Here’s a head scratcher. In a community that strongly values education, the Madison public schools are performing abysmally. And yet, the voting public doesn’t seem to care. Longtime school board members go unchallenged and referendums pass by overwhelming margins.
What’s going on? Here’s my theory. If your household values education your kid can get a good one in the MMSD. Your student can silo up into AP courses and other programs and do quite well. So, the overall numbers for the district can be dismal — low test scores, high truancy, lots of police calls, a yawning racial achievement gap — and yet your kid can pretty much avoid all that and succeed.
So, the only way board members risk losing their seats is if those silos for success get cracked. That’s why the district backed off on getting rid of stand alone honors classes last year. The same thing happened in San Francisco when the school board there tried to mess with its flagship high school that functioned as a conveyer belt to the Ivy League.
And that’s why the MMSD is moving now toward reinstating rigorous grading at its high schools. They realize that the only thing that really could stir a revolt is if they do something that threatens the silos occupied by kids from relatively affluent, highly liberal and mostly white families.
So, the new initiative is called “weighted grading,” which simply means taking into account the difficulty of a given course. Without it — which is the current system — a student who takes easy or remedial courses and aces them looks better on paper then the student who takes AP courses and gets a few B’s.
It’s the parents of those high-achieving students who are demanding the change and they’re demanding it in response to new state programs granting automatic admissions to the UW for kids who rank in the top 5% of their classes and automatic admissions to UW campuses outside of Madison for those in the top 10%.
The current system doesn’t work because, in addition to there being no weighting of grades, there isn’t even any class rankings. So, how can you tell if any kid is in the top 10%? Even worse, the district has been trying to move away from assigning grades at all with a pilot program at one high school which would replace letter grades with “Advanced,” “Proficient,” “Developing” or “Emerging.” (I note that there are only four of these and so none that equates to an “F.” I assume that if there were one it would be something like “Could Be The Next Einstein.”)
The bottom line here is that merit is finding its way back into the Madison public schools. This whole movement — no weighted grading, no class rankings, downplaying letter grades altogether — is born of the notion that merit is just a construct of the oppressors. And the liberal parents of those high-achieving kids might actually buy that in theory.
Until it stands in the way of their kid getting into the UW.
YSDA stands for:
Free speech.
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Reason.
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Pluralism.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
Back in the day, late 70s early 80s, parents sent their children to Edgewood instead of the Madison public schools because it was considered a college prep school. To me, not much has changed. Except that they paid taxes AND the private school fees. Also, I think parents tuned out during the COVID board meetings where boards were screamed at and accused of doing all sorts of horrible things by trying to keep their students safe and even that became a political issue. So parents who care are focusing on what they can affect: their own children and doubling down on their involvement in helping their own children succeed, versus spinning wheels on bureaucracy. Also, the Republicans have been doing an excellent job of tearing down public schools, not just with lack of funding, but with Act 10 and the voucher system and all the fear mongering and disrespect of teachers. As mediocre as Underly is, Kinser will only further destroy the public school system.
Schools and teachers used to be valued and respected. And the voucher system doesn’t just destroy the public school system and make learning about the haves and have nots, it also destroys the fabrics of community. There is alot of community involved in children who live in the same neighborhood going to the same schools and parents making those connections with other parents. Vouchers are such a bad idea for so many reasons.
If you know, you know. They only serve the wealthy elites. Don’t kid yourself otherwise.
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Thoughtful response, but I can’t say I entirely agree. People I respect, like Howard Fuller, support Kinser precisely because she supports vouchers. Fuller believes the public schools establishment isn’t serving Black kids. In my case, I’m not supporting Kinser because of vouchers — though I’m fine with them. She has no power to increase vouchers anyway. I’m supporting her because our schools are failing and Underly is just more of the same. Things are bad enough that I’m willing to take a chance on Kinser.
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Who is using the vouchers and who benefits most from them?
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Right. This is the kind of practical question that should be answered. (Off hand, I don’t know the answer, but there are income limits that I would think keep the beneficiaries at a modest income level.) But so much of the reaction to this is just ideological. Opponents of vouchers see them as an attack on public schools. To me, that’s not the issue. The issue is the education kids get. At least theoretically, I like vouchers because they provide lower income families with the options that better off families have and they provide competition for public schools.
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Wonder how much of what this teacher talks about has to do with student learning:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHTWwCIODkr/?igsh=ZGUzMzM3NWJiOQ==
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