This report comes out of a recent hearing that took place at the Capitol by the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute (TCCRI) that involves the state's most conservative elected leaders. Among other things, they call for the state to end bilingual education instruction and for not allowing the children of undocumented immigrants (referred to as "anchor babies") to obtain citizenship. To accomplish this, Texas Congressman Ron Paul proposed an amendment to the Constitution restricting "birthright citizenship." This amounts to a loss of benefits available to citizens to U.S.-born children. Read on to see what some of our state leaders are proposing. -Angela

Vol.10 No.415
Friday, October 27, 2006

Immigration Reforms: Conservative proposals
by Christine DeLoma and William Lutz/LSR

Let 'em all in; keep 'em all out – the anguished debate over illegal immigration hasn't been rich in proposals that address the matter of incentives and disincentives to come and stay.

This week, the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute (TCCRI) – a bipartisan organization run by the state's most conservative elected leaders – took its own crack at
the challenge.

A special task force of the institute, headed by Rep. Linda Harper-Brown (R-Irving) released Oct. 18 a set of proposals that tilt toward control of the circumstances that seem to invite illegal residence in Texas.The task force singles out, among other factors, "lax enforcement of the citizenship requirements to enroll in public benefit programs, abundant employment opportunities for illegal immigrants, a public school system that will teach students entirely in Spanish, and the presence of active political movements that advocate for and on behalf of illegal immigrants." It calls these factors "the basis upon which effective immigration reform should be based."

TCCRI's recommendations include:

Voter identification reforms

The task force recommends voters be required to submit at the polls a driver’s license or Texas ID card, along with a voter registration card. Rep. Mary Denny (R-Aubrey) unsuccessfully tried to pass similar legislation in 2005 that would have required voters to show their driver’s licenses. The main difference is that Denny’s proposal would also have allowed a voter without a photo ID to use two forms of non-photo ID, such as a copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, or an official government document showing the voter’s name and address.

Some Democrats called Denny’s measure a sort of "poll tax" that would intimidate voters. Her proposal would have allowed individuals without driver’s licenses to obtain a state photo identification card free of charge.

TCCRI recommends marking the citizenship status on Texas driver's licenses or Texas Identification Cards. The federal government passed the REAL ID Act of 2005 requiring the state Department of Public Safety, beginning in 2008, to verify citizenship status of people who apply for either a driver’s license of Texas ID card. Nonetheless, the federal law does not require states to list citizenship status on the new cards. TCCRI believes listing status would help prevent illegal immigrants from voting.

Other proposals include requiring voters to submit a home telephone number and driver’s license or ID number on an early voting ballot application; and prohibiting state agencies from accepting Matricula Consular cards as evidence of immigration status or identity.

Much of the discussion at an Oct. 18 TCCRI Conference on Immigration centered on ways to prevent voter fraud. The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, author of Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy, discussed the importance to democracy of fighting voter fraud.
He noted that one of the challenges to stopping fraud is getting local prosecutors to
prosecute it.

After Fund's speech, the TCCRI conference featured a panel discussion with Luis Figueroa of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and Paul Bettencourt, Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector.

Figueroa said he keeps asking, but in vain, for a proven case of an immigrant wrongfully voting. "In fact," he said, "what we find, if there [are] any cases of voter fraud, it happens with mail-in ballots, which [don’t] require identification… To the extent there is a problem, voter ID wouldn’t solve it." He also said voter ID and proof of citizenship to register laws create a substantial burden on county
election officials.

Bettencourt talked about ways the Harris County Tax Office used technology to clean up voter rolls.

He argued that technology is the key and said he supports a voter database that could be cross-checked against Department of Public Safety and Social Security databases. When the office first audited the voter roll, it found several dead people and incarcerated felons.

One member suggested adopting an idea from Mexico, where voter registration certificates have pictures on it, and clerks at the polling location have access to the pictures.

Limiting access to public programs

One of the most controversial of the proposals to limit immigrant use of public welfare programs would require changing the U.S. Constitution. TCCRI recommends prohibiting children born to non-citizens - called "anchor babies" - in the United States from becoming U.S. citizens.

Texas Congressman Ron Paul (R-Lake Jackson) proposed an amendment to the Constitution, HJR 46 that would restrict birthright citizenship. This change would exclude anchor babies from receiving many welfare benefits that require U.S. citizenship.

Currently, Texas hospitals are required to medically treat all individuals who visit the emergency room without regard to ability to pay or residency status.

This provision, the task force argues, "paves the way for illegal immigrants to receive free health care in American hospitals."

The reports states that 80 percent of all births in two Houston hospitals last year were to illegal immigrant parents. TCCRI supports changing the definition of “emergency medical care” to exclude childbirth that does not threaten the life of the mother.

To determine the cost of educating illegal immigrants, TCCRI recommends requiring students to disclose their residency status to public school districts at the time of enrollment.

The task force did not recommend prohibiting illegal immigrant children from receiving a public education because a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Plyler v. Doe, mandates state provide free education to all children – regardless of citizenship status.

Yet school districts do not even collect data on how many illegal immigrants receive public education.

Other recommendations include denying illegal immigrants access to punitive damages in civil lawsuits; and imposing fees on remittances sent to Mexico or Latin American countries.

Imposing fees on money transfers was a key item in Dan Patrick’s successful campaign for the GOP nomination in the open West Houston Senate seat.

It was a bill filed by two Democrats in 2005. There is, however, some question about whether the state can constitutionally tax money transfers to foreign countries, and opposition has developed in the banking sector. Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas) requested an Attorney General’s opinion Oct. 3 on the legality of the idea.

Other measures

* Employer sanctions. The task force supports imposing a monetary penalty on businesses that employ illegal immigrants equal to the amount of the salary paid to the worker.

Other proposed sanctions include: ending property tax exemptions for businesses found guilty of employing illegal immigrants; prohibiting companies repeatedly found guilty of using illegal workers from operating in the state for at least six months; and imposing a 10 percent penalty on a business’ tax liability.

* Removing bilingual education programs in public schools. Currently school districts are required to offer bilingual education to students of limited English proficiency.

TCCRI believes that the state should end the instruction of bilingual education, which costs the Texas Education Agency approximately $1 billion a year.

* Increase public safety. The report calls for increased funding for Border security, enabling local law enforcement to detain illegal immigrants.

* Banning sanctuary cities The TCCRI recommends prohibiting Texas cities from refusing to enforce immigration laws. Some cities have policies that restrict when police officers can ask about a person's immigration status when writing a ticket or making
an arrest.

When pre-filing begins (after election day), expect several conservative legislators to file bills to address the immigration issue.

Rep. Dianne White Delisi (R-Temple) sent out a news release Oct. 17 detailing bills she intends to file.

Delisi plans to file bills b

http://www.easttexasreview.com/story.htm?StoryID=3977&now=62919

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 5:41 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Good stuff from Harvard professor Ron Ferguson. -Angela

November/December 2006

Recent Research on the Achievement Gap

How lifestyle factors and classroom culture affect black-white differences

An Interview with Ronald Ferguson

For more than a decade, economist Ronald Ferguson has studied achievement gaps. In 2002, he created the Tripod Project for School Improvement, a professional development initiative that uses student and teacher surveys to measure classroom conditions and student engagement by race and gender. The findings inform strategies to raise achievement and narrow achievement gaps. A senior research associate at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Ferguson is director and faculty cochair of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University. He spoke with the Harvard Education Letter about the most recent findings from the Tripod Project surveys.

How do you define “achievement gap”?

There are a lot of different achievement gaps. The achievement gap that I focus the most on is the gap between students of different racial groups whose parents have roughly the same amount of education. It concerns me that black kids whose parents have college degrees on average have much lower test scores than white kids whose parents have college degrees, for example. You can take just about any level of parental education and we have these big gaps.

How much progress has been made in closing black-white achievement gaps?

Huge progress since 1970, not much progress since 1990. Sixty-two percent of the overall black-white reading-score gap for 17-year-olds disappeared between 1971 and 1988. About one-third of the math-score gap disappeared during the same period. Over the last several years the gap has narrowed significantly for both 9- and 13-year-olds, but there’s been a bit of backsliding for the older teens.

There’s been enough progress to establish firmly that these gaps are not written in stone. Even IQ gaps are narrowing. Measurements of the intelligence of kids less than one year old show virtually no racial or social-class differences, yet racial and social class achievement gaps are firmly established by the time students start kindergarten. Something happens before kindergarten that produces differences in proficiency.

Achievement gaps are not facts of nature. They are mostly because of differences in life experience. We’ve got to figure out how to get all kids the kinds of experiences that really maximize access to middle-class skills. That’s the challenge.

Some say that social inequities must be solved before we can close achievement gaps; others say it’s the schools’ responsibility to close them. Where do you stand?

First of all, it’s not an either/or question. If you are talking about having black achievement levels and white achievement levels that are completely the same, then yeah, you have to deal with quite a few challenges in the domain of wealth and social capital, but that’s in the long run. In the near term, I think we can make substantial progress by affecting home intellectual climate and lifestyle as they affect achievement. The big idea that frames my thinking these days is lifestyle. Even in school, the notion is to try to provoke lifestyle changes that cause people to be a bit more focused on cultivating a love of learning among kids.

Isn’t talking about lifestyle factors a way of blaming the victim?

Your motivation can be to explain why we have achievement gaps or it can be to seek levers to pull in order to reduce achievement gaps. I’m seeking levers to pull in order to reduce the gaps. I don’t care whose fault it is really. If it’s the case that reading scores could rise if parents pushed their kids to do more leisure reading at home or took the television out of the bedroom, why not do it? Or why not at least tell parents that that’s an option that they have? I think most parents would want to know.

Still, virtually every school can make progress even if the family achieves zero change. They’ll do better if parents do more, but no school, no institution, none of us is as good as we can be. Pretty much every school has a way to improve. I’ve been working in schools for almost a decade, paying a lot of attention to teacher-student relationships and some of the ways that teachers understand or misunderstand kids. There’s a spiral of mutual causation that can lead classrooms to be either terrible places or really nice places. A lot of it you can characterize as lifestyle.

How does your research help schools change their lifestyles to support achievement?

The project that I run is called the Tripod Project because we address three pieces: content, pedagogy, and relationships. And what vexes me most in the schools that I work with is that it’s so hard to get people to spend time studying the work of the students who don’t do very well. Because if our main concern is material on which students don’t do well, then why don’t we look at where the breakdown is and work on that? Just take the assignments of the students who have done poorly, sit down together, and figure out what it is that they didn’t know; why we think they didn’t know it, and talk about how to alter instructional approaches to help them.

We use a protocol called Teaching the Hard Stuff to talk about whether success was feasible for the student, whether the kids were focused or not, and why they may not have been focused. People like the protocol, they enjoy using it and they almost always get up from the table with new insights, but they don’t set aside more time to do it more frequently.

What does Teaching the Hard Stuff involve and what do teachers learn?

It’s an hour-long protocol for looking at student work. Teachers discover all kinds of things. At least half the time the problem is with the way the assignment was written: The assignment wasn’t really testing what the teacher was trying to test; or there was a vocabulary word that had two meanings; or the context for the problem was a context the students weren’t familiar with and so the student couldn’t solve the problem. If the achievement gap is based on the nature of the experiences that students have, and if schools don’t scaffold appropriately on the understandings that kids bring from their different experiences, then kids can’t construct the new understandings.

One of my favorite examples is a Pythagorean theorem problem: How far does a catcher need to throw the ball in order to throw out a runner who is trying to steal second base if the bases are 90 feet apart? If kids don’t know there’s a right angle at first base, they can’t solve that question.

Where schools may contribute to the achievement gap is by not scaffolding appropriately for different kids, not differentiating instruction in ways that are grounded in what kids actually bring to the classroom. Teachers try to make work interesting and relevant by using real-world examples. But which real-world example will your kids understand? And if they don’t understand it, will they admit it? In our surveys we find that black kids in particular are concerned all the way through school with whether people think they are smart or not. If you are concerned with whether you think people think you’re smart, you are not going to speak up and show your ignorance as often. So if what the teacher just said doesn’t make sense to you—particularly if you are in a racially integrated classroom and you think the other kids are ahead of you—you are more likely to misbehave and pretend like you weren’t trying anyway, because it’s better to look lazy than stupid.

What other misperceptions does your research point to?

There are sometimes misperceptions about how much parents care. In our surveys, the higher the percentage of black kids in the classroom, the lower the teacher’s estimate of how many kids will say that their parents asked them what they learned in school that day. When we ask kids the same question, we don’t pick up racial differences.
Now you do pick up racial differences when you get at parenting practices more directly: TVs in the bedroom, which our studies show are associated with sleepiness in class; whether kids say they watch TV at home more than anything else; how much leisure reading they do; how many books are provided in the house. Eighty percent of black kids in our surveys at the elementary level have TVs in their bedroom. Much smaller percentages of white kids do.

Another misperception that folks often have is that kids who misbehave don’t want to learn. Teachers see that black kids misbehave on average more than white kids do. There’s not much dispute about that—the kids self-report worse behavior. Also, black kids have lower homework completion rates than white kids do, which they also self-report. So what do you infer? You say, well, they don’t care as much and they aren’t trying too hard.

In my surveys, I find that even though black students self-report more misbehavior and less homework completion, they also self-report spending almost exactly the same amount of time on homework as their white classmates. They also self-report equal or higher endorsement of the statement “My friends think it’s important to work hard to get high grades in school.” They are motivated, but there’s some subtlety to it, because they have conflicting motivations, conflicting pressures. Sometimes they’re just trying to fit in with friends, to be liked inside a culture of behavior that no one student created and no one student can single-handedly reform. They are part of a peer culture where certain patterns of behavior do have oppositional elements, but they are not opposition to high achievement. Paradoxically, their assertiveness is a quest for respect: It shows opposition to the kinds of subordination and toleration of disrespect that blacks have had to put up with over centuries. Kids are saying, “We’re not taking that.… You can’t face me down in front of one of my friends and yell at me or fuss at me and have me not say something back to you.”

This seems to challenge the “acting white” hypothesis —that black kids are afraid to achieve because high achievement is seen as acting white.

Based on the survey results that I get back from students, I believe it’s a misperception that kids think getting high grades is acting white. It’s really a matter of personal style. Students who get high grades will often have personal styles that seem to violate the endorsed expressions of racial authenticity: they may speak proper English too much in informal settings; they may listen to rock music instead of rap; they may be a little too happy-go-lucky in their attitudes. In order to fit in with your friends, you don’t have to be a low achiever or resist high grades, but you do need to be able to speak in informal settings the way kids speak in informal settings, you do have to be the kind of kid who doesn’t tolerate disrespect without a response even if it comes from an adult in an authority position. Among black kids, self-esteem rises as grades rise all the way through an A, except if it’s the kid who doesn’t fit in socially, in which case—if it’s a male—self-esteem drops as they move from a B to an A average. This is not true for white kids.

How do these findings relate to your research on teasing?

Some of the peer dynamics around achievement, such as teasing each other for making mistakes, may not be visible to teachers, but they are problems as early as first grade. In first grade classes where fewer than 25 percent of the students are white or Asian, I find that more than half agree that classmates tease other kids for making mistakes. Teasing for making mistakes in majority white and Asian classes is about 20 percentage points lower. Kids who worry that other classmates tease kids for making mistakes report that they worry more that they may not measure up to their classmates. Worry is anxiety, and anxiety interferes with concentration.

What can teachers do to foster student engagement and create a positive peer culture?

I have data at the elementary level that show that if kids don’t think the teacher both loves to help them and holds them to a high standard—what I call a “high help/high perfectionism” classroom—their behavior can deteriorate and their engagement can deteriorate, and the teachers are more likely to think that the kids just don’t want to learn. If the class is less than 25 percent white or Asian and the students rate the teacher as offering both low help and low perfectionism, kids can treat each other pretty poorly. All you need is about a quarter of the kids in the class who don’t think their questions are welcome to get a pretty uncollegial classroom environment. The challenge to the teacher is being able to signal, “I love to help you” and “We’re never fully satisfied until we can do it correctly.” When working with kids who come from difficult backgrounds, and who don’t bring a whole lot for you to scaffold on some of the time, you’ve really got to understand these kids. You’ve got to understand what they don’t understand and what their misunderstandings are, and you’ve got to have the confidence to say, “If these children tell me what they are thinking, I can clear up any confusions that they have, and at the end of the day they’re going to understand what I am trying to teach them.”

Over 80 percent of kids in any classroom say they plan to do their best all year long, if you ask them in the fall. The only ones that are still near that level in the spring—if the vast majority are nonwhite and non-Asian—are kids in high help/high perfectionism classrooms. We need to give teachers the learning experiences that help them reach and teach some of the kids who they are struggling to understand if we want kids to persist and do their best work all year.

For Further Information

J.B. Diamond. “Are We Barking Up the Wrong Tree? Rethinking Oppositional Culture Explanations for the Black/White Achievement Gap.” Available online at http://agi.harvard.edu/events/download.php?id=79

W.T. Dickens and J.R. Flynn. “Black Americans Reduce the Racial IQ Gap: Evidence from Standardization Samples.” Available online at http://agi.harvard.edu/events/download.php?id=66

R. Ferguson. What Doesn’t Meet the Eye: Understanding and Addressing Racial Disparities in High-Achieving Suburban Schools. Oakbrook, IL: North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 2002. Available online at http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/tripodproject/about.html#whatis

R.G. Fryer Jr. and S.D. Levitt. “Testing for Racial Differences in the Mental Ability of Young Children.” Available online at http://agi.harvard.edu/events/download.php?id=93

The Tripod Project. www.ksg.harvard.edu/tripodproject/

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 6:45 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Bush's family profits from 'No Child' act
By Walter F. Roche Jr.
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

October 22, 2006

A company headed by President Bush's brother and partly owned by his parents is benefiting from Republican connections and federal dollars targeted for economically disadvantaged students under the No Child Left Behind Act.

With investments from his parents, George H.W. and Barbara Bush, and other backers, Neil Bush's company, Ignite! Learning, has placed its products in 40 U.S. school districts and now plans to market internationally.

At least 13 U.S. school districts have used federal funds available through the president's signature education reform, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, to buy Ignite's portable learning centers at $3,800 apiece.

The law provides federal funds to help school districts better serve disadvantaged students and improve their performance, especially in reading and math.

But Ignite does not offer reading instruction, and its math program will not be available until next year.

The federal Department of Education does not monitor individual school district expenditures under the No Child program, but sets guidelines that the states are expected to enforce, spokesman Chad Colby said.

Ignite executive Tom Deliganis said that "some districts seem to feel OK" about using No Child money for the Ignite purchases, "and others do not."

Neil Bush said in an e-mail to The Times that Ignite's program had demonstrated success in improving the test scores of economically disadvantaged children. He also said political influence had not played a role in Ignite's rapid growth.

"As our business matures in the USA we have plans to expand overseas and to work with many distinguished individuals in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa," he wrote. "Not one of these associates by the way has ever asked for any access to either of my political brothers, not one White House tour, not one autographed photo, and not one Lincoln bedroom overnight stay."

Funding laws unclear

Interviews and a review of school district documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act found that educators and legal experts were sharply divided over whether Ignite's products were worth their cost or qualified under the No Child law.

The federal law requires schools to show they are meeting educational standards, or risk losing critical funding. If students fail to meet annual performance goals in reading and math tests, schools must supplement their educational offerings with tutoring and other special programs.

Leigh Manasevit, a Washington attorney who specializes in federal education funding, said that districts using the No Child funds to buy products like Ignite's would have to meet "very strict" student eligibility requirements and ensure that the Ignite services were supplemental to existing programs.

Known as COW, for Curriculum on Wheels (the portable learning centers resemble cows on wheels), Ignite's product line is geared toward middle school social studies, history and science. The company says it has developed a social studies program that meets curriculum requirements in seven states. Its science program meets requirements in six states.

Most of Ignite's business has been obtained through sole-source contracts without competitive bidding. Neil Bush has been directly involved in marketing the product.

In addition to federal or state funds, foundations and corporations have helped buy Ignite products. The Washington Times Foundation, backed by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, head of the South Korea-based Unification Church, has peppered classrooms throughout Virginia with Ignite's COWs under a $1-million grant.

Oil companies and Middle East interests with long political ties to the Bush family have made similar bequests. Aramco Services Co., an arm of the Saudi-owned oil company, has donated COWs to schools, as have Apache Corp., BP and Shell Oil Co.

Neil Bush said he is a businessman who does not attempt to exert political influence, and he called The Times' inquiries about his venture — made just before the election — "entirely political."

Big supporters

Bush's parents joined Neil as Ignite investors in 1999, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission documents. By 2003, the records show, Neil Bush had raised about $23 million from more than a dozen outside investors, including Mohammed Al Saddah, the head of a Kuwaiti company, and Winston Wong, the head of a Chinese computer firm.

Most recently he signed up Russian fugitive business tycoon Boris A. Berezovsky and Berezovsky's partner Badri Patarkatsishvili.

Barbara Bush has enthusiastically supported Ignite. In January 2004, she and Neil Bush were guests of honor at a $1,000-atable fundraiser in Oklahoma City organized by a foundation supporting the Western Heights School District. Proceeds were earmarked for the purchase of Ignite products.

Organizer Mary Blankenship Pointer said she planned the event because district students were "utilizing Ignite courseware and experiencing great results. Our students were thriving."

However, Western Heights school Supt. Joe Kitchens said the district eventually dropped its use of Ignite because it disagreed with changes Ignite had made in its products. "Our interest waned in it," he said.

The former first lady spurred controversy recently when she contributed to a Hurricane Katrina relief foundation for storm victims who had relocated to Texas. Her donation carried one stipulation: It had to be used by local schools for purchases of COWs.

Texas accounts for 75% of Ignite's business, which is expanding rapidly in other states, Deliganis said.

The company also has COWs deployed in North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada, California, the District of Columbia, Georgia and Florida, he said.

COWs recently showed up at Hill Classical Middle School in California's Long Beach Unified School District. A San Jose middle school also bought Ignite's products but has since closed.

Neil Bush said Ignite has more than 1,700 COWs in classrooms.

Shift in strategy

But Ignite's educational strategy has changed dramatically, and some are critical of its new approach. Shortly after Ignite was formed in Austin, Texas, in 1999, it bought the software developed by another small Austin firm, Adaptive Learning Technology.

Adaptive Learning founder Mary Schenck-Ross said the software's interactive lessons allowed teachers "to get away from the mass-treatment approach" to education. When a student typed in a response to a question, the software was designed to react and provide a customized learning path.

"The original concept was to avoid 'one size fits all.' That was the point," said Catherine Malloy, who worked on the software development.

Two years ago, however, Ignite dropped the individualized learning approach. Working with artists and illustrators, it created a large purple COW that could be wheeled from classroom to classroom and plugged in, offering lessons that could be played to a roomful of students.

The COWs enticed students with catchy jingles and videos featuring cartoon characters like Mr. Bighead and Norman Einstein. On Ignite's website, a collection of teachers endorsed the COW, saying that it eliminated the need for lesson planning. The COW does it for them.

The developers of Adaptive Learning's software complain that Ignite replaced individualized instruction with a gimmick.

"It breaks my heart what they have done. The concept was totally perverted," Schenck-Ross said.

Nevertheless, Ignite found many receptive school districts. In Texas, 30 districts use COWs.

In Houston, where Neil Bush and his parents live, the district has used various funding sources to acquire $400,000 in Ignite products. An additional $240,000 in purchases has been authorized in the last six months.

Correspondence obtained by The Times shows that Neil Bush met with top Houston officials, sent e-mails and left voice mail messages urging bigger and faster allocations. An e-mail from a school procurement official to colleagues said Bush had made it clear that he had a "good working relationship" with a school board member.

Another Ignite official asked a Texas state education official to endorse the company. In an e-mail, Neil Bush's partner Ken Leonard asked Michelle Ungurait, state director of social studies programs, to tell Houston officials her "positive impressions of our content, system and approach."

Ungurait, identified in another Leonard e-mail as "our good friend" at the state office, told her superiors in response to The Times' inquiry that she never acted on Leonard's request.

Leonard said he did not ask Ungurait to do anything that would be improper.

Houston school officials gave Ignite's products "high" ratings in eight categories and recommended approval.

Some in Houston's schools question the expenditures, however. Jon Dansby was teaching at Houston's Fleming Middle School when Ignite products arrived.

"You can't even get basics like paper and scissors, and we went out and bought them. I just see red," he said.

In Las Vegas, the schools have approved more than $300,000 in Ignite purchases. Records show the board recommended spending $150,000 in No Child funding on Ignite products.

Sources familiar with the Las Vegas purchases said pressure to buy Ignite products came from Sig Rogich, an influential local figure and prominent Republican whose fundraising of more than $200,000 for President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign qualified him as a "Bush Ranger."

Rogich, who chairs a foundation that supports local schools, said he applied no pressure but became interested in COWs after Neil Bush contacted him. Rogich donated $6,000 to purchase two COWs for a middle school named after him.

Christy Falba, the former Clark County school official who oversaw the contracts, said she and her husband attended a dinner with Neil Bush to discuss the products. She said Rogich encouraged the district "to look at the Ignite program" but applied no pressure.

Mixed reviews

Few independent studies have been done to assess the effectiveness of Ignite's teaching strategies. Neil Bush said the company had gotten "great feedback" from educators and planned to conduct a "major scientifically valid study" to assess the COW's impact. The results should be in by next summer, he said.

Though Ignite's products get generally rave reviews from Texas educators, the opinion is not universal.

The Tornillo, Texas, Independent School District no longer uses the Ignite programs it purchased several years ago for $43,000.

"I wouldn't advise anyone else to use it," said Supt. Paul Vranish. "Nobody wanted to use it, and the principal who bought it is no longer here."

Ignite's website features glowing videotaped testimonials from teachers, administrators, students and parents.

Many of the videos were shot at Del Valle Junior High School near Austin, where school district officials allowed Ignite to film facilities and students.

In the video, a student named India says: "I was feeling bad about my grades. I didn't know what my teacher was talking about." The COW changed everything, the girl's father says on the video.

Lori, a woman identified as India's teacher, says the child was not paying attention until the COW was brought in.

The woman, however, is not India's teacher, but Lori Anderson, a former teacher and now Ignite's marketing director. Ignite says Anderson was simply role-playing.

In return for use of its students and facilities, a district spokeswoman said Ignite donated a free COW. Five others were purchased with district funds.

District spokeswoman Celina Bley acknowledged that regulations bar school officials from endorsing products. But she said that restriction did not apply to the videos.

"It is illegal for individuals to make an endorsement, but this was a districtwide endorsement," Bley said in an e-mail.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:25 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Political Backlash Builds Over High-Stakes Testing
Public Support Wanes for Tests Seen as Punitive
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 23, 2006; A03

LAUDERHILL, Fla. -- School exams may be detested by students everywhere, but in this state at the forefront of the testing and accountability movement in the United States, the backlash against them has become far broader, and politically potent.

The role of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, has become central to the race to succeed Gov. Jeb Bush (R), with polls showing a growing discontent over the exams, which he has championed and which are used to determine many aspects of the school system, including teacher pay, budgets and who flunks third grade.

Republican Charlie Crist is offering to push forward with the testing regime, but Democrat Jim Davis has condemned what he calls its "punitive" nature, arguing that exam pressures have transformed schools into "dreary test-taking factories."

"Couple years ago one of my sons brought this quiz home, and the first question was 'What does the FCAT stand for?' " Davis told a meeting of clergy here Saturday. "I won't repeat to you what I said because I used words I'm teaching my boys not to use. . . . We're going to stop using the FCAT to punish children, teachers and schools."

This election season may be the first in which the growing use of high-stakes school testing, embodied in the No Child Left Behind legislation, has reached this level of political prominence.

A similar exam revolt has become a key issue in the race for governor in Texas, another state in the vanguard of the testing movement, and the issue has roiled the Ohio gubernatorial contest as well.

High-stakes testing -- using standardized test scores to impose consequences affecting teachers and students -- has been embraced widely in recent years as a way to hold educators and students accountable for their performance. Experts say the movement is one of the most significant shifts in U.S. education in decades.

Texas and Florida were among the states that adopted high-stakes testing early, and each has pushed its program beyond what is required in No Child Left Behind.

Advocates say that under the pressure of the exams, students in Florida, Texas and elsewhere have shown significant improvements. The testing systems include the public release of schools' results and test-based financial incentives for educators, and determine which third-graders can be promoted and which high school students can graduate.

But teachers unions and some parents groups have argued that an overemphasis on the tests has reduced education to rote drills and needlessly heightened stresses on elementary students, and that the reported test gains have been illusory, overstated or short-lived.

Many opponents say they do not object to the testing but to the high stakes attached to the results, which they say force schools to develop a myopic curriculum focused on the test.

In Florida, as many as 14 percent of 200,000 public school third-graders in some years have been held back, most for failing to make an adequate score on the reading test.

In Texas, an inspector general is investigating possible cheating and other testing irregularities at almost 700 schools.

While many past education debates have dissolved into intangible issues of school finance, the testing critics believe that the issue may sway larger numbers of voters because the tests are having such pronounced and immediate effects on children.

"We have third-grade children who have been retained so many times they are wearing brassieres in the third grade," said Florida state Sen. Frederica Wilson, one of the leaders of the anti-testing movement here.

"When parents are dealing with children vomiting on the morning of the tests and seeing other signs of test stress, they're going to be motivated at the voting booth," said Gloria Pipkin, the president of a testing watchdog group, the Florida Coalition for Assessment Reform. "Texas and Florida are the poster children for excessive testing, and we're seeing an enormous backlash."

Polls are also registering growing voter discontent over tests.

A Zogby International poll for the Miami Herald last month showed that 61 percent of voters disagreed with grading and funding schools based on their test scores, and almost half said schools were allocating too much time for test preparation. A poll by the Florida Times-Union and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel showed similar results.

In Texas, a survey drafted by two polling firms, one Democratic and one Republican, and paid for by the Texas State Teachers Association, indicated that 56 percent of voters thought there was too much emphasis on state testing in their schools.

A national poll by a pro-testing group, the Teaching Commission, showed that 52 percent of respondents thought that standardized tests do not accurately measure student achievement; 35 percent thought they do.

"Our kids should be leading the world, and they're not going to get there by filling in little ovals all day long," Chris Bell, the Democratic challenger for Texas governor, says in a television ad.

Gov. Rick Perry, however, is sticking to the program.

"I won't dismiss the idea that there are a lot of folks out there -- maybe a large number -- who don't like testing," said Robert Black, a spokesman for Perry. "But the governor has never been one to follow polls. If you want to hold schools accountable and make sure they are learning, you have to test."

Opposition to the tests has been building over several years.

At first, Wilson said, opposition was considered a "minority issue" because many of the students being held back in third grade or denied diplomas were African American or Hispanic. But with children in many schools taking on more homework and rote drills, she said, enough parents have complained that the candidates "could see that the FCAT was devastating Florida families."

Crist, who as Florida education commissioner supported the pro-testing agenda of the Bush administration, began the race offering to move ahead with the program. But more recently, noting that the test has become "a pejorative," he has indicated that his position on testing is more flexible.

The polls aside, Crist sees support for the FCAT.

"Residents across the state have said that the FCAT is making a difference," according to Erin Isaac, deputy press secretary for the Crist campaign, in response to e-mailed questions. "Charlie Crist believes that if we don't measure every student's progress every year, we don't care."

His opponent expressed a different view. "Parents in this state are outraged," Davis said Saturday. "They're seeing the rote drills and the pressure. But they're not seeing their children learn."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/22/AR2006102200998.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:23 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Oct. 19, 2006, 8:39PM

Educators pro and con have stake in charter experiment
New Orleans turns to alternative school programs in wake of Katrina

By BECKY BOHRER
Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS — If the world is a laboratory, New Orleans is a petri dish.

The city, notorious for having one of the worst public school systems in the country, has emerged from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as an experiment in education: Privately run charter schools, relatively limited before last year's storm, now outnumber government-run public schools.

And the numbers could rise as the demand for quality schools grows in this still-recovering city, state education officials predict.

"Suddenly, there's an opportunity to improve the community and education as a whole," said Robin Jarvis, who oversees the state-run school district that took over most of the city's public schools after Katrina. "I think largely, before, they'd given up."

Since Katrina, fewer than half the city's public schools have reopened. Of the 53 that have opened, 17 are run by the state, five by the cash-strapped local school board and 31 by charter groups. Total enrollment, now at about 25,000 students, also is less than half of what it was before Katrina, officials say.

People on both sides of the charter debate are watching what happens closely for evidence to bolster their theories that giving parents choices in public education pays off in student achievement — or that relying increasingly on independent, nonprofit groups to teach children is a dicey proposition.

A recent federal study — downplayed by a U.S. Education Department official as a snapshot in time — found that fourth graders in traditional schools did better in math and reading than students in charters.

Supporters promote charters as a step toward strengthening the city's educational system, while critics see them as eroding what's left of traditional public schools. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has called New Orleans the closest the country has come to an all-charter district.

"You had a natural disaster in New Orleans," said charter critic Nat LaCour, secretary-treasurer of American Federation of Teachers. "Now what's happened in New Orleans is a man-made disaster."

Charter schools receive public funding and generally accept a wide range of students. The schools have caught on in parts of the country where traditional public schools have faltered, such as Washington, D.C. Their charters can be pulled if progress isn't shown in test scores.

Parents like Debbie Williams say they're pleased so far.

"They're extremely organized," she said after dropping off her daughter, a first-grader, at Alice Harte Elementary recently. "It's early, but I have faith they're going to do well."

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4274492.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 3:31 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Interesting piece. I'm going over some of these things in class this semester so I'm encouraged to ponder a little.

Scholar John Ogbu captured well in some of his writings how the psychology of immigrants is different from that of the U.S.-born minorities whose families start out as immigrants like the picture painted here. According tof Ogbu (also see Suarez-Orozco, Gibson, and Stanton-Salazar), their dual frame of reference helps them to rationalize their experiences with discrimination precisely because they are immigrant.

Moreover, in their experience, being a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or other high status individual is not automatically correlated with Whiteness (though it is with middle classed-ness) as it is in this country for many U.S.-born minorities. Stated differently, U.S.-born minorities (2nd & 3rd generation - and sometimes 1st generation youth who have grown up in the U.S.) do not typically compare their present situation to people in Mexico or Latin America. Instead, Ogbu and others maintain, their reference group is Anglos in which case experiences with marginality, exclusion, and discrimination are more difficult to rationalize. After all, they’re American. So the psychology is different as it will be for the majority of these immigrants’ children. I, too, write about how Mexicanidad (Mexican-ness) in the U.S. moves away from a national identity (related to their country of origin) toward and ethnic minority identity with time in the U.S. Also, U.S. Schools reflect and encourage the formation of racialized identities (as opposed to class-based ones). Laurie Olson's book, MADE IN AMERICA illustrates this well.

I do agree with the thrust in this piece that the immigrant optimism that results from this dual frame is a resource and asset that should be utilized. When this optimism among immigrant children, however, confronts significant barriers like English-only, high-stakes, standardized testing at the high school level resulting in a bleak 20 percent high school completion rate for many of these children in many of our schools, the making of an ethnic minority ensues. Subjectively, they may have hope, but objectively, they’re in dire straits.

This is a central point that I make in Subtractive Schooling as well. What is interesting then, as Rodolfo de la Garza notes in one of his surveys in the Southwest, the second generation takes on the identity of being "charter members" of the Southwestern U.S. Why? Because though they are "immigrant minorities," their close connection to the history, low status, and marinalization of their U.S. counterparts renders them "involuntary minorities" in Ogbu's scheme.


-Angela

'Poverty is Relative'
Latinos Defy 'Downtrodden' Status, Sending Their Successes Home

By Marcela Sanchez
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, October 20, 2006; 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON -- The cat is out of the bag -- the majority of Latino immigrants in the United States are poor. By one calculation, up to three-fifths are "working poor" or "lower middle class," with annual incomes of less than $30,000.

The bad news seems worse when one considers that as Hispanics gain in the U.S. population, the share of Hispanics in poverty doubled from 12 percent in 1980 to 25 percent in 2004. Recent immigrants fared worse. In 2006, the U.S. government drew the poverty line at $20,000 annually for a family of four, or a little more than $1,600 a month. But for those newly arrived from Latin America, the average monthly salary was $900, according to a new report released this week by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

If immigrants, especially Hispanics, are card-carrying members of the U.S. underclass, society at large is having a hard time convincing them of it: Latino immigrants are too busy working, buying cars, purchasing homes, and even investing abroad.

Such a lifestyle is not exactly the picture of poverty. The poor are supposed to be the down and out -- the hungry and depressed standing in bread lines. Under this stereotype, they struggle for basic goods and services and are left outside the mainstream, unable to get ahead.

Yet observers of the Latino experience in the United States say that Hispanic immigrants generally don't fit this mold for two basic reasons: choices and attitude. Immigrants cut what corners they can to keep rent, health care, sundry expenses and taxes to a minimum. They also leave family behind, clearly the most painful among their money-saving strategies to reduce the number of dependents in the United States.

The income they pull together from their jobs is pumped into work-related expenses and living essentials, putting 90 percent of their earnings back into the U.S. economy, according to the IDB. Most of the rest of their incomes they invest in their homelands as remittances.

The IDB report found that immigrants will send home approximately $45 billion in remittances in 2006, creating "one of the broadest and most effective poverty alleviation programs in the world." It also found that the majority of migrants want to purchase a family home or open a small business in their home country. One-third said they had already made investments, mainly in real estate. These are not the actions of the economically deprived.

Hispanic immigrants don't necessarily feel excluded or underserved either. In an education survey, the Pew Hispanic Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation found two years ago that Hispanic immigrants were notably positive about the quality of public school education in their area. More pointedly, the survey concluded that Hispanics are not a "disgruntled population that views itself as greatly disadvantaged or victimized."

What Hispanics do with their money and how they live reflect not deprivation or exclusion but an attitude of abundance. Poverty is relative. Less than $20,000 a year may rank an immigrant statistically poor, but this income may be seen as a fortune to someone who was making less than a tenth of that back home.

So, at the end of the day what do we have? A growing number of immigrant poor? Well, yes. A growing number of depressed and downtrodden? Heck no. Hispanic immigrants, just as their immigrant predecessors, are optimists. The IDB found that despite the fact that 64 percent of remittance senders have an annual household income of less than $30,000, most believe their economic situation in the United States is good (58 percent) or excellent (10 percent), and that they are confident about the future.

Optimists, of course, make poor fodder for those who would cast immigrants as down and out. The poor that strive, spend and invest do not easily fit the argument so often used over the past months: that immigrants represent a drag to the U.S. economy.

Sure, due to immigration, the ranks of Hispanics among the poor in this country have grown. And while their incomes initially may be lower than those of native workers, economists such as Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute have found that they "improve more quickly" than those of natives.

Those who use poverty to disparage immigration will continue to argue that immigrants -- particularly those here illegally -- hurt the U.S. economy. The reality is that rather than increasing poverty rates in this country, Hispanic immigrants are helping decrease poverty rates south of the border -- and with that they are doing more than anyone else to stem the future flow of immigration.

Marcela Sanchez's e-mail address is desdewash@washpost.com.

© 2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/19/AR2006101901137.html?referrer=emailarticle

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 3:26 PM 1 comments Links to this post

On the subject of gender, this is an important, if poignant, read. -Angela

Coverage of "School Shootings" Avoids the Central
Issue: Gunning Down Women
By JACKSON KATZ

In the many hours devoted to analyzing the recent
school shootings, once again we see that as a society
we seem constitutionally unable, or unwilling, to
acknowledge a simple but disturbing fact: these
shootings are an extreme manifestation of one of
contemporary American society's biggest problems --
the ongoing crisis of men's violence against women.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, so let's
take a good hard look at these latest horrific cases
of violence on the domestic front. On September 27, a
heavily armed 53-year-old man walked into a Colorado
high school classroom, forced male students to leave,
and took a group of girls hostage. He then proceeded
to terrorize the girls for several hours, killing one
and allegedly sexually assaulting some or all of the
others before killing himself.

Less than a week later, a heavily armed 32-year-old
man walked into an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania
and ordered about 15 boys to leave the room, along
with a pregnant woman and three women with infants. He
forced the remaining girls, aged 6 to 13, to line up
against a blackboard, where he tied their feet
together.

He then methodically executed five of the girls with
shots to the head and critically wounded several
others before taking his own life.

Just after the Amish schoolhouse massacre,
Pennsylvania Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller
said in an emotional press conference, "It seems as
though (the perpetrator) wanted to attack young,
female victims." How did mainstream media cover these
unspeakable acts of gender violence? The New York
Times ran an editorial that identified the "most
important" cause as the easy access to guns in our
society.

NPR did a show which focused on problems in rural
America. Forensic psychologists and criminal profilers
filled the airwaves with talk about how difficult it
is to predict when a "person" will snap. And countless
exasperated commentators -- from fundamentalist
preachers to secular social critics -- abandoned any
pretense toward logic and reason in their rush to
weigh in with metaphysical musings on the
incomprehensibility of "evil."

Incredibly, few if any prominent voices in the
broadcast or print media have called the incidents
what they are: hate crimes perpetrated by angry white
men against defenseless young girls, who -- whatever
the twisted motives of the shooters -- were targeted
for sexual assault and murder precisely because they
are girls.

What is it going to take for our society to deal
honestly with the extent and depth of this problem?
How many more young girls have to die before
decision-makers in media and other influential
institutions stop averting their eyes from the lethal
mix of deep misogyny and violent masculinity at work
here? In response to the recent spate of shootings,
the White House announced plans to bring together
experts in education and law enforcement. The goal was
to discuss "the nature of the problem" and federal
action that can assist communities with violence
prevention. This approach is misdirected. Instead of
convening a group of experts on "school safety," the
president should catalyze a long-overdue national
conversation about sexism, masculinity, and men's
violence against women.

For us to have any hope of truly preventing not only
extreme acts of gender violence, but also the
incidents of rape, sexual abuse and domestic violence
that are a daily part of millions of women's and
girls' lives, we need to have this conversation. And
we need many more men to participate. Men from every
level of society need to recognize that violence
against women is a men's issue.

A similar incident to the Amish schoolhouse massacre
took place in Canada in 1989. A heavily armed
25-year-old man walked into a classroom at the
University of Montreal. He forced the men out of the
classroom at gunpoint, and then opened fire on the
women. He killed fourteen women and injured many more,
before committing suicide.

In response to this atrocity, in 1991 a number of
Canadian men created the White Ribbon Campaign. The
idea was for men to wear a white ribbon as a way of
making a visible and public pledge "never to commit,
condone, nor remain silent about violence against
women." The White Ribbon Campaign has since become a
part of Canadian culture, and it has been adapted in
dozens of countries. After the horrors in this country
over the past two weeks, the challenge for American
men is clear: will we respond to these recent
tragedies by averting our eyes and pretending that
none of this happened? Or will we at long last break
our complicit silence and work together with women to
turn these tragedies into a transformative cultural
moment?

Jackson Katz is the author of "The Macho Paradox: Why
Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help"
(Sourcebooks, 2006).

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:33 PM 2 comments Links to this post

Hmm, wonder where other intersectionalities like race/ethnicity and gender fit in. -Angela

On the day your district administrators look at test scores, grades, and discipline referrals with gender in mind, some stunning patterns quickly will emerge.

Girls, they might find, are behind boys in elementary school math or science scores. They’ll find high school girls statistically behind boys in SAT scores. They might find, upon deeper review, that some girls have learning disabilities that are going undiagnosed.

Boys, they’ll probably notice, make up 80 to 90 percent of the district’s discipline referrals, 70 percent of learning disabled children, and at least two-thirds of the children on behavioral medication. They’ll probably find that boys earn two-thirds of the Ds and Fs in the district, but less than half the As. On statewide standardized test scores, they’ll probably notice boys behind girls in general. They may be shocked to see how far behind the boys are in literacy skills; nationally, the average is a year and a half.

The moment an administrator sees the disparity of achievement between boys and girls can be liberating. Caring about children’s education can now include caring about boys and girls specifically. New training programs and resources for teachers and school districts are opening cash-strapped school boards’ eyes, not just to issues girls and boys face but also to ways of addressing gender differences in test scores, discipline referrals, and grades.

In the Edina School District, outside Minneapolis, Superintendent Ken Dragseth and district staff implemented a gender initiative that has helped close achievement gaps and improve overall education for students. In 2002, Dragseth and his staff analyzed district achievement data. They found that girls were doing much better than boys on most academic indicators, showing that they needed to address this achievement gap. They discovered areas of need for girls as well.

Edina officials decided to work on gaining greater knowledge on how boys and girls learn differently. Over the last three years, the district has seen qualitative and quantitative improvement in student performance.

Dragseth says that the gender-specific techniques and gender-friendly instructional theory he and his staff learned at the Gurian Institute helped the district significantly improve student achievement. For example, he says, they have seen higher seventh- and 10th-grade state reading and math mean scores for both boys and girls.

“We have also found that teacher- and parent-heightened awareness of gender differences in learning styles and appropriate strategies has been well received by students themselves,” he says.

Brain research

Gender training and resources used by Edina and other districts rely on information gained from PET, MRI, and other brain scans. This brain-based approach to gender was conceived in the early 1990s when it became clear that teachers were leaving college, graduate school, and teacher certification programs without training in how boys and girls learn differently. Educational culture was struggling to serve the needs of children -- the needs of girls were most publicly discussed in the early 1990s -- without complete knowledge of the children themselves.

When I wrote The Wonder of Boys in 1996, I hoped to bring a brain-based approach to gender issues into a wider public dialogue. In 1998, I joined the Missouri Center for Safe Schools and the University of Missouri-Kansas City in developing a two-year program to academically test the links among brain science, gender, and teacher education.

In six school districts in Missouri, teachers and staff integrated information from various fields and technologies and developed a number of strategies for teaching boys and girls. Gender disparities in achievement began to disappear in these districts. After one year, the pilot elementary school in the St. Joseph School District finished among the top five in the district after testing at the bottom previously. Discipline referrals diminished as well. In Kansas City’s Hickman Mills School District, discipline referrals were cut by 35 percent within six months.

In the five years following the Missouri pilot program, more than 20,000 teachers in 800 schools and districts have received training in how boys and girls learn differently. More and more teachers are using this knowledge in the classroom. Increasingly, universities and teacher certification programs are training young teachers in the learning differences between boys and girls.

Different learning styles

As with so many things of value in life, a teacher’s innovations on behalf of children begins with an epiphany. A fourth-grade teacher recently told me, “When I saw the brain scans and thought about my class, I just went ‘aha.’ So much made sense now. The boys and their fidgeting; the girls and their chatting; the girls organizing their binders colorfully; the boys tapping their pencils; the girls writing more words in their essays than the boys; even the way the boys end up in the principal’s office so much more frequently than the girls. We were all told long ago that every child should be taught as an individual, so gender didn’t matter -- but it really matters! Knowing about it has completely changed the way I teach, and the success my students are having.”

On your way home this afternoon, stop by your local elementary school and see some of these differences for yourself. Walk down the hallway and find a classroom in which the teacher displays students’ written work. Stand for a moment and look at the stories.

With all exceptions noted, you will probably find that the girls on average write:

• More words than the boys,

•Include more complex sensory details like color and texture, and

•Add more emotive and feeling details (“Judy said she liked him” “Timmy frowned”).

If you could look with X-ray glasses into the brains of the boys and girls who wrote those stories, you would see:

•More blood flow in the verbal centers (in the cerebral cortex) of the girls’ brains;

•More neural connections between the verbal centers and emotive centers in the limbic systems of the girls’ brains; and

•More blood flow in sensorial centers (for instance in the occipital lobe), with more linkage between those centers and the verbal centers in the girls’ brains.

A visual link to learning

My example of the differences in boys and girls writing has a visual link. The female visual system (optical and neural) relies more greatly than the male on P cells. These are cells that connect color variety and other sensory activity to upper brain functioning. Boys rely more on M cells, which make spatial activity and graphic clues more quickly accessible.

This difference is linked significantly to a gender-different writing process for boys and girls. Boys tend to rely more on pictures and moving objects for word connections than girls. Girls tend to use more words that describe color and other fine, sensory information. Not surprisingly, gender gaps in writing are often “detail” gaps.

Girls use more sensorial detail than boys, receiving better grades in the process. However, when elementary school teachers let boys draw picture panels (with colored pens) during the brainstorming part of story or essay writing, the boys often graphically lay out what their story will be about. After that, they actually write their “word brainstorming” because they can refer to a graphic/spatial tool that stimulates their brains to greater success in writing.

Watch a fourth-grade classroom led by a teacher untrained in male/female brain differences. You’ll probably see the teacher tell students to “take an hour to write your brainstorming for your paper.” Five to 10 of the boys in a classroom of 30 kids will stare at the blank page.

But when teachers are trained in male/female brain differences, they tell students to draw first and write later. Students who need that strategy will end up writing much more detailed, organized, and just better papers.

The rest state and discipline problems

Another area where you’ll see gender differences is classroom behavior. Boys tend to fidget when they are bored. In a boy’s brain, less of the “calming chemical,” serotonin, moves through the pre-frontal cortex (the executive decision-maker in the brain). Boys thus are more likely to fidget, distract themselves and others, and become the objects of the teacher’s reprimands.

Furthermore, the male brain naturally goes into a rest state many times per day and is not engaged in learning. Thus the boy “zones out,” “drifts off,” or “disappears from the lesson.”

Sometimes he begins to tap his pencil loudly or pull the hair of the kid in front of him. He’s not trying to cause trouble; in fact, he may be trying to wake up and avoid the rest state. Girls’ brains do not go to this severe rest state; their cerebral cortices are always “on.” They more rarely need to tap, fidget, or talk out of turn in order to stay focused.

Teachers can learn how to organize classrooms so that any boys (and girls) who need it can physically move while they are learning and keep their brains engaged. The rest state and boredom issues begin to dissolve. Discipline referrals decrease exponentially.

Brains on math

Both boys and girls can do math and science, of course, but their brains perform these tasks differently. Girls fall behind boys in complex math skills when their lesson plans rely solely or mainly on abstract formulations specified in symbols on the blackboard.

However, when words, essay components, and active group work are added to the toolbox of teacher strategies, girls reach a parity of performance. Brain-based innovations to help girls in math and science over the last decade have brought more verbal elements into math and science teaching and testing: more words, more word-to-formula connections, and more essay answers in math tests.

The results in both math and science achievement have been stunning, with girls closing the math/science gap in many school districts.

Different reactions to competition

Because of neural and chemical differences in levels and processing of oxytocin, dopamine, testosterone, and estrogen, boys typically need to do some learning through competition. Girls, of course, are competitive too, but in a given day, they will spend less time in competitive learning and less time relating successfully to one another through “aggression-love” -- the playful hitting and dissing by which boys show love.

The current emphasis on cooperative learning is a good thing, and the basis of a diversity-oriented educational culture. However, because they are not schooled in the nature of gender in the brain, teachers generally have deleted competitive learning, and thus de-emphasized a natural learning tool for many boys. We’ve also robbed girls of practice in the reality of human competitiveness.

When teachers receive training on how competitive learning can be integrated into classrooms (without chaos ensuing) they actually come to enjoy seeing both boys and girls challenge one another to learn better. Many girls who avoided leadership before now step forward to lead.

Learning to their potential

Our children are children, of course -- but they are also girls and boys. This is something we all know as parents. When a school board makes the decision to focus on how the girls and boys are doing, all children gain. Students learn more, teachers are more productive, test scores and behavior improve, and parents and the community are happier.

A school board member in North Carolina told me, “Ten years ago, it was almost scary to talk about hard-wired gender differences. There were a lot of Title IX concerns, fears of reprisal. Now it’s not scary, the brain research has caught up, and now it’s so necessary. In fact, it just feels right.”

It does indeed feel right to help boys and girls learn to their potential. Ten years ago, our girls were behind our boys in math and science; now, we see that our boys are far behind our girls in literacy. Neither of these gaps need exist anymore, as we engage in best practices on behalf of both boys and girls.

Michael Gurian, co-founder of the Gurian Institute, is author of 21 books, including The Minds of Boys (with Kathy Stevens), The Wonder of Girls, and Boys and Girls Learn Differently (with Patricia Henley and Terry Trueman).

Training staff produces results

It’s all well and good to have a theory, but does it work in the classroom? This is the question the Gurian Institute has been answering for a decade. Our data shows that training district staff and teachers in how boys and girls learn differently has a profound and positive effect on grades, standardized test scores, discipline referrals, and school culture.

Districts have used gender information and strategies to affect not only their coed classrooms, but also to experiment with single-gender classrooms. These experiments usually take place in core classes (language arts, math, and science). Woodward Avenue Elementary School in DeLand, Fla., outside Orlando, is an example of this dual strategy.

Woodward principal JoAnne Rodkey and members of the education department at Stetson University in DeLand have collected assessment data from single-gender and mixed classes at kindergarten, second, and fourth grades. Data showed very positive results in all the grades.

For example, in kindergarten the percentage of students scoring at grade level or above on DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) went from 40 percent in the all-boys class in the first assessment to 84 percent after the new strategies were in place. The girls’ classes went from 47 percent to 75 percent. In the coed classes, scores rose from 36 percent to 70 percent. Similar data in second and fourth grade indicates gains in both mixed and single-gender classes.

Some districts form partnerships with their state departments of education to get training on gender issues. In Alabama, for instance, Director of Programs Carol Crawford initiated statewide training in 2002 for administrators and school principals. Individual districts and boards then took Gurian Institute resources and methods into individual schools. Within six months, schools began reporting increased test scores and grades for both boys and girls, as well as decreased discipline referrals.

In the summer of 2004, Principal Jackie Dye of Rudd Middle School in Pinson, Ala., noted, “Following the ‘boys and girls learn differently’ training, we immediately saw teachers reporting decreased disciplinary referrals and improved academic performance for both our boys and the girls.”

At Lewis Palmer High School in Monument, Colo., individual teachers add new resources to the “boys and girls learn differently” theory and practice. Teacher Patricia St. Germain created a gender-specific curriculum called MindWorks, which uses gender diversity theories and applications. She told us: “My students love meta-thinking about gender. They want to know more about what makes boys and girls tick. ”

Throughout the grade levels, the theory and practice surrounding the phrase “boys and girls learn differently” can alter the academic and social environment of a district, school, and classroom.

This article was co-written by Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens, authors of The Minds of Boys. Stevens is also head of the Gurian Institute.





Copyright © 2006, National School Boards Association. American School Board Journal is an editorially independent publication of the National School Boards Association. Opinions expressed by this magazine or any of its authors do not necessarily reflect positions of the National School Boards Association. Within the parameters of fair use, this article may be printed out and photocopied for individual or educational use, provided this copyright notice appears on each copy. This article may not be otherwise, linked, transmitted, or reproduced in print or electronic form without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, call (703) 838-6739.

http://www.asbj.com/current/coverstory.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:19 AM 1 comments Links to this post

The Rise of the Testing Culture
As Exam-Takers Get Younger, Some Say Value Is Overblown
By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 10, 2006; A09

Pop quizzes, spelling bees and the three letters that strike dread into high school students across the country -- SAT. We have become a Test Nation, and the results can determine the course of a student's life. Some are beginning to question: Is it all too much? Has our obsession with testing pushed students too hard? Just what do tests really tell us? Over the next few months, The Washington Post will examine the nature of testing and its effects. First in a series:

Along with painting and gluing and coloring and playing, Kisha Lee engages the youngsters in her day-care program in another activity: testing.

Three- and 4-year-olds take spelling tests of such words as "I," "me" and "the," as well as math tests, from which they learn how to fill in a bubble to mark the right answer.

Test preparation for children barely out of diapers is hardly something Lee learned while getting her education degree at the University of Maryland, she said. But it is what she says she must do -- for the kids' sake -- based on her past experience teaching in a Prince George's County elementary school.

"Kids get tested and labeled as soon as they get into kindergarten," said Lee, who runs the state-certified Alternative Preschool Solutions in Accokeek. "They have to pass a standardized test from the second they get in. I saw kindergartners who weren't used to taking a test, and they fell apart, crying, saying they couldn't do it.

"The child who can sit and answer the questions correctly is identified as talented," Lee said. "It hurts me to have to do this, but it hurts the kids if I don't."

Lee's approach underscores the culture of testing that reigns in the United States. Americans like tests so much that they have structured society around them.

Newborns are greeted into the world with the Apgar test to measure activity, pulse, reflex, appearance and respiration. Getting a 3 or below is like getting an F. Soon to follow are assessments -- the first of many -- that will compare them with their peers. Are they crawling, sitting, walking at the correct age?

In no time, kids are facing tests to measure school readiness.

Four-year-olds are tested in literacy and math in Head Start programs, and kindergartners undergo tests to see who is "gifted." By then, they are firmly ensconced on the testing treadmill.

"We are obsessed with tests," said Occidental University education professor Ron Solorzano, who used to teach in Los Angeles public schools.

"We are pretty much preparing [kids] for the SAT at the age of 6," added Solorzano, who also worked at the Educational Testing Service, the world's largest private educational testing and measurement organization.

Americans embrace tests because they are entranced with objectivity -- or at least the appearance of it, experts say.

"Merely having a number associated with something makes it sound worthwhile, even if the number isn't all that valid," said Robert J. Sternberg, dean of Tufts University's School of Arts and Sciences and former president of the American Psychological Association.

No topic in education sparks as much debate and division as testing -- especially standardized testing.

Although U.S. students have never been strangers to tests, President Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative has revolutionized the process. Implemented in 2003, the law seeks to hold schools accountable for results. It not only added a national mandate for testing, but also raised the stakes higher than ever. A single test today can determine grade promotion or high school graduation, a teacher's salary or a principal's job.

Proponents say standardized tests are the best objective tool to hold teachers and schools accountable; opponents argue that the tests prove nothing more than that some kids are better at taking tests than others.

"The problem is not the tests themselves," Sternberg said. "They are assigned a value way beyond what they actually have. It has become like a cult."

The testing culture "has a lot more momentum than it should," agreed Harvard University education professor Daniel Koretz, an expert on assessment and measurement. He said a lack of solid research on the results of the new testing regimen -- or those that predated No Child Left Behind -- essentially means that the country is experimenting with its young people.

Tests, experts say, also serve as self-fulfilling prophecies; the most elite schools accept only students with top scores and then brag that it is these students who do well. The current craze of ranking schools also perpetuates the importance of tests, they say.

Ask students what they think about standardized tests and many agree with Leah Zipperstein, a junior at Colorado College. She said she remembers her teachers in Cincinnati spending weeks in middle and high school helping kids practice to pass the tests rather than teaching something more substantive.

"I'm so sick of caring about those tests," she said.

"I think we have probably, as a culture and as a society, gone too far," said Michael A. Morehead, associate dean of the College of Education at New Mexico State University. "We need to really reflect on what these tests imply. They don't really evaluate character. They don't really evaluate persistence of an individual."

Standardized tests also don't measure values or attitude, said Daniel Chambliss, a sociology professor at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y.

"Tests measure very narrow kinds of things under very specific circumstances," he said. "And real life doesn't work that way."

Some polls indicate that a majority of Americans are growing dubious of high-stakes standardized tests; three of the major gubernatorial candidates in Texas, for example, want to de-emphasize the state's high-stakes exam.

Still, nobody expects tests to go away; in fact, the latest wrinkle in the debate is about a national test that would supplant the state and systemwide tests now given.

That is why Pat Wyman, an instructor at California State University at East Bay and author of "Learning vs. Testing: Strategies That Bridge the Gap," says students should just learn how to deal with tests -- of all kinds.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/09/AR2006100900925.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:21 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Interesting international perpsective on the education of children that we can learn from. -Angela

October 2006

October 2006 | Volume 48 | Number 10

Harmonious Learning for the Whole Child: Education Perspectives from China
Message from the President

Richard Hanzelka


As educators in the United States struggle to expand their view of learning to embrace the whole child and not just achievement test scores, it is encouraging to know that other nations are engaged in similar processes. China, a country I have been fortunate enough to visit twice in the last two years, is also challenging itself to build a system that addresses the whole child.

This summer I traveled to China to participate in the first China-U.S. Education Leadership Conference. What I learned and experienced expanded and clarified the impressions I formed during the ASCD Board of Directors trip to China in November 2005.

The Language of Learning
I didn't hear the word “achievement” once on either trip. Instead, the Chinese educators I met spoke constantly of “learning,” with an emphasis on lifelong learning, a phrase that seems somewhat passé in the United States these days.

I asked myself some questions in the face of that realization. When we put so much emphasis on achievement, do we cause more problems than we solve? When we allow the rhetoric of achievement and testing to control the dialogue, do we take attention away from the whole child—from the creation of thinking, democratic citizens who are learners? Is schoolwork truly more important than the work of real-world thinking and problem solving?

Granted, some of the dialogue in the United States now addresses improvement of the whole child. But that kind of language actually moves the conversation away from the whole child and learning and back to measuring the whole child. There's a big difference.

At the China-U.S. Conference, Yang Jin, a deputy director-general from the Chinese Ministry of Education, described the educational challenges China confronts as it tries to change the face of education. These challenges reflect many of the paradoxes that China as whole must address: economic disparities between cities and rural areas, a massive population, a sprawling geography, and the growing pains of an emergent international powerhouse. He also offered the strategies China will use to meet those challenges. I believe educators around the world can learn from the experience of the Chinese.

Ten Challenges
Challenge 1
Although China mandates that all children will go to school for nine years, 176 counties—about 10 percent of the total—have yet to implement systems to make it happen.

Strategy: Spend 10 billion renminbi (about US$1.1 billion) to build 7,000 additional rural schools by the end of 2007. In addition, build more dormitory facilities for junior secondary schools.

Challenge 2
The dropout rate in China is high; children from poor families can't attend school.

Strategy: Provide a comprehensive system of financial aid so that 30 million poor students, especially those in rural areas, can get free textbooks. Those students won't have to pay miscellaneous fees, and subsidies will be provided for their accommodations.

Challenge 3
Almost 23 million children are unlikely to receive a good education because their parents are among the 6.5 million adults who have moved from poor, rural areas to booming cities, leaving their children behind.

Strategy: Craft policies so that the governments of cities where workers are moving assume the main responsibility for funding rural education for migrants' children.

Challenge 4
Enrollment in China's preschools is low. Current preschools cannot meet the demands for early childhood development.

Strategy: Expand opportunities for preschool education, and provide parental guidance to improve early childhood family-based education.

Challenge 5
Only half of 15-year-olds can currently progress to upper secondary schools, which are very selective.

Strategy: Expand total secondary enrollment. Develop vocational education opportunities so that vocational and regular secondary opportunities stay about even.

Challenge 6
Insufficient funding is available for education. In 2004, it was just 2.79 percent of China's gross domestic product, among the lowest levels in the world.

Strategy: Establish a guarantee to finance compulsory education, and clarify the responsibility of all levels of government for providing such funding.

Challenge 7
Significant educational disparities exist between urban and rural areas and eastern and western China. Between 70 and 80 percent of students reside in the much poorer rural areas.

Strategy: Promote balanced basic education by focusing on equity as the key and compulsory education as the priority.

Challenge 8
There is a shortage of qualified teachers in rural areas. In 2004, 500,000 temporary teachers—often less qualified than permanent teachers—were teaching in rural schools.

Strategy: Implement on-the-job teacher training to enhance competencies. University graduates are being encouraged through various incentives to work in rural and western areas of China.

Challenge 9
The Internet is available in just 5.6 percent of primary schools and 20.4 percent of junior secondary schools. Classroom technology is generally in short supply.

Strategy: Network 37,000 secondary schools by 2007. By then, 370,000 primary schools will have satellite transmission capabilities, and 110,000 primary schools will have DVD and CD players.

Challenge 10
Concepts and ideas of education need to be more innovative. Instructional methods need to be upgraded and curricula improved.

Strategy: Implement far-reaching reforms around curriculum and teacher quality. Emphasize learning and teaching. Focus on student health because Chinese children spend a great deal of their time in school.

Balanced Education, Harmonious Society
To support those strategies, Chinese educators and policymakers focus on balanced education that leads to the development of a “harmonious society.” That implies equality of educational rights and comparable education processes with relatively equal facilities and levels of teacher quality throughout the country. In a nation as large and diverse as China, the goal of balanced education is intended to be relative rather then absolute, dynamic rather than static.

Thus, it comes as no surprise that China is reducing its reliance on rigid testing, while increasing its emphasis on formative and value-added assessment.

Ultimately, China wants every child to become fully developed—morally, ethically, physically, intellectually, and aesthetically. Expected changes described by Yang include changing from teacher-centered to student-centered approaches and from delivering knowledge to fostering students' creative competence.

Of course, China is unique. Size alone sets it apart—it is five times larger than the United States. China's solutions to its educational challenges won't necessarily be appropriate elsewhere. But kids everywhere have very similar needs. (China itself is quite open to adopting practices that work in other countries. Yang lamented that Chinese children spend about twice the amount of time in school as U.S. students, yet they are not twice as educated. It was interesting for me to hear him praise what he saw as outstanding features of the U.S. education system, including greater flexibility and more choices and opportunities for American students.)

Reflect on the Goal
What can educators in other nations learn from China? Regardless of international differences, we should all take heed of China's concern for the development of a whole child who is capable of being part of a harmonious society. Can we make the same commitment? Can we make it possible for our children to become adults who continue to learn as they live their lives?

Perhaps the most important lesson to learn from China is the need for continuous reflection on the goal of schooling. The more time I spend learning how educators worldwide approach their important work, the more I believe we all need to question anything that interferes with this straightforward goal: Schools should encourage and nurture children now so that they will develop into complete human beings who can participate meaningfully in society in the future.

ASCD President Richard Hanzelka is director of the Eastern Iowa Writing Project at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa.


Copyright © 2006 by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 3:30 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Oct. 7, 2006, 6:18PM

NEXT GENERATION

New agenda for Texas education
Current trends that reveal gaps must be reversed

By JIM WINDHAM

During the 1990s, Texas became a national leader in education reform when a bipartisan group of Texans joined together to establish academic standards and accountability as the framework for transforming public schools.

The reforms began in 1993 when the state adopted a new accountability system that linked school accreditation with success in meeting academic standards. At the time it was a radical concept, but over the next few years Texas adopted other sweeping initiatives that would place it at the forefront of a growing effort to improve education.

Chief among the changes was Senate Bill 1, legislation that in 1995 began the largest overhaul of the Texas Education Code in half a century. It increased local control of schools, created the State Board for Educator Certification and established charter school authority.

Over the next 10 years, Texans would adopt knowledge and skills standards, statewide reading and math initiatives and end social promotion. Tougher high school programs and graduate exams would be instituted and in 2006 math and science courses were added to high school curriculums.

The reforms made a dramatic change in the delivery of public education in Texas. They resulted in an increase in state assessment pass rates from 45 percent in 1992 to 85 percent in 2002. The percentage of students taking college prep curriculum increased to 68 percent and the number of AP scores acceptable for college credit tripled. In addition, each ethnic group in K-8 outperformed the national average for their peers and began to close achievement gaps on state and national tests.

The progress was remarkable but problems remain. Gains were largely at the elementary level, and our students' proficiency to succeed in middle school and beyond presents a huge challenge. Even with the progress, K-8 Hispanic and African-American students lag two years behind their Anglo classmates. Eighth-grade reading proficiency is below national average and eighth-grade reading (26 percent) and math (31 percent) proficiency are too low to support success in advanced studies.

Although more students are taking a more rigorous curriculum, proficiency of high school graduates has not improved. Only 18 percent of high school graduates acquire skills necessary for college and the workplace, and 52 percent of high school graduates require remediation to do college work. There are major gaps in the pass rates between the high school exit exam and the college ready scale score and the Texas higher education graduation rate is the fifth lowest in the nation.

The bottom line is that unless current trends are reversed, a majority of Texas students will be unprepared for success in higher education and the 21st century workplace. How we meet that challenge is important for the educational future of our children and the economic future of our country.

We are already behind. Most of our international com-petitors are producing larger, more highly competitive work forces; most industrialized countries outperform American students in science and math; and most have higher standards for high school graduation. The result likely means that our children will be the first generation of Americans worse off economically than their parents.

The Texas Center for Demographic and Socioeconomic Research predicts that, based on the current rate of population growth and pace of educational improvement, Texans will experience a 12 percent decrease in average household income and a 40 percent increase in poverty in less than forty years.

The urgency for action couldn't be more evident. We must not allow this prediction to become a reality. We must develop a long-term plan for moving to the next phase of public education reform so that our students can begin to immediately accelerate their preparation for success.

Here is an immediate agenda:

• Enhance educator effectiveness: No education delivery system can be better than the educators in the school building. We need much better and more competitive preparation, certification reform, research-based professional development, effective mentoring, performance-based compensation, value-added evaluation, mandatory remediation and dismissal of ineffective educators.
• Raise standards: After 10 years, it is clear that TEKS needs a complete overhaul. The expectations for our kids are too low, there is no grade-level specificity, no progression of rigor from grade to grade and in many instances, the standards are not measurable.
• Strengthen accountability: We should phase into a 90 percent proficiency standard for accreditation of a campus, strengthen the consequences for school failure, adopt statewide public school choice, and expand charter school authority with equalized funding and tougher standards.
• Refine academic performance assessments: We should adopt value-added evaluation for charters, educator preparation programs and educator compensation; add end of course exams in high school; and connect all assessments to college and workplace readiness expectations.
Finally, we should create a comprehensive agenda for systemic long-term reform for public education that will fulfill the objective that every child in Texas will graduate from high school fully prepared for higher education, the 21st century workplace and responsible citizenship. What Texans can dream, Texans can do. Working together, with the energized leadership of the business community, we can build the schools we need to thrive in the highly competitive knowledge-based economy and once again lead the nation in public school innovation.

Windham heads the Texas Institute for Education Reform.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/4242637.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 3:27 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Jesse Bogan and Mariano Castillo
San Antonio Express-News Staff Writers

Web Posted: 10/07/2006 11:13 PM CDT

HIDALGO — If there was a place along the winding Rio Grande to justify the controversial fence Congress and President Bush have authorized, it seems Sonny Miller's ranch would be it.
Nine people, most of them Salvadorans, drowned when their smuggler drove a 1987 Crown Victoria into a nearby irrigation canal two years ago. And Miller has a photo of 60 immigrants detained on his property this summer.

Like many South Texas ranchers, he built stairs over a pasture fence so it wouldn't get trampled.

Clearly, there's a lot of foot traffic, yet Miller, 72, is among residents and leaders from both sides of the border — not to mention the rest of the Americas — who are riled up over the "Berlin Wall," as many call the proposed structure.

"It's a waste of money," said Miller, who used to farm vegetables and cotton but now just raises a few cattle. "They'll either go through it, over it or under it."


(Jesse Bogan/Express-News)
Rancher Sonny Miller of Hidalgo says he doesn't support the planned border fence because immigrants will find a way to get in.
The Senate recently joined the House in passing the Secure Fence Act, which calls for 700 miles of fencing along the southern border, including large stretches in Texas — from Laredo to Brownsville, Del Rio to Eagle Pass, and El Paso into New Mexico.

In an election year, the bill was designed to please voters anxious about homeland security, primarily conservatives who long have sought a border clampdown. But the fence's construction is far from a sure thing, and with the exception of those who would build it, support for it appears almost non-existent along the border.

Although 700 miles were authorized, no money was included in the bill. A separate bill signed Wednesday by President Bush appropriated $1.2 billion for border security, which can — but doesn't have to — be used for a fence.

Many questions remain. How close to the river would the fence be built? Will the government condemn private property? What about the long stretches of rough terrain that experts say isn't appropriate for such a barrier? What about environmental concerns?

Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, both Texas Republicans, got assurances the Homeland Security Department will have broad discretion on whether to build the fence and will consult with state and local officials on its location.

"It's all a complex thing, but I think at this point the focus ought to be on appreciation that Congress has finally done something," said Pennsylvania-based Colin Hanna, president of the Web site WeNeedAFence.com, acknowledging that "a year ago, we were just about the only organization advocating a fence, and the idea was very much on the fringe of the debate."

Now he is confident the money needed to build it — an estimated $2 billion to $7 billion — will be approved.

Many foes in Texas and Mexico, however, said the fence ignores the root causes of immigration, is not neighborly, and ultimately would jack up the going rate for smugglers who guide immigrants here or foster more attempts to corrupt officials on international bridges.

Among people interviewed along the border after Senate passage of the Secure Fence Act, those who saw no downside to the fence generally were able to cross the border legally, didn't care to cross the border, or were enthused about financial or employment opportunities stemming from the project.

Brownsville Mayor Eddie Treviño Jr. said fences could be helpful in certain areas, but he described the wall as an "attempt to institutionalize discrimination and racism."

"We spent 40 years trying to tear down the Berlin Wall, and here we are building one (against) our second-largest trading partner," he said, blaming Congress for failing to address comprehensive immigration reform, including a bolstered guest worker program and better pathways to citizenship.

Across the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Matias Miss, a manager of a shelter for undocumented immigrants, said border-area residents shouldn't have a problem with the wall because most have laser visas that allow them to shop, eat and visit with families in the 25-mile border zone of South Texas.

"If I have a house and put up a fence, I am going to feel more secure, and that doesn't mean I can't be a good neighbor," said Miss, 38.

The burden, he said, will fall heaviest on the residents of his shelter, Casa San Juan Diego, some of whom have endured rape, robbery and hunger during their long trips north fueled by dreams of construction, agricultural and service jobs.

They include people like Patricio Vázquez, 23. A farm laborer with a sick mother, he sold a few cows and his stereo and borrowed money from relatives to fund a trip from rural Veracruz state, only to be robbed of his $2,000 on the Rio Grande's banks.

Vázquez said the wall wouldn't be fair, because "we all have a right to eat and have a normal life without so much poverty."

Eduardo Hinojosa Cepeda, mayor of Camargo, a Mexican border town of 20,000, asked, "What would the United States do without our manual labor?"

Hinojosa, a dual citizen born in McAllen, said the wall is bad for the "brother countries" because it makes it look like the United States "doesn't want anything to do with Mexico."

Reynaldo Clemente Cavazos, director of the country club in Reynosa, Mexico, a large border city and manufacturing center, said he already feels like a delinquent when he crosses because of close questioning by U.S. officials at the bridge. It would worsen with a fence, he said.

He compared the tide of undocumented immigrants to the bustling narcotics trade, saying they couldn't be held back by force because they are pulled by U.S. demand.

"Mexico is the diving board, and the United States is the swimming pool," he said.

Across the river, Steve Ahlenius, president of the McAllen Chamber of Commerce, called the wall a "19th-century solution to a 21st-century problem" and said it could erode the local $2 billion retail economy, to which Mexicans contribute a third.

"How it hurts us economically is, the image that we send to Mexico is that, 'We are going to build a wall and we don't want you here,'" he said, adding that the perceived cold shoulder could cause shoppers who make several trips a year to cut back.

Ahlenius finds it hard to believe anyone locally could support the wall, and he said lawmakers who voted for it are "scared about what they think America is becoming."

"People are afraid that America is being more brown. ... This is a country where there has always been opportunity, there has always been freedom, and (when) we start to wall up things and to block things off — we are losing what we really stand for."

In Laredo, Ray Segura, owner of Segura Fence Co., said he's eager to compete for government contracts to help build the fence. He already has teamed up with a San Antonio company to submit a bid.

"There's going to be a lot of contracts, there's going to be a lot of bidding, there's going to be a lot of action," Segura said.

He said that based on his experience, the fence probably would be built on an easement along the river that the government owns and runs along the entire border, usually 30 to 50 feet wide.

He estimated it would take about two to three months per mile of construction for a thick wire fence with holes too small to fit a boot in; twice as long if it is a double fence, as Congress wants.

Also standing to gain was a shirtless man with a tattoo of a bat on his chest.

He was drinking beer last week with two colleagues along the river where smugglers commonly bring immigrants in rafts from the Mexican town of Miguel Alemán to the Texas town of Roma.

The self-described "patero," or smuggler, sat among trash, just beyond the reach of flies buzzing around a dead animal.

"We aren't politicians, we are ruffians. It's going to be more difficult (to cross), but it's going to cost more money," said the man, who appeared to be about 40 and declined to give his name.

"If they want to spend the money on the wall," he said with the flick of a hand, "then spend it."

jbogan@express-news.net

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:57 PM 1 comments Links to this post

" In Texas, the number of Hispanic public school students increased 43 percent -- from 1.3 million in 1993 to 1.8 million in 2003. Texas has the second-largest population of Hispanic students, behind California."

What needs to be remembered is that most of this increase is due to the rate of natural increase (births).

Angela

Study: Hispanic students in Texas increase 43%
Nationwide surge is largest since baby boomer era

Thursday, October 5, 2006

New York Times News Service


Study: Hispanic students in Texas increase 43%
Nationwide surge is largest since baby boomer era

08:24 PM CDT on Thursday, October 5, 2006

New York Times News Service

WASHINGTON -- Fueled by the burgeoning Hispanic population, the number of children in U.S. public schools increased by 4.7 million from 1993 to 2003, the largest surge since the baby boomers started school, a new study shows.

Hispanic students accounted for 64 percent of the total growth, or 3 million children, according to the report by the Pew Hispanic Center, a non-partisan research group.

In Texas, the number of Hispanic public school students increased 43 percent -- from 1.3 million in 1993 to 1.8 million in 2003. Texas has the second-largest population of Hispanic students, behind California.

"Latinos have been the key growing student population over all of American public education," said Richard Fry, a senior researcher at the Pew Hispanic Center and author of the study.

The report, based on data from the Department of Education, shows that during the same time period, the number of black students increased by 1.1 million, the number of Asian students increased by 500,000, and the number of white students declined by 35,000.

The impact of high rates of immigration in the 1980's and 1990's -- which produced an influx of young Hispanic adults in their prime childbearing years -- is most evident in the numbers of Hispanic students in elementary schools, the study says.

From 1993 to 2003, Hispanic enrollment in public elementary schools increased by 1.6 million. During the same time, the enrollment of black students increased by 390,000, Asian enrollment increased by 219,000, and white enrollment declined by 1.2 million, the study showed.
In addition, the report said that white students for the most part still attend mostly white schools.

In Florida, the number of Hispanic public school students increased 91 percent -- from 282,000 in 1993 to 538,000 in 2003. Florida has the fourth largest number of Hispanic students, behind California, Texas and New York.

In Ohio, the number of Hispanic public school students increased 49 percent -- from about 24,000 in 1993 to 36,000 in 2003. insert for Cox states)
The report also shows that the nation has seen a boom in the construction of new schools with more than 15,000 built between 1993 and 2003. That marks the most vigorous school construction period in the United States since the 1920's.

Most Hispanic students, however, are being educated in older schools that existed before 1993. The report does not provide a reason why most Hispanic students are not attending the newly built schools.

Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California, said it is not surprising that most Hispanics are not attending the newer schools because new immigrants often settle in older neighborhoods and inner cities.
"There is a correlation between port of entry communities and older schools," he said.

The situation will likely change over time, as Hispanics become more affluent and educated and move to suburban communities and other areas, he said.

"Hispanics are just like all other Americans. They want the dream of the house in the suburbs with the yard, the fence and the dog," he said.
The report also shows that schools with large increases in the Hispanic population have a larger share of low income students as evidenced by an increase in the use of free lunch programs.

In schools with at least a 100 percent increase in Hispanic students from 1993 to 2003, the percent of students using the free lunch program increased from 36 percent to 42 percent, the study said.

The study also found:
- Arkansas saw the largest percent increase in its Hispanic school-age population -- from about 3,900 to 21,400 -- an increase of 454 percent.
- Most Hispanic public school students reside in six states -- Florida, Arizona, Illinois, California, Texas and New York.
-Twenty four states -- including Alabama, Minnesota, Utah, and Iowa -- have seen at least a 100 percent increase in the number of Hispanic public school students from 1993 to 2003.

- Only one state had a decline in Hispanic enrollment during that time. The number of Latino students in Hawaii public schools decreased from 9,082 to 8,487.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/100606nathispanics.1eafb98.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:51 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Texas inflates graduation rates, researchers say
12:02 AM CDT on Friday, October 6, 2006

Associated Press
HOUSTON – Texas grossly inflates its high school graduation numbers, masking critical dropout figures, according to studies to be presented Friday at a Rice University conference.

Academicians from institutions including Rice, Harvard, Stanford and Johns Hopkins, as well as other experts in the field, say their goal is to bring clarity to the problem, explain the implications for the state and nation and lay the groundwork for progress.

In a conference call to reporters on Wednesday, the conference speakers previewed the research and issues they planned to present.

"The graduation crisis is much more urgent than we might understand just based on what the TEA presents," said Chris Swanson, director of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, referring to the Texas Education Agency. He notes that the Lone Star state isn't the only one that exaggerates its numbers.

His research, part of a four-year project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, found Texas' graduation rate to be 66.8 percent, much lower than the 84.2 percent the state reports.

"We do not think our graduation rate is inflated," said Debbie Ratcliffe, spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency. She questions the researchers' methodology.

Swanson's numbers are almost identical to what other independent researchers have found using various methodologies, the speakers said. Swanson used enrollment-based estimates; others have looked at individual student records and unduplicated data from the state.

Further, Swanson said the inflation increases in the larger districts. Dallas has a 46 percent graduation rate, his study found, not the state's figure of 81 percent. The inflation was also more prominent when looking at minority and poor students.

Part of the disparity lies in the differing definitions for what a dropout is. The state figures mentioned, from the 2002-2003 school year, do not count the following as dropouts: students who have enrolled in a GED program, students who have passed coursework but not the required state test, students who transferred to another Texas public school but never showed up for class and students who are missing.

The state will begin including the first three of those categories in their calculations, starting this school year, but not because it found fault with its previous method, Ratcliffe said, but rather to align it with the definitions used by the federal No Child Left Behind law and National Center for Education Statistics.

Texas is one of the few states to have a system that tracks individual students, a resource many other states want to emulate.

"The lesson for Texas is that it doesn't matter how good the data collection is. If you're not reporting in an accurate, transparent way, you wind up with very misleading information," said Dan Losen, a senior education law and policy associate with Harvard's Civil Rights Project. "That misleading info means that educators and policy-makers and the general public are going to make bad decisions about education reform or at least not very effective ones. It's a real tragedy."

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/100606dntexdropouts.28a25ee.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 5:01 PM 0 comments Links to this post

A vision from Chrs Bell, candidate for governor. -Angela

We can't just 'fix' schools; they need to be retooled

An op/ed by Chris Bell, Austin American-Statesman

September 30, 2006

Last week, in a small cafe, a young lady came up to me, shook my hand and told me she was proud to be voting Democratic this November. She was proud because our campaign is firmly rooted in family values and faith — she was proud because we offer a clear vision of greatness for Texas and a comprehensive plan to achieve that vision. And, as she started to let go of my hand, she looked me square in the eye and said, "And, please, do something about our schools. I want my kids to do better than I did."

She speaks for almost every Texan I've met — and she speaks for me. I want our children to do better than we did. I want to make one thing clear from the start; unlike Gov. Rick Perry and Carole Keeton Strayhorn, I'm not going to promise to "fix" Texas schools.

Trying to fix Texas schools would be like spending hard-earned money to fix an electric typewriter. Even if I got it running better, it would still be a typewriter. It would never compete with a laptop computer and the World Wide Web.

Texas schools aren't broken. They're running on an obsolete operating system. It's time for a bold new direction.

Here's my promise: Texas students will be the most skilled, knowledgeable, creative, innovative, ambitious, productive and healthy young people in the world in 10 years. Texas students will pass any standardized test because they will have learned to learn, not because they memorized useless facts. Your governor should not be willing to settle for anything less. But the people who run schools now would rather defend the status quo than acknowledge the reality that schools aren't working.

Perry is the worst offender. He can't mention raising standards without talking about standardized tests. He uses the TAKS like the end-all, be-all of education.

Everything in our schools is geared toward helping kids get better scores on that test. What we have is a public school system that has put a premium on mediocrity and failed to meet even that low standard. Only two of every three students make it to graduation. For those graduating, our SAT scores are darn near the worst in the country. And then those lucky enough to get to that next step are showing up at colleges increasingly unprepared to do the work, forcing colleges to teach what our kids should have learned in high school.

If we want a different result, we need to commit ourselves to big, dramatic changes. We need to "retool our schools." We must do more than apply a fresh coat of paint to an outmoded factory. Texas needs schools that prepare our kids for greatness not just for standardized tests.

My very first act as governor will be to appoint a blue-ribbon commission to figure out how to make our schools the best in the country. I don't pretend to have all the answers. But leadership requires that I put some ideas on the table. My main role as governor will be to articulate a common goal and a new vision for public education in Texas.

Here's where I think we should start: High-stakes testing has tied teachers' hands and turned them into little more than glorified test-prep monitors. We need to empower teachers to teach children how to learn in self-directed, group learning environments. We won't see progress in Texas until we end the tyranny of the TAKS test. Next, we must modernize our learning model. Schools need to focus on critical thinking, communication skills, teamwork, self-direction and other skills necessary for success in today's economy.

Finally, we need to engage parents. Too often, we forget that the most important teachers children will ever have are their parents. We need to work with parents to make sure their kids are showing up at school every day ready to learn.

We know what the stakes are. We know what the goal is. And we know that we're not going to get there if we continue along our current path. What Texas needs is a governor with the courage to lead. Only then can we begin to build the best public school system in the country. And only then will the Texas that's in our hearts become the Texas we see around us.

Bell is the 2006 Democratic gubernatorial nominee.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:20 PM 1 comments Links to this post

by Steve Blow, Dallas Morning News. I generally agree with this piece except for his conclusion that quality public schools is one of our nation's greatest achievements. True for some, but not for all. Schools do a very good job of reproducing the inequalities that we see in society. -Angela


05:27 AM CDT on Wednesday, October 4, 2006

To be honest, I'm not all that enthused about writing this column. Seems we've trod this ground before.

But when the opposition is so relentless and the stakes are so high, it's foolish to let tedium distract.

So let's take a moment to counter the $400,000 advertising campaign now aimed at you – the one touting "school choice." And, of course, that's code for "private school vouchers."

Once again, this is the high-dollar handiwork of San Antonio vouchers proponent – no, that's too mild – let's say "vouchers zealot" James Leininger.

This fellow just won't take "no" for an answer. Over and over, the Texas Legislature has rejected his voucher schemes – taking the wiser course of raising standards for public schools, not draining funds from them.

In the last legislative elections, you recall, Dr. Leininger tried an end run by pouring campaign money toward the defeat of five key voucher opponents.

His $2.5 million investment succeeded in ousting two of them.

The strategy this time is a little class warfare. In radio ads and on billboards, he's trying to stir up the wrath of poor folks.

I spotted one of the billboards on the edge of downtown yesterday. It shows a nice, upstanding black family and says: "All families deserve a choice, Not just the rich. Give parents a choice, Give children a chance."

That's the wedge Dr. Leininger and his Texans For School Choice hope to use in getting a voucher pilot project approved when the Legislature convenes in January. The plan would take money from public schools and give it to low-income families for private-school tuition.

But let's look at three significant issues overlooked by this latest campaign:

No. 1. Parents already have a choice. Every school district of any size offers a variety of options – magnet schools, specialty career or arts schools, talented-and-gifted schools, etc. Add to that the 313 charter public schools across the state, which offer free, open enrollment to students, no matter where they live.

And on top of all that, by law, no student is trapped in a low-performing school. Districts are required to offer transfers from any school that failed to meet federal academic standards for two years.

No. 2. Parents have choices, but few exercise them. So why gamble on vouchers? Where is this competitive pressure that is supposed to create great schools?

Nationally, only 1 to 2 percent of eligible students transfer from low-performing schools. It was 1.1 percent last year in Dallas and less than 1 percent in Fort Worth.

The excellent, rigorous KIPP TRUTH Academy – a free charter school in South Dallas – began the school year with empty seats. Not enough parents applied to even fill the school.

No. 3. There is no magic to private schools. Voucher proponents love to deride "government schools" as hopeless and inept. They love to portray private schools as wholesome, sure-fire successes.

The truth is that, overall, there's very little difference. A huge federal study released this summer found that students of like economic backgrounds perform almost identically whether in public or private schools.

And those charter schools? They were supposed to be the magic solution, allowing private operation of tax-funded schools.

Results have been lackluster across the state. A few, like the KIPP schools, have been great. Most have been so-so. And far too many have been "academically unacceptable" – 13 percent of them last year, compared to just 4 percent of traditional public schools.

Listen, there is always room for improvement in our public schools. And we shouldn't be afraid of innovation.

But don't buy the baloney that all of public education is in disarray. Or that there are miracle fixes.

Quality public education has been one of our nation's greatest achievements. It's part of what has made us strong, united and truly a land of opportunity.

Let's build on that success, not dismantle it.

E-mail sblow@dallasnews.com


Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/localnews/columnists/sblow/stories/DN-blow_04met.ART.North.Edition1.3dd078a.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:35 PM 1 comments Links to this post

Charters on Rise; Quality Unequal
Officials Told to Consider Closing Low-Performing Facilities
By Theola Labbé
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 3, 2006; B05

The number of District charter schools has grown dramatically in the past 10 years, but the quality has been uneven, and officials should consider closing low-performing schools, according to findings in a study to be released today.

"The State of the District of Columbia Charter School Sector 2006: A Ten-Year Review," reports that charter schools are performing slightly better than traditional D.C. public schools on national standardized tests. However, only a small percentage of charter school students are scoring at proficient or advanced levels, the study says.

The study challenges the various city and federal entities responsible for District education to work together to improve student performance.

"Can the charter sector be satisfied to perform only somewhat better than a school district that has been struggling for decades and widely known to be lagging [behind] so many other large urban districts?" asks Gregg Vanourek, the independent researcher who completed the study.

"Charter schools, if they are to fulfill their promise, must do better -- much better," he says in the study.

Vanourek used feedback from a 40-question survey sent to charter schools; existing research; and interviews with District education leaders in charter and traditional public schools to deliver his assessment of the education landscape since Congress authorized charter schools in the District in 1996.

The study was sponsored by Fight for Children, a District-based nonprofit group that funds programs in traditional public and charter schools and also supports vouchers as an alternative for parents.

The study was based on the District's 51 charter schools, which had 17,419 students on 62 campuses in the 2005-2006 school year. About 25 percent of District students attend a charter school, the third-highest percentage in the nation, the study says.

The study was completed before the release of recent test scores on a standardized test that show D.C. students in traditional public schools doing slightly better than charter students. However, more than 80 percent of traditional and charter schools failed to reach yearly academic benchmarks.

Based on the falling enrollment of students in the public school system and the growing student enrollment in charter schools, the study concludes that should those trends continue, 51 percent of public school students in the District would be attending charter schools by 2014.

Charter schools are publicly funded and open to students citywide. Two groups are authorized in the District to open new charter schools and close schools that are not performing: The D.C. Public Charter School Board and the D.C. Board of Education.

Thomas A. Nida, chairman of the charter board, said the seven-member appointed panel has not been timid about revoking school charters. But he said the board is looking at other ways to intervene earlier at schools that are struggling.

For example, it has spoken with D.C. Council members about expanding the charter board's authority to remove individual members of a school's board of trustees and to allow high-performing schools to merge with struggling ones.

"You can't just simply wield the hammer of revocation at every misstep," Nida said.

The findings will be discussed at 3:30 p.m. today at a public forum at the Hilton Washington, 1919 Connecticut Ave. NW. Participants will include charter leaders and D.C. Schools Superintendent Clifford B. Janey.

The report also says that among the two chartering boards, there is no uniform means to collect data on high school graduation rates, another important measure of school success.

On the availability of facilities for charter schools, the report says charter schools have had limited access to empty or underused District public school buildings. But according to a Master Facilities Plan recently released by Janey, 21 charter schools are operating in current or former District school buildings, either through ownership or a lease.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/02/AR2006100201125.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:15 PM 0 comments Links to this post

This article details the mismanagement of Reading First funds that come out of the DOE as part of NCLB. Corruption abounds. -Angela

THE EDUCATION ISSUE
By Michael Grunwald
Sunday, October 1, 2006; B01

President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act was premised on three revolutionary goals. The first was to focus on low-performing schools and students; hence, No Child Left Behind. The second was to beef up the federal role in education, enforcing national standards through testing. The third was to bring facts and evidence to the notoriously squishy world of education policy, promoting teaching methods backed by "scientifically based research" instead of instinct and fad. This was the least-publicized goal, but arguably the most vital; the phrase "scientifically based research" appeared more than 100 times in the landmark 2001 law.

The centerpiece of the new research-based approach was Reading First, a $1 billion-a-year effort to help low-income schools adopt strategies "that have been proven to prevent or remediate reading failure" through rigorous peer-reviewed studies. "Quite simply, Reading First focuses on what works, and will support proven methods of early reading instruction," the Education Department promised.

Five years later, an accumulating mound of evidence from reports, interviews and program documents suggests that Reading First has had little to do with science or rigor. Instead, the billions have gone to what is effectively a pilot project for untested programs with friends in high places.

Department officials and a small group of influential contractors have strong-armed states and local districts into adopting a small group of unproved textbooks and reading programs with almost no peer-reviewed research behind them. The commercial interests behind those textbooks and programs have paid royalties and consulting fees to the key Reading First contractors, who also served as consultants for states seeking grants and chaired the panels approving the grants. Both the architect of Reading First and former education secretary Roderick R. Paige have gone to work for the owner of one of those programs, who is also a top Bush fundraiser.

On Sept. 22, the department's inspector general released a report exposing some of Reading First's favoritism and mismanagement. The highlights were internal e-mails from then-program director Chris Doherty, vowing to deny funding to programs that weren't part of the department's in-crowd: "They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the [expletive] out of them in front of all the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see how we welcome these dirtbags."

Doherty has since resigned, and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has pledged to review Reading First, emphasizing that the "individual mistakes" detailed in the report occurred before she became secretary. Still, Spellings expressed full confidence in the overall program: "Thanks to Reading First, struggling students are far more likely to get the help they need from teachers using scientifically based classroom reading instruction."

But the report barely scratched the surface of the incestuous process that dominated the formation of Reading First. The initiative didn't promote scientifically based reading instruction, the third goal of No Child Left Behind. And it's providing ammunition to critics of the second goal, strong national standards. The billion-dollar question is whether it may imperil the first goal: Will some children get left behind?

Bush administration officials frequently say that Reading First does not play favorites or intrude on local control, that states and districts are free to choose their own textbooks and programs -- as long as they're backed by sound science. But aggressive muckraking by the newsletter Title 1 Monitor and reading advocates at the Success for All Foundation have eviscerated those claims, and the inspector general's report officially contradicted them, accusing the department of breaking the law by promoting its pet programs and squelching others. In his internal e-mails, Doherty frequently admitted using "extralegal" tactics to force states and local districts to do the department's bidding. A report by Success for All documented how state applications for Reading First grants that promoted the preferred programs were the only ones approved.

In fact, the vast majority of the 4,800 Reading First schools have now adopted one of the five or six top-selling commercial textbooks, even though none of them has been evaluated in a peer-reviewed study against a control group. Most of the schools also use the same assessment program, the same instructional model, and one of three training programs developed by Reading First insiders -- with little research backing.

"They kept denying it, but everybody knew the department had a list," said Jady Johnson, director of the Reading Recovery Council of North America. "They're forcing schools to spend millions on ineffective programs."

To some extent, the controversy over Reading First reflects an older controversy over reading, pitting "phonics" advocates such as Doherty against "whole language" practitioners such as Johnson.

The administration believes in phonics, which emphasizes repetitive drills that teach children to sound out words. Johnson and other phonics skeptics try to teach the meaning and context of words as well. Reading First money has been steered toward states and local districts that go the phonics route, largely because the Reading First panels that oversaw state applications were stacked with department officials and other phonics fans. "Stack the panel?" Doherty joked in one e-mail. "I have never *heard* of such a thing . . . ." When Reid Lyon, who designed Reading First, complained that a whole-language proponent had received an invitation to participate on an evaluation panel, a top department official replied: "We can't un-invite her. Just make sure she is on a panel with one of our barracuda types."

Doherty bragged to Lyon about pressuring Maine, Mississippi and New Jersey to reverse decisions to allow whole-language programs in their schools: "This is for your FYI, as I think this program-bashing is best done off or under the major radar screens." Massachusetts and North Dakota were also told to drop whole-language programs such as Rigby Literacy, and districts that didn't do so lost funding. "Ha, ha--Rigby as a CORE program?" Doherty wrote in one internal e-mail. "When pigs fly!"

Said Bruce Hunter, a lobbyist for the American Association of School Administrators: "It's been obvious all along that the administration knew exactly what it wanted."

But it wasn't just about phonics.

Success for All is the phonics program with the strongest record of scientifically proved results, backed by 31 studies rated "conclusive" by the American Institutes for Research. And it has been shut out of Reading First. The nonprofit Success for All Foundation has shed 60 percent of its staff since Reading First began; the program had been growing rapidly, but now 300 schools have dropped it. Betsy Ammons, a principal in North Carolina, watched Success for All improve reading scores at her school, but state officials made her switch to traditional textbooks to qualify for the new grants.

"You can't afford to turn down the federal money," Ammons said. "But why should we have to give up on something that works?"

The answer lies in the Reading First grant process, which was almost comically skewed. Michigan was the first state approved, after it simply proposed to adopt the five best-selling textbooks. But when Rhode Island officials proposed to require "high-quality reading programs that meet the test of having a scientific research base," they were rejected. Doherty told them to check out Michigan's list, so they cut and pasted it into their application, while suggesting that districts could still adopt other programs justified by research. They were rejected again. So they limited their program to the textbooks. Only then were they approved. Similarly, Oklahoma unsuccessfully proposed to require reading programs backed by three years of longitudinal data before it got the hint and proposed the Michigan list.

So instead of advocating scientifically based reading programs, Reading First has promoted programs with "key elements" endorsed by a national reading panel, which could describe almost any program. It may not be a coincidence that the initiative was essentially outsourced to a few experts with a dizzying array of apparent conflicts of interest.

For example, when the department needed reviewers to evaluate reading assessment programs, it contracted with a University of Oregon team led by Edward Kame'enui, Roland Good and Deborah Simmons. Good had developed an assessment called Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), and Kame'enui, Good and Simmons had all served on the design team for Voyager Passport, a remedial program built around DIBELS. Ultimately, DIBELS was the only assessment used in Reading First, and Voyager was the most popular supplemental program.

Similarly, the department steered states to just three providers of professional development services: Kame'enui and Simmons at Oregon, Louisa C. Moats at the for-profit Sopris West, and Sharon Vaughn at the University of Texas at Austin. Vaughn was the other member of the Voyager Passport design team, and one of the four chairmen of the secretary's Reading Leadership Academy, which exerted enormous influence over Reading First; the others were Moats, Kame'enui and his Oregon colleague Douglas Carnine. States such as Alabama, North Carolina and Washington specified in their Reading First grants that every one of their reviewers for local proposals would have to be approved by one of those chairmen.

Kame'enui and Simmons also wrote the "Consumer's Guide" that most states agreed to use to evaluate Reading First programs, and ran one of Reading First's three "technical assistance centers" at Oregon. They co-wrote one Reading First textbook, and Kame'enui earned more than $100,000 last year from royalties on another, according to his financial disclosure when he moved to an Education Department job. In her 2004 book "In Defense of Our Children: When Politics, Profit, and Education Collide," Elaine Garan recalled color-coding the various financial connections running through Reading First; when it came to Kame'enui, she wrote, "I ran out of colors."

The department declined a request to interview Kame'enui, but Undersecretary Henry Johnson said the department takes conflicts of interest seriously, and will adopt all the inspector general's recommendations. "We're going to dig into this," he said.

But Johnson said states are ultimately responsible for making sure their programs are scientifically based, which is small comfort for applicants pressured into adopting programs they didn't want. "It's been very frustrating for those of us who really believe in evidence-based programs," said Richard Long, a lobbyist for the International Reading Association, which represents 90,000 reading teachers and specialists nationwide.

Then again, Long thinks spending $1 billion a year on reading is a great idea. And he thinks it's helping kids to read: "Have there been mistakes in implementation? Oh yeah. But teachers in Reading First schools believe progress is being made."

The bottom line, Johnson said, is that Reading First works. A department report found that teachers in Reading First schools spent 19 minutes more per day on reading than teachers in other schools, and were more likely to place struggling students in reading intervention programs. A new report by the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy suggested that Reading First is having a positive effect on state reading scores, although Johnson said much more needs to be done.

"Despite all the problems with Reading First, there's evidence that it's helping states," said Jack Jennings, the center's president.

Of course, $5 billion over five years ought to help states; the question is whether it's helping as much as it should. Without the kind of rigorous studies the law promised but the implementers failed to deliver, it's not clear.

But it is clear that Reading First has been a terrific boon for the textbook publishing industry, and for the department's favored programs. For example, the company that developed Voyager Passport was valued at about $5 million in a newspaper article before Reading First; founder Randy Best, whose Republican fundraising made him a Bush Pioneer, eventually sold it for $380 million. He then put Lyon and Paige on his payroll.

Local domination of education is an American tradition, and Bush took up a storied cause in challenging it; reformers since Horace Mann have promoted national education policy as a way to encourage common culture and equal opportunity. But local-control advocates have always warned that empowering heavy-handed federal bureaucrats would breed self-serving, one-size-fits-all solutions. Now, Reading First is making them look like prophets.

grunwaldmr@washpost.com
Michael Grunwald is a Washington Post staff writer.


© 2006 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092901333.html?referrer=emailarticle

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:26 AM 1 comments Links to this post

This study underscores the importance of caring teachers who can help boost students' academic self confidence. -Click here to get a PDF file of this report.
-Angela
January 2006
Student Context, Student Attitudes and Behavior, and Academic Achievement
An Exploratory Analysis

Theresa M. Akey


What are the key factors that promote academic success among students whose demographic characteristics and school circumstances place them at high risk of failure? This paper provides highly suggestive, although not conclusive, answers to this question. Through path analysis modeling techniques applied to data collected in MDRC’s evaluation of the First Things First school reform initiative in a large urban school district, the paper explores the influence of two psychological variables — student engagement and perceived academic competence — on achievement in reading and mathematics.

This study’s findings may have important implications for understanding how students learn in the classroom. Consonant with previous research, they indicate that both engagement in school and students’ perception of their own academic competence influence achievement in mathematics for high school students. But the study departs from earlier work in suggesting that perceived academic competence may be more influential than engagement in boosting achievement in both mathematics and reading. Indeed, analyses indicate that perceived competence had a stronger influence on subsequent engagement than engagement had on students’ perceptions of themselves as competent learners.

The findings also make clear that supportive teachers and clear and high expectations about behavior are key to the development of both student engagement and perceived competence. This study suggests that the earlier schools and teachers begin to build students’ confidence in their ability to do well, the better off students will be. Because students’ perceptions of their capacity for success are key to their engagement in school and learning, schools should be designed to enhance students’ feelings of accomplishment. Teachers whom students see as supportive and who set clear expectations about behavior help create an atmosphere in which students feel in control and confident about their ability to succeed in future educational endeavors.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:27 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Good news about racial & ethnic diversity at The University of Texas at Austin. -Angela

Record number of Hispanic and African American students
enrolled for 2006 fall semester

September 21, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas—A record high number of Hispanic and African American students are enrolled and attending classes at The University of Texas at Austin for the 2006 fall semester, according to a preliminary report by the university’s Office of Institutional Research.

Total enrollment of all students of all ethnic groups this fall is 49,738, slightly higher than the 49,696 recorded for the 2005 fall semester. This total, based on preliminary figures, includes 37,069 undergraduate, 11,361 graduate and 1,427 law students, said Maryann Ruddock, associate vice president and director of institutional research.

Included in the 2006 total fall enrollment are the highest numbers ever recorded for Hispanic and African American student populations on campus—7,453 Hispanics (15 percent of the student population) and 1,939 African Americans (3.9 percent of the student population). The previous record high enrollments for these two ethnic groups were 7,013 Hispanics in 2005 and 1,911 African Americans in 1996.

The 15 percent Hispanic figure for the 2006 fall semester reflects a 6.3 percent increase over fall 2005, when 7,013 Hispanics accounted for 14.1 percent of the student population.

The preliminary fall 2006 figures show a 5.2 percent increase in African American students over fall 2005, when 1,843 African Americans accounted for 3.7 percent of the student population.

White students remain a majority on campus, accounting for 56.6 percent of the student population. The 28,132 white student enrollment total for fall 2006 reflects a 1.4 percent decrease from fall 2005, when 28,537 were enrolled.

The 7,181 Asian American students enrolled this fall semester represent 14.4 percent of the student population, a 0.8 percent increase over fall 2005.

The enrollment statistics for other ethnic groups include:

The 231 American Indians enrolled represent 0.5 percent of the student population, a 6 percent increase.

There are 4,432 foreign students representing 8.9 percent of the student population, a 0.2 percent increase.

The preliminary report reflects a planned increase in the number of first-time freshmen (up by 509 to 7,421). This figure includes freshmen who entered in the summer and continued this fall, as well as new entrants. In the entering class from Texas high schools, about 71 percent were admitted under House Bill 588, better known as the Top 10 Percent Law. This is an increase from the 69 percent in fall 2005.

First-time freshman enrollment by ethnicity counting fall/summer entrants includes 54.3 percent white, 0.5 percent American Indian, 5.2 percent African American, 17.9 percent Asian American, 18.7 percent Hispanic and 3.4 percent foreign.

Total enrollment in the School of Law decreased by 119 students (8.3 percent), and new law school enrollment decreased by 69 students (12 percent).

Trends reflected by the preliminary report include undergraduate enrollment increases for schools and colleges, including: Fine Arts (1.4 percent), the new Jackson School of Geosciences (19.5 percent), Natural Sciences (3.9 percent), Nursing (6.1 percent) and Social Work (1.8 percent). Enrollment in all other schools and colleges decreased or remained stable.

Graduate enrollment increased for Communication (1.4 percent), Engineering (1.9 percent), Fine Arts (3.2 percent), Geosciences (16.7 percent), Intercollegial Programs (5.0 percent), Nursing (8.5 percent), Pharmacy (4.0 percent), Public Affairs (5.4 percent) and Social Work (3.8 percent). Graduate enrollment in all other schools and colleges decreased or remained stable.

Ruddock said these data are preliminary 12th class day numbers issued by the Office of Institutional Research. Final figures for the 12th class day will be available in October, but usually there is little variation from preliminary figures.
For more information contact: Robert D. Meckel, Office of Public Affairs, 512-475-7847.

Updated 2006 September 21
Comments to utopa@www.utexas.edu

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:15 PM 0 comments Links to this post

September 27, 2006
Teacher-Pay Incentives Popular But Unproven
By Linda Jacobson, EDWEEK.ORG

The idea, in various forms, has become a popular refrain among politicians.

“I ask you to support my proposal to offer more-competitive salaries to teachers across the state,” Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, a Democrat, implored lawmakers in March.

“Combat pay” is the term Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gave his plan to attract well-qualified teachers to California’s toughest schools. While that phrase offended some educators, and the plan was eventually dropped last year, his meaning was clear: Reward teachers with bonuses or other financial advantages if they agree to teach in schools that other teachers want to leave.

But as pressure grows to use research-based practices to improve schools, it’s almost a wonder policymakers are so quick to join the trend. States have little evidence that using financial incentives to entice teachers to certain jobs actually reduces turnover or raises student achievement.

Nonetheless, a 2005 review by the Education Commission of the States found that at least 30 states offer such incentives—which can include housing benefits, loan forgiveness, and scholarships, as well as yearly bonuses and salary increases—to address teacher shortages in certain subjects and geographical areas. And 17 states offer incentives specifically for teachers who work in hard-to-staff schools.

Looking for Data
Tricia Coulter, the director of the Teaching Quality and Leadership Institute at the Denver-based ECS, said that policy analysts and others following such initiatives get frustrated when lawmakers approve incentives for teachers but don’t require any evaluation or data collection to determine the effectiveness of the policies.

Attracting Teachers
Here are some examples of incentives that states offer to lure teachers to hard-to-staff schools.

• Arkansas: Gives $4,000 bonuses to teachers—not currently employed by the district—who sign a contract to work in a high-priority district, and $3,000 each of the next two years if they stay employed in that district.

• California: Teachers who are certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards are eligible to receive a $20,000 bonus over four years if they agree to teach in a high-priority school for at least four years.

• Hawaii: Offers $3,000 per year, for up to three years, for licensed special education or general education teachers who agree to work in hard-to-fill locations.

• Illinois: The state’s Golden Apple Scholar program offers $5,000 a year for four years of college for minority and low-income high school seniors who agree to teach in a poor or low-performing school for five years after graduating from college.

• Mississippi: Licensed teachers who buy a home and move into one of the state’s geographical critical-shortage areas can receive a home loan of up to $6,000

SOURCE: Education Commission of the States
For example, when Julia E. Koppich, a San Francisco-based author and consultant specializing in teacher issues, began investigating whether California’s $20,000 incentive to draw teachers with National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification to high-needs schools was paying off, she found that the state wasn’t keeping data that would enable her to find out.

“That was annoying,” she said.

Margaret Gaston, the executive director of the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, located in Santa Cruz, Calif., had similar questions when she wanted to know whether a slew of incentives instituted during former Gov. Gray Davis’ administration—such as college loans and targeted teacher-training programs focusing on high-poverty schools—helped in the recruitment and retention of teachers.

Ms. Gaston said that those programs probably contributed to a significant drop in the number of “underprepared” teachers in the state—from about 42,000 in 2002 to fewer than 20,000 last year. But the data to prove her hypothesis aren’t available.

The center’s 2003 report on the state’s workforce said, “Given the scant reporting requirement of some of these programs, it is difficult to ascertain exactly how much of the money was spent.”

Other researchers have also encountered barriers when trying to study teacher-incentive policies.

“Many of the most ambitious and interesting reforms have collapsed within a few years under pressure from political opposition or fiscal constraints, and attempts to study the few reforms that stayed afloat have yielded little fruit to date,” Steven Glazerman, a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research’s office in Washington, wrote in a paper earlier this year.

Promising Results
States, however, are likely to begin taking a closer look at whether their efforts to draw teachers to hard-to-staff schools and subjects are working. A provision of the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires that “highly qualified” teachers be equally distributed in high-poverty and high-minority schools, not concentrated in those serving predominantly white and better-off students. States had to detail those efforts this summer in “equity plans” submitted to the U.S. Department of Education. Some observers suggest data collection could begin to improve as a result.

“Now states are saying, ‘If we’re going to put in place an equity plan, then we better start doing a better job of monitoring whether some of these strategies are effective,’ ” said Sabrina W.M. Laine, the director of the Washington-based National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality, which was launched last year with funding from the U.S. Department of Education and is a national resource center on such policies.

For example, Virginia is documenting the effectiveness of a pilot incentive program launched in 2004 that awarded bonuses to highly qualified teachers who went to work in Caroline County and the city of Franklin. Four schools are involved—a middle school and a high school in each district. Under the plan, the highly qualified teachers each received a one-time $15,000 “relocation” bonus, and the highly qualified teachers already in those schools each received a $3,000 retention bonus.

After the first year, 2004-05, teacher attrition dropped in both sites, but test scores increased only in the high schools. Preliminary data from last school year, though, seem to show even more improvement in all schools and in both areas, said Connie Fisher, a special-projects coordinator for teacher quality at the Virginia Department of Education.

“The legislature is looking at it, and is looking for results,” she said.

She added that the districts are drawing more applicants than before, and those applicants are more qualified. “So they have a better pool,” Ms. Fisher said.

Mississippi has also closely followed its 8-year-old effort to draw new teachers into 47 “critical shortage” geographic areas—primarily in the Mississippi Delta region—through a combination of college scholarships and housing assistance programs.

According to recent data from the state’s student- and teacher-information system, of the 332 teachers who completed the state’s Critical Needs Teacher Scholarship Program since it began in 1998, 254 are still teaching. And of those, 165—or 65 percent—are still teaching in a critical shortage area.

“That’s a powerful retention percentage,” said Wesley Williams II, the director of the Mississippi education department’s Teacher Center, which focuses on recruiting and retaining teachers.

Models to Follow
California may soon have a database similar to Mississippi’s. A bill waiting to be signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger would create a teacher-workforce data system, which could be used to determine which teachers have taken advantage of certain incentives, where teachers are moving, and whether they are staying in those schools. The fiscal 2007 budget includes nearly $1 million for the project.

“It would make our job so much easier,” said Ms. Gaston of the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, which recommended such a system.

Whatever the evidence, or lack of it, on whether financial and other incentives attract talented teachers to challenging schools, the officials implementing such programs concede that money alone won’t keep teachers in those jobs.

“Many policymakers hear ‘financial incentives’ and think a lump sum of money can attract a lot of people,” said Ben Schaefer, a program manager at the Washington-based National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, a nonprofit organization that promotes high-quality teaching. “But it might not retain them.”

One model that should not be followed, most experts say, comes from Massachusetts, which in 1999 began offering $20,000 bonuses to attract new teachers to the state. But after one year, one-fifth of the teachers who took the bonuses left the classroom, and many of the others found different teaching positions in suburban schools.

Mr. Schaefer says that experience suggests that states need to target their incentive programs to specific needs.

Other experts say incentives such as mentoring, professional development, strong leadership, and even ongoing bonuses for raising achievement are also needed to keep teachers in hard-to-staff schools and fields.

One model being used in 13 states is the Teacher Advancement Program, which was launched in 1999 by the Milken Family Foundation. Now administered by the Santa Monica, Calif.-based National Institute for Excellence in Teaching, the program has four primary elements: multiple career paths for teachers, ongoing school-based professional development, evaluations tied to student performance, and performance-based compensation. The program can also include incentives for teachers who transfer into low-performing schools.

“Signing bonuses,” says Lewis C. Solmon, the president of the institute, won’t be enough to improve student learning if they aren’t coupled with pay that is based on whether teachers are making a difference in the classroom.

“You don’t want just any teacher to come,” he said, “you want effective teachers.”

Vol. 26, Issue 05, Pages 1,20

“Report Faults Ed. Dept., States on Teacher-Quality Rule,” July 12, 2006.
“Commentary: Teacher Pay for Performance: Another Fad or a Sound and Lasting Policy?,” April 5, 2006.
“Commentary: Aligning the System: The Case for Linking Teacher Pay to Student Learning,” March 29, 2006.
“Groups Tackle Teacher Quality in Needy Schools,” February 16, 2005.
“Mass. Bonus Program To Favor Ed. Schools,” December 4, 2002.
“Delta Blues,” May 26, 1999.
Read a transcript of our exclusive online chat, Education Week/ERS Report on Salary and Wages.
For more stories on this topic see Teaching and Learning.
For background, previous stories, and Web links, read Teacher Quality.

View resources and get information on how states are handling teacher compensation from the Education Commission of the States. Also, read the November 2005 report, "Eight Questions on Teacher Recruitment and Retention: What Does the Research Say?"
Learn more about the four elements of the Teacher Advancement Program, which is administered by the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching.
The National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality offers resources on recruitment and retention, including databases on state policies and regional and national recruitment and retention initiatives.


© 2006 Editorial Projects in Education

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:13 PM 1 comments Links to this post

Published: September 27, 2006
Political Shift Could Temper NCLB Resolve
If Democrats Take House or Senate, Uncertainty Ahead
By Alyson Klein
The two top Democratic lawmakers on education policy have signaled that if their party regains control of one or both houses of Congress in November, they will seek to retain the core accountability features of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Rep. George Miller of California would likely support more funding for the law, while seeking to keep its requirements that schools test students annually and be held accountable for the results.

The two, who were among the architects of the bipartisan law five years ago, have continued to champion its central provisions in the face of vocal opposition. A big question is whether rank-and-file Democrats, as well as some senior members who would likely assume other key education posts in a Democratic takeover, share Sen. Kennedy’s and Rep. Miller’s commitment to keeping the law largely intact.

“The bloom has come off the rose for many Democrats and Republicans since the law was signed” by President Bush in January 2002, said Michael D. Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a Washington group representing more than 60 large urban school districts. “Support for the legislation in Congress appears to be not as great as it was when the initial votes were taken.”

Party’s Prospects
Political analysts suggest that the 2006 midterm elections offer Democrats their best chance in years of retaking one or both chambers of Congress. If the Democrats assume control of the House of Representatives or the Senate, these members are poised to take on leadership roles on education policy over the next two years.

SENATE

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts

In line to become: Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee
Would replace: Sen. Michael B. Enzi, R-Wyo.
Priorities: A key architect of the No Child Left Behind Act, Sen. Kennedy wants to bolster resources for schools in need of improvement under the law and improve tests used to measure students’ progress. He would also like to make it easier for graduates working in public-service fields to repay their student loans.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut

In line to become: Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Education and Early Childhood Development
Would replace: Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.
Priorities: Sen. Dodd has introduced a bill that would change the way adequate yearly progress is calculated under the No Child Left Behind law, giving schools credit for meeting benchmarks other than simply bringing students to proficiency on mathematics and reading tests. He is also interested in boosting Pell Grants for college students.

HOUSE

Rep. George Miller of California

In line to become: Chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee
Would replace: Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif.
Priorities: Rep. Miller, along with Sen. Kennedy, has introduced a bill, called the Teach Act, aimed at improving teacher quality and encouraging effective teachers to work in high-need schools. He would like to cut interest rates on student loans in half.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey of California

In line to become: Chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Education Reform
Would replace: Rep. Michael N. Castle, R-Del.
Priorities: Rep. Woolsey would like to see the No Child Left Behind law become more flexible, possibly by using measurements other than tests to determine a school’s progress. She would like to see the law encourage schools to educate “the whole child,” in part by bolstering classes in subjects such as art and music.

SOURCE: Education Week
Political analysts give the Democrats their best chance in years for retaking one or both chambers in this fall’s midterm elections. The party needs a net gain of 15 seats to retake the House. In the Senate, they would need to pick up six seats. Republicans have dominated Congress for most of the time since their dramatic takeover in the 1994 elections.

At a panel discussion in Washington last week, Rep. Miller said that he and other Democratic leaders would continue to work in a bipartisan way to maintain the “core concepts” of the No Child Left Behind law, which was championed by President Bush.

“I don’t see there’s any likelihood that Congress goes back on them,” said Rep. Miller, who as the ranking Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee is in line to become its chairman if his party wins a majority.

A Kennedy Fine-Tune
Sen. Kennedy, who was the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee when the law passed in late 2001 as a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, says that if he reclaims that position, he will push for changes that would help foundering schools meet the goals of the law.

“Schools need better solutions to respond to the challenges identified by the No Child Left Behind Act,” Sen. Kennedy said on Sept. 19 in comments provided to Education Week.

“We also need to fine-tune the act to make it more effective in assisting struggling schools by providing new federal funds for advisers and teacher coaches who are experienced in turning low student achievement around, and by creating new partnerships between high-performing and lower-performing schools,” the senator said.

Under the law, states must test students annually in reading and math in grades 3-8 and once in high school. Students and districts must meet annual performance targets for their entire student populations, as well as for subgroups of students, such as those who are learning to speak English, in order to make adequate yearly progress, or AYP. Schools and districts receiving federal Title I money that fail to make AYP for two years or more face increasingly serious consequences.

Additionally, the law requires schools to employ highly qualified teachers, defined as those with state certification and knowledge of the subject they teach.

The law is due for reauthorization in 2007, although many observers doubt that Congress will meet that target.

Stronger Oversight?
Sen. Kennedy says he would seek to channel resources to helping states design better assessments and data systems. He may consider trying to add NCLB provisions to improve high schools, such as dropout-prevention measures, and work to provide schools with parent-outreach coordinators.

He and Rep. Miller have also co-sponsored a bill that would authorize money to boost the salaries of educators who work as mentor or master teachers, or in high-needs districts. The measure would give schools resources to develop a “transition year” for new teachers and overhaul state certification process, among other provisions.

For the past two years, Republicans have provided level funding for the Title I compensatory education program for poor children—a major part of the ESEA in its various versions—and grants to states for students in special education, under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Democrats are more disposed to boost spending levels for those programs.

They are also more likely to spare, or even boost, K-12 programs perennially slated for elimination under President Bush’s budget proposals, such as the Upward Bound program, which prepares disadvantaged high school students for college.

“Congress has walked away from its obligation for funding the law,” Rep. Miller said last week at the discussion on the No Child Left Behind law sponsored by the Business Roundtable.

Democrats say they would keep a closer eye than the Republicans have on how the Department of Education is implementing parts of the law, including the management of the teacher-quality provisions as well as the testing of children with limited English skills and students in special education.

Because the law has been a centerpiece of President Bush’s domestic-policy agenda, the administration and current congressional leaders have a disincentive to identify school districts “that are not performing very well, but are putting forth good statistics,” Rep. Robert E. Andrews, D-N.J., a member of the House education committee, said in an interview. “We would be much more clinical about this and find districts that are gaming the system.”

Though Sen. Kennedy and Rep. Miller may not be eager to change much in the No Child Left Behind law, other members of their party, including high-ranking lawmakers on both the House and the Senate education committees, appear poised to push for more substantial revisions.

Attempts to change the direction of the law could be bolstered by Democrats—and Republicans—on Capitol Hill who have fielded complaints about the law from teachers, administrators, and parents in their constituencies. Dissatisfaction has centered on such provisions as the law’s reliance on standardized tests to measure progress and requirements for teachers to become highly qualified.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., whose home state is suing the federal Education Department over what Connecticut contends is inadequate funding for the law, would be in line to chair the Senate Education and Early Childhood Development Subcommittee, which oversees K-12 policy.

Last year, Sen. Dodd introduced a bill that would make changes to the way states calculate AYP under the federal law, among other provisions.

Under Sen. Dodd’s legislation, schools and states would be able to get credit for showing improvement on measures other than standardized tests, such as dropout rates, the number of students who take Advanced Placement courses, and individual student improvement over time. The measure has not advanced very far.

In the House, Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., would be in line to chair the key Education Reform Subcommittee after a Democratic victory. She said in an interview this month that, while she supports the concept of the No Child Left Behind law, she has reservations about some of its major provisions, including its reliance on “narrowly focused standardized tests.”

She said the law should give credit for educating “the whole child. … There’s a lot that’s being left out,” Rep. Woolsey said, citing some schools’ lack of emphasis on subjects like art, music, and geography.

At least two Democrats on the House education committee, Reps. Betty McCollum of Minnesota and David Wu of Oregon, have put forth their own proposals for reauthorizing the law, both of which focus on providing more flexibility to the states, partly by allowing them to get credit for improving individual student performance through different types of growth models.

Rep. Miller said he would support including additional measures for determining whether schools and districts make adequate yearly progress under the law. Currently, schools must meet achievement levels on state tests and attendance goals. High schools also must meet targets for graduation rates.

But Rep. Miller said any new measures must be valid and academically challenging.

“It can’t be pass-fail, have a portfolio, do some art work, and tell us the history of your life,” Mr. Miller said at the Business Roundtable forum.

Miller the Maverick?
Whether any significant changes to the No Child Left Behind Act make their way into a reauthorization may depend on the leanings of not-yet-elected Democrats who would take the place of GOP lawmakers next year, said Jack Jennings, the president of the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based research and advocacy organization.

Those members would likely be in the House of Representatives, which political analysts suggest is more likely to change hands than the Senate, said Mr. Jennings, who was an aide to Democrats on the House education committee from 1967 to 1994.

Freshman House Democrats could come from swing districts, where they would need the support of the 2.8 million-member National Education Association to get re-elected two years from now, Mr. Jennings said. The NEA has criticized many aspects of the federal education law and mounted a lawsuit over its funding provisions.

In maintaining strong support for the federal school improvement law, Rep. Miller has bucked key Democratic constituencies, such as the NEA, said Michael J. Petrilli, the vice president for national programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a research and advocacy group in Washington, and a former Education Department official under President Bush.

“It might be easier for [Rep. Miller] to continue to play the maverick role as a ranking member than as chairman,” Mr. Petrilli said. In the event of a Democratic takeover of the House, he said, “Miller will be expected to come and write NCLB version 2.0, and he’s going to have to decide how bold he’s willing to be. There’s going to be a real war within the Democratic Party.”

If new members or rank-and-file Democrats hear concerns from their constituents about the No Child Left Behind law, they could press for changes, appealing to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who will likely become the speaker of the House if the Democrats retake the chamber. But Rep. Pelosi and Rep. Miller have a close working relationship, Mr. Jennings said.

“I find it hard to believe she would propose something much different from what he would want, unless she has newly minted members of Congress who want change,” Mr. Jennings said.

Some observers do not expect a groundswell of opposition to the school law to materialize in Congress.

“There’s not going to be tremendous pressure to gut this law,” said Ross Wiener, the policy director of Education Trust, a Washington-based organization that supports the law for its emphasis on raising the achievement of all students.

“The critics are obviously the most vocal, but there really is a silent majority in the middle,” he said, who feel the law is the right direction for K-12 education.

Associate Editor David J. Hoff contributed to this story.

Vol. 26, Issue 05, Pages 1,24-25

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:11 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Continuation of earlier posts regarding NCLR's position with respect to English language learners (ELLs). -Angela
Raul Gonzalez
Legislative Director
National Council of La Raza
Washington, DC

Dear Raul,

We are disappointed by your answer to our Sept. 20 message -- that, in your view, "an open conversation" among advocates for English language learners about No Child Left Behind would not be "productive" at this time. We are also surprised. You recently wrote that the National Council of La Raza would be "very open" to discussing its views on this critical subject. Indeed, it was in response to your implicit invitation that we elaborated a number of pressing concerns that educators and researchers have expressed about NCLB.

Again we invite you to engage in an e-mail exchange on this subject, in which a broad range of teachers, administrators, academic experts, and others concerned with the education of ELLs can participate. We believe that an open conversation would be more useful than the closed session of "Latino organizations" that you propose. In our view, it is critical to include those who are intimately familiar with the impact of NCLB in discussions on how the law should be reauthorized. We have no doubt that, if professionals who serve ELL students had been part of legislative deliberations back in 2001, the result would have been a far more workable accountability system. As Congress prepares to reauthorize NCLB in the coming months, advocates for ELLs need to engage in frank discussions about how to reform this law. We believed -- and continue to believe -- that such a dialogue would be productive.

You have also proposed that any discussion should consider ELL issues broadly rather than focus on specific provisions of No Child Left Behind. As you put it, "We should feel free to think outside the NCLB box." We believe this approach would be a mistake. Whether we like it or not, NCLB is the "box" that ELLs and their teachers find themselves in today. It dominates and, indeed, constrains what goes on in public schools like no other federal statute to date. As detailed in our previous message, NCLB is having numerous adverse effects on the children we serve. Unfortunately, certain policymakers and advocacy organizations -- including, we are sorry to say, the National Council of La Raza -- seem to disregard these concerns in their eagerness to promote a Stay the Course position on NCLB.

In our previous message, we posed a number of questions that we still hope will be answered. Here are a few more:
If the objective is to ensure that No Child Left Behind truly serves the needs of ELLs, what steps has your organization taken to investigate its effects on these students thus far?
Have you considered reports by ELL educators and researchers about NCLB, including those who do not share your position?
Do you have any basis to disagree with the list of negative consequences we have cited?
Why has the National Council of La Raza dropped its advocacy for bilingual education -- which is mentioned nowhere in your publications, including those on ELLs and NCLB?
Again, we would welcome a detailed response. In our view, all ELL advocates should try hard to achieve a unified position on NCLB so we don't end up working at cross purposes during the reauthorization process. For this to happen, however, we need to talk to each other -- not in carefully controlled private meetings, but in an inclusive discussion that's open to all who are working to promote equal educational opportunities for ELLs.

Sincerely,

James Crawford, Silver Spring, MD
Salvador Gabaldón, Tucson Unified School District
Stephen Krashen, University of Southern California
Kate Menken, Queens College, City University of New York

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 6:19 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Pew Hispanic Center Releases Latinos and the 2006 Election fact sheet

The Pew Hispanic Center released today a fact sheet on Latinos and the 2006 election. This fact sheet presents estimates for the number of Hispanics who will be U.S. citizens and at least 18 years old and thus eligible to vote as of November 2006. Estimates are computed for the nation, by state and by congressional district. Also included are estimates of the number of eligible voters based on three scenarios that weigh changes in the population and potential levels of political participation.

The fact sheet is entitled Hispanics and the 2006 Election and can be accessed on the Center's website.

The Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization, is a project of the Pew Research Center and is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 6:10 PM 0 comments Links to this post

September 28, 2006
As 2 Bushes Try to Fix Schools, Tools Differ

By SAM DILLON
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.-- Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida has long played the dutiful younger brother.

Well before President Bush signed his No Child Left Behind law, Jeb Bush poured his own ideas into a school improvement program for Florida.

Over the years since, Governor Bush has mostly held his tongue about the president’s very different law, even as detractors of all stripes have attacked it.

But in recent weeks--perhaps seeking to cement his legacy as a school-policy expert as he prepares to leave office-- Governor Bush has been speaking out about the federal law, mixing dollops of praise with measured criticisms--and taking an occasional potshot. He has been caustic, for instance, about the requirement that 100 percent of the nation's students be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

"I mean perfection is not going to happen," Mr. Bush said Sept. 12 at a news conference in Orlando, arguing that achievement targets are important but that unrealistic ones discourage educators. "We're all imperfect under God's watchful eye, and it's impossible to achieve it."

He followed up in an interview with criticisms of other provisions.

"With all due respect to the federal system," the governor said, "our accountability system is really the better way to go."

Other figures also say the federal law, which comes up next year for Congressional reauthorization, could use some improvement. But Bush vs. Bush may be the most striking part of the debate.

It is natural, of course, that the brothers might feel a bit of fraternal rivalry on this topic, because each built a political career --George in Texas, Jeb in Florida--around promises to improve their states' schools.

Still, this is more than a brotherly squabble, as Governor Bush's comments could well provide the president's opponents with ammunition against his signature law.

No Child Left Behind and the Florida law, the A-Plus plan, differ in many ways. For one, the federal law grades schools pass-fail, while Florida’s gives schools A to F grades.

One reason the governor may be wading into the debate over the federal law is that every year since it took effect in 2002, the school-grading systems have contradicted each other. Hundreds of schools have received an A from Florida while flunking under the federal system, often because they narrowly missed testing targets.

At the Orlando news conference, Paul E. Peterson, a professor of government at Harvard, urged Congress to make the federal law more like Florida's.

"Florida's school-grading system is clearly superior to the one used under No Child Left Behind," said Dr. Peterson, who with a colleague, Martin R. West of Brown University, expands on that argument in the current issue of Education Next, an academic journal.

In the article, Drs. Peterson and West described the federal system as so "badly flawed" that it might err with nearly 3 of every 10 schools it classifies as low performing.

The federal law also puts sanctions on schools that do not meet testing goals, but does not reward ones that do. The Florida law, on the other hand, gives large cash bonuses to schools that help low-performing students improve their scores.

"Punitive actions don't work nearly as well," Governor Bush said in the interview. Accountability, he added, "works better when it’s viewed as a reward."

In criticizing No Child Left Behind, Governor Bush signaled disagreement with the position staked out by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who told reporters on Aug. 30, "There’s not much needed in the way of change."

"I talk about No Child Left Behind like Ivory Soap," Ms. Spellings said. "It’s 99.9 percent pure."

Governor Bush said that when he had lunch in early September with Ms. Spellings in Washington "I was loaded for bear, to go in and say, 'What was that quote about?'"

"But she disarmed me completely before I got around to my attack," he recalled. "She is eager to reform, to reauthorize N.C.L.B. There’s still work to do, and she knows it."

In an interview, Ms. Spellings said that in characterizing the law as "99.9 percent pure” she meant to convey only that no changes were needed to its “core principles.” She cited several changes she hoped for, including extending the reach of the law into high schools.

Months after Governor Bush took office in 1999, the Florida Legislature approved his education plan. It requires schools to administer tests in reading and mathematics every year in Grades 3 through 10 and assigns grades based mainly on the results.

Two years later, a legislative audit found that the A-Plus plan was improving student performance, but noted a weakness in its comparing scores at each grade with the previous year scores from the same grade, measuring a different set of students.

Florida overhauled the plan to track the achievement of individual students from grade to grade, allowing the state to calculate how much specific students had learned in a given year. That has made it possible for the state, for instance, to reward schools for raising the achievement of the lowest-performing 25 percent of students.

No Child Left Behind has broad similarities with the A-Plus plan, but the two plans also differ in important ways.

Rather than tracking individual students, the federal plan measures whether schools have made "adequate yearly progress," based on whether the percentage of students who demonstrate proficiency at each grade level, and within racial and other groups, increases by a required amount. For example, the system, like A-Plus before its revision, compares scores this year from fourth graders with those from last year. The federal law took effect just as Florida was rolling out its revised plan. Sharp contradictions emerged almost immediately in many states between the federal and state ratings given to local schools.

These contradictions became especially notable in Florida in the summer of 2003, when 1,200 of the state's 3,050 schools earned A’s from the state. At the same time, more than 950 of the top-rated schools failed to make adequate yearly progress under the federal law. Similar discrepancies re-emerged in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

R. J. Longstreet Elementary School here in Daytona Beach is an example. The tidy one-story building near the Atlantic Ocean has fallen short on the federal yardstick every year, but Florida has given it an A for five years straight.

It earned its latest A because on tests in spring 2006 tests 80 percent of students met “high standards” in reading, math and writing, and because 60 percent of students, and nearly 80 percent of the lowest-performing students, increased their scores. In August, the school received a $42,800 reward check.

"Congratulations on your outstanding performance," Governor Bush wrote to the school.

But it fell short on 2 of 17 federal requirements, and that was enough to fail under the federal system. On a writing test administered to 55 fourth-grade students, 50 needed to show proficiency; 48 did. On math tests administered to 42 disabled students, 21 needed to score at grade level; 20 did.

Having failed the school four years running, each time because it barely missed a target or two, the federal law requires the Volusia County District to make plans this year to replace the staff at Longstreet or to undertake another form of corrective action, said Chris Colwell, a deputy superintendent.

"We’re not opposed to measuring achievement in our schools, but our point is, measure accurately," Dr. Colwell said. "Longstreet has a high-performing faculty. Why would we change them?"

In their Education Next article, Drs. Peterson and West used test figures to calculate how much students learned, on average, in each school in Florida in the 2003-4 school year and compared the gains in schools with adequate yearly progress with those in schools that did not.

Their conclusion?

The federal accountability system does not perform as well as Florida's "in distinguishing schools where students are learning more from those where they are learning less," the professors wrote.

At the Sept. 12 news conference, called to publicize a broad review of education initiatives, Governor Bush listened approvingly as Dr. Peterson praised the A-Plus plan and criticized No Child Left Behind. But the governor has been careful to note what he considers to be the federal law’s contributions.

Florida, for instance, began focusing increased attention on disabled and limited-English students after the federal law required states to improve those students’ achievement, Governor Bush said.

He approaches the law, he said, "not from the standpoint of saying it's bad, but that it's good and needs to be better."


Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 5:21 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Ok. These last two posts are really interesting with this one addressing the difficulties of defining identity and the earlier one referring to commonalities. These should provoke much discussion--particularly, it appears, for those in the business world who want to market better to this population. -Angela

Rich and varied 'Hispanic heritage' not easy to define
by Steven Winn
Wednesday, September 27, 2006

It's been nearly five months since the May 1 Day Without Immigrants rallies filled cities around the country with a mighty chorus of pleas for coherent government action on immigration. Now, as Congress prepares to adjourn for the midterm election campaigns, our bumbling leaders are hopelessly flummoxed on the issue. As the Senate mulls a House-passed bill mandating a 700-mile Mexican border fence that Kafka or Calvino might have dreamed up in one of their absurdist fictions, partisan divisions have all but doomed any meaningful legislation in the foreseeable future.

How fitting that this latest national stalemate should come in the heart of Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs through Oct. 15. In ways that transcend the question of what to do about the country's estimated 11 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants (about 78 percent of whom come from Mexico and Latin America, according to a Pew Hispanic Center report), U.S. culture gives off a jarring dissonance on Latino themes. In a country of 299 million with 43 million of them Latinos, a richly diverse population segment that exerts a rapidly expanding impact and influence, the tendency to think in reductive and monolithic terms remains pronounced.

Part of the problem comes from perceptions fostered in the press. A recent Harper's Index noted that 1 in 100 articles in last year's major U.S. news weeklies dealt with a Latino or Latinos. Two out of every 3 of those stories were about immigration.

Meanwhile, as if in some alternative parallel universe, we live in a country so profoundly and intimately shaped by Latino life at so many levels that we don't fully or consciously register it happening. And that's not just in border states such as California and Texas, where the influences are hard to miss. From children's TV (where the bilingual "Dora the Explorer" and "Go, Diego, Go!" are major fixtures in the preschool mind-set) to grocery stores in Michigan (where black beans have replaced white beans as that state's most popular legume, according to Hector Tobar's "Translation Nation") to movie theaters, concert halls and city halls, changes are at once substantive, subtle and fundamental.

A generation ago, it would have been far more noteworthy than it is now to have a Latino U.S. Attorney General (Alberto Gonzalez) or a mayor of Los Angeles (Antonio Villaraigosa) in office. Similarly, the flap over Arnold Schwarzenegger's remark about "hot" California Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia (she's of Puerto Rican descent) would have echoed louder and longer than it has. The real chumps here weren't the governor or Garcia, who cheerfully labeled herself "hot-blooded," but rather the inept dirty tricksters in the Phil Angelides campaign who got caught scrounging around in Schwarzenegger computers for hot goods. Playing this kind of low-rent ethnic politics, in a state with a huge and increasingly sophisticated Latino electorate, is a fool's game in 2006. It's a different, more textured and demanding world.

That's just as true in the arts as in society at large. Latino musicians, writers, filmmakers, visual artists and choreographers have built an indisputable record of achievement and influence. From Carlos Santana to Christina Aguilera to Los Lonely Boys, Latin music has strengthened its hold as a major force, certified by its own awards ceremonies. The seventh annual Latin Grammy Awards show will be broadcast Nov. 2 from New York. A well-documented boom in Latino literature, famously fueled by "One Hundred Years of Solitude" author Gabriel Garcia Márquez's 1982 Nobel Prize, has helped bring mainstream attention to scores of writers, from Oscar Hijuelos to Guillermo Gómez-Peña to Isabel Allende, over the past quarter century. Fat new anthologies and encyclopedias devoted to new Latino writing and writers appear all the time. Some of the most vivid independent films of the past five years -- "Amores Perros," "Y Tu Mamá También," "Maria Full of Grace," "Quinceañera" -- have opened moviegoers' eyes to a range of Latino visions.

At the same time, and perhaps inevitably, the attention has created its own kind of distortions and blurring of effects. Even as Latino artists and art figure more prominently in the nation's cultural life, questions about intentions, audience, aesthetics and sensibility raise new challenges. To what degree does one Latino artist intrinsically share turf with another? Are there certain attributes or qualities that might be ascribed to a Latino sensibility? How do those values change from first- to second- or third-generation residents? Does it make sense, in a cultural patchwork that includes artists of Mexican, Peruvian, Salvadoran, Cuban and multiple other heritages, to assume or try to stake out an aesthetic common ground? Even the terminology -- "Latino," "Hispanic," "Chicano" -- provokes internal controversy and debate.
In his 2004 book, "Latino and Latina Writers," editor Alan West-Duran identified one through line -- "a willingness to explore and explicitly examine cross-cultural encounters." Call it border-think, an awareness of the geographical and metaphorical barriers of language and culture.

But no sooner does some thesis gain currency than the danger of it hardening into confining stereotype or proscriptive dogma lurks. Eduardo Machado, the Cuban American playwright and artistic director of New York's Intar theater company, put it this way in an interview with the New York Times: "When they did 'Raisin in the Sun' decades ago, it was considered a black play, but now it's just an American play." That, said Machado, was his aspiration for Latino playwrights: "To be part of this culture without being in the corner."

One of the things that makes "Quinceañera" such a winning film is its easy, unforced mingling of the culturally specific and the universal. A story about a Mexican American teenager's unplanned and somewhat magical-realist pregnancy slowly blooms from domestic drama to a meditation on the meaning of family, as the heroine (Emily Rios) knits new ties with an emotionally imploded gay cousin (Jesse Garcia) and their seraphic great-great uncle (Chalo González). The dialogue, details, pacing and performances feel so faithful to the integrity and subtle dislocations of Mexican American life in Los Angeles that "Quinceañera" both roots the viewer in that world and finds an authentic reverberation. The film is so true to its corner, in Machado's phrase, that the corner fills the room.

The wildly ambitious "Chicano" show at the de Young Museum (through Oct. 22), by contrast, aims to take the room, the house and the city by storm. There's something both wonderful and wearying about this three-part extravaganza, which supplements intensely colorful paintings from the collection of Cheech Marin with an exhibition of political posters and prints as well as a sprawling multimedia display of everything from food and photo albums to music, low riders and TV sitcom star George Lopez. This "Chicano Now: American Expressions" portion of the show may offer a certain broad-canvas appeal to a wide audience. But I wish the show's organizers (and corporate sponsor Target) had let the art speak for itself and not feel it had to be contextualized by this walk-through diorama of Latino life. As even a casual stroll through the show's painting galleries quickly proves, the invention, bristling energy, savagery, comic brio and sheer whirling drive of these "Chicano Visions" will resist any sweeping categorical perspective.

Painting after painting makes you look and look again without instructing you what to think or how to feel about it. Carlos Almaraz turns car crashes into gaudily combustive bursts of color. David Botello backs the posed figures in "Wedding Photos -- Hollenbeck Park" with a stretch of elevated freeway. Frank Romero sets a ghoulish make-out scene in the backseat of a comically foreshortened Dodge.

You could read these and other paintings in the show, I suppose, as some kind of key to the Latino automobile culture. Or you could go along for the ride and not try to plot out the route or destination in advance. By 2040, the statisticians say, half the population of California will be Latino. The view, between now and then, is sure to hold our attention.

E-mail Steven Winn at swinn@sfchronicle.com.


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©2006 San Francisco Chronicle

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