May 17, 2010: "Our children need your immediate and strategic attention to this crisis."

Ten years and one day ago, I wrote the Board of Education of the Madison Metropolitan School District:

May 17, 2010

Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I am deeply concerned about how well our district is teaching our students to read. 

When the Board requested last December (in response to the district's progress report on Reading Recovery) that district administration report back on the district's reading programs, I expected that such a report would be turned around quickly (given the urgent need for such an evaluation, and given the budget cycle) and that it would comprise reports and analyses by the professionals that work with the district's reading programs and the students in them. I did not expect that a "study of how to study reading programs," outsourced to consultants based in Washington, D.C., would be presented five months later, at the 11th hour of budget deliberations, with a recommendation for further study, at a six-figure cost, with conclusions to be available at the second semester of next school year.  

As has been well-reported, the state of Wisconsin bears the unfortunate distinction of having the lowest achievement scores reported for black 4th graders on the 2009 NAEP reading test. Nationally, 52% of black 4th graders scored below "basic" in their NAEP reading level. In Wisconsin, 56% of black 4th graders scored below basic. In this context, the percentages of black 4th graders who scored below "proficient" on the November 2009 WKCE are particularly sobering: statewide, 41.4% of black 4th graders scored below "proficient"; for Milwaukee, the percentage was 45.2%. Madison's percentage is 46.1%. (Similar underperformance is reported for our district's economically disadvantaged 4th and 3rd graders, and black 3rd graders.) 

Many children in our community don't have educators at home to pre-teach or reteach their schoolwork, nor family resources to fund tutoring or supplemental educational enrichment. A quality public education is their only hope for improving their lives and their futures. Every day that goes by without confronting the educational crisis in our district does irremediable damage. If I called 911 because a house with children in it was on fire, I would not expect the fire department to send away for a pamphlet on how to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of firefighting techniques while the house burned. Our children need your immediate and strategic attention to this crisis.  

Thank you for your work.

Today, the third paragraph of that 2010 message could be updated as follows:

Nationally, 52% of black 4th graders scored below "basic" in 2019 NAEP reading . In Wisconsin, 69% of black 4th graders scored below basic. In this context, the percentages of black 4th graders who scored below "proficient" on the 2019 Wisconsin Forward Exam are particularly sobering: statewide, 84.4% of black 4th graders scored below "proficient" (55.8% below basic); for Milwaukee, the percentage was 88.2% (63.6% below basic). Madison's "below proficient" percentage is 82.0% (not including 4.2% non-testers). (Similar underperformance is reported for our district's economically disadvantaged 4th and 3rd graders, and black 3rd graders.) 

More than ten years on, our children still need immediate and strategic attention to this crisis.