fwd: school news

The following news links were posted on the MAFAAC list. I haven't checked them out. I'm just passing them on; a few comments are footnoted.

• Don't be a Statistic: Fight the Achievement Gap - Lafollette Student Jazmin Jackson writes a must read.*
  
  
• Schools Could Use a Makeover, by Rob Zaleski (with links & related articles)
  
  
• Malcolm Gladwell on Education - New Yorker writer and author (Blink, Tipping Point) spoke at the Memorial Union last week. Interesting stuff, including some words on education and inadvertent (or not) gender bias.
  
  
• March 7, 2005 Madison School Board Meeting Budget Comments, including the administrations's proposed strings program elimination.**
  
  
• Carol Carstensen & Ruth Robarts exchange views on the District's current budget process
  
  
• Mary Battaglia offers up Virginia's recent school funding change
  
  
• Blogshine Sunday, FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) and PAC money in the
  local school board races
  
  
• Madison School Board Candidate election site
  

Up to date local school information, links, events and ideas: http://www.schoolinfosystem.org

Send your ideas and information: http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/ideas/

Best wishes!
Jim Zellmer

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* I'm not reading this now because I'm trying to get back on track with my work, but I hafta say, the last time I saw a student article about the achievement gap, it was a Black student telling other Black students it was (essentially) all their fault. I couldn't help seeing this article because someone cut it out and taped it to the wall about every three feet all over Sherman Middle School. I don't blame the kid--this is the message she gets--but the publisher who didn't include any other points of view, and the teacher(s) who loved this "get out of the doghouse free" card, earn my ire (not that this would concern them at all).
**My first reaction: good. As it is, "strings" is used to segregate--the rich kids who have had private tutors or something like that go into "strings," and everyone else goes into "band." god, there are so many little trap doors like this--and the parents' ways of communicating about it are so subtle and awful, so that they probably convince themselves they aren't doing it! Now, before I seem like the grinch that stole music classes, there's nothing wrong with strings per se, and I generally oppose cutting music and art just on principle--but there are other things going on here.