Madison School Board Election Update

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School Board Candidates & Groups (PAC’s) filed their latest campaign finance disclosures this past week. I’ve added receipts, expenditure and PAC receipt data here. Highlights include:

Raised most $’s: Alix Olson $11,203.21

(Olson’s opponent, incumbent Ruth Robarts has raised $5,839.44 and has accepted no PAC money)
Received most Pac $’s: Alix Olson $2,185.00
Raised least amount: Sam Johnson $1,656.30

(Johnson’s opponent, incumbent Shwaw Vang has
raised $5,153,98 and has accepted $2,135 in PAC money)
Raised least PAC $’s: Ruth Robarts $0.00
PAC with most cash: MTI Voters
(Madison Teachers, Inc. PAC)		 $47,391.55
PAC with least cash: Get Real $289.81
     
Fund raising
Summary
Seat 3 Sam Johnson $1,656.30 Shwaw Vang $5,153.98
PAC Receipts $306.30 $2,135.00
Seat 4 Melania Alvarez $2,111.27 Johnny Winston, Jr.$9,683.93
PAC Receipts $266.27 $600 other + $1560MTI*
Seat 5 Alix Olson $11,203.21 Ruth Robarts $5,839.44
PAC Receipts $2,185.00 $0.00
     
   Learn
more here… and vote April 6, 2004

* MTI Voters Campaign Finance Disclosure shows a $1,560 contribution to Johnny Winston, Jr’s campaign on March 17, 2004, but Winston’s March 29, 2004 disclosure does not show the receipt of this contribution.

Connected Math Controversy: “It’s not a bad thing to learn language, but there’s a language arts class”

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– UW-Madison Math & Computer Science Professor Jin-Yi Cai in Lee Sensenbrenner’s article on the Madison School District’s Connected Math controversy.

Board of Education candidate Melania Alvarez has made curriculum (esp math) a centerpiece of her campaign. Melania’s interview transcript has quite a few useful links on this subject.
Connected Math Links: Teoma | Alltheweb | Yahoo | Google

Google’s Hypocrisy?

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Google, which makes a very nice living scraping internet sites (copying & storing images, text & data from sites around the world) and presenting that data to search users has issued a issued a cease-and-desist order against British programmer Julian Bond with a warning that the creation of a news feed from the results of Google News was against its terms of reference. From Jeff Jarvis.
Search engine alternatives: Teoma | Alltheweb | Yahoo Search

School Board Election Updates

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Two interesting items related to the April 6, 2004 Madison School Board Election:

  • Doug Erickson writes that Madison Teachers, Inc. filed a request with the UW Madison for all records pertaining to Ruth Robarts salary & compensation. (Robarts is an assistant law school dean)
  • This Week’s Isthmus has a fascinating set of letters regarding their recent article on the School District’s math curriculum. Unfortunately, not online.

Politically Incorrect Paper of the Month

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Alex Tabarrok writes:

African-Americans make up a larger proportion of students than teachers. Many educators say that as a result African-Americans students suffer because they lack role models and white students suffer because they lack diversity. In a newly published paper (working paper version), Thomas Dee (Swarthmore College) supports some but not all of this story. Using data from Tennessee’s Project Star, a very important experiment in which K-3 students were randomly assigned to small and regular sized classes, Dee finds that black students improve when they have black teachers. So far so good. Dee also finds, however, that white students improve when they have white teachers. Uh, oh. There goes the diversity is good for everyone story.
Dee is quick to point out that we don’t understand why students perform better with a teacher of their own race. If it is a role-model effect then why would white students perform poorly with black teachers – surely there are enough white role models to choose from that one more or less isn’t going to have an effect on the self-esteem of white students. Another theory, with some support from other studies, is that teachers spend more time helping students of their own race. Note that if it is the latter then better teacher training, to overcome natural biases, could improve the effectiveness of both white and black teachers.
The cite for the paper is Dee, Thomas S. 2004. Teachers, Race, and Student Achievement in a Randomized Experiment. The Review of Economics and Statistics 86(1): 195-210.

Vote! April 6, 2004 Election

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One week from today, Madison holds its spring election (school board, judges & county board). However and unfortunately, this race falls during spring break. If you are planning to be out of town, please obtain an absentee ballot from the City Clerk’s office.
Some have asked why I spent the time (and money) to put together this web page, dedicated to the Madison School Board Race. I’ve summarized a few reasons here:

  • These type of races generally don’t attract all that much attention.
  • There’s an intersting group of candidates this year.
  • Encourage Madison citizens to vote (turnout is never all that great)
  • Provide deep, convenient information on each candidate – as much as possible (four of the six agreed to sit for a video interview, as did Superintendent Art Rainwater – to his credit. I requested interviews from Mayor Dave & John Matthews, Executive Director of Madison Teachers, Inc., but never heard back from them.).
  • General disappointment with the lack of depth in local news coverage from traditional tv & print sources
    • My favorite scene: the local nbc affiliate was the only station covering a candidate forum at Cherokee Middle School – it’s great they were there for a few minutes, however the end result was a 10 second video clip on the 10 o’clock news that night.
    • The local newspapers, have two education reporters, Doug Erickson & Lee Sensenbrenner. Lee’s paper, the afternoon Capital Times, has posted most of his articles online (including one with a description of this site, but not a link on the web version), while Doug’s paper, the morning Wisconsin State Journal has posted very few (Doug’s candidate interviews have NOT been online, which is just amazing – correction, they are available on this page).
  • Support these candidates. Running and serving on the school board is a thankless job. I wanted to give them an opportunity to express their views without a filter.
  • Contribute: I contributed to four of the six (those who took the time to sit for an interview – you should, too. I’ve posted links to all 6 candidate web sites here.)

How did it work out? My election page has received quite a bit of activity. It’s also received some interesting comments. I hope other Madison residents start their own blogs…. Email me if you have questions (zellmer AT mac.com) Vote!