Kettle Moraine Kids, Compared to the World

You could expect students in the Kettle Moraine school district to do well. The communities served by the district in western Waukesha County are generally doing well economically, parents are involved and expect good results, and the school leaders and staff are talented professionals.

But what does “do well” mean? Compared to whom? Neighboring districts? Wisconsin? The nation?

How about the world?

Kettle Moraine has been an eager participant in a small, but growing movement that involves samples of 15-year-olds taking a test called the OECD Test for Schools. It yields comparisons of individual schools to students in nations around the world. The test also includes a set of questions that yield potentially insightful information for school leaders on the perspectives of students about the learning environment they find, both at school and elsewhere.

I was asked by editors of Education Next, a widely-followed national magazine and Web site, to write about Kettle Moraine’s involvement with the OECD Test.

The story can be found by clicking here and will be in  the issue of Education Next to be published in coming weeks.

And the answer  to the question of how Kettle Moraine kids are doing? The answer, in short, is quite well, but there’s room for improvement.

 

 

 

 

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Rodriguez v. United States: Supreme Court Says No to Prolonged Traffic Stops

Last week, the Supreme Court decided City of Los Angeles v. Patel, the fourth and final of its search-and-seizure cases this term. In Patel, the Court overturned a city ordinance requiring hotel operators to share information about their guests with the police.

Patel confirmed this as a good term for Fourth Amendment rights, joining Grady v. North Carolina (GPS tracking of sex offender counted as search for Fourth-Amendment purposes) and Rodriguez v. United States (police improperly extended traffic stop to conduct dog sniff of car). Less favorable, though, was Heien v. North Carolina (no suppression of evidence obtained after traffic stop that was based on officer’s reasonable mistake of law).

The remainder of this post will focus on Rodriguez, which strikes me as the most interesting of the Fourth-Amendment series. Broadly speaking, at issue was the extent to which the police can go on a fishing expedition when they pull over a driver for a traffic violation.  

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Ohio v. Clark: The Supreme Court’s Latest Pronouncement on the Confrontation Clause

By guaranteeing criminal defendants the right to confront their accusers, the Sixth Amendment limits the ability of the government to use hearsay evidence against defendants at trial. Importantly, though, the Confrontation Clause only limits the use of statements that are “testimonial” in nature. A pair of Supreme Court cases from 2006 clarified what makes a statement testimonial, but left an important question unanswered. Last week, the Court finally provided an answer (sort of) in Ohio v. Clark.

Clark featured an unusually unsympathetic defendant who was convicted of physically abusing his girlfriend’s two very young children.  

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