Washington, DC has selected a non-profit organization to administer the first federally funded school voucher program in the nation, according to Justin Blum:

“The group selected, the Washington Scholarship Fund, will be administering the first federally funded voucher program in the country. The program received final approval from Congress in January after contentious debate.
The voucher program will allow at least 1,700 District children to attend private and religious schools this fall with grants of up to $7,500 per student.
At a news conference this morning, officials released new details of how the program will operate. Families first will apply to private schools and go through the schools’ normal admissions procedures. Parents meeting the program’s income guidelines then will apply for voucher funds, indicating their order of preference among the schools where their children have been accepted.”

Meanwhile, the local morning paper suggested that Governor Doyle sign Senate Bill 253, which would let Wisconsin public universities run specialized schools for younger students. The article also references a recent statement by UW Chancellor John Wiley:

The measure could help address specific shortcomings in public schooling as well. For example, UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley this week cited “phenomenal shortages” in the country’s supply of scientists and engineers. Charter schooling would let the UW System address the problem by getting in on the ground floor of public schooling, where educators could run a school geared to students with interest and aptitude in these areas. The students then get the preparation they need to pursue science and engineering degrees and careers.

Wiley’s comments follow a report from the American Electronics Association critical of American schools efforts teaching students science and math.

Michelle Delio writes that a new American Electronics Association report on outsourcing charges that the American school system fails to provide a strong science and math education to students.

“Despite our best efforts, our kids really have a hard time understanding why they might need advanced math or science in their adult lives”, said New York middle-school teacher Keri Carnen.
Noting that roughly 50 percent of all engineering, math and science degrees awarded by U.S. universities now go to foreign nationals, AeA researchers also called on the federal government to give green cards to all foreign nationals upon their graduation with master’s and Ph.D. degrees, in an effort to keep these people — and their skills — in the United States.

Lee Sensenbrenner writes that Madison School Board President Bill Keys stated during a telephone interview Tuesday that golf and strings should be on the chopping block as the Board considers $9m reductions in the $310+ budget:

“Funding for the fourth-grade stringed music classes and varsity golf teams is being questioned by Madison School Board President Bill Keys as the school district struggles to find $10 million worth of cuts.
The district administration made its recommendations earlier this month for next year’s budget, and the board is in the process of its own review.
Although administrators did not propose cutting the popular strings class, Keys said in a telephone interview Tuesday it’s an option he’d like to consider.
“The strings class has always been brought up as a possibility, so I said let’s bring it up again,” Keys said.”

Interestingly, Barb Schrank sent a one page Madison Schools Budget update where she writes:

“To date, the School Board has not received the budget for next year. How can the School Board make cut decisions without a reference budget?”

[95K PDF] Great question…..

The Madison school district has, for a number of years, supported a Microsoft based monoculture of computing tools. This ill advised policy has placed far too much emphasis on one computing model (by the time today’s elementary & middle school students enter the work force, the technology at hand will be quite different).
Today, Microsoft, a convicted monopolist was fined over $600m by the European Union. A number of other legal cases are underway, including this one in Minnesota.

Among the documents introduced in court this week was a letter from June 1990 in which Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, told Andrew S. Grove, the chief executive of Intel at the time, that any support given to the Go Corporation, a Silicon Valley software company, would be considered an aggressive move against Microsoft.
Other evidence presented by the plaintiffs’ lawyers at trial yesterday gave an account of how Microsoft violated a signed secrecy agreement with Go and showed that Microsoft possessed technical documents from Go that it should not have had access to.

Madison’s financial support of this monoculture is absurd. We should take the cash we’re sending to Microsoft and fund our PE program instead…. (Note that the argument that business uses Microsoft therefore we should feed our children the same dog food does not hold water. Increasingly, business is using open source tools such as linux, apache, php, mysql and other products)

Samantha Ganey writes about child rearing strategies:

You’d better be a good parent. Because if you’re not, your kids will resent you, get tattoos, pierce their upper lip frenulums, drop out of school and maybe even join the circus. And believe me, you’ll be sorry, Mister.
So how’s that feel?