelists who I have
had deep respect for over the years and what they've done in
our Wisconsin schools, both at the regional level and the local
level with Dan. And thanks to you, Julie.
I know Julie as an instructor, as I told her at dinner, she was
absolutely the best instructor I've had at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison bar none. She was excellent and that was
her first time around as they call it when I had her back
then. As Julie said, I've been at the
Department of Instruction not ten years, but 20 years.
I used to have jet black hair and a wife and two kids.
( laughter ) I've still got the wife and two
kids but education is a tough business, as you know.
I'm just going to give you a couple comments to give you kind
of a picture about a little about myself and about what
I kind of see education in Wisconsin.
See, I'm a proud consumer and product of our Wisconsin
education system. I went through our K-12 system,
our higher education system. My wife is a teacher,
she went through the system. My kids went through the system.
I, or my two kids have attended the University
of UW-Stevens Point, UW-Oshkosh, UW-Whitewater, UW-Oshkosh,
UW-Madison, MATC, and Winona. Now, I don't know how one
of my kids crossed the border to Winona but he did.
But all of those were excellent education systems in this
particular state and I attribute our ability to do that in this
particular state all the way back to our Constitution in 1848
when our Founding Fathers said, we're going guarantee every
child in this state a free public education from age 4-20.
We're going to guarantee that. They knew that was the way to
prosperity in this particular state.
And it was so important that in 1879, we said it was going to be
compulsory. You have to go.
We've had some great reform achievements in this particular
state. 1859, we had the first
kindergarten in the nation in Whitewater.
1973, we passed the first state law that required schools to
serve children with disabilities.
IDA is modeled after Wisconsin's law.
We have just the largest, and the first state to implement
the largest voucher program allowing private school students
to attend private school students in Milwaukee.
We have in this particular state, we've received
from the federal government the largest charter school grant to
expand charter schools in this state and we currently have 206
charter schools running throughout this particular
state. We were the first state to
develop and implement a tiered licensure system for our
educators, and I can tell you from talking to people from
other states when they call and say, I'm kind of curious about a
teacher in our-- oh, wait a minute they're
from Wisconsin, we're not worried about them at all.
We have a really good system in our particular state.
And, you know, even though we had a lot of successes in our
state and I'm proud of them, proud when I go to national
meetings to talk about where I am in Wisconsin, I feel we
really haven't done enough to keep pace with the educational
needs of our particular students.
You know, right now, Tony Evers, our state superintendent,
ran on of platform of every child to graduate.
Every child to graduate, we graduate 90% of our students in
this particular state. But when you disaggregate that
data, we know that some populations, some subgroups of
students aren't doing so well and that's not good enough.
And it's not just good enough to graduate, you have to graduate
ready. Like to say that every child
that is born to say, you're going to get a free education
and when you get done with it, you're going to be ready.
You're going to be ready to go on to post secondary education
and not have to take remedial coursework or you're going to be
ready to go into the world of work and be able to function in
that world of work and advance in a career and earn a
respectable living. That's what we guarantee you the
opportunity for and I don't think to the point that our
education system has kept pace with that particular promise.
We have to create learning systems in our state that really
are meeting the needs of students where they are now.
Let me tell you just about four points I think what part of that
learning system needs to include and then we'll talk more about
some of the specifics as what Joan and Dan are doing in their
particular districts. But that learning system we have
to have for all kids is one that has high expectations, high
expectations for achievement. Now, were the first state to
sign on to the national standard, the common course
standard being language, arts, and mathematics.
The first state, 47 other states followed suit.
We have high academic standards that we're going to implement in
this particular state, internationally bench-marked
standards. We have to follow that up with a
really solid and good curriculum to deliver those particular
standards. And we are working with CESA's
and others in this state to develop a really good curriculum
around implementing those particular standards of high
expectations for all kids at all grade levels.
That's where it starts. We have to have the second
piece, we have to have instructional designs and
environments where kids can achieve and be engaged in this
school system. And instructional designs
that take kids at where they're at
and move them forward. Personalized systems that allows
all different types of learning, 24/7 learning
in our school districts, bringing digital learning
into the classroom, providing kids an opportunity in
the high school to earn college credit, dual credit enrollments,
early and middle-level colleges. We have to provide these
opportunities for kids because they live in a different
environment than they have before.
And they're going to compete in a different environment.
We have to really good account ability and assessment systems
in our particular state. Fair accountability systems,
accurate accountability systems that are based on data and we're
moving rapidly in this state to develop a really good data
system, student information system, so we'll have that data.
And we're revising our state testing system to develop a
better testing system that's online, adaptive, and gives
people immediate results. Those are the types of things we
need in our state to move forward.
And we have to move forward with a sense of urgency.
And finally, we have to be able to support and recognize the
teachers, they're the most vital resource for our kids in this
particular state. We have to be able to do that
and at the state level, we have to create some flexibility in
licensing. We have a really good licensing
system that assures that we have high quality teachers in our
particular state. We have to make sure that that
license system is flexible to the changing nature of how kids
take coursework in our schools. And we're working in that
particular piece. And we have to have a system to
effectively and fairly evaluate teachers in our particular
state. Teachers and principals and
we're working to that end as well.
So we can not only look at where we need to improve in the area
of teaching but recognize the tremendous strengths our
teaching core in this particular state have.
This state has a lot of things to build on, a lot
of successes in our state particularly to build on.
The big shift that I see in education, apart from, I think
I agree with Julie, a watershed moment, is when I see districts
come together to talk about education.
A time ago, they used to come together to learn about what
other people were doing and when states would come together at
the national level, we'd all listen to what other states were
doing. The shift is, districts are
coming together to move together.
And states are coming together to move together.
And that's what's happening, both at the regional level and
at local levels about how we're moving education forward.
We're going to have common standards, we're going to have
common curriculum, we're going to have common assessment
systems and we're going to have common data systems that we all
can draw from and I think those are all positive movements in
education as we go forward. So, I appreciate the opportunity
to be here and thanks to all of you for coming out on a rainy
night. Appreciate that.
I'm glad it's not Thursday, because that would be a rainy
night plus the Badgers were playing so.
( laughter ) >> Thanks, Mike.
Joan. >> Joan Wade: Well, good evening
everyone and I would like to thank the invitation to be here.
Julie, for facilitating and being a part of this panel is
pretty awesome experience for me and I'm really happy to be here.
I have been a CESA administrator for about ten years and prior to
going into the legislature before that, I served as a
teacher. I worked as an elementary
teacher, I've worked as a library media specialist, I've
worked with technology in school districts.
We do in Wisconsin have a very proud history of education, we
have a very proud history of cooperatives which is why I'm
proud to say I'm at CESA, and part of that proud history that
we have makes it difficult to change.
We see ourselves right now in our state where we're really in
a state of a crisis. But I firmly believe that within
every crisis, there is opportunity.
I can't think of a better time to be in education than right
now. This is a critical time in our
educational system and I think that public education is going
to come through this financial crisis and they're going to be
stronger and better than we've ever been in our past.
In our region of the state, our superintendents had been talking
about this crisis for about at least the last couple of years.
Knowing that, there's a few things going on that we can't,
we couldn't quite get our arms around.
So we spent considerable enough time really studying some of the
issues that we're facing in public education.
And we created a mess map, we called it, and on our mess map,
we had all kinds of things that were interrelated and really we
called them wicked problems because they didn't really have
an answer and they rated five top wicked problems that we
really needed to deal with in our region.
And those five problems, the first one is alienation of
students. We're finding that in schools
every day and it's hard, a lot of times, it's hard for
educators, myself included, to admit that we are alienating
students. But whether they are students
that are failing or students that are A students, we find
that they're bored, that they're oftentimes not being
challenged like they'd like to be.
And are we really meeting their needs?
Not all students but we certainly aren't meeting the
needs of some of the students. So, the superintendents in our
region really looked at how are we alienating those kids.
The second thing we looked at is if we're alienating kids, they
have choices. And so let's look at the
competition that we're facing in education and there's a lot of
competition to public education. How are we going to deal with
that as public schools? The third thing they looked at
is all these technology challenges that are being thrown
at us. There's a lot of changes with
technology, kids will be in school and sometimes they will
have their cell phone in their pocket and they'll be texting
somebody on their cell phone but yet they're not able to use it
to do things in class and so we need to get a different view on
technology and how we're able to start multitasking with the kids
and letting them use technology to drive their learning.
So that was another wicked problem that we're trying to
deal with. The fourth wicked problem was
really the status quo. How do you change a system that
is really comfortable where it's at?
Because, as we said, we have a proud history in Wisconsin.
Our public schools are really good and they are.
We do good on test scores, we do good across the nation, so if
you're doing good, how do you get better?
And how do you beat that status quo?
And then the fifth one which we're more aware of today than
ever is an unsustainable financial model.
Our superintendents talked a year and a half ago about the
funding cliff that was right in front of us.
What are we going to do when the federal stimulus money is gone,
where many of our school districts are facing declining
enrollment which means we are facing declining revenue.
And how are we going to continue to educate our schools, or our
students rather with that financial crisis down the path.
We wrestled with those issues. And we decided that if we didn't
plan for our future, somebody else would.
And we probably wouldn't like the future that somebody else
was going to plan for us. So, we took upon ourselves to
redesign what we wanted to call public education for the future.
We developed the next generation of learning initiative which
The foresight of these school districts and some of the work
that they did together is paying off dividends today because
they've been thinking as school communities, school boards,
superintendents, teachers, and even students coming into the
dialogue about how do we change our education system to better
meet the needs of our kids for 21st global society.
How do we use technology better? How do we really customize the
learning for the students? How do we change a system and
how do we partner with DPI, in some cases, in higher ed in some
cases, so that we can allow kids to get credit for, let's say,
if they are participating in a community orchestra, why can't
they get credit for band for that?
If they're doing outside work, they should be able to,
if they can meet competencies, get credit in school
for some of those experiences.
So, we're taking a look at that. How do we share programs across
districts in a regional setting? How do we with students that are
living in poverty or homeless, how do we assign a family
advocate to those students so that they're ready to come to
school to learn? How do we make sure that all
students have a breakfast in the morning when they get to school
so they're not thinking about how hungry they are?
And so as we talked about those structures that we need to put
into place, we've designed a regional learning center that
six to eight schools could partner with to develop.
Different learning experiences for kids, different teaching
programs for teachers so they become actual teaching
coaches, learning coaches rather than the traditional teacher in
front of the classroom. We're in the process of
developing a teacher and leader effectiveness center so that as
seniority, if it goes away, we have something to take its place
in school districts so you can look at teaching and know
if teachers are being effective and how that works
with student learning. We also have to put together a
new business model and so we're looking at business models
across the nation. How are schools doing business
differently so that they can lower their expenses and still
provide a world class education for students?
So, I think we'll probably be talking about that a little bit
more as we go through the night but I want to be able to pass it
off to Dan so I'm really, really excited to be here and it is an
honor to be on this panel. >> Thank you, Joan.
Dan Nerad: Thank you very much and I would too express
it's a great honor to be here this evening and join my
colleagues. I have great respect for the
work that they're doing both at the DPI and CESA.
I also want to extend my thanks to the academy for gathering
people together tonight for an important conversation about
education. In my very strong bias, there's
no more important conversation that needs to take place across
this entire country and in particular in our community
about how we educate children and what's at stake if we fail
to do so. Well, and I also want to thank
Dean Underwood for her commitment to gather partners
together for these kinds of conversations and for other
types of partnership work that the district is doing with the
University of Wisconsin School of Education.
You know, as with other times in our history, today we are facing
challenges as an educational community.
And I would suggest that we are facing unprecedented challenges.
These include the public's perception of how well we are
educating our children, the fact that we have children that
aren't meeting curricular standards, and we aren't able to
really offer plausible explanations why these
achievement gaps continue, that we have competing educational
outcomes that create mixed signals about the quality and
value of public education, and I also believe there's an
unwillingness to commit to the discussion about how important
resources are related to public education today.
Questions like, how much does it really cost to educate a child
in our community and in our state and second, how much does
it cost when we fail to do so well?
Those are important public policy discussions that I
believe must occur all across the state of Wisconsin if we are
to advance a more productive agenda around our children.
I believe there is much at stake in this conversation about
public education and about the individual school districts or
organizations that we represent. I'd like to be able to take a
few minutes to focus on the key challenges that we face as a
larger urban school district. And in fact, we are proud as a
public institution about our history of accomplishment in
service of our young people. But I also must tell you that we
are an institution today that can no longer claim the kind of
success that has been more universally available in the
past. Who we are as a public district
in fact is inseparable from the issues of who we serve as a
public school district. I want to begin by stating that
we continue to have many, many students in our district with
incredible patterns of academic achievement.
Our students continue, for example, to surpass their state
peers in the percentage scoring in the highest performance
category. We have more than six times the
national merit scholars semi-finalists than a district
our size would have on average. Who are these students?
They are not only learned but are amazing in terms of their
work around issues of social responsibility and giving back
to community. And having had a chance to meet
and interact with many of them, I've been so impressed not only
about their academic accomplishments but how much
they care about community and how much they're willing to
engage in issues that have dearly affect community.
And most often, these students are also characterized by having
significant support in their personal lives, especially as it
relates to creating additional opportunities to learn, beyond
which we can provide as a school district.
But I'll tell you in my opening remarks this evening that
these students, however, do not tell the whole tale of the
Madison Metropolitan School District.
In many ways we are a tale today of two school districts.
And so let me share the rest of the tale in, regarding some
important statistics. Our district is a very
language-rich school district. Today, we have students
representing 70 different language groups and I'll be the
first to tell you that they're not all large groups of students
but some of them are very large groups of students.
Our English language learner population today represents 17%
of our 25,000 students and this compares to a 6% rate across the
entire state of Wisconsin. So we have very language-rich
environments and we have challenges that go with the fact
that many of our kids, English is not their native language.
53% of our kids today are students today are students of
color and now we have to be very careful about we literally use
the term minority as we convey information about our student
population. From a statistical point of
view, our students of color in the aggregate are in fact no
longer a minority. And I would urge us to recognize
that the greatest disequalizer for our kids is their family
income status. Now, in the Madison Metropolitan
School District, 51% of our student population qualify for
free or reduced lunch, the majority qualify for free lunch
which is a lower family income level.
And today, 18 of our 32 elementary schools have 50% or
more low income children, resulting literally in poverty
density issues within our schools in particular at the
elementary level. And this still doesn't tell the
whole story because these groups of children also represent in
fact our groups of kids who are furthest away from meeting the
academic standards that Mike Thompson referenced in his
opening remarks. And they oftentimes lack the
personal resources in their personal lives that would allow
them to have better educational outcomes.
They come to school behind, not meeting standards and literally
our commitment over the years has to be to narrow those
achievement gaps that they're experiencing and those gap
reduction strategies are not oftentimes easy.
They are as a group of students experiencing what we literally
call today achievement gap issues.
So what I'd like to do is just to summarize what I see as I
look across our school district and as what I hear as I listen
to people within our community about key challenges that we're
now facing as a school district. I believe that we must ensure a
focus on the improvement of learning for all kids.
This cannot be a zero sum game. And I mentioned that because
oftentimes I hear zero sum language in our community that
if we're helping this group of kids, we're not helping this
group of kids. And I understand why that
conversation at times exists because there have been real
decisions that have been made about real programs in our
school district that people feel disaffected by.
But we have to get to a better conversation around how we meet
the needs of all groups of kids. If you're meeting standards, the
standards again that Mike Thompson referred to, the end of
learning isn't there. We have to advance learning for
our highest achievement kids as well within our school district.
And as an institution, people are expecting us to meet the
needs of those kids. We did a survey a couple years
ago and one of the things that we learned from parents
that are exercising choices other than ours, they
continue to live in our school district but they opt for other
things is a belief that we're not focusing enough on the needs
of advanced learners in our school district.
So how is it that we can continue to commit, we must, to
meeting the needs of all learners, whether you're meeting
needs or not, to advance them, all kids to their next
level of learning? And at the same time, our second
challenge must be to eliminate these notable and I would assert
grotesque achievement gaps that are very hard to explain to
people why they need to exist. We know nothing that would
tell, everything that we know tells us there should not be a
relationship between race and achievement, between family
income and achievement, between language and achievement
but the reality is that relationship does exist today.
And we see lower performance from certain groups of kids and
in fact, there are certain groups of kids that are most
rapidly increasing populations of kids in our school district.
That poverty measure that I told you about is a relatively recent
phenomenon in the Madison Metropolitan School District
where we have more and more kids that live with family income
levels that cause them to have challenges often tied with their
learning. And then finally, I personally
would be remiss if I did not mention a third key challenge
and it has been mentioned throughout the evening tonight
and I did mention it earlier and that is the need to ensure that
we have adequate resources to educate our children.
In education, I would assert that resources do matter and
that we're in a very, we are a very human resource intensive
proposition. You know, we do need to engage
with technology but using that term a little differently,
I would assert that our technology's adults--
And that everything that good and just that happens to
children in a school district happens by what adults do in
terms of their quality interactions with young people.
And those adults as well today, I think the time we're in, will
tell us that they need nurturing as well.
So in education, resources do matter and I believe
we have a moral obligation to elevate the conversation
within this community about the fact that resources
do matter in education. Teachers matter, materials
matter, professional development matter, early learning
opportunities matter and I'm proud to say next year we are
going to be able to implement a four year old kindergarten and
now be one of the 85% of the districts in this state that
have that portal available for our youngest kids at the age
four. Curriculum matters, the quality
of curriculum that was discussed earlier, and in fact today, in
terms of this issue about resources, we do face
unprecedented challenges. A year ago we had a 15% cut in
state aid. This year an 8% cut in state aid
and the governor's budget proposal is a 5.5% reduction
in the revenue cap formula for all school districts
but for ours, it creates a $15 million shortfall for next year
along with an additional shortfall of $5 million in the
fixed cost areas totaling a shortfall of $20 million.
I know that we are in a tough time economically and we are
sensitive to try to balance the needs of our kids with the needs
of our taxpayers. But I would assert this
continued financial challenge we face is unacceptable.
And we do have to have a conversation about this whole
notion about what does it properly cost to educate
children and again, what does it cost when we in fact fail to do
so well. My view is that education is an
investment and so we need to elevate the public policy
discussion knowing that laws don't change overnight and
funding formulas don't change overnight.
And we can't wait for a better economy to begin this
conversation, it has to begin now because I'm describing to
you an unprecedented challenge but having come into the school
district near three years ago, I also have to tell you that this
school district has been facing these kind of reductions under
the current funding formula for 15 years.
And real decisions have had to be made about cutting programs,
reducing commitments to kids, and just as Wisconsin needs
to be open for business, and I don't mean to be trite about
this, Wisconsin needs to be open for education.
And there's a relationship between good educational
outcomes and the better educational outcomes that we
need to have for our kids and the state and this community
remaining a strong community. If we don't do well, if we don't
do better by our kids, this community will not remain
as strong as it has been.
So I would urge us to elevate this conversation about the
resources that are needed to educate our children well.
And thank you very much. (applause)
Underwood: So, thank you Mike, Joan, and Dan.
And now I don't know about the rest of you but I have about 50
questions that I'd like to ask. (laughter)
And I won't ask them all, I won't dominate this time but
they've laid lots of issues on the table, proud history and
the juxtaposition of a proud history and a need to change,
issues of technology, privatization, social issues,
social issues as they affect our K-12 community and children's
learning, four year old kindergarten, early childhood
opportunities, English language learning, and of course,
we ended with a question about finance.
So, I'm going to start there. Joan talked about a new business
model and about creating some sustainable financial model for
public education in the state. Let me go back to Mike
since Mike led off. Mike, there's been lots of
conversation about funding of schools and trying to figure
out, Dan asked us to look at how much does it really cost to
educate a child well and what is the important cost of not
educating a child well into the future.
Can you think about that and kind of bring us into a
Wisconsin perspective? >> Sure, that's a good one.
(laughter) We all know that resources are
limited but I guess I will say this to start out and I don't
know if you'll agree with this or not.
But Congress had it right during the second economic recession
with what they said when they put forth stabilization,
whether you agreed with this federal money coming or not, the
rhetoric, I think was in the right place.
With stabilization money going into school districts, say, we
have to stabilize our education systems during our tough
economic times. We cannot afford to let this
institution deteriorate during tough economic times.
We're going to stabilize it. It wasn't to advance it, it
wasn't to grow it, it was to stabilize it.
During the toughest economic times, the way out of tough
economic times is through supporting your education
system. That's what will get us out of
these times, supporting. That's what our Founding Fathers
in the state saw, to say how we're going to advance
prosperity, that's true now. And when we said in our
Constitution, all kids, regardless of condition, when we
passed that law in 1973, regardless of handicap and
condition. Prior to 1973, the state
reimbursed school districts for providing special education
because it was not required. At 70%, now it's down to 26%.
We simply know that kids more, some kids, but agree all kids
can learn. Some kids need more time.
Some kids need more intensity, and some kids need a different
environment to do it. And if you believe it, and if we
believe that's what we have to provide kids, we have to do
that. That was our commitment to them.
And now, in this area of funding, we have to look at and
the state superintendent back in the summer, last summer, felt
that the time to look at how we fund education in the state is
now, when we have limited resources.
It's a discussion to have now when there aren't new resources
and he put forward a proposal about a fair funding proposal.
How do you distribute the limited resources we have in the
state to provide to education? How do you distribute in a fair
and equitable and sustainable way to the state?
It's a discussion I still think we need to have in this state.
The resources are limited, how do we move forward?
And he proposed a model called fair funding, how do you create
something that's fair? And he's proposed that we put
funding behind every child in this state.
There is not state funding behind every child in
this state now. Got to have funding behind every
child and a fair system we ought to account not only for property
wealth but we ought to account for income wealth as well.
We have a lot of districts in this state that are property
wealth and people poor and there ought to be a mechanism to
provide an equitable distribution of that limited
resources around that particular piece.
To keep the funding system fair, we need to have a funding
system that's sustainable. School districts, I don't
believe, can fund learning systems on a year to year basis.
We're okay this year, we're not sure about next year, we're not
even thinking about the third year.
We have to be able to fund things that are sustainable.
They have to know what resources they're getting over time.
And that's not only true and in my opinion at the state level,
it's true at the federal level. The most consistent foundational
funding at the federal level and just so you know my feeling on
this, education is a state function, locally directed and
supported by the federal government.
Now, the federal government had two hallmark programs in the
early 70's, IDA, special education funding, and Title I
funding. It was the funding source that
districts could count on over the years based on their poverty
rate. And our poverty rate in this
particular state continues to climb.
We had the fifth highest increase nationally based on the
census adjustment this year in poverty in this state.
So that's school districts, kids eligible for free lunch,
it's going up in every single district in this particular
state, not just isolated ones. But we have to have this
consistent, sustainable amount of funding so people can plan
long-term. And we have to have transparency
and funding, that's the other piece that Tony has in his
particular plan, and make sure we're clear on how much money
school aids is actually going into schools.
And he suggested that the property that our levy credit.
Thank you, Dan, which is $900 million a year that shows up in
our property tax bills and relief, it's counted as a
school aid, it doesn't go into schools.
It ought to go into schools. People feel strongly about
supporting our education but we have to do it in a fair way, we
have to do it in a sustainable way and we have to do it a way
that's transparent so people understand it.
Thank you. >> Can I?
Yes. >> Okay, I just want to, I would
agree with everything Mike said about the fair funding proposal.
I think it's a really good proposal.
I wish that in the state of Wisconsin we had enough funding
to fund it. And I'm not going to take a side
on whether we really are broke as a state or we're not broke as
a state because I'm sure people have various opinions about that
but what I'd really like us to do is take some time under this,
at this fiscal crisis to really think about what could we
do differently to become more efficient.
For instance, could we look at moving kids on when they're
ready? Why do we have kids stay
together as third graders, fourth graders, fifth graders,
when if you've taught those grades, you know that some kids
are ready to move on sooner and some kids need more help.
It's the same in the high school years.
If kids can meet the standards when they're 16 or 17 years old,
why do we keep them in high school?
Why don't we let them move on and go on to their next level of
learning whether that's a technical college or a four year
college or into the workforce if that's where they want to be?
We just seem to pigeon hole into the same system structure
because we don't think about doing business differently
and I really hope that as we go through this financial
crisis, we'll take a look at some of those different ways of
teaching and learning. Again, I think technology can
really help us through some of this as well.
Could we get some of the content online?
Can school districts, some of the school districts up by us
are pretty close together geographically?
Could they share some of their staff?
And they're looking at that right now for how they're going
to get through this. I don't know that we all need to
have a business office in the 42 school districts
in my region. Is there a way that some of them
can share some of that organizational kind of
structure? Do we need to have 42 different
hot lunch menus? Could we share some of them
instead of having somebody reinvent that in every place?
So those are some of the things that I think if we cooperate and
share and, again, as being in a CESA, that's what we do.
We cooperate and share. Could we lower our cost and
change that financial model a little bit?
I think we could make quite a big bit of a difference.
Thank you. So let me ask one more question
before we kick it out to everybody.
Or at least raise one topic. Dan, you were talking about,
actually, we had mention of data about our achievement gaps from
various places, but you were talking about achievement gaps
within Madison and of course within the state as a whole.
You were also talking about English language learners, Mike
just mentioned the new data that have come out about the number
of low-income students in our state.
Can, we also have issues of charter schools; can you think
about out loud with us, what particular programs do you think
best address those needs to close achievement gaps?
Well I think that that's a question that's on all of our
minds. >> That's a real easy one,
isn't it? (laughter)
Well, none of them are easy. Just as Mike had darker hair,
I used to be 6'5" too. (laughter)
But, you know, that's what we're here for, to have conversations
about these big challenges. You know, first and foremost, I
would say that we must as a country face these achievement
gaps if we're going to remain strong.
I know I'm being redundant with that but there's a tie between
educational outcomes and community and economic
development and workforce development outcomes.
So there's a lot at stake here, meaning that this is not an
academic issue only. I mean, this is a real issue
that has to happen around the real lives of kids.
I've come to the view that there's no silver bullets with
the achievement gaps issues. And I believe that we have to
have the courage to look at a lot of things that need to be in
place if we're really going to have a sustained focus over
time and in fact eliminate these gaps.
I would also assert that first and foremost, that we have to be
about ensuring the highest quality instruction in all of
our classrooms, the highest quality curricular experience
for young people and contemporary ways to assess
learning. So what I'm saying is that part
of the solution, relative to the achievement gap, in good part is
based on best practice. And so what we do to support
teachers in their ongoing professional development needs
to ensure that we are implementing instructional
practices that are consistent with what we know works better
than other things in instruction.
That's not to say that there aren't a lot of things that
teachers can choose from but there's been good research now
about, you know, some instruction makes more of a
difference than other instruction.
And so part of my belief is that it needs to be about best
practices, more intensely provided.
I also believe that we have to have good quality programs in
place that support kids who need intervention that aren't meeting
standards but I also am of the view that we have to think in
non-traditional ways about that as well.
And here's what I mean there and that is that the traditional
way, I'm generalizing now, to address the needs of kids who
aren't meeting standards is to give kids less slower.
It's based on a traditional remedial framework.
And it's oftentimes based on a view that these kids are
experiencing learning deficits and they need something less
than what other kids might need. I believe that we have to turn
that thinking really on its head.
Literally upside down. And what has to happen in terms
of achievement gap issues within the regular school environment
is we do have to accelerate instruction; we have to provide
systems of intervention that target kids early and in some
cases would actually advance their learning outside of what
traditional remedial models would allow for.
And so here's what I really mean by that: we should never lower
the standards. I believe Mike referred to some
kids need more time. So we need to create systems for
some people that some kids that provide more time.
Quality after school programming that has an academic
orientation, quality summer school programming that doesn't,
again, doesn't lower the standard but it gives kids more
time. I also believe in systems that
would create double learning opportunities for kids.
Again, it's not lowering the standards but let's say at the
high school level and I know there's some controversy
associated with this but we have to think about big ideas as
giving some young people double doses of the same language arts
course. It may not be the same course
two periods, it would vary by period, but it's giving them
a double experience in language arts
and mathematics. Again, not lowering the
standards but advancing, accelerated pace of learning.
Because the goal needs to be to get all kids to the standards.
And so, you know, unless we're advancing an agenda of
improvement that allows that happen, we're going to have some
kids meeting standards and other kids maybe moving along but they
still aren't meeting standards. And then finally, I do believe
that we're advantage by the earlier the better.
And that is that this whole notion of early learning and
early intervention with kids especially those that have not
had early opportunity to learn, they come into kindergarten with
a much lower vocabulary level than kids that have been read to
and taken to museums and taken to different places to, you
know, to have that type of learning exposure.
So four year old kindergarten is not a nice thing,
it's a necessary thing. And it's also necessary that
communities have birth to four year old programming that is the
community's commitment to advanced development from zero
to age four so it's not just a school piece but it's a
community piece as well. So in total I guess what I'm
saying is we have to be about a lot of things and we also have
to think and behave counter intuitively.
It can't be for a lot of these kids less slower, it has to be
an accelerated pace of learning in order to get these kids to
the standards. >> More and faster.
Right. >> Oh, more, earlier, and
faster. Joan or Mike, you want to add
anything to that or? >> I'll just add that I can't
agree more with what Dan said, if you asked me to pick one
thing, I'd say three things. Early, early, early.
Get kids early. >> I did ask one thing.
If you think of early, and if you think of a first grader and
you provide them with the core instruction and you
differentiate because they don't quite get it in the core and
then you go, we still need to do more so we intervene.
You do an intervention and you have data determinants that work
and if it doesn't work, you do something different.
And if that doesn't work you do something different.
It's where districts go, we don't have anything else to do,
we can't do, we don't have any more resources to do something.
Then the child stays there until they move them along, well, they
might fourth and fifth grade, I guess they're a child that
should be identified for a disability.
And this intervention early, it's intervening early,
it's getting resources to those kids, and as Dan said, moving
them along faster. And it can be done but it takes
resources. I just want to, you should,
there's a lot of what CESA 6 is doing at the regional level
that's worth looking at on their website and as Joan talks about,
some of those innovations, and Joan talks about that.
I look at them as the right things to do for kids and they
could save us money. But they're not done to save
money, you don't start with let's save some money,
what can we do? You start doing the right things
and they can, those things can save money.
And that's why I believe it's very difficult and districts
don't have a sustainable fund source, they can't think out,
they got to think about, oh what are we going to, what can we do
with less now? And so they can't think about
some of these innovations because they're always thinking
about what can we do with, what can we do less with.
And so that's a problem, in my opinion, about funding that you
can't count on, you can't plan over a years time when you don't
know where, what you're going to have.
Mike, I don't know if you would agree or disagree, so
I'm going to kind of ask you as long as I'm here, was some of
these ideas like moving kids on when they're ready so they're
not necessarily with their same age group, letting them get out
of high school when they're ready to get out of high school
because they've met the standards, letting them get
credit for out of school experience if they can meet
the standard in the school, those things are against
the status quo. They're against the norm of what
we're used to doing in schools and so I don't see those things
really being taken very serious until you have a financial
crisis like we're seeing now. And now our schools are really,
okay how can we do this, how fast can we get this off the
ground? And that's I think where we're
really focused on individual student learning and customizing
that to make sure that students get the highest quality
education we can possibly give them in public schools and
trying to meet their needs. I totally agree with what Dan
said about these kids that are living in poverty, how do we
help these families so that they come to school ready to learn?
How do we make sure that when they get to school they have
breakfast so that again, they can focus and concentrate?
So it's a very dynamic, very complicated how you fix
this problem. And is funding an issue?
Absolutely is funding an issue. Do we have a problem right now?
We do, we need to put our very smartest people to work at these
problems and we got them. We've got them here in
Wisconsin. We've got them in our schools,
we've got them in our school boards, we've got them in our
communities that are working on them to problem solve together
so I think our future's going to be great but we've got to look
outside the box. We can't stay traditional
or it's not going to work. >> Thank you, Joan.
I think that I've heard a couple things that resonate.
One certainly is thinking about the status quo as a problem and
how we can think about doing things differently while we
still tackle the past of having previous success and a proud
history of education because it's quite easy to become
complacent. I also, what's the saying, you
don't want a good crisis to go to waste?
(laughter) So we may be in that position as
well. I know people have questions
so Ronny has a mic, and I'm going to ask people to
ask questions but we have some ground rules.
Since we are taping, we need to have you actually ask your
question into the mic and then Jason I believe, will be giving
us questions from our distance audience as well.
Hi. >> Hi my name's Nancy Young and
I have a very short question but it's a very deep one.
And you've proposed many things, many questions you're asking,
how do we do this, how do we do that.
And I think it's time to move toward your ideas about
solutions and the audience's ideas about solutions if we
could now.
Joan, you want to give your 30 second kind of framework
for your next generation? >> I would give a plug.
We'll give you a minute, not just 30 seconds.
Okay, so I can get my plug in.
If you Google Next Generation of Schools, you would get to our
website where we do have some of those solutions.
Typically, I give an hour presentation to community groups
and school boards on what next generation of learning looks
like. So it's really hard to describe
these solutions in a minute or 30 seconds but I'll try on some
of them. For the student experience, we
really think that it's important that students from birth, before
they even get to school, to have the resources they need so that
they're ready to learn when they get to school.
How many years have we heard that boy, if we could just
decide who's a parent and who isn't because some kids just
aren't ready to learn when they get to us and so then what do we
do with them? So that's where we are looking
at family advocates being assigned to families when
children are born. Now some of those families are
going to need a lot of time with their family advocates, some of
them aren't going to need anything.
So once they get to school then, those family advocates become
learning coaches and make sure that the students are again,
having breakfast, they're ready to learn, they move on when
they're ready, so some kids as they are going through school
will get through it faster, they might not get to middle school
until they're 13, they might get to middle school when they're 9.
It just depends on how quickly they can get through the
learning cycle. Once they get into that middle
school section, we really see these learning coaches being
able to use data to really take a look at how kids learn.
What kind of learning styles they have, what is it that
they're interested in learning and having the students start
directing their own learning and the teachers coaching them along
the way. The structure for the teacher
would change because some of them might be face to face
teachers, some of them might be online teachers so that they're
able to teach to more kids, some of them will be truly learning
coaches working directly with kids.
The school year structure would change, do we have to just go
180 days, I don't think so, maybe we don't need to take 12
weeks off in the summer or however long the summer is.
We could compress that so the school year is different.
The school day might be different for some kids.
Maybe some kids learn better in the morning, maybe some kids
learn better in the afternoon. So we'd really structure it to
best meet the kids and their family.
I've already talked about getting credit for things that
they learn outside of the classroom.
I've already talked about kids being able to get out of high
school and into the next level of learning when they're ready.
So those are some of the-- >> Also, Joan, collaborative
administrative structures. >> Yeah, and we've talked about
collaborative, that's absolutely right.
Structures within a school that could be shared. their business
practices, their business structures, their hot lunch
programs that they can share regionally between six to eight
school districts. Maybe in a region of four to six
school districts, one school's going to really focus on an
international baccalaureate, one school district's going to focus
more on career technical ed, one school might have a different
focus and so kids might go to a different school that's not
necessarily in their community. And every time we present that,
the first thing that people ask us is, well what about sports?
Because of course, people get really concerned, you know,
people don't ask the question about what if we have a failing
student in our school? What are we going to do?
But boy if you have a failing football season or a failing
baseball season or a basketball season, that can sometimes
rile up communities. But, so what if really
restructured or thought differently about our community
sports program and rather than having the high school football
team be the high school football team, what if it belongs to the
community? And so no matter where you go to
school, whether you're home schooled or parochial
schooled or charter school or public school, you're still
being able to participate on that local sports team.
Those are some of the things that our communities are really
looking at doing differently. >> Thank you.
Mike, can you think about some of the innovative practices that
you know of in this state? >> Well I don't know about
that sports thing, Joan but-- (laughter)
I like the other ideas. >> Well, we all know
Joan's a radical. >> What I see from school
districts across the state is I think and I talked
about schools that some kids need more of this time,
intensity, and environments. I see school districts trying to
put in programs or strategies to meet those particular needs.
As I mentioned, we have 206 charter schools in this
particular state, you can go down that list of charter
schools and look at some of the innovations that they're
implementing in their districts. At least 40 of them are really
engaged in personalized learning, many of them are
engaged in project-based learning, giving kids
connections to what they're doing in their classrooms.
We have started a state-wide initiative and Dan talked a
little bit about the structure of it but it's called response
to intervention. How do you create a system in
your school to meet the needs of kids by being able to intervene
and having data to make sure that the intervention works and
having other interventions if it doesn't work?
It's a major shift in how schools operate around serving
kids. Change is difficult, change is
hard for people, you know the little story of a family woke
up, the only thing they could recognize is the schools.
You know, things that it's hard to change but you have to create
a culture of change and I believe in Joan's CESA, they
created a culture of change. They've been talking about it
for a couple of years. This didn't happen because of
the budget situation, they've been talking about it for years,
they have a culture of change. And I'm like, have at it.
I don't see a lot of that's currently in state in federal
law that prevents those districts from doing those types
of things to move forward and do them on a regional level like
that. I mean, that's to me the pieces
of looking at where these innovations happen, moving
forward with these innovations and see if they work.
And you can bet, I mean, I find there's one thing I know for
sure, it's the only thing I know for sure, is that all kids are
different. Nothing works.
There's no magic bullet that's going to work for everybody.
So you've got to provide a variety of opportunities and
create systems that do it. And I think people are looking
at those systems, I think people are aggressive at looking
at those systems. I know CESA 6 is, I know CESA 1
regionally is, and I know school districts individually are
looking at ways to do things differently to meet the needs of
kids. And that's a positive.
I mean that and I think we'll see a lot of those innovations.
I think we have a state where school districts have the
ability to innovate, if they choose to.
Some people are reluctant to because it makes people
uncomfortable. And it's hard to change, so they
go, oh no we can't because we have all these regulations or
whatever and they're like, what are the regulations?
Well, you know, there's a lot of them but when we get down to it,
people have to have this will and you have to create the
culture and I think that's what you've done in CESA 6 and to
your credit and I think more people will look at that and try
to follow suit. >> Dan, do you want to give in?
Yeah, this whole notion of innovation, it strikes me,
it's a very difficult thing to balance and I'm obviously biased
given the work that I do that we have to make our schools
as strong as they can be. In other words, it's about how
we build better capacity to provide the best education in
all of our schools and have strong schools and we have
school improvement plans for all of our schools.
And we're monitoring progress and we're adjusting those goals
and we're providing support to ensure that good outcomes,
better outcomes come for kids. But having said that, I know
that we're in a time where people are looking for different
ideas around you know, the best ways to educate kids.
And it's been a difficult conversation because in this
resource constrained time, you know, do you really focus on
your own schools making them stronger or do you look at these
very innovative models and you know, I've come to believe that
we need to find a balance in that conversation.
Recognizing that the data, referencing charter schools that
I'm aware of which say that there are quality charter
schools, there are quality public schools, there are poor
charter schools, there are poor public schools as well.
And so to look at that as the magic bullet I think is wrong.
So where we've kind of come down on this issue around these
charters and innovative programs is that we need to have an open
mind and an open eye to them and the way right now, if you want
to just look at charters, there are three charters in the
Madison Metropolitan School District, one is new, opening
this fall, Badger Rock Middle School and one is, an
additional one is under study right now, you know the program
that the Urban League has asked us to work with them and to
consider as a program for male students.
So that conversation is happening but one of the things
that we decided to do as a result of our strategic plan is
that we have now formed a committee to study innovative
and alternative models. Because what we're finding
ourselves and I don't think it'll ever end because people
from outside have some ideas that they want us to consider
but we're in a reactive mode only so what we're trying to do
is to move more toward a proactive mode.
So how many innovative and alternative designs should we be
looking at? What should they be?
Should there be more charters, should there be magnets, should
there be schools within schools that, you know, that offer more
specialized learning? And that's going to take about a
year to do that study. And we want to take the time to
do that study well and we have a very large committee of school
and community people working with us on this.
So I think through that, I think we can get to an answer
for ourselves, how should we innovate in the Madison
Metropolitan School District, as opposed to just intervene in a
reactive mode and I know that there are some perceptions that
we haven't been as open as we should be to these other ideas
and what we're trying to do is to be open to the ideas that we
think will advance learning for kids in our school district.
I have a question over here. >> Hi my name
is Kristin Laclair. I teach K-1.
And Superintendent Nerad mentioned nurturing teachers,
I'm just not feeling the love right now.
(laughter) (applause)
Thanks. Hi.
Saw them on the square. I think one of the issues that
I'd really like you to address is this charter school and
there's a bill tomorrow, ten o'clock, I hope some people will
be there. And I know, Senator Olson, I
know you're here and listening and I think this is a very
interesting dialogue, to get very specific.
You talk about charter schools, really where are we on charter
schools? And I know there's people that
know a lot more than I do. I came from Connecticut where I
got my master's degree. I looked at a lot of charter
schools and I looked how it pulled away, for example,
at the Bridgeport community, how it stripped them
of their tax money yet left their schools high and dry
with a higher percentage, 80% poverty and maybe 200 kids
benefited. So you know, I don't see the
plus, honestly. And I don't see the plus in
having a student being taught by somebody without a BA and
without any kind of education. (applause)
Where are you guys on that? >> Well, I mean, I've tried
to respond in terms of we're taking the time to really
decide where should we innovate, what types of programs are
acceptable to the district and what types of programs aren't
acceptable to the district. And I believe that they're
staying the same, if you have charters, the same standards
should apply, including teacher licensers.
So that's where I'm at with that issue.
You know, and I also believe that in terms of this, we have
to be very careful that it doesn't result in reduced
resources to our schools. That's a tough dynamic and I
think that that's what caused me to be more supportive of what's
called instrumentality charters. If we're going to have them,
they should be instrumentalities of the school district, parcel
of the district so that we can have that conversation about are
we balancing the right things? Are we taking away from our own
schools and creating a charter because I think that's
problematic in doing that. And the other thing, and I do
intend, if time permits it on the schedule is I'm very
concerned, to testify tomorrow. I'm very concerned about this
notion of an independent chartering and board.
Because I believe that we have to place the trust
in local school boards, that's why they're elected to
make these kinds of decisions. (applause)
And I think that particular nuance of the bill is
problematic. And so those are some of my
responses to that. >> Thank you.
But at the same time, I don't think we can afford to not be
part of a conversation. We have to figure out where we
land with that conversation, but it can't be a closed mind on
innovative and alternative programs for young people.
But you are looking at tomorrow, I mean, you're
looking at that bill and you're saying, oh my heavens, look at
this? >> That's correct.
You know, who's going to make, who's going to be that
nine member? >> Right.
The Governor's going to pick three?
The head of the Senate's going to pick three and the head of
representative's going to pick three.
There's your nine right there. Is that going to represent me or
any school board I'm a part of? Sorry, I just asked.
We have another question. >> That was not a question,
sorry. >> It's okay.
We have another question back here.
I also want to mind people who are watching this as an Internet
stream to send their questions as an email to
questions@wisconsinacademy.org >> So my name is John Wright and
I wanted to tie together these ideas of innovation and the idea
that you brought up earlier of keeping challenges there for
everyone. And as I look at that, it seems
to me the best approach is to increase the amount of what Fred
Newmann called authentic learning in schools and if you
ask, how is that actually going to happen, how are those kinds
of innovations going to take place?
Seems to be that that comes from the grassroots of the teachers
themselves. So it seems like there needs to
be a way of empowering the teachers to exert more, to be
able to exert more innovations in the ways that they try to
address the needs of the individual people in the
classes. Because right now, it seems
there is a fetter on them that is there because their need to
try to address particular standards for the other things
that are required by them. So I'd like you to comment on
those ideas. >> To just comment, so you're
asking for comments on the issue of empowering teacher's
innovations? >> That's right.
And you know, starting at the grassroots rather than top down.
Let's see. Joan, do you want to take that
first? >> I would.
I think that that is absolutely spot on.
The teachers in the classrooms are the ones that know the
students the best, they have access to the data, I think that
if we listen to them, we would find a whole lot of innovative
things that they would like to put into practice across
classrooms all across Wisconsin. I think that we have to give
them the flexibility, however, so that they're able to do the
innovating within their classroom and within their
schools. And I fear sometimes that their
hands are tied, maybe that's just my opinion, but I fear that
if we don't loosen up some of the work rules that they find
themselves tied to, that it makes it difficult to be
innovative even within their own schools.
So, I think that absolutely, the teachers are the professionals
that know the kids the best and they know their data the best
and they know how to read that data and if they have the tools
at their hands, some of that technology tools, they would be
able to customize learning for their kids.
Thank you. There's another question back
here. >> My name is Melanie Schmidt
and am I biased to be up front about it because I think there's
a necessary partnership that occurs between the schools and
between the community in order to have that student success.
And I'm curious for each of you since you represent different
perspectives on the issue, what do you see as the call to action
for the business leaders, the parents, the community leaders
leaders who are here who clearly have an interest and believe
that there's a necessary need for some action, what's your
call to action for all of us? >> Call to action.
Mike. >> Why am I always first?
There you are, you're called on.
There's your call to action. >> Always the tough ones.
This is what I would say and it goes back to my belief that when
a child enters into our system, a first grader, a
kindergartner, we're saying to them, you're going to read and
you're going to learn to do math, and we are going to help
you as the teacher, our system, the principal, our community,
your mom and dad, it's everybody.
And we always look at whose to blame when kids don't succeed?
Well I would turn it around and say, who to we attribute when
kids do succeed? We attribute that to the
parents, to the community, to the environment that they're in
and to the school and so that's who has to take ownership in
this particular piece. We all know this.
There are kids that come into school that never have been read
to. Now they're in school and there
are some kids that come to school, they've been read to
every single day. It starts when a child is born
and it starts in the care of the physician talking to the parent
about what's in the best interest of your child
educationally all the way up. And if our kids in a community
succeed, in a community that does succeed with all kids, then
you can bet there's a lot of people to thank for that.
And when kids don't succeed, there's a lot of people that are
at blame. You get into this, people will
go well, I can't do anything because look at the way they
came to my classroom. They're in your classroom, you
can do something with them. Every kid can move along and
should move along in your classroom, but its everybody's
job. I always would like too line up
kids across a football field and say to them your going to run
down from this end of the football field to the other end
and your all going to make it and we're all going to help you
do it. We're all going to help you move
down that line. It's going to be the pharmacist
then the street then it's going to be the business person.
We're all going to help you get to that line because you're all
going to graduate. That's kind of an ownership of
education that we have to have I believe in our communities.
It's an ownership and everybody plays a role.
Getting kids to school, keeping them in school, rewarding them,
getting them involved in business partnerships, but it is
this belief that everybody plays a role and everybody should
celebrate in the success when kids achieve, everybody should.
In turn, they should all take a little bit of the blame when we
have kids that fail. >> Thank you.
Just quickly, I think that there are some real partnerships
that ought to be happening in every community with the
business sector, the school board, and the teachers and the
educational leaders in the school community.
It ought to be around those authentic learning experiences
for students that we were talking about earlier.
We'd like to see students, especially at that high school
level be offered experiences in some of those businesses.
That's just one small example of a partnership that could happen
and should happen. So that kids have those
experiences while they're still in high school.
There's a whole lot of other places where businesses and
industry could really invest volunteer time, finances for
venture capital so some of this innovation that these classroom
teachers would like to do if they had the resources to do it.
There's all those kind of partnerships, the list would
just go on and on. I think that's really, really
important. >> Thank You.
I know Ronny's got lots of people queued up and Ronny
you've got lots of people who-- more people who want to be
up here. >> My name is Karen and I'll
give you the call to action that you're asking for.
If you don't pay to educate your going to pay to incarcerate.
The state of Wisconsin spends over $40,000 per year, per
inmate to keep people behind bars.
Dr. Nerad do you get $40,000 a year per pupil?
No, we don't. >> Dan, can you just do that a
little louder? >> No we don't.
Clearly we don't. (laughter)
I just wanted to make sure everyone heard that.
Don't you see the problem here?
I don't want to be subtle about that.
I mean where do we want to invest is your point.
The point that I would urge us is it's so important to invest
in kids and we need to have these conversations about what
is the appropriate way to do that.
What's the penalty we pay when we don't do it well.
The common core standards were mentioned at the beginning.
Now the mathematics standards have parts of them that are
significantly different than what has gone on before.
Similar to what's being done in a number of countries,
mathematics will be easier to learn if the standards are
taught well. The problem is that many of the
teachers don't know the material because they've never had it.
So there's massive professional development that's going to be
needed. Content professional
development, what's being planned for that?
Dan do you want to give some examples?
I certainly agree with that, in particular the point around
professional development. We are working with the
university on a project. >> That was my plug.
What's that? Maybe you should explain it.
No, no, no. >> It's a wonderful effort that
obviously we need to stay at for a good number of years that
provide that content knowledge to our middle level educators.
That's where we're starting in terms of ensuring a better
understanding of those standards.
As well as a kind of professional development to be
able to teach to those standards.
That's a good example of what I meant earlier around building
greater capacity within our system to teach as well as we
can possibly teach. >> Thank you.
I have a question. Most of what I've heard here is
addressing the needs. >> Could you tell us your name?
My name is Adrianne. What I have heard here is much
attention being paid to children that need a great deal of help
and the assumption is how can we help those children?
What happens if you take children who, you've got some
third graders who could barely read.
You've got some third graders that only get their books out of
the young adults or higher section of the library.
What would happen if you're going to give two extra sessions
to the very bottom, what would happen if you gave that to the
top? What is happening if all of
education is one of trying to meet the needs of those at the
bottom what your doing essentially is putting a lid on
the top or encouraging, by not doing something else, your
students or their parents to place them into private schools
if they can afford it. >> Can we take this answer in
two parts? Dan you'd mentioned that one of
the issues in the Madison metropolitan school district was
the need of high achieving students.
Then maybe Mike can give us a perspective of some of the
things that are happening state wide.
This is not an either or issue.
It's a both and issue. That's why we committed as a
district to revitalize our talented and gifted plan in the
school district. We have a lot of work to do on
that frankly, I'll be the first to admit that to be able to
implement that plan is going to take time and take additional
resources. First and foremost, it's going
to take commitment from people like me to ensure that we're
meeting the commitments of that plan.
I really want to underscore this is not an either or thing.
We want to at times frame it up that way, it has to be about
advancing kids who are meeting standards.
It also has to be about eliminating achievement gaps.
I will also tell you that in the time we're in we are making real
choices about where we place our resources because they are very
limited today. My assurance is that we're going
to keep our eyes focused on the needs of all of our kids and
obviously the community will judge over time how well we are
doing that. Frankly, we do need some help
that's another partnership issue.
We do need help around how we can come together more as a
community to ensure that we are focusing on all kids.
Kids that are meeting standards, as well as kids who aren't
meeting standards. It's not either or it's both.
I'd agree with Dan, what you say, and both.
When I talked about a response intervention system.
Response intervention system runs for the continuum of kids.
From the kids that come into 1st grade, who are not reading at
their 1st grade level, interventions are necessary for
them. To the child whose reading at
the 5th grade level you don't say to that person, Anna you
better slow down a little bit so everybody else catches up.
Right? You've got to be able to move
her down the road as well. That's what a response
intervention is. To intervene when a child is
behind and to intervene when a child needs more to move ahead.
It's systematic. It's not just we'll give them a
little extra homework, it's a systematic approach to serving
those needs. That's what the response
intervention system is. That's why it's a systems change
model that takes a lot of work to implement into a school
district, but it's both ends of the continuum.
There's a question over here. >> My name's Carol.
I taught for a lot of years. Before that, I want to mention
that you might be overlooking some of your most readily
available and cheapest resources in those smart students.
Those smart students can tutor other students when those smart
students are sitting there wasting time because they're
finished with the assignment or whatever.
They could be helping this kid over here who is having trouble
learning to read or learning to do the math or whatever, to
understand it better. In fact, I did that years ago,
way back when so that's not an innovative idea actually.
Thank you. >> I certainly support this
whole notion of cross age tutoring.
On the other hand,asking advanced learners to do that and
have that be their education plan isn't fair either.
It's using cross age tutoring where it makes sense, but that
shouldn't be a replacement for what these advanced learners
need in the classroom that will advance their learning.
Thanks. I think Jason has a question
from our online audience. >> This is a question from Emily
who is an elementary ed student at UW Madison.
Rachel writes, can you please address any of the
specific changes you propose in making the testing we currently
use to evaluate successful in the district.
How do you evaluate success vis-a-vis testing, I think is
the question. >> How do you evaluate success
vis-a-vis testing. Standardized testing and I
assume we may be talking about testing as it relates to
students or are we talking about assessment as it relates to
teachers? So I'll let you all take a hand
at that. ( laughter )
You can do either one, this is an either or.
I'll just start. With our next generation of
learning we do see the importance of standardized
testing for students so that you can still show that they're
meeting those standards that are set by our state.
We'd also like students to have electronic portfolios because we
really believe that there's more ways to show that students have
mastered their learning other than just test scores.
Quite frankly, we're missing a whole lot of the picture of a
students school career if we don't have another way to show
that. We're building electronic
portfolios for kids so when they go onto the next level of
learning they can show some of the activities that they've
participated in schools. With teachers, we are putting
together and rolling out in April a teacher--
I just lost it. What was I going to say about
teacher competencies? Kind of the value add motto that
UW Madison has been pushing is one proponent of it.
Teacher competencies so that you know when teachers are expert
teachers so that it's not just the testing of the teachers when
they get through the Praxis test to make sure that they're
qualified. You're able to move teachers
into the next level from an initial educator to a master
educator to a professional. We're trying to set up those
structures so that you can evaluate and mentor teachers as
well. >> We have another question from
a viewer. I appreciate your thoughts on
letting students learn at their own pace instead of mandating
all students sticking together through each grade level.
Over the last 30 years we have added at least two years of
education to the front end of our students educational career.
First kindergarten now 4K and some have early childhood
preschool etc. Are there any studies or states
who are considering graduating student at age 16 so that the
education process is 12 years long instead of 14 or 15?
That's definitely an issue that's been discussed and I'm
not sure who wants to start that one off.
Or who wants to answer that one and maybe we can take one more
after that question. >> From my perspective I
understand the need around focus on individual learners as some
kids are ready to move on. We should have our systems be
more responsive. As a general response I'm
concerned that we don't have enough time in our school day in
this country and we don't enough time in our school year.
To what extent do we want to shorten that, to compromise
overall what young kids are going to be able to know and be
able to do through their experience with us.
I can get to that point around the needs of individual
learners, but I have a problem looking at it from a point of
view as total system design. Because I don't think we have
enough time right now. >> Joan as part of your
proposals, isn't there some transition into community
colleges and higher education as well?
Right. I was just trying to think of
the states that we looked at when we pulled that together and
there are five states that participated in a study where
you could move on when you were ready and the kids could get out
of high school at age 16 and 17 and go onto another level of
learning. ( inaudible )
Well I have another question here.
Wait a second, 'cause Mike wants to say something about
this issue. >> In this issue, if a kid, if a
child, a student is ready. They're ready to go on college,
they're ready to go onto the world of work we ought to have
options for kids to be able to test out.
Or we ought to have options for kids to be able to take college
courses in their high school. They ought to be dual enrollment
credits, transcripted credits so those kids can continue to
advance and not just be sitting around in a high school when
they're ready to move on. We ought to have those options
and Joan talked about some of those.
We have our last question. >> I'm Connie, I was one of
those precocious readers who was told to slow down when I was
probably in 3rd grade so that my peers could catch up with me.
I'm also a former employee of the Madison Metropolitan school
district, a teacher. I would like to ask you, well
I'll just say that having been a teacher for quite some time I
always felt that innovation was lagging.
Particularly in a school district as large as MMSD, it's
hard to keep up with new trends and yet teachers are really the
feet on the ground in terms of what's going on for teachers.
In the context of what's happened in our city, in our
state in the last month, six weeks, what would you say to
people who are considering being teachers right now?
How can you encourage maybe me, to return to the classroom?
How can you encourage people who know that the need is there,
but they're really struggling with why, oh why, oh why would I
do that? >> I think that's a wonderful
question. If we could take each one of our
panelists as kind of our closing comments.
Why would you encourage somebody to go into, stay in, or return
to teaching or education as a field?
Dan do you want to start? >> Even before this crisis, I've
been personally worried about that.
Trying to think about the minds of 19-year-olds, you could pick
an 18-year-old or a 20-year-old. What would compel them to look
at teaching as a profession of first choice?
You know I'm very much worried about that because teaching and
public service in total need to be fields of first choice, not
fields of second choice. We need people that really have
this interest and that it's in their heart and in their belly
to be public servants and to be teachers.
What I'm worried about in the now and the time that we're in,
we have even more messages about are these fields that I want to
go into? I hope in fact we can settle
this down at some point fairly soon because there's not only a
lot at stake around teachers still in the field and not
feeling the love as was mentioned earlier.
There's also a lot at stake in terms of ensuring that young
people say, that's what I want to do, I can serve and I want to
do this work. I'm very worried that we are
creating messages of undervaluing even if we're not
intending to do that. That becomes the outcome here
and I think we have to have our eye on that issue very, very
carefully. I'm hoping and I know this is a
contentious time, but I'm hoping we can find a way to settle
things down in a way that can return our schools.
Our schools are filled with tension now as well.
Whether this should have happened or that should have
happened I can't get into that argument as superintendent
because I have to deal with the fact that there's tension there
that now exists. We have a responsibility to
nurture our staff, to have the right kind of conversations that
allow them to feel valued and that we move on in support of
our people. I don't have all the ideas
around that, but I do believe that that's what has to happen.
Thank you Dan. Joan?
I always encourage high school students going into
college and second career people that are thinking about getting
into education. When they say to me, why would I
want to go into education now? The kids are so hard and it's so
difficult being in the teaching situation.
It's a noble profession. It's a place where you really
make a difference of the lives of kids every single day.
It's a profession where it's changing and it needs to change.
Technology can be used differently, students can be
taught in many different, there's so many different
resources available to you. Content resources on the web,
things that you can bring into the classroom that you never
could before. You have to be creative and
you've got to look for different ways of doing the business.
I think it's more exciting time to be in education than it ever
has been in the past. I really look forward to the day
when our kids are teachers because they're the natives with
this technology. They' know how to use it so
differently than we do. We don't get it.
Sorry, I use it everyday and I don't get it, but my kids get
it. When they can teach other kids
how to use technology on how to find things using technology
it's amazing. >> Thank you Joan.
Mike? >> When I graduated from college
and went into teaching and I was looking for an apartment in this
community. I said, wow I wonder if I'll be
able to find an apartment? Somebody said to me, you'll find
an apartment, you're a teacher. You're a pillar of this
community. That's what they said to me and
I was like I am? Made me feel pretty good.
Here a fact, countries that we're always compared too that
are doing well, that do well, we always compare to those
countries. Here's a commonality of those
countries. They hold their teachers in high
esteem and those teachers are supported within their systems.
We have to get back to that. We have to make teaching the
profession that is deserves to be and this didn't happen
because of a budget debate. This is a drum beat that's been
going on for time, it builds. We all can't let that happen
because you all know teachers, many of you are teachers, all
you need to do as I always say to people, take a pair of
handcuffs hook yourself to a good teacher for three days and
then tell me what you think of them.
They'll tell you, they're wonderful.
Right? That's all you need to do.
( applause )
Thank you panelists. Thank you all for your
questions. I'm going to turn this back over
to Margaret. >> For just a second, thank all
for you thanking our panel and especially Julie for keeping us
on task and on time. We really appreciate that belief
in the Wisconsin idea that we know Dean Underwood has and
expresses by being here tonight and reaching out to the
community across this state. Thank you again to all of our
panelists. If I could just remind the
audience of two upcoming events really quickly and to
thank again Dean Underwood and the School of Education who are
making the possibility of this being streamed live tonight
because we really do appreciate being able to reach a statewide
audience. There are two events coming up:
next Tuesday, March 29 at 7:00 right here is the final
of the three-part Education is Fundamental series.
This is a talk by Adam Gamoran, Professor of Sociology and
Education Policy studies at UW-Madison and director of the
Wisconsin's Center on Education Research.
I hope you'll join us then. Mark your calendars for April 12
you're invited to this season's last Academy Evening.
When two leading researchers on water, Rebecca Klapper from
UW Milwaukee and her research on Great Lakes water and UW
LaCrosse's, Mark Sandheinrich's is talking about river quality.
This program is called Water Course: A Conversation on
the Health of Wisconsin's Lakes and Rivers.
We hope can join us for the next two presentations that are
coming up. Thank you again all of you for
coming and we hope you'll all become members of the Wisconsin
Academy. ( applause )