Questions for 2019 BOE Candidates from Madison Partnership for Advanced Learning
Kaleem Caire, Seat 3
1. Every MMSD plan (AL, ELL, Special Ed, BEP) seems to have specific challenges with implementation at the school level. What will you as a board member do to better understand these issues and get the information you need to assess these situations? How will you ensure that issues with implementation and unmet student needs get addressed?
For the last several weeks, I have visited several Madison public schools to hear from, and talk with, educators, students, principals, other professional staff (e.g., guidance counselors, custodians and school resource officers) and parents. I did so because I want to have a broad awareness and understanding of what key stakeholders in our schools feel our school board and school district should focus on to strengthen our schools and ensure our students have what they need to be successful.
It is vitally important to our leadership as school board members, that we spend quality time in our schools talking with students who attend our schools and adults who work with our children every day. We must talk with students, teachers, administrators and staff about the policies and programs we’ve authorized, and that we are considering authorizing, and how these policies, programs and decision are impacting them. We need to hear what these stakeholders think should be implemented, changed, improved or abandoned. I have spent hundreds of hours over the last 25 years in Madison’s public schools and have found that engaging people who work directly with programs, personnel and students is the best ways to get to know what people are doing, experiencing and thinking.
As a Board member, I also recognize there are parents and community members that our schools don’t see every day. These individuals are equally important to our children’s education and to the success of our schools. We must go visit with these community members in their neighborhoods and places of employment, if necessary. We should knock on doors periodically throughout the year and meet with community members at local community centers, service organizations, neighborhood events and wherever else we can learn more and have a thoughtful conversation. The Board of Education should host Brown Bag luncheons at local employers to both share and receive information. We must make use of our available resources and networks to hear from people, and commit to doing the hard work that is necessary to reach them.
With regard to ensuring that students’ needs are met, and that school district policies and programs are implemented effectively, I will insist that our school board require routine reviews of our policy and procedures. I will also ask my fellow Board members to ensure that major programs we implement have independent evaluations conducted on them that provide annual and semi-annual reports that pertain to costs, implementation, obstacles, short-comings and successes. We cannot and should not rely solely on anecdotal information about key policies and initiatives that our district and community is heavily invested in financially and programmatically. We also should not rely solely on the information provided to us by our administrative team. It is not about trust; we must ensure we have the information necessary to make informed and objective decisions.
2. In a February Madison365 article, Superintendent Jen Cheatham wrote:“A superintendent, no matter how determined or talented or passionate simply cannot succeed without a Board that clears the path for success.” How do you interpret this statement from a board member’s perspective?
I try to avoid relying on interpretation, especially when we have the time to ask and find out for ourselves. I think this practice is especially important as elected members of the School Board.
That said, I have asked Dr. Cheatham about this previously. What I derived from her response is that she desires to have more support from the Board of Education for key policies and initiatives she feels are important to our children, educators and schools. I also believe she has concerns about the level of partnership she has with certain members of the Board of Education.
3. In 2018-19, 5,661 MMSD students (21% of all students) were identified as advanced learners in one of the five domains: specific academic areas, general intellectual, visual/performing arts, leadership or creativity. This included 8,503 AL designations as some students are identified in multiple areas. Disparities by race, income and language have improved slightly but still need significant work. Providing consistent and systematic advanced instruction (beyond math) to advanced learners continues to be a challenge at most schools. Please explain your thoughts on how schools can address both the critical work of helping students reach proficiency while allowing students to move beyond that level when they are ready.
I answered this somewhat in questions 4 and 5 below. I believe we should offer special programs and courses for advanced learners in all of our schools – elementary through secondary school – and ensure children attending alternative programs and who are enrolled in special education have access to appropriate advanced learning options as well. We can do this without engaging in the old-school style of tracking children by real or perceived ability (or skin color and behavior, which unfortunately often implicitly or explicitly factors into these decisions, too). Instead, we can accomplish this by ensuring that every child has an individualized learning plan that informs teachers, parents and other professionals about the gifts, talents, gaps, needs, desires and interests of each child enrolled in our school system. These plans should also include strategies that can and should be used within the classroom, at home and by the student themselves to maximize their learning in their area of need, interest, and/or talent.
We should also implement MMSD’s own version of an Early College High School model in partnership with Madison College, Edgewood College, UW-Madison, the local building trades, the Police and Fire Academies, and local businesses and nonprofit organizations representing STEM Fields and Human Service work. MMSD’s STEM Academy and the state’s Dual Credit program where high school students can earn college credit is a start, but we can and must go further than this. When I say I want to revolutionize public education, these are some of the things that I am talking about.
My dear friend Kevin Teasley created a dual credit program at his public charter schools in Indiana and has had students complete their bachelor’s degree while receiving a high school diploma at the same time. We could be doing things like this “within” the Madison Metropolitan School District. We have all of the ingredients in our city to make this work. While we do need additional resources to implement some of these things, I believe we can secure these resources if we present a clear and compelling plan to our tax-paying community, and appeal to our state, in collaboration with other school districts, for specific increases in funding to help us accomplish our aims.
I am done playing small and taking the slow road to addressing challenges and implementing important opportunities for our children. We should all take a moment to read and think deeply about the most salient and unifying parts of Marianne Wright’s popular poem, “Our Deepest Fear”, as we work to eliminate disparities and expand opportunities for all of our children:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us…There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you…And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
As board members, we need to be courageous, collaborative, inspiring and smart. Status Quo leaders won’t help any of us move forward, and they definitely won’t help us solve our greatest problems or help our children realize their greatness.
4. How can MMSD effectively measure success for its advanced learners?
There are both quantitative and qualitative measures that MMSD can use to measure the success of its advanced learners. Early use of the PSAT, SAT, ACT, Pre-ACT and ACT Tessera and ACT Engage to identify students with exceptional academic skills in grades 3 and older can be helpful. There are also other assessment tools that can be used to measure students’ innate and developing abilities and aptitudes in core academic areas, and with children who are younger than age 8 as well. Our District should be using these assessment tools annually, and when necessary (when I child shows an emerging strength in a particular area). MMSD should also require its 30 early childhood education partners (and parents), who they provided $3,646 per child to this school year to provide a half-day 4K program to 708 four-year-olds (Total = $2,581,368), to administer, at minimum, the Ages and Stages Questionnaire so they can get some data on children’s strengths and abilities before they reach kindergarten.
Additionally, children who show exceptional talent, dedication or precociousness in linguistics and reasoning, the visual and performing arts, sports and athleticism, leadership, and building design and creative thinking (as examples) should have skilled professionals in these areas assess their strengths and put programs together enable them to continue to build upon their interests and abilities. Again, children should be assessed as signs of their special skills, aptitudes and interests emerge.
MMSD can provide baseline and advanced learning assessments to young children, but should also partner with other agencies, community programs and higher education in Dane County, and outside of our state (for example, the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University) to ensure advanced leaders, learners and doers are effectively served by our community, families and public schools.
5. The current 2019-20 proposed budget includes Strategic Equity Projects. One proposal addresses a recommendation made by the Advanced Learning Advisory Committee through the Office of Civil Rights resolution process to address racial disparities in access to and preparation for advanced coursework. This recommendation includes increasing the Advanced Learning staff to 1.0 FTE (from current 0.5 FTE levels) for every K-8 school in order to provide a talent development program for underrepresented students and a systematic structure for advanced learning in every school. If elected, will you support funding this recommendation?
Yes, however, I do not believe the recommendation goes far enough. I am leery of your point that we need a “program” specifically for underrepresented students. I think I understand it, but it raises some concerns and questions for me. For example, why do we need a segregated program for this?
What I understand would be best is having appropriate staffing (which the 1.0 FTE does) to coordinate a strong set of programs, curriculum enhancements and academic acceleration for high ability students within and outside classrooms, while also providing appropriate training to classroom teachers, school counselors, paraprofessionals and parents on how to identify and support high ability students within their schools, classrooms, at home and in the community.
In the late 1990s, I created the Children of Promise Program for the Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth (WCATY). You can learn more about it by clicking the following links:
Dr. Ellie Schatz hired me to create this program because our community knew as far back as 1987 when the Urban League of Greater Madison commissioned its review of student’s course-taking patterns, that Black students who should have been enrolled in advanced learning courses and programs were going unidentified or were being excluded. By the mid 1990s, nothing had been done of substance to address this issue. We also learned that many Latino, Asian American, Native American and under-served, low-income white children, and those who might have been identified as having a special educational need, were not being adequately served through advanced learning courses and programs as well.
Through the Children of Promise Program, which was a partnership with the University of Wisconsin System, we worked with the Madison, Beloit and Milwaukee school districts to implement talent development and testing programs in local communities to both cultivate the talents of all children residing in a particular area of these cities, while establishing testing centers and partnerships to identify underserved children for additional services and academic challenge through WCATY and their schools. The program continued until funding ran out and the leadership at WCATY and the UW System changed.
Programs like this can be effective but they are most effective if they are embedded within schools, are aligned with a child’s regular education program, and focus on a child’s specific areas of academic, intellectual, physical, leadership or artistic strengths. It also helps to have strong partnerships with community-based organizations, businesses, and industry that can provide extended learning, leadership and employment opportunities to children that meet their educational and professional needs, passion and interests.
So Yes, I would support the recommendation the Advanced Learning Advisory Committee made as a first step. However, if we are really going to provide the type of educational opportunities that our children need and deserve, we must find and create ways to push the envelope further. Your current recommendation doesn’t go far enough for our kids. I hope MMSD and the Board of Education understands this.
6. How can MMSD increase genuine engagement by stakeholders (i.e. students, families, staff and community members) in processes both at the district and school levels?
We should have talented citizens on school district committees, or at the very least, serving in a formal advisory capacity to our committees. We also need committees and/or time-limited and project-specific work teams that actually focus on getting work done and solving major challenges the school district faces.
Beyond that, we should hold policy, program and budget meetings around the city on a regular basis, and partner with our Superintendent and her leadership team to meet with school personnel, students and families together, at schools throughout the school year.
Our schools also need parent and family liaisons whose sole focus is on helping our school teams and school district build strong partnerships with families, and to collaborate with community partners to support and engage our families in reasonable and meaningful ways.
Kaleem Caire, Seat 3
1. Every MMSD plan (AL, ELL, Special Ed, BEP) seems to have specific challenges with implementation at the school level. What will you as a board member do to better understand these issues and get the information you need to assess these situations? How will you ensure that issues with implementation and unmet student needs get addressed?
For the last several weeks, I have visited several Madison public schools to hear from, and talk with, educators, students, principals, other professional staff (e.g., guidance counselors, custodians and school resource officers) and parents. I did so because I want to have a broad awareness and understanding of what key stakeholders in our schools feel our school board and school district should focus on to strengthen our schools and ensure our students have what they need to be successful.
It is vitally important to our leadership as school board members, that we spend quality time in our schools talking with students who attend our schools and adults who work with our children every day. We must talk with students, teachers, administrators and staff about the policies and programs we’ve authorized, and that we are considering authorizing, and how these policies, programs and decision are impacting them. We need to hear what these stakeholders think should be implemented, changed, improved or abandoned. I have spent hundreds of hours over the last 25 years in Madison’s public schools and have found that engaging people who work directly with programs, personnel and students is the best ways to get to know what people are doing, experiencing and thinking.
As a Board member, I also recognize there are parents and community members that our schools don’t see every day. These individuals are equally important to our children’s education and to the success of our schools. We must go visit with these community members in their neighborhoods and places of employment, if necessary. We should knock on doors periodically throughout the year and meet with community members at local community centers, service organizations, neighborhood events and wherever else we can learn more and have a thoughtful conversation. The Board of Education should host Brown Bag luncheons at local employers to both share and receive information. We must make use of our available resources and networks to hear from people, and commit to doing the hard work that is necessary to reach them.
With regard to ensuring that students’ needs are met, and that school district policies and programs are implemented effectively, I will insist that our school board require routine reviews of our policy and procedures. I will also ask my fellow Board members to ensure that major programs we implement have independent evaluations conducted on them that provide annual and semi-annual reports that pertain to costs, implementation, obstacles, short-comings and successes. We cannot and should not rely solely on anecdotal information about key policies and initiatives that our district and community is heavily invested in financially and programmatically. We also should not rely solely on the information provided to us by our administrative team. It is not about trust; we must ensure we have the information necessary to make informed and objective decisions.
2. In a February Madison365 article, Superintendent Jen Cheatham wrote:“A superintendent, no matter how determined or talented or passionate simply cannot succeed without a Board that clears the path for success.” How do you interpret this statement from a board member’s perspective?
I try to avoid relying on interpretation, especially when we have the time to ask and find out for ourselves. I think this practice is especially important as elected members of the School Board.
That said, I have asked Dr. Cheatham about this previously. What I derived from her response is that she desires to have more support from the Board of Education for key policies and initiatives she feels are important to our children, educators and schools. I also believe she has concerns about the level of partnership she has with certain members of the Board of Education.
3. In 2018-19, 5,661 MMSD students (21% of all students) were identified as advanced learners in one of the five domains: specific academic areas, general intellectual, visual/performing arts, leadership or creativity. This included 8,503 AL designations as some students are identified in multiple areas. Disparities by race, income and language have improved slightly but still need significant work. Providing consistent and systematic advanced instruction (beyond math) to advanced learners continues to be a challenge at most schools. Please explain your thoughts on how schools can address both the critical work of helping students reach proficiency while allowing students to move beyond that level when they are ready.
I answered this somewhat in questions 4 and 5 below. I believe we should offer special programs and courses for advanced learners in all of our schools – elementary through secondary school – and ensure children attending alternative programs and who are enrolled in special education have access to appropriate advanced learning options as well. We can do this without engaging in the old-school style of tracking children by real or perceived ability (or skin color and behavior, which unfortunately often implicitly or explicitly factors into these decisions, too). Instead, we can accomplish this by ensuring that every child has an individualized learning plan that informs teachers, parents and other professionals about the gifts, talents, gaps, needs, desires and interests of each child enrolled in our school system. These plans should also include strategies that can and should be used within the classroom, at home and by the student themselves to maximize their learning in their area of need, interest, and/or talent.
We should also implement MMSD’s own version of an Early College High School model in partnership with Madison College, Edgewood College, UW-Madison, the local building trades, the Police and Fire Academies, and local businesses and nonprofit organizations representing STEM Fields and Human Service work. MMSD’s STEM Academy and the state’s Dual Credit program where high school students can earn college credit is a start, but we can and must go further than this. When I say I want to revolutionize public education, these are some of the things that I am talking about.
My dear friend Kevin Teasley created a dual credit program at his public charter schools in Indiana and has had students complete their bachelor’s degree while receiving a high school diploma at the same time. We could be doing things like this “within” the Madison Metropolitan School District. We have all of the ingredients in our city to make this work. While we do need additional resources to implement some of these things, I believe we can secure these resources if we present a clear and compelling plan to our tax-paying community, and appeal to our state, in collaboration with other school districts, for specific increases in funding to help us accomplish our aims.
I am done playing small and taking the slow road to addressing challenges and implementing important opportunities for our children. We should all take a moment to read and think deeply about the most salient and unifying parts of Marianne Wright’s popular poem, “Our Deepest Fear”, as we work to eliminate disparities and expand opportunities for all of our children:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us…There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you…And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
As board members, we need to be courageous, collaborative, inspiring and smart. Status Quo leaders won’t help any of us move forward, and they definitely won’t help us solve our greatest problems or help our children realize their greatness.
4. How can MMSD effectively measure success for its advanced learners?
There are both quantitative and qualitative measures that MMSD can use to measure the success of its advanced learners. Early use of the PSAT, SAT, ACT, Pre-ACT and ACT Tessera and ACT Engage to identify students with exceptional academic skills in grades 3 and older can be helpful. There are also other assessment tools that can be used to measure students’ innate and developing abilities and aptitudes in core academic areas, and with children who are younger than age 8 as well. Our District should be using these assessment tools annually, and when necessary (when I child shows an emerging strength in a particular area). MMSD should also require its 30 early childhood education partners (and parents), who they provided $3,646 per child to this school year to provide a half-day 4K program to 708 four-year-olds (Total = $2,581,368), to administer, at minimum, the Ages and Stages Questionnaire so they can get some data on children’s strengths and abilities before they reach kindergarten.
Additionally, children who show exceptional talent, dedication or precociousness in linguistics and reasoning, the visual and performing arts, sports and athleticism, leadership, and building design and creative thinking (as examples) should have skilled professionals in these areas assess their strengths and put programs together enable them to continue to build upon their interests and abilities. Again, children should be assessed as signs of their special skills, aptitudes and interests emerge.
MMSD can provide baseline and advanced learning assessments to young children, but should also partner with other agencies, community programs and higher education in Dane County, and outside of our state (for example, the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University) to ensure advanced leaders, learners and doers are effectively served by our community, families and public schools.
5. The current 2019-20 proposed budget includes Strategic Equity Projects. One proposal addresses a recommendation made by the Advanced Learning Advisory Committee through the Office of Civil Rights resolution process to address racial disparities in access to and preparation for advanced coursework. This recommendation includes increasing the Advanced Learning staff to 1.0 FTE (from current 0.5 FTE levels) for every K-8 school in order to provide a talent development program for underrepresented students and a systematic structure for advanced learning in every school. If elected, will you support funding this recommendation?
Yes, however, I do not believe the recommendation goes far enough. I am leery of your point that we need a “program” specifically for underrepresented students. I think I understand it, but it raises some concerns and questions for me. For example, why do we need a segregated program for this?
What I understand would be best is having appropriate staffing (which the 1.0 FTE does) to coordinate a strong set of programs, curriculum enhancements and academic acceleration for high ability students within and outside classrooms, while also providing appropriate training to classroom teachers, school counselors, paraprofessionals and parents on how to identify and support high ability students within their schools, classrooms, at home and in the community.
In the late 1990s, I created the Children of Promise Program for the Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth (WCATY). You can learn more about it by clicking the following links:
- Goal: To Help Bright Minority Kids Sparkle (Wisconsin State Journal, Sept 5, 1999)
- WCATY Offers Opportunity for Excellence (The Madison Times, Oct 1 -7, 1999)
Dr. Ellie Schatz hired me to create this program because our community knew as far back as 1987 when the Urban League of Greater Madison commissioned its review of student’s course-taking patterns, that Black students who should have been enrolled in advanced learning courses and programs were going unidentified or were being excluded. By the mid 1990s, nothing had been done of substance to address this issue. We also learned that many Latino, Asian American, Native American and under-served, low-income white children, and those who might have been identified as having a special educational need, were not being adequately served through advanced learning courses and programs as well.
Through the Children of Promise Program, which was a partnership with the University of Wisconsin System, we worked with the Madison, Beloit and Milwaukee school districts to implement talent development and testing programs in local communities to both cultivate the talents of all children residing in a particular area of these cities, while establishing testing centers and partnerships to identify underserved children for additional services and academic challenge through WCATY and their schools. The program continued until funding ran out and the leadership at WCATY and the UW System changed.
Programs like this can be effective but they are most effective if they are embedded within schools, are aligned with a child’s regular education program, and focus on a child’s specific areas of academic, intellectual, physical, leadership or artistic strengths. It also helps to have strong partnerships with community-based organizations, businesses, and industry that can provide extended learning, leadership and employment opportunities to children that meet their educational and professional needs, passion and interests.
So Yes, I would support the recommendation the Advanced Learning Advisory Committee made as a first step. However, if we are really going to provide the type of educational opportunities that our children need and deserve, we must find and create ways to push the envelope further. Your current recommendation doesn’t go far enough for our kids. I hope MMSD and the Board of Education understands this.
6. How can MMSD increase genuine engagement by stakeholders (i.e. students, families, staff and community members) in processes both at the district and school levels?
We should have talented citizens on school district committees, or at the very least, serving in a formal advisory capacity to our committees. We also need committees and/or time-limited and project-specific work teams that actually focus on getting work done and solving major challenges the school district faces.
Beyond that, we should hold policy, program and budget meetings around the city on a regular basis, and partner with our Superintendent and her leadership team to meet with school personnel, students and families together, at schools throughout the school year.
Our schools also need parent and family liaisons whose sole focus is on helping our school teams and school district build strong partnerships with families, and to collaborate with community partners to support and engage our families in reasonable and meaningful ways.