by rsullivan | Jul 30, 2018 | Stand Up for Public Education Blog
Wisconsin State Journal: Madison school officials say a nine-week “micro school” at the end of the 2017-18 academic year improved attendance, engagement and learning for a small group of at-risk La Follette High School students, but key questions remain about how the model could be implemented in the future.
The Madison School District launched the school April 5 at the Life Center Madison church in the wake of a string of fights and other behavior problems at La Follette, on the city’s East Side. The idea was to try to re-engage a small group of students believed to be responsible for much of the discord, in part by allowing them to have a greater say in what they learn and how they learn it.
Enrollment in the school was voluntary and while the district initially sought to recruit from 15 to 20 students, ultimately 13 — all black or biracial boys — signed up, and 10 of them showed academic, social and other kinds of progress toward graduation.
- Ten students had plans in place to transition to a more permanent school placement this coming school year.
- Attendance for the 13 increased from 72 percent for school year prior to entering the micro school to 84 percent in the micro school.
- Students earned five partial-day suspensions during the nine-week session, as opposed to 30 during the school year to that point.
- Nine of the 13 students earned the maximum 3.5 credits available during the nine-week program, one earned three credits and three earned none.
by rsullivan | Apr 9, 2018 | Stand Up for Public Education Blog
The Capital Times: As the school year draws to a close, a new experience is just beginning for 13 La Follette High School students.
On Thursday, the start of fourth quarter, the Madison Metropolitan School District opened a “micro school” at the Life Center on Madison’s southeast side. The alternative school site was developed for a small number of students from La Follette who’ve had behavioral challenges this year.
District administrators announced the alternative site in late February following a series of high-profile incidents at La Follette during the second and third quarters of the school year. La Follette parents organized a listening session with MMSD superintendent Jennifer Cheatham and voiced their concerns at Madison School Board meetings.
Alex Fralin, MMSD’s secondary schools chief, said the energy was high following a parent orientation for incoming micro school students on Tuesday.
by rsullivan | Mar 19, 2018 | Stand Up for Public Education Blog
Channel3000.com: Madison East High School won first place at the Wisconsin ProStart Student Invitational Culinary Competition held in Milwaukee March 13, according to a release.
At the ProStart Invitational, 21 high schools and 112 students from Wisconsin competed in the management and culinary competition.
Madison East High School participated in the culinary competition, where students needed to make a three-course meal. They are judged by food industry professionals and college educators on teamwork, presentation, cooking procedures, knife skills and sanitation.
Read the complete article on Madison East High School’s culinary team.
by rsullivan | Jan 22, 2018 | Stand Up for Public Education Blog
Channel3000.com: A world language teacher at East High School was named Global Educator of the Year, by the Wisconsin Superintendent’s International Education Council.
Claudine Clark was awarded the honor in Milwaukee on Friday at the General Session of the Wisconsin State Education Convention.
Clark is being recognized for the third annual award for her contributions to East High School, by raising substantial scholarship funds for her students to travel, bringing in international teachers to the school, helping students become lifelong learners and collaborating with other educators.
Read the complete article on Wisconsin’s Global Educator of the Year.
by rsullivan | Jan 8, 2018 | Stand Up for Public Education Blog
Wisconsin State Journal: In a cross-cultural literary feat two years in the making, a class of dual-language immersion students at Lincoln Elementary School in Madison has helped create the first trilingual children’s book about the Ho-Chunk Nation.
Now in fifth grade, the students as third-graders in teacher Emily Schroeder’s class worked for several months with a Ho-Chunk tribal officer and Ho-Chunk students from a language school in Nekoosa to record, transcribe and illustrate a traditional Ho-Chunk story about a boy on a quest, and translate it into English, Spanish and Ho-Chunk.
“I wanted to dive deeper into this whole idea of Madison history before European contact,” Schroeder said. “Plus there are not a lot of children’s books, fictional or nonfictional, in general about the Ho-Chunk Nation.”
A tribal grant recently paid to print 2,000 copies of the book, titled “The Ho-Chunk Courting Flute,” which will be donated to all public schools and libraries in Madison and throughout the Ho-Chunk Nation after a book release party at Lincoln on Friday. The release party is open to the public.
