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My family is looking to move from Mississippi to Madison. We have a job with the university, and would like to live somewhere with a reasonable commute (not longer than 20 minutes), and make sure our children have good schools. We don't mind being rural. Also, we're not wealthy, so I think some of the fancier suburbs are going to be beyond us.
What areas do you suggest we settle in?
If the job is on campus than 20 minutes is not going to get you very far out of Madison. Traffic around the University can get congested and this will add time to your commute. Going west toward Middleton on University Ave., it could take you 20 minutes or more just to get to the Beltline.
Madison and the surrounding areas have fantastic schools. I think you will be pleasantly surprised when you start looking. Try going to Madison Schools - Madison Wisconsin School Ratings - Public and Private to start your search.
While Madison and the surrounding communities are struggling to keep up with a more economically diverse population we are still tops in the state and provide some of the best public education in the country.
Make sure that when you start to zero in on an area that you contact the school that your child will be attending and ask to talk to the administration and one or two teachers. If it's a good school they will also have a couple of parents that you can call.
If you are actively involved in your child's life and education you will be hard pressed to find a school in the area where they will not thrive.
Hope this helps!
Amy
People say the schools are declining because the poverty and minority rate of the district is about 50% vs the lower 10% it was 20 years ago. It has been a slow but steady trend. Obviously the district is no longer lily white and test scores have gone down with such an increase in students who live in poverty. Many of the resources have been redirected from gifted programs to help struggling students. This is also a big reason people look less favorably on the disctrict.
Many families moved to suburban school districts as their families grew and people living in Madison (city) had children and they have grown up, so the enrollment of well to do white students has gone down as a result, not necessariy because people are fleeing from the district. At the same time, low income residents have taken advantage of affordable apartment housing in Madison and tend to have more children, so for every well to do student that graduates or leaves the district, a student from a lower socioeconomic background has taken his or her place over the past decade. The cycle is perpetuated when people move to the suburbs to buy more house for their dollar and can have their kids in new stae of the art schools. Madison schools also have constant budgetary problems...
With all of that said, I don't think Madison schools are bad. At least not overall. There are some schools that aren't stellar, but what district this size wouldn't have that? The school district is very hands on and throws money at problems, reaps the benefits of having the UW nearby...so I would say look at Madison if you can and ask people in the neighborhood you like what the local schools are like or ask on here.
Upscale Madison suburbs are Shorewood Hills, Maple Bluff and most of Fitchburg. More affordable suburbs are Sun Prairie, Cottage Grove, McFarland and Oregon. All have good schools.
If you want to be within 20 minutes of campus and are on a budget, look at the far west side, there are several affordable areas scattered about with lots of parks and shopping nearby, in addition to good neighborhood schools.
we live on the far west side of madison. we are looking to move OUT of the are and into a better suburb. we love our home, our neighborhood is great, we're close to shopping, but we have a 4 year old slated to enter kindergarten next fall and would really prefer not to enroll her in the elementary school we're located in due to mismanagement of the school district and within the elementary school. some of the disturbing things that madison does on a regular basis is adjust classes a month or more into the school year so that when they submit their final enrollment numbers for the year, they will qualify for extra funding.
they put a few thousand dollars ahead of the children's well being in this case. i grew up in western pennsylvania and this did NOT happen there. they made the adjustments BEFORE the school year began and left well enough alone once the year began regardless of who showed up and who didn't. madison has accomplished meeting the enrollment guidelines via mixing random students across grade levels-not entire grade levels. they have also taken teachers from one school and move them to another and split up the class amongst other classes (when there weren't enough students in october to warrant keeping said teacher at that building-granted this is less appalling than combining a handful of kids from say, 2nd grade, with a handful of kids from 3rd grade because the 3rd grade classrooms have more room and the 2nd grade ones are "overcrowded".)
i find how the district handles situations such as those a disgrace. it's horrid to put kids through that, especially when we are talking about elementary kids! try doing a better job of tracking enrollment before the year starts and adjusting as neccessary before the year begins. or eat the "loss" that year.
for the record, we live in a far west suburb with one of the newest elementary schools in the district and one of the highest economic base for the elementary school (something which madison would also love to redistrict because they want all socio-economic backgrounds everywhere, so bussing kids across town makes more sense to them and switching the schools that they attend mid-elementary career makes more sense to them rather than allowing something like intradistrict enrollment and allowing some of the lower income kids to choose to enroll in different schools while allowing parents who live closest to x, y, or z school to remain enrolled there.)
which reminds me, redistricting..... madison LOVES to do that.
i would highly recommend sticking with almost ANY suburb!!
I would like to point out that parents everywhere are dissatisfied with elements of the way their kids are schooled: in the city, in the suburbs, in rural areas, in private schools, in public schools, in charter schools, even in home schools! Where schooling is concerned, our insecurities and uncertainties about the future, and our anxieties about how well we are preparing our kids to meet the future come to a sharp and prickly point. Sharp words and sharp elbows come out too. We see this in forums such as this, and if you've ever attended a school board meeting -- anywhere! -- you've probably seen it there. Informed and educated parents are especially attentive to problems -- and perceived problems -- in the schools that their children are attending, or once attended, or might attend, or will attend if the parents can't manage to flee.
There are problems with all school systems, problems in all schools. Madison's schools have their share, yes, as do Middleton, Monona Grove, Waunakee, and all the rest. Some of the specific issues identified by posters on this thread as germane in Madison are real. But it's important to keep in mind that Madison is the elephant in the room. It gets the attention on sites such as this because it is so big, so familiar, and so talked about that all parents in Dane County -- knowledgeable and not -- have an opinion about the Madison schools. Very few of us have an opinion about the Sun Prairie or McFarland schools because most of us don't know enough about them. Of course they have their problems too. Furthermore, and this is NOT an accusation of racism leveled at anybody, there is particular anxiety and fear among lots of middle class and aspiring parents about schools where their children will rub up against elements of an unfamiliar and frightening underclass -- Black, Hispanic, Hmong, White, other, a fear, mostly irrational, that that some of this underclassness will somehow rub off on their kids. At very least there is a fear that the district's and the school's resources and the attention of teachers will be diverted to the neediest kids out of all proportion, and their own kids will suffer.
However legitimate the basic concerns might be, the problems usually aren't half as bad as they seem to be from the vantage point of the more anxiety-wrought and agitated parents who appear on these forums, at school board meetings, and on the sidelines of youth soccer games. So I recommend caution in reading the wilder and more anxiety-provoking posts on sites like this.
For what it's worth, I am happy with the Madison schools but also concerned about some aspects of planning and policy. My concerns have never even come close to warranting such a drastic move as leaving this lovely, lovely city, where I can bicycle to work, which functions so very well in so many respects, where the houses and neighborhoods have character, where neighbors are neighbors, for a any soulless suburb, for a split-level with a three-car garage around the traffic circle from the big box, for life as suburban parent/chauffeur, for life-sucking daily car commutes, and all the rest of it. This is my personal calculation. Many perfectly intelligent, rational people, plenty of friends of mine for instance, come down on the other side of this, and I respect their decisions. I just don't like it when these forums come to be dominated by harshness and thinking that comes mainly from one angle.
[quote=Skippery Boo;16335097For what it's worth, I am happy with the Madison schools but also concerned about some aspects of planning and policy. My concerns have never even come close to warranting such a drastic move as leaving this lovely, lovely city, where I can bicycle to work, which functions so very well in so many respects, where the houses and neighborhoods have character, where neighbors are neighbors, for a any soulless suburb, for a split-level with a three-car garage around the traffic circle from the big box, for life as suburban parent/chauffeur, for life-sucking daily car commutes, and all the rest of it. This is my personal calculation. Many perfectly intelligent, rational people, plenty of friends of mine for instance, come down on the other side of this, and I respect their decisions. I just don't like it when these forums come to be dominated by harshness and thinking that comes mainly from one angle.[/QUOTE]
So then, what are the pros and cons of Madison city schools? My husband and I have a 3 year old, we currently live in CA but will be moving to Madison soon, by April at the very latest.
What do you mean by "adjusting" classes? Do your public schools really mix grades in together? If they do, do you then have two separate teachers, one for each grade level? How often do things like that happen? How do the kids react to things like this?
Not judging, BTW, just curious. I'm trying to figure out what my son will be dealing with when he starts school, as we had really fallen in love with Madison proper. I don't especially want to live in the suburbs.
Are there any resources I could look up for more information?
they put a few thousand dollars ahead of the children's well being in this case. i grew up in western pennsylvania and this did NOT happen there. they made the adjustments BEFORE the school year began and left well enough alone once the year began regardless of who showed up and who didn't. madison has accomplished meeting the enrollment guidelines via mixing random students across grade levels-not entire grade levels. they have also taken teachers from one school and move them to another and split up the class amongst other classes (when there weren't enough students in october to warrant keeping said teacher at that building-granted this is less appalling than combining a handful of kids from say, 2nd grade, with a handful of kids from 3rd grade because the 3rd grade classrooms have more room and the 2nd grade ones are "overcrowded".)
Western PA (Pittsburgh) vs Madison. Only fair to compare the 2 urban districts in the region. Otherwise we would start a post Cranberry, PA vs. Waunakee, Wi.
Pittsburgh Public schools vs. Madison. They are about the same size as far as districts go. Pit has about 26-27k students
now. Madison looks Ivy league compared to us. That shocks a lot of people. Allderdice High school is West High here. (which makes all Madison High schools look incredibly great.) I was born and raised in Madison and I am proud to be from East High. Living here (Pittsburgh) opened my eyes how out of sync Madison can be with real urban school life. Apples to Apples Madison wins.
In quick reply to foilgirl, I have to say first that I am not a specialist or even especially knowledgeable about schools and schooling, in Madison or anywhere else. My own children are in college now (actually, one just graduated). Two of them went to elementary, middle, and high school in something like a Madison suburb, and the other went exclusively to Madison public schools (family change issues not germane to this discussion are the reasons for this). They were equally well educated, I think. They all went on to good and great colleges and are succeeding. I can barely remember when my kids were as young as yours, the kinds of concerns we had then as parents, but I think that we were more trusting than lots of parents are now that, one way or another, our kids would be well prepared. I think my attitude, and my spouse's attitude, was that children coming from a good home will learn very well and will have an equal chance of excelling in just about any kind of reasonable school, and, frankly, just about every public school in the Upper Midwest is at very least reasonable.
Alright, I may be exaggerating slightly, I'm sure there are a few abysmal schools in Wisconsin, in Minnesota, in Iowa, but not really very many, and in the Madison area I venture to say that there are none. Public schools in the Upper Midwest are generally are good to great; we pay for it, and we get what we pay for. In the Madison area this is especially true.
Our assumption was that kids who go to school with the parent-instilled expectation that they will learn, will in fact learn. Furthermore, we assumed that kids will learn just as well, though no doubt differently, in lots of different kinds of schools. We had confidence in the system and in the capacity of our kids. We were more than philosophical about the element of chance and circumstance that we knew would have an impact on the kind of learning that each of our kids would get (good teacher here, bad teacher there, extra-curriculars of this kind here, mediocre library there, lots of rich kids here, lots of poor kids there) -- we were more than philosophical about it, we liked this element of chance. Why? Because we knew that so much is out of our control, and that it's good for kids to be exposed to a range of hard knocks, bad luck, AND opportunities. Plus we had basic confidence in the schools around here. I realize I'm lecturing, or implying that many parents now have lost sight of something important. This isn't what I mean. I understand that everything seems more pressurized than it did twenty years ago. But I do suggest that the strong quality of all schools in our area, coupled with a parental willingness to concede some element of randomness in the particular exposures that their children will receive and the impacts on that particular child of those particular exposures, should yield in a rational person a certain degree of confidence. I also think that this very confidence will rub off in a positive way on kids.
I'm being general, not specific, and now I'm running out of time (I only look at this site every now and then). I'll just stay general, but do trust that what I'm about to say is based on the experiences of our children and their friends. And remember, this is just my opinion today and I may be wrong. Kids coming out of all-white and nearly all-white "suburban" school systems where the vast majority of parents and kids are upper-middle-class tend to have had a few more academic advantages than kids coming out of urban schools, even good to great urban schools such as Madison's. I think, and this is very general, that the price they pay -- lots of them pay -- is that they arrive in a certain self-satisfied place, a place of a kind of narrow-mindedness or assumption of privilege which (and this is the important part) eventually impedes them, or easily can impede them as persons and as intellects, as they move into college and into life. The academic advantages that seem substantial when they are in grade school and high school can instill attitudes that strangely get in the way of intellectual and social development later. I know this is vague, but I can't be better on this subject at this moment.
I'm trying to say that middle class kids in urban schools, including Madison, have a better chance, I think, of coming out both well prepared and interesting, adaptable, supple in a way that it's harder for more "protected" kids from suburban schools to achieve. I realize that this is almost descending into gross stereotype. And I have to move on. But do you see what I'm driving at? Our child who went to Madison schools is funny, interesting, supple. And succeeding highly in college.
(By the way, is there a high school in the state that comes even close to Madison West and Madison Memorial in the production of National Merit Scholars? Certainly there is no suburban Madison school that comes anywhere even close. This tells you something.)
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