Beware for your children: Madison's union teachers fail....again. (Milwaukee: sales, school districts)

[Hotbug]

Anyone read this? Yet again, madison's public schools are failing the children.

Madison was one of six districts in the state that didn’t meet goals in 2010-11 in either test scores, test participation, graduation or attendance for either all students or certain subgroups, including by race, ability status, income and English proficiency, according to information released Tuesday by the state Department of Public Instruction.
Of those six, Madison was one of three “identified for improvement” because they didn’t meet goals in one or more categories. Milwaukee and Racine were the other.

With 13.7 children per teacher, and above the national average in spending, one would think that madison's public school system would do better for your children?


Yet another stellar example of why leftist ran places like, say madison, milwaukee, racine should be avoided if you have children or want some actual positive results from your tax monies.


Oh, and MATC is pushing thru a double digit property tax increase for their schooling.

[bananamana]

Originally Posted by Hotbug

Anyone read this? Yet again, madison's public schools are failing the children.


With 13.7 children per teacher, and above the national average in spending, one would think that madison's public school system would do better for your children?


Yet another stellar example of why leftist ran places like, say madison, milwaukee, racine should be avoided if you have children or want some actual positive results from your tax monies.


Oh, and MATC is pushing thru a double digit property tax increase for their schooling.

Before I comment, anyone else feel like this thread is going to be shut down any minute?

Anyway, if Madison's Public Schools have above average funding and a low student to teacher ratio, by all studies I know of, they should be achieving. With that being said, I think your article is more of an indication of other determining factors to the failure of the schools than simply the teachers and administration. If teachers were the only ones at fault, we would see fluctuations in the data as different teachers move in and move out of the system. We would also see that the test scores drop across the board regardless of race, ethnicity, immigrant status, and household income; however, we don't. These determing factors still demonstrate that White, rich kids attending MPS tend to graduate with high test scores while non-White, poor kids will struggle to do so.

So, I'm not saying that the administration and the faculty are completely free of blame, I think they share in it as much as other determining factors such as: parent involvement, student support networks, extracurricular activities, etc.

Also, correlation does not prove causality. Just because a "leftist" government controls the majority of this nation's urban areas and a majority of this nation's urban areas have difficulty producing strong schools does not mean the two are related. Instead of spouting inflammatory language and unfounded accusations, you could be asking What has changed since the last time MPS tested their students? Why is it that your income level, parent's marital status, race, ethnicity, immigrant status, etc. all seem to play a roll in whether or not you succeed?

[MassVt]

Originally Posted by Hotbug

Anyone read this? Yet again, madison's public schools are failing the children.




With 13.7 children per teacher, and above the national average in spending, one would think that madison's public school system would do better for your children?


Yet another stellar example of why leftist ran places like, say madison, milwaukee, racine should be avoided if you have children or want some actual positive results from your tax monies.


Oh, and MATC is pushing thru a double digit property tax increase for their schooling.

Take your agenda-drive gargage somewhere else...

[Hotbug]

Originally Posted by MassVt

Take your agenda-drive gargage somewhere else...

Madison always puts forth they are very "educated", focus on education and of course, wrapping it all up ending their sales pitch with "children".

So I guess people considering moving to madison should be informed of the reality of the sales pitch they are fed. BTW, I'd call that "garbage", putting forth a lie about a place so people will move there or send their money there in the form of taxes, etc. Yeah, either garbage or a lie.

At least there is some place where people can put forth reality about a situation. What was madison coined again, 'ten square miles surrounded by reality" or the like? It is.

[Bo]

Originally Posted by bananamana

Before I comment, anyone else feel like this thread is going to be shut down any minute?

Keep the conversation civil and it won't. Best way to do that is to discuss the issues and not each other.

[arangoa79]

This is why our subdivision is trying to get out of the madison District.

[Hotbug]

Originally Posted by arangoa79

This is why our subdivision is trying to get out of the madison District.

Get involved in whatever way you can to get free of the tentacles of leftist madison's school system. Most people that reside in one of those districts and can afford it, send their children to private schools, but they still are on the hook for coughing over their monies to such failed school systems.

Get involved and tell all your friends/etc. to do also.

Your children deserve far better than madison schools and of course, your family could use the financial break from that black hole.

In the meantime, Gov. Walker is expanding school vouchers, so at least he's thinking of the children instead of padding the teachers pension packages.

[spectator80]

it's no secret that the MMSD is facing challenges related to rapid urbanization and an increase in poverty that is often associated with such change. however, i feel that the OP is skewing the article to support his rather obvious political agenda. by no means do i claim to be an expert on the subject, but from my understanding the testing benchmarks require schools to meet or exceed their test scores from previous years. several of the schools mentioned in the article have received very high scores in the past (far above the national average), but because their scores dropped they were identified as needing improvement. still, if stacked head-to-head with schools nationwide, they still compare favorably. furthermore, the OP conveniently didn't mention the fact that other madison schools actually made progress this year.

madison schools are without doubt facing challenges, and there is certainly room for improvement. but is the district in shambles and "failing" students? absolutely not.

[Hotbug]

Originally Posted by spectator80

it's no secret that the MMSD is facing challenges related to rapid urbanization and an increase in poverty that is often associated with such change.

And the leftist mindset in madison has proven to be a failure at any sort of success, in spite of all the direct spending and indirect (govt programs for the poor/illegals). A great example of this is the violence in the school system, where armed police now patrol and criminal gangs run rampant....yet east high 'dealt' with the problem by trying to get new principals that could 'understand' the 'special needs' of the urbanized/foreign population coming to madison to take advantage of the plethora of government programs for them.

One can only contrast and compare the conditions in schools in, say portage or wausau vs. east/west/memorial/lafollete.

They can hide ancillary spending on this by putting it in the general budget rather than the one tied directly to their schools.

But as you allude to, and most people agree, public education systems are failing their children due to the incompetence and personal greed of their government union members. So you too make an excellent case for a school voucher program--for the children.

Wisconsin ranks 8th in per capita spending for elementary and secondary education. The seven states above us tend to be either high cost states like New York and Connecticut or states with very small populations like Alaska and Wyoming. Taxpayers shoulder this burden by paying high property taxes and high state income taxes. In fact, on average, 44 percent of the property tax bill goes to fund public schools and 40 percent of the state budget is devoted to funding for K-12 public education in Wisconsin.

WMC - Media Outlet (http://www.wmc.org/display.cfm?ID=993 - broken link)

Then toss in federal monies given back to WI taxpayers after being laundered in DC. "For example, in 2009 feds gave us back In fiscal 2008, the federal government provided $669.6 million in subsidies to the public schools in Wisconsin."

No matter what criteria is used, the unionized public school system in this nation is indeed in shambles and failing the children (pick any tests). Some are just far worse than others.

[Chelito23]

Originally Posted by spectator80

it's no secret that the MMSD is facing challenges related to rapid urbanization and an increase in poverty that is often associated with such change. however, i feel that the OP is skewing the article to support his rather obvious political agenda. by no means do i claim to be an expert on the subject, but from my understanding the testing benchmarks require schools to meet or exceed their test scores from previous years. several of the schools mentioned in the article have received very high scores in the past (far above the national average), but because their scores dropped they were identified as needing improvement. still, if stacked head-to-head with schools nationwide, they still compare favorably. furthermore, the OP conveniently didn't mention the fact that other madison schools actually made progress this year.

madison schools are without doubt facing challenges, and there is certainly room for improvement. but is the district in shambles and "failing" students? absolutely not.

You added a much more balanced perspective to this thread, thanks.

It's also worth noting that the MMSD was such "magical" district for many reasons that had nothing to do with politics or it's teaching methods. It was a simple matter of a district in a well to do community with minimal poverty and the small minority population it had was educated as many students' parents worked with the UW.

On top of that, Madison had a large amount of highly educated residents and they are and were very involved in the schools...and there weren't any suburbs as there are today, back then. So the MMSD didn't have to deal with students moving to other school districts initially, even when times started to slowly change starting back in the early 90s.

Fast forward 20 years and now Madison has grown tremendously. The surrounding communities have turned into full fledged suburbs with large school systems that offer all of the amenities of the MMSD minus the problems that gowth has brought this district. They are the new MMSD.

At the same time, many families that earn below the median income have moved into the school district while yesteryear's established, well to do families' children have grown up and moved on (many to the suburbs) and started their own families in Fitchburg, Verona, Waunakee, Sun Prairie, etc. The result is a stabilization of the districts population in the following manner: the well to do white students that graduate are replaced by students comming from the lower socioeconimc backgrounds and immigrant families.

This is a challenge for the MMSD and any school district in the country. I can't complain and say the MMSD isn't doing things right...they have many restictions and rules they must abide by. It is no longer a sit back and let the district run itself, gravy train and reap in the rewards and accolades. Now they have to break a sweat to get things done.

All in all, it's part of change that keeps cities and districts dynamic. I would rather my children be in Madison schools going through these changes than in a community where people try to turn the situation into a political or racial hot bed. In Madison there is a genuine interest in helping students from different backgrounds and if that is lost on someone or viewed as a negative, I think it says a lot more about them than about the MMSD.