To help parents get a sense of the changes at West High School and the implementation of Small Learning Communities (SLC's), we have provided an overview of the issue as well as specific information relevant to the English, math, and science curriculum.

Overview

• The entire grant that the District submitted to fund the restructuring of West High School.
  • Entire grant this is a large .pdf file (114 pages)
    • Abstract
    • Narrative
    • Budget
    • Appendicies

 

• The PowerPoint presentation on SLC's that was given to West High parents in the spring of 2004.

• A brief report from the March 2004 PTSO meeting on SLC's

• West High Principal, Loren Rathert, responds to concerns we have raised.

• Ability Grouping - what does the research say about this issue? (a work in progress)

• The research and philosophy behind this new movement in American high schools.

• Questions that we wished had been answered at the March 22 meeting
  
• A summary of the 3/22/04 meeting

• 1 February 2005 - Although West will not be implementing the core curriculum model for 10th graders during the 2005/2006 school year, they do expect to have all 10th graders taking their core courses within their SLC's beginning in the 2006/2007 school year.

• 9 January 2006 - Presentation to West High PTSO summarizing the progress of the SLC grant available in both .pdf and .ppt format

• March 2007 - Final report on West's SLC grant by evaluator M. Bruce King, readers will note the absence of inferential statistics in this report.

• A history of changes at West High School that was posted on schoolinfosystem.org

• A review of accelerated and AP course offerings highlights the tremendous differences amongst the four schools. This comparison chart is also available as a .pdf document.

English

• On December 23, West posted the final draft of the changes to the English 10 curriculum.

• The proposed changes to 10th grade English - November 2005

• A summary of the November 8, 2005 presentation to parents on the changes in store for 10th grade English.

• An evaluation of Evaluation of the SLC Project at West High School - The 10th Grade English Course by Bruce King, Project Evaluator. 

• A West High student shares their thoughts on the proposed 10th grade English core

• West High English teachers received a copy of Alfie Kohn's article, Only for my kid. How privileged parents undermine school reform after we invited them to attend our October meeting.
  • Phi Delta Kappan published two rebuttals to Kohn's article. One by J. Martin Rochester and the other by Robert Rose. Professor Rochester turned his piece into a book: Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids and the Attack on Excellence

Math

• A letter to the editor of Isthmus from West High math teachers about changes being implemented in West's math programming - April 2004

• Math in the Madison schools

• More about math curricula

Science

• Parent letters regarding Accelerated Biology and the school's regular attempts to eliminate this course option - Spring 2004