Berman (R- Tyler) wants to cut off state benefits (like education & health care) to the children of undocumented immigrants who are born in Texas. He's among other right-wing folks that want the 14th Amendment re-interpreted. -Angela

Berman in the middle of controversial voting, immigration proposals
Retired Army officer doesn't shy away from a good fight

By By Laylan Copelin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Rep. Leo Berman, a retired U.S. Army field artillery officer, is trained for a good, loud fight.

He'll probably get several. As the new chairman of the House Elections Committee, the Tyler Republican will be heard on issues ranging from voter fraud to requiring photo IDs of voters to moving Texas' primaries to February and campaign finance and ethics.

Outside his committee duties, Berman already has led on getting elderly and disabled Texans their share of school property tax cuts and hopes to steer Texas into federal court in a constitutional fight over state benefits for the children of illegal immigrants born here.

Berman spent 22 years in the Army, but the political bug bit after spending four of those years as a military liaison to Congress. When he retired, he returned to Texas. He lost a close race for Congress in 1978 to U.S. Rep. Martin Frost, a prominent Democrat, before serving as mayor pro tem of Arlington. After moving to Tyler, Berman was elected to the Legislature in 1998.

A Brooklyn native, Berman is half of the Texas House's New York City Caucus, as he and the other half, Austin's Elliott Naishtat, like to joke.

Berman says he's about as conservative as Naishtat is liberal. But the two joined together last year — and again this month — to champion legislation giving elderly and disabled Texans the same property tax cuts granted to other Texans last year. The constitutional proposition concerning that oversight should go to the voters in May.

Berman said his proposal to move Texas' primaries from March to February might draw the most bipartisan support. The move is aimed at giving Texas more clout in the presidential election.

"Why should a state like New Hampshire or Iowa preclude Texas voters from having a bigger say in their party's nominee?" Berman asks.

The chairman favors a February primary even in non-presidential years to avoid confusing voters. He dismisses the notion that campaigning over the year-end holidays — and necessarily making for a shorter primary campaign — is a problem.

Berman also is concerned about voter fraud and the reliability of electronic voting machines.

His committee already has heard legislation to add a paper trail to the voting machines, a prospect Berman deems too expensive (unless Congress wants to pay for it) and is not the best solution to the human errors involved in programming and managing the machines.

"You probably shouldn't be buying something and attaching it to a machine no one has confidence in," he said.

Without action by Congress, Berman said, the Legislature should study the issue between now and the 2009 legislative session.

That makes Berman's colleague on the committee, Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, wince.

Burnam, who favors going back to paper ballots immediately, asks, "What price is democracy?"

The two also differ on the prospect of voter fraud in Texas.

Berman favors legislation requiring voters to produce photo identification at the polls.

"We don't know if illegal aliens are voting in Texas or not," Berman said. "But if we do nothing, we encourage fraud."

Burnam said there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud and that the push for photo identification is a ploy to intimidate minority voters — as a national study by Rutgers and Ohio State university scholars suggested in research released last month.

"The problem is how my voters get turned away because their skin is too dark," said Burnam, who represents a district with a majority of minorities.

Berman dismissed the intimidation argument, saying photo identification is routinely required in daily life.

Although some lawmakers will be offering legislation to limit campaign donations by wealthy donors to $100,000 per election cycle, Berman said he's heard no complaints from his constituents or most members.

On the issue of legislative conduct, Berman said it "smells" that some lawmakers are using campaign donations to buy Austin homes in their spouses names. (Berman parks his motor home at Camp Mabry — a perk of being retired military — and said he wouldn't dream of using campaign money to buy his motor home.)

His most contentious issue, however, is likely to be Berman's quest to cut off state benefits to the children of illegal immigrants who are born in Texas.

The U.S. Supreme Court already has ruled that the children are entitled education and health care.

"We're giving the children U.S. citizenship while (their parents) are breaking immigration law," Berman complained.

He admits he only has a 50-50 chance of passing legislation curbing state benefits and he know the law immediately would be challenged in federal court.

"That's exactly what we want!" Berman said.

He argues that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was meant to apply only to the children of freed slaves. The more conservative U.S. Supreme Court, he believes, might reconsider the matter.

"If they go back and look at the law and the congressional record," Berman said, "it doesn't apply to foreigners."

lcopelin@statesman.com

Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/02/28/28berman.html

Labels: immigration, Texas legislature

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:09 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Check out the executive summary of the Forum on Educational Accountability. They write: "The Forum on Educational Accountability (FEA) is a working group of some of the national education, civil rights, religious, disability and civic organizations that have endorsed the Joint Organizational Statement on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. The FEA has prepared the following
report to promote the ideas in the Joint Statement, to provide concrete policy recommendations for
implementing the principles of the Joint Statement, and to contribute to discussions about the
reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The Joint Statement itself has been
signed by more than 100 national organizations."

Here are some of their recommendations:

Recommended chAngeS in nclb
Progress Measurement
1. Replace the law’s arbitrary proficiency targets with ambitious achievement targets based on rates of
success actually achieved by the most effective public schools.
2. Allow states to measure progress by using students’ growth in achievement as well as their perfor-
mance in relation to pre-determined levels of academic proficiency.
3. Ensure that states and school districts regularly report to the government and the public their prog-
ress in implementing systemic changes to enhance educator, family, and community capacity to
improve student learning.
21Redefining Accountability: improving Student learning by building capacity
22 forum on educational Accountability february 2007
4. Provide a comprehensive picture of students’ and schools’ performance by moving from an
overwhelming reliance on standardized tests to using multiple indicators of student achieve-
ment in addition to these tests.
5. Fund research and development of more effective accountability systems that better meet the
goal of high academic achievement for all children.
Assessments
6. Help states develop assessment systems that include district and school-based measures in
order to provide better, more timely information about student learning.
7. Strengthen enforcement of NCLB provisions requiring that assessments must:
• Be aligned with state content and achievement standards;
• Be used for purposes for which they are valid and reliable;
• Be consistent with nationally recognized professional and technical standards;
• Be of adequate technical quality for each purpose required under the Act;
• Provide multiple, up-to-date measures of student performance including measures that
assess higher order thinking skills and understanding; and
• Provide useful diagnostic information to improve teaching and learning.
8. Decrease the testing burden on states, schools and districts by allowing states to assess stu-
dents annually in selected grades in elementary, middle schools, and high schools.
Building Capacity
9. Ensure changes in teacher and administrator preparation and continuing professional devel-
opment that research evidence and experience indicate improve educational quality and stu-
dent achievement.
10. Enhance state and local capacity to effectively implement the comprehensive changes
required to increase the knowledge and skills of administrators, teachers, families, and com-
munities to support high student achievement.
Sanctions
11. Ensure that improvement plans are allowed sufficient time to take hold before applying sanc-
tions; sanctions should not be applied if they undermine existing effective reform efforts.
12. Replace sanctions that do not have a consistent record of success with interventions that
enable schools to make changes that result in improved student achievement.
Funding
13. Raise authorized levels of NCLB funding to cover a substantial percentage of the costs that states and
districts will incur to carry out these recommendations, and fully fund the law at those levels without
reducing expenditures for other education programs.
14. Fully fund Title I to ensure that 100 percent of eligible children are served.

-Angela

Labels: accountability, assessment, NCLB

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:20 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Study says students are learning less
By Mitchell Landsberg
Times Staff Writer

7:52 PM PST, February 22, 2007

U.S. high school students are taking tougher classes, receiving better grades and, apparently, learning less than their counterparts of 15 years ago.

Those were the discouraging implications of two reports issued Thursday by the federal Department of Education, assessing the performance of students in both public and private schools. Together, the reports raised sobering questions about the past two decades of educational reform, including whether the movement to raise school standards has amounted to much more than window dressing.

"I think we're sleeping through a crisis," said David Driscoll, the Massachusetts commissioner of education, during a Washington news conference convened by the Department of Education. He called the study results "stunning."

Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, said he found the results "dismal." After years of reforms aimed primarily at elementary schools, Fuller said the studies "certainly support shining the spotlight on the high school as a priority for reform efforts."

The reports summarized two major government efforts to measure the performance of high school seniors as part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. One was a standardized test of 12th graders conducted in 2005. The other was an analysis of the transcripts of students who graduated from high school that year.

The transcript study showed that, compared to students in similar studies going back to 1990, the 2005 graduates had racked up more high school credits, had taken more college preparatory classes and had strikingly higher grade point averages. The average GPA rose from 2.68 in 1990 to 2.98 -- close to a solid B -- in 2005.

That was the good news -- or so it seemed. But the standardized test results showed that 12th grade reading scores have generally been dropping since 1992, casting doubt on what students are learning in those college prep classes.

Math scores posed a different sort of mystery, because the Department of Education switched to a new test in 2005 that wasn't directly comparable to those used before. Still, the results of the new test didn't inspire confidence: Fewer than one-quarter of the 12th graders tested scored in the "proficient" range.

The reports also showed that the gap separating white and black, and white and Hispanic students, has barely budged since the early 1990s. And while the results were not broken down by state, a broad regional breakdown showed that the West and Southeast lagged well behind the Midwest and, to a lesser extent, the Northeast.

David Gordon, the Sacramento County, Calif., superintendent of schools and a participant in the Department of Education news conference Thursday, said he found it especially disturbing that the studies focused on "our best students," those who had made it to 12th grade or who had graduated.

"It's clear to me from these data that for all of our talk of the achievement gap among subgroups of students, a larger problem may be an instructional gap or a rigor gap, which effects not just some but most of our students," Gordon said.

The reading and math test was given to 21,000 high school seniors at 900 U.S. schools, including 200 private schools. The transcript study was based on 26,000 transcripts from 720 schools, 80 of them private. The reports did not give separate results for public vs. private schools.

Policy analysts nationwide said the studies were gloomy news for the American economy, since the country's educational system already measured poorly in international comparisons.

"What we see out of these results is a very disturbing picture of the knowledge and skills of the young people about to go into college and the workforce," said Daria Hall, assistant director of the Education Trust, a Washington-based nonprofit dedicated to improving education especially for poor and minority students.

Among other things, Hall said the transcript study provided clear evidence of grade inflation, as well as "course inflation" -- offering high-level courses that have "the right names" but a dumbed-down curriculum.

"What it suggests is that we are telling students that they're being successful in these courses when, in fact, we're not teaching them any more than they were learning in the past," she said. "So we are, in effect, lying to these students."

Although the reports came out five years after passage of President Bush's signature education reform initiative, No Child Left Behind, Hall and others said it would be unfair to blame that program for the students' poor showing. They were already in high school when No Child Left Behind was enacted, and it is primarily aimed at elementary and middle schools.

Driscoll recalled an earlier president's contribution to education reform -- the Nation at Risk report that seemed to galvanize the educational establishment when it was issued by President Reagan in 1983.

"That was a shocker," said Driscoll. "But here we are, 25 years later (and) ... we've just been ignoring what it's going to take to really change the system."


Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

Labels: high school, NCLB

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:23 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Friday, February 23, 2007
McClatchy Special Report

US Economy Leaving Record Numbers in Severe Poverty
by Tony Pugh

The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen.
A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 - half the federal poverty line - was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year.
The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That's 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period. McClatchy's review also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn't confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty - the highest rate since at least 1975.

The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily over the last three decades. But since 2000, the number of severely poor has grown "more than any other segment of the population," according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

"That was the exact opposite of what we anticipated when we began," said Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, who co-authored the study. "We're not seeing as much moderate poverty as a proportion of the population. What we're seeing is a dramatic growth of severe poverty."

The growth spurt, which leveled off in 2005, in part reflects how hard it is for low-skilled workers to earn their way out of poverty in an unstable job market that favors skilled and educated workers. It also suggests that social programs aren't as effective as they once were at catching those who fall into economic despair.

About one in three severely poor people are under age 17, and nearly two out of three are female. Female-headed families with children account for a large share of the severely poor.

Nearly two out of three people (10.3 million) in severe poverty are white, but blacks (4.3 million) and Hispanics of any race (3.7 million) make up disproportionate shares. Blacks are nearly three times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be in deep poverty, while Hispanics are roughly twice as likely.

Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, has a higher concentration of severely poor people - 10.8 percent in 2005 - than any of the 50 states, topping even hurricane-ravaged Mississippi and Louisiana, with 9.3 percent and 8.3 percent, respectively. Nearly six of 10 poor District residents are in extreme poverty.

'I DON'T ASK FOR NOTHING'

A few miles from the Capitol Building, 60-year-old John Treece pondered his life in deep poverty as he left a local food pantry with two bags of free groceries.

Plagued by arthritis, back problems and myriad ailments from years of manual labor, Treece has been unable to work full time for 15 years. He's tried unsuccessfully to get benefits from the Social Security Administration, which he said disputes his injuries and work history.

In 2006, an extremely poor individual earned less than $5,244 a year, according to federal poverty guidelines. Treece said he earned about that much in 2006 doing odd jobs.

Wearing shoes with holes, a tattered plaid jacket and a battered baseball cap, Treece lives hand-to-mouth in a $450-a-month room in a nondescript boarding house in a high-crime neighborhood. Thanks to food stamps, the food pantry and help from relatives, Treece said he never goes hungry. But toothpaste, soap, toilet paper and other items that require cash are tougher to come by.

"Sometimes it makes you want to do the wrong thing, you know," Treece said, referring to crime. "But I ain't a kid no more. I can't do no time. At this point, I ain't got a lotta years left."

Treece remains positive and humble despite his circumstances.

"I don't ask for nothing," he said. "I just thank the Lord for this day and ask that tomorrow be just as blessed."
Like Treece, many who did physical labor during their peak earning years have watched their job prospects dim as their bodies gave out.

David Jones, the president of the Community Service Society of New York City, an advocacy group for the poor, testified before the House Ways and Means Committee last month that he was shocked to discover how pervasive the problem was.
"You have this whole cohort of, particularly African-Americans of limited skills, men, who can't participate in the workforce because they don't have skills to do anything but heavy labor," he said.

'A PERMANENT UNDERCLASS'
Severe poverty is worst near the Mexican border and in some areas of the South, where 6.5 million severely poor residents are struggling to find work as manufacturing jobs in the textile, apparel and furniture-making industries disappear. The Midwestern Rust Belt and areas of the Northeast also have been hard hit as economic restructuring and foreign competition have forced numerous plant closings.

At the same time, low-skilled immigrants with impoverished family members are increasingly drawn to the South and Midwest to work in the meatpacking, food processing and agricultural industries.

These and other factors such as increased fluctuations in family incomes and illegal immigration have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty - the highest rate in at least 32 years.

"What appears to be taking place is that, over the long term, you have a significant permanent underclass that is not being impacted by anti-poverty policies," said Michael Tanner, the director of Health and Welfare Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Arloc Sherman, a senior researcher at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, disagreed. "It doesn't look like a growing permanent underclass," said Sherman, whose organization has chronicled the growth of deep poverty. "What you see in the data are more and more single moms with children who lose their jobs and who aren't being caught by a safety net anymore."

About 1.1 million such families account for roughly 2.1 million deeply poor children, Sherman said.

After fleeing an abusive marriage in 2002, 42-year-old Marjorie Sant moved with her three children from Arkansas to a seedy boarding house in Raleigh, N.C., where the four shared one bedroom. For most of 2005, they lived off food stamps and the $300 a month in Social Security Disability Income for her son with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Teachers offered clothes to Sant's children. Saturdays meant lunch at the Salvation Army.

"To depend on other people to feed and clothe your kids is horrible," Sant said. "I found myself in a hole and didn't know how to get out."
In the summer of 2005, social workers warned that she'd lose her children if her home situation didn't change. Sant then brought her two youngest children to a temporary housing program at the Raleigh Rescue Mission while her oldest son moved to California to live with an adult daughter from a previous marriage.

So for 10 months, Sant learned basic office skills. She now lives in a rented house, works two jobs and earns about $20,400 a year

Sant is proud of where she is, but she knows that "if something went wrong, I could well be back to where I was."

'I'M GETTING NOWHERE FAST'

As more poor Americans sink into severe poverty, more individuals and families living within $8,000 above or below the poverty line also have seen their incomes decline. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University attributes this to what he calls a "sinkhole effect" on income.

"Just as a sinkhole causes everything above it to collapse downward, families and individuals in the middle and upper classes appear to be migrating to lower-income tiers that bring them closer to the poverty threshold," Woolf wrote in the study.
Before Hurricane Katrina, Rene Winn of Biloxi, Miss., earned $28,000 a year as an administrator for the Boys and Girls Club. But for 11 months in 2006, she couldn't find steady work and wouldn't take a fast-food job. As her opportunities dwindled, Winn's frustration grew.

"Some days I feel like the world is mine and I can create my own destiny," she said. "Other days I feel a desperate feeling. Like I gotta' hurry up. Like my career is at a stop. Like I'm getting nowhere fast. And that's not me because I've always been a positive person."

After relocating to New Jersey for 10 months after the storm, Winn returned to Biloxi in September because of medical and emotional problems with her son. She and her two youngest children moved into her sister's home along with her mother, who has Alzheimer's. With her sister, brother-in-law and their two children, eight people now share a three-bedroom home.
Winn said she recently took a job as a technician at the state health department. The hourly job pays $16,120 a year. That's enough to bring her out of severe poverty and just $122 shy of the $16,242 needed for a single mother with two children to escape poverty altogether under current federal guidelines.

Winn eventually wants to transfer to a higher-paying job, but she's thankful for her current position.

"I'm very independent and used to taking care of my own, so I don't like the fact that I have to depend on the state. I want to be able to do it myself."

The Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation shows that, in a given month, only 10 percent of severely poor Americans received Temporary Assistance for Needy Families in 2003 - the latest year available - and that only 36 percent received food stamps.

Many could have exhausted their eligibility for welfare or decided that the new program requirements were too onerous. But the low participation rates are troubling because the worst byproducts of poverty, such as higher crime and violence rates and poor health, nutrition and educational outcomes, are worse for those in deep poverty.

Over the last two decades, America has had the highest or near-highest poverty rates for children, individual adults and families among 31 developed countries, according to the Luxembourg Income Study, a 23-year project that compares poverty and income data from 31 industrial nations.

"It's shameful," said Timothy Smeeding, the former director of the study and the current head of the Center for Policy Research at Syracuse University. "We've been the worst performer every year since we've been doing this study."
With the exception of Mexico and Russia, the U.S. devotes the smallest portion of its gross domestic product to federal anti-poverty programs, and those programs are among the least effective at reducing poverty, the study found. Again, only Russia and Mexico do worse jobs.

One in three Americans will experience a full year of extreme poverty at some point in his or her adult life, according to long-term research by Mark Rank, a professor of social welfare at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

An estimated 58 percent of Americans between the ages of 20 and 75 will spend at least a year in poverty, Rank said. Two of three will use a public assistance program between ages 20 and 65, and 40 percent will do so for five years or more.
These estimates apply only to non-immigrants. If illegal immigrants were factored in, the numbers would be worse, Rank said.

"It would appear that for most Americans the question is no longer if, but rather when, they will experience poverty. In short, poverty has become a routine and unfortunate part of the American life course," Rank wrote in a recent study. "Whether these patterns will continue throughout the first decade of 2000 and beyond is difficult to say ... but there is little reason to think that this trend will reverse itself any time soon."

'SOMETHING REAL AND TROUBLING'

Most researchers and economists say federal poverty estimates are a poor tool to gauge the complexity of poverty. The numbers don't factor in assistance from government anti-poverty programs, such as food stamps, housing subsidies and the Earned Income Tax Credit, all of which increase incomes and help pull people out of poverty.

But federal poverty measures also exclude work-related expenses and necessities such as day care, transportation, housing and health care costs, which eat up large portions of disposable income, particularly for low-income families.

Alternative poverty measures that account for these shortcomings typically inflate or deflate official poverty statistics. But many of those alternative measures show the same kind of long-term trends as the official poverty data.

Robert Rector, a senior researcher with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, questioned the growth of severe poverty, saying that census data become less accurate farther down the income ladder. He said many poor people, particularly single mothers with boyfriends, underreport their income by not including cash gifts and loans. Rector said he's seen no data that suggest increasing deprivation among the very poor.

Arloc Sherman of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities argues that the growing number of severely poor is an indisputable fact.

"When we check against more complete government survey data and administrative records from the benefit programs themselves, they confirm that this trend is real," Sherman said. He added that even among the poor, severely poor people have a much tougher time paying their bills. "That's another sign to me that we're seeing something real and troubling," Sherman said.

McClatchy correspondent Barbara Barrett contributed to this report.

BY THE NUMBERS

States with the most people in severe poverty:
California - 1.9 million
Texas - 1.6 million
New York - 1.2 million
Florida - 943,670
Illinois - 681,786
Ohio - 657,415
Pennsylvania - 618,229
Michigan - 576,428
Georgia - 562,014
North Carolina - 523,511
Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Labels: poverty

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:47 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Tue, Feb. 20, 2007
Critics: Testing is going too far

By KATHERINE CROMER BROCK
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

Testing students to measure their progress is necessary, Birdville schools Superintendent Stephen Waddell says.

But the number of state and federally required tests that will be given to students this year and the amount of time it takes to prepare for and administer those tests have gotten out of hand, according to Waddell and other educators.

"We've gotten to a point where if a little bit is good, a lot more ought to be better," Waddell said.

Critics also say that too much emphasis is being placed on test results, which can determine teacher pay and even the amount of money the state sends to school districts.

"This system was to measure academic performance," said Larry Comer, spokesman for the Association of Texas Professional Educators. "Now it's being used for everything. It's something politicians can grab onto. Everybody agrees that the system is broken; we just have to figure out how to fix it."

This year's Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills begins today with reading and writing tests for students in the third, fourth, fifth, seventh, ninth and 10th grades. In addition, exit-level English language arts tests will be given; students must pass them to graduate. Testing will continue through the end of the school year, with retests well into July. Some tests take only a few hours. Others, like today's high school English language arts tests, are untimed, and some students may work well into the night.

During the 2002-03 school year, school districts were responsible for giving 110 kinds of tests, Fort Worth schools Superintendent Melody Johnson said.

That number has steadily increased, she said. This year, 203 kinds of exams will be given to students, including the TAKS in English and in Spanish and a variety of forms for bilingual and special-education students.

The assessment program is a byproduct of the accountability systems set up by the state and federal governments. They each require different tests in different subjects.

"Everybody embraces accountability and acknowledges the fact that you have to have good information and data to measure if students are learning," Johnson said.

But the current programs put tremendous pressure on educators to focus more on scores than on curriculum.

"There are a lot of diversions from the teaching and learning process on the way to the test that are detrimental," Johnson said.

Muffet Livaudais, communications director of the student assessment division of the Texas Education Agency, said her office understands the frustration the system creates.

"We don't have a lot of choice," she said. "By law, our job is to implement the testing program that we are assigned."

Waddell said many superintendents are concerned about the number of tests that some students have to take.

For example, a fifth-grade bilingual elementary student could take up to nine tests between now and the end of the year, Waddell said. That number could include retests, likely for a bilingual student.

"We have to rethink what we're trying to accomplish with these tests," Waddell said. "The volume has gotten carried away."

Last year, 25,941 pounds of testing materials -- close to 13 tons -- were delivered to warehouses in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district. And as more tests, such as state end-of-course examinations, are likely to be added, that amount could grow.

Every new exam must be tried out on students to assess the fairness of the questions. And with each new test, teachers will give more practice tests to ensure that students are hitting the benchmarks that will be measured.

Comer said he has heard anecdotes from across the state about students who are punished for poor TAKS performance and about beleaguered teachers losing the ability to provide creative and inspiring instruction:

In El Paso, a reading specialist was pulled from her classes to provide math tutoring for struggling fifth-graders, Comer said.

In Houston, poor reading performance by third-graders at an inner-city school resulted in all students, including kindergartners, being deprived of recess.

"Everyone feels the pressure," Comer said. "Teachers have all this knowledge they want to share. But if it's not tested, it's not taught."

The solution is to convert to one streamlined system that measures "value added," or the progress that children make from year to year, Johnson said.

Wally Carter, director of institutional research and testing for the Arlington school district, agrees that a value-added system would bring about the changes in public education that legislators are looking for.

"Somehow, they think that setting the standards high is what's really going to reform schools and reform teaching," Carter said. "There should be other things in place that have much more to do with the actual leadership and management of teaching."

And while change does not appear to be on the horizon, Waddell hopes that "common sense" will eventually prevail.

"A test has never taught anybody anything. It's designed to figure out what people have learned," Waddell said. "The end result is, we're doing less teaching and more testing."

TAKS Q&A

Q: What is the Student Success Initiative?

A: Enacted in 1999, the SSI applies to grade three reading and grade five reading and math. Students can advance to the next grade level only by passing those tests or by unanimous decision of their grade placement committee. Next year, eighth-graders must pass the math and reading tests to advance. The SSI's goal is to ensure that all students receive the instruction and support they need to succeed in reading and mathematics.

Q: Are charter schools required to give state assessments?

A: Yes, just like all public schools.

Q: Can students use highlighters during the test?

A: Students in grades four through 10 and exit-level may use highlighters in the test booklets. Third-graders may not use highlighters, crayons or colored pencils.

Q: Can students use cellphones during the test?

A: Use of cellphones and other communications devices during testing is not permitted.

Q: What if students become ill during the test?

A: If they feel better later in the day and haven't discussed the test with anyone, they may complete the test. They will not be allowed to take the makeup test because they will have seen the test, and they may not receive a score for the part they completed.

Q: What about students suspended from school on the test day?

A: Students can take the test on the makeup day.

SOURCE: Texas Education Agency

IN THE KNOW

TAKS testing calendar

Here are some major testing dates for the rest of the school year. This list does not include assessments for bilingual or special-education students.

Today: Grade three reading, grade four writing, grade five reading, grade seven writing, grade nine reading, grade 10 English language arts, exit-level English language arts

Wednesday: Exit-level math retest

Thursday: Grade 10 English language arts makeup, exit-level science retest

Friday: Exit-level social studies retest

April 3: Grade five math

April 17: Grades three-four math, grades six-eight math, grade 10 math

April 18: Grade four reading, grades six-eight reading, exit-level math, grade three reading retest, grade five reading retest, exit-level math retest

April 19: Grade five science, grade eight science, grade nine math, grade 10 science, exit-level science

April 20: Grade eight social studies, grade 10 social studies, exit-level social studies

May 15: Grade five math retest

June 26: Grade five math retest

June 27: Grade three reading retest, grade five reading retest

July 10: Exit-level English language arts retest

July 11: Exit-level math retest

July 12: Exit-level science retest

July 13: Exit-level social studies retest

SOURCE: Texas Education Agency

Katherine Cromer Brock, 817-685-3813 kcromer@star-telegram.com

© 2007 Star-Telegram and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.dfw.com

Labels: testing

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 6:16 PM 0 comments Links to this post

The move against TAKS is gaining strength. The move toward end of course exams is coming. -Angela

As TAKS begins, concerns increase
Many parents and teachers doubt value of state's achievement test, according to survey.

By Laura Heinauer
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, February 19, 2007

As TAKS season begins this week, opposition to the state's high-stakes test from parents, teachers and lawmakers is mounting.

Parents have become more vocal about eliminating the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, saying that their children face considerable stress and that teacher creativity is stifled by too much testing.

Less than 15 percent of Texas teachers and 30 percent of parents think the TAKS accurately measures student learning or increases the quality of the educational system, according to a report released in 2006 by University of Texas research associate Edward Fuller.

The study, which involved a phone survey of 1,000 randomly selected teachers and parents, was paid for by the Association of Texas Professional Educators and shows "fairly negative" views about the test, Fuller said. The survey has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

This year's TAKS, administered in Texas since 2003, will begin Tuesday.

"It's not that they don't want any testing; they want this information, but they want it at the beginning of the year to use as a diagnostic tool," Fuller said. "What really came across is that people are starting to think, maybe the pendulum has just swung too far.

"And it has resulted in a strong feeling that it's just not having a positive effect on the Texas educational system," Fuller said.

Some politicians seem to have taken note.

In November, high-stakes testing gained a new level of political prominence when it became a potent issue in several gubernatorial races across the country, including in Florida, Ohio and Texas.

With President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act up for reauthorization this year, the debate has continued.

In Texas, where accountability standards are tougher than those required by No Child Left Behind, the backlash is being reflected by state lawmakers this legislative session.

Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, is planning to file a bill that would replace the TAKS with end-of-course exams, which she says would allow more in-depth exploration of subject matter.

According to Fuller, about 45 percent of teachers and parents suggested replacing the TAKS with end-of-course exams.

"This type of assessment also provides teachers and districts a better understanding of a student's grasp of a particular subject, and it tests students' knowledge on a topic in close proximity to the time it was taught," Shapiro said.

For now, as schools continue to prepare for the upcoming TAKS, teachers are feeling the pressure.

Fuller said his study found that about 60 percent of teachers and parents feel that because of the TAKS, teachers are teaching students to become test-takers rather than critical thinkers.

A majority of those surveyed expected the dropout rate to increase because passing the test is a condition of graduation.

In Austin, TAKS troubles kept more than 400 seniors from donning a cap and gown in May; by August, about 320 still hadn't passed the exam.

Parents say they and their students are feeling the pressure as well, particularly as certain sanctions for not meeting standards are beginning to hit home.

Amarillo parent Chantelle Heiskell started the group Oppose TAKS — Organization of Proud Parents Opposing State Enforced TAKS — in 2005 after her daughter's first experience with the exams in fifth grade.

"You're watching your child deteriorate before your eyes," Heiskell said. "There's no possible way that their ability can be measured, because they're so worried they're going to fail. The shame that accompanies that is overwhelming, and it doesn't matter if you're a third-grader or 12th-grader."

Heiskell's group tries to step up the pressure on lawmakers by sending letters and organizing protests.

She said she's somewhat encouraged by the consideration of end-of-course exams.

"I don't know if that would be better or worse," Heiskell said. "Just to get TAKS out of the schools would be a step up, I would think."

At recent forums, Austin Superintendent Pat Forgione's proposed closure of Webb Middle School because of three consecutive years of low test scores drew an angry response from parents.

David Delgado, the school's PTA president, said the proposal has made students more anxious this spring.

"I'm pretty sure they are under pressure," said Delgado, whose son is a sixth-grader at Webb. "They're hearing: 'The school's going to close. The school's going to close.' "

Whether Texas will see any change is unclear, Fuller said.

He pointed to the outcry that erupted when Anderson High in Northwest Austin failed to meet federal standards.

Austin was able to successfully appeal the rating, but as standards continue to increase, Fuller said, reform will depend not just on the number of people who show opposition to high-stakes testing, but who.

"You look at the outcry from (the Anderson) community, and if that starts happening more and more, those are the parents that have the influence to make the political change," he said.

Test tips

Austin school district officials offered the following tips to help students prepare for test day.

•Children should get adequate rest the night before a test. The National Sleep Foundation (www.sleepfoundation.org) recommends nine to 11 hours of sleep.

•A healthy breakfast helps children focus. Breakfast is available at every Austin school.

•Attendance on test dates is critical. The Texas Education Agency requires a test participation rate of 95 percent for a school to be in compliance with Texas' accountability system.

TAKS testing set to start

The Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills is given each spring; this year's schedule continues through April. More dates are listed inside.

Tuesday

Grade 3 reading*

Grade 4 writing

Grade 5 reading*

Grade 7 writing

Grade 9 reading

Grade 10 English language arts

Grade 11 English language arts**

April testing dates

April 3

Grade 5 math*

April 17

Grades 3, 4, 6-8, 10 math

April 18

Grades 4, 6-8 reading

Grade 11 math**

April 19

Grade 5, 8, 10, science

Grade 11 science**

Grade 9 math

April 20

Grade 8, 10 social studies

Grade 11 social studies**

* Must pass to be promoted to the next grade

** Must pass to graduate

lheinauer@statesman.com; 445-3694



Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/02/19/19taks.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 2:22 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Mom helps us learn, too: Monique Taylor with her daughters Raynique Taylor (left) and Amira Patterson (right) at the Maurice J. Tobin School in Boston. Ms. Taylor stays involved in her daughters' education by keeping in close touch with their teachers.
MARY KNOX MERRILL – STAFF

February 15, 2007
Schools strive for 'no parent left behind'

Public schools facing pressure to perform are working to help parents be more engaged in their children's educations.

By Stacy A. Teicher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor<

With schools increasingly held accountable for the performance of every student, the demand to partner with parents has intensified. School plays and fundraisers supported by moms, dads, and grandparents are still staples of American public schools. But in the spirit of "it takes a village," families now might find such activities paired with a workshop on test-prep or a briefing on how to read state accountability reports.

When "no child left behind" became the mantra of federal education officials five years ago, it was touted as a way to empower parents to ensure their children received a good education. If schools are chronically failing academically, children can receive tutoring or transfer. But there have been barriers to parents taking advantage of those offers. In 2003-04, only 1 percent of eligible students chose to transfer, and only 19 percent participated in supplemental services such as tutoring, according to a recent report by Appleseed, a nonprofit organization in Washington.

Such escape valves give parents leverage, but it's perhaps more important for family members to be brought in as allies as local schools plan improvement, experts say.

"The revolution of [the No Child Left Behind Act] is it really institutionalized parent involvement in schools in a way that says, 'Your contribution is more than just sending your kids and baking cookies,' " says Edwin Darden, director of education policy at Appleseed. But, he adds, "there's a long way to go in terms of parents really understanding fully what the rights and the opportunities are of No Child Left Behind." The vision of the law, the group reported, "remains unfulfilled."

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) actually requires schools that need improvement to inform and involve parents in their strategies, but federal and state monitors haven't been paying much attention to that part of the law, says Anne Henderson, a senior fellow at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and coauthor of "Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family-School Partnerships."

Parents tend to have widely varied interactions with school staff, partly because of factors such as their socioeconomic background or ability to speak English, Ms. Henderson says. For white, middle-class parents, it's generally easier to walk into a school and advocate for a child to take particular classes to be on track for college. For low-income, less-educated families, "they don't know 'educationese'.... There are class and cultural differences that make it difficult for them to relate easily and comfortably to school staff – and school staff may look down on those families," she says.

When Baruti Kafele, principal of Newark Tech high school in New Jersey, hears educators lamenting that certain groups of parents just won't get involved, he tells them, "That is an excuse, and it is unacceptable."

The author of "A Black Parent's Handbook to Educating Your Children (Outside of the Classroom)," Mr. Kafele is often called upon to give talks to parents and educators. One creative solution he heard about at a school in Charlotte, N.C.: The staff took a bus tour of the communities the students live in, mostly impoverished areas where the teachers generally didn't venture. "Until you get into the community, you don't even know the child.... You can't fear the student, nor the community, nor the parent," he says.

Parent-teacher partnerships

Research shows that students do better when teachers and parents get past their misunderstandings and work together. Henderson mentions one study of schools with large portions of low-income students, for example, which found that when teachers did a three-part outreach – getting to know families, sending home assignments that parents could do with kids, and phoning routinely to talk about students' progress – there was a 40 to 50 percent faster rate of student improvement in reading and math.

Monique Taylor is the kind of parent who doesn't have much time to attend group meetings at school, but she appreciates that her daughter's teachers talk to her about any concerns.

"When she was kind of dropping in her reading, you know, they gave me a call, and between me and her teachers, we kept with her," she says as she's picking up her fifth-grade daughter, Amira Patterson, at the Maurice J. Tobin school in Boston. Soon mother and daughter will be attending orientation for a summer program that Amira's teachers suggested, to help the family plan for college.

Even this school, which tries hard to connect with parents, finds it difficult at times to keep them engaged in broader decisionmaking, say staff members who attend a monthly parent-council meeting at Tobin. About 15 parents usually attend, but on this frigid February night, the staff sat for nearly an hour munching on a dinner that's provided, waiting in vain for any parent to show up.

Approaches to involving parents at school

A state legislator in Texas, frustrated by what he sees as parents' lack of engagement, is taking a hard-nosed approach. Rep. Wayne Smith (R) proposed a law recently that would fine parents for failing to show up at a parent-teacher conference without a legitimate excuse. Schools would have to send a certified letter proposing three dates for the meeting.

Organizations like the National PTA, on the other hand, prefer the carrot to the stick. It has designated this week as its second annual Take Your Family to School Week. Hundreds of parent-teacher associations responded with ideas ranging from a parent-teacher basketball match to parents shadowing their children in abbreviated classes.

One bright note as awareness on this issue grows: The percent of parents who participated in a general school meeting rose from 75 percent in 1993 to 85 percent in 2003, according to a recent report by the national Center for Education Statistics.

By the time students are in high school, it's particularly difficult to get parents to participate, says Michelle Walden, president of the Parent Teacher Student Association at Central High School in Capitol Heights, Md., a participant in the "family" week.

"A lot of the parents just truly don't know" of the activities going on, she says. Sometimes they refuse to be on e-mail lists because they're unsure what kind of e-mails they'll receive, or their kids forget to give them announcements. "A lot of them are kind of like, 'I don't get involved,' unless it relates directly to them," she says.

When it comes to giving parents options if schools are failing, one key is for them to receive clearer and more timely information.

The Appleseed study looked at reports on school performance that go out to parents and found "some that were, frankly, truly awful," Mr. Darden says; they were packed with statistics and jargon. "A parent shouldn't have to pick up the phone to ask someone to decode [the report]," he says.

Work still to be done

Other reasons for low transfer and tutoring rates cited by various experts include a lack of better performing schools into which students could transfer; a strong desire to stay in neighborhood schools; and poor communication with parents about tutoring options.

The US Department of Education acknowledges the need for improvements in these areas. "There are about 1,800 schools today ... in this chronic underperformance category," said Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings in a conference call last month unveiling proposed changes to NCLB, which is up for reauthorization in Congress this year. "We all have to answer the question ... what are we gonna do about that? No Child Left Behind must be a promise that is lived out and met for these families."

Her proposals include providing more money for supplemental services for students who live in rural areas, have disabilities, or are learning English – three groups that have been particularly underserved. "Promise Scholarships" would give an additional $2,500 to $3,000 to eligible students to help them to transfer to better public schools (even outside their district) or private schools, or to receive intensive tutoring.

Federal education officials are planning to visit 14 districts to focus attention on parental involvement and supplemental services.

An independent bipartisan commission also released recommendations for improving NCLB this week. They include a requirement that public school districts create an office or designate a contact person for parents to talk with about options for their children.

Meanwhile, some grass-roots groups around the country have already been advocating for schools to do more to include parents in their decisionmaking. The Boston Parent Organizing Network, for example, lobbied for the district to hire a family coordinator for each school. Two years ago, 15 were hired, says assistant director Myriam Ortiz, but the group is still fighting for full implementation of the plan by bringing parents to every budget meeting to voice their demands.

www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2007 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

Labels: NCLB, Parent Involvement

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:07 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Waco Times-Tribune Writer, John Young’s editorial appearing in the Austin American-Statesman today, also appeared earlier this week in the Waco Times-Tribune. This piece responds to the Feb. 2, 2007
“Texans and Their Tests” report out of Inside Higher Education .

- Angela

COMMENTARY
Texas colleges made a deal with the devil
John Young, WACO TRIBUNE-HERALD

Saturday, February 17, 2007
Warning to students at Texas state colleges: You are about to get used again. Actually, your term for it might be more anatomical.

Students got used four years ago when, to reduce its share of college funding, the Legislature deregulated tuition. That pleased college administrators, who jacked up college costs.

It was another hurtful wrinkle by which lawmakers could balance the budget with "no new taxes." But a tax on students is what this was.

Now with a new Legislature, colleges stand to play the foils again. Students again stand to be on the receiving end of a royal scam.

Gov. Rick Perry proposes to spend $362 million more on higher education. As a key condition, Perry wants to implement standardized exit-level tests. Yes, standardized testing, that mesmerizing yo-yo of one-trick education reformers.

He wants to tie funding to test scores and graduation rates. He also proposes an initiative to move students through college faster.

Not surprisingly, the idea of new dollars tweaks college administrators' salivary glands. New tests? Where do we sign? We'll just make students pay for them, $25 a pop.

While administrators appear onboard, tongues wagging, those in college faculties have raised an alarm.

Texas Faculty Association president Charles Zucker told Inside Higher Ed, "We've had massive amounts of teaching to the test (in public schools).. . . Now there's a consensus that that has failed, the governor wants to institute the same plan for higher education."

His use of "consensus" is open to debate. If education's quest is to roll out drones who, when drilled under threat of retention, will do certain state-assigned tasks, maybe "accountability" is a success. But we all thought higher education was, well, higher.

As proposed, the plan would not require college students to pass the state exams to graduate. A no-stakes test. So, no over-emphasis, right?

Listen, folks. If money is attached, those tests will be high-stakes faster than Deutsche Bank can convert rubles to yen.

What kinds of tests are we talking about?

Well, let's ask Education Testing Service. It has exit-level tests for college seniors in several disciplines. But a host of disciplines don't have anything. Sounds like new business for what surely will leap-frog cellular phones as the nation's largest growth industry.

This should trouble just about anyone who isn't on the cash end of the transaction.

Standardized testing has become a dead weight on our nation's schools with far less benefit per time and dollars spent than anyone wants to acknowledge.

With Texas leading the way, states have shown they can increase test scores, but not necessarily produce thinkers or innovators.

Speaking to Inside Higher Ed, Bob Schaefer of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing warned that with state-imposed testing and economic incentives attached, colleges would "narrow their curriculum to test preparation for the exit exam."

"Test scores may soar, but education quality will be undermined."

The result, said Schaefer, would be "another phony 'Texas miracle.' "

One of two things will happen under this proposal: (1) Time and money will be spent on tests that students know don't matter but which the state says are important in "rating colleges." (2) The state would impress on colleges how important the tests are, and more and more classroom content would be dictated by some far-off test maker.

Presto. You have homogenization and standardization of a once-vibrant creature, American higher education, long the envy of the world.

jyoung@wacotrib.com


Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/02/17/17young_edit.html

Labels: college testing

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:45 AM 0 comments Links to this post

From The Sunday Times / February 11, 2007
A lesson for all media groups
Dominic Rushe in Texas on how Pearson is making a mint in education

LIKE many students, Alfred Mora had found concentrating in class difficult and the 17-year-old was in danger of failing history and not graduating. “Sometimes there just seemed to be too much going on,” he said.
But Mora didn’t seem to be having trouble finding his focus sitting at a computer terminal in a quiet classroom at Austin High School in Texas last week. Clicking through a series of questions about the first world war, he said: “I find it a lot easier to concentrate in here. It’s explained in a different way and I can go at my own speed.”
Mora is one of half a dozen students taking what the school calls Delta, and the scheme is making millions for the British media and publishing group Pearson. With Delta, lessons are taught online; pupils can flick back and forth to make sure they understand what they are being taught. They can catch up at their own pace and if they have any questions, there is a teacher on hand to help.
Like Mora, Mayra Barrios, 17, often finds classes “too distracting”. She is taking English, maths and psychology in Delta and hopes to study criminal justice.
“Students in here have failed for lots of different reasons and I’ll guarantee it’s not because they can’t do it,” said John Garcia, the teacher supervising the Delta students.
Austin High School may have more than the average number of famous alumni — including George Bush’s daughter Jenna and Kinky Friedman, the musician, politician and crime novelist — but it is a fairly typical school.
Its 2,200 pupils make up a diverse cross-section of Texas’s economic and social backgrounds. As is normal, two armed police officers patrol the grounds. And, like all US high schools, Austin is undergoing a teaching revolution.
Ever since the rise of Japan in the 1980s, America has been worried about losing its competitive edge.
Education has long been seen as the tool best suited to sharpening that edge and America spends $440 billion (£226 billion) a year on schooling. But until recently nobody has tried to measure how effective that spending has been.
Now, thanks to a combination of technology and legislation, the country is keeping tabs on it. And it is proving a bonanza for Pearson.

Educators talk of a “teach and learn cycle” that technology can create. The British government calls it “personalised learning”. Children can be taught, then tested and the results used to identify areas where individuals are having difficulty.
Austin pupils may know the course as Delta but it is known as Novanet to Pearson, which counts Penguin books and the Financial Times among its assets.

Novanet is part of a rapidly growing portfolio of high-tech education programs Pearson is selling to the US schools market.
Pearson now stores the school records of some 50% of US school students. Everything from age, race, sex and attendance to grades goes through its computers. Long a provider of text books, Pearson is remodelling itself as a “solutions provider”, hoping to combine its traditional text book content business with its high-tech test scoring and information-gathering arms.
It seems to be a winning formula. In California, the company recently won the contract to provide a new high-tech text book and computer program teaching kindergarten and junior school children history and social science. Alongside the book, inter-active computer programmes offer songs and video as well as options for teachers to conduct the lesson in Spanish or other languages. It is the first of its kind, and unlikely to be the last.

Even the exam marking is high-tech. Tests are scanned and then sent digitally to examiners, allowing more than one person to work on the test at the same time. Pearson has computer programmes that can assess essays — analysing content and style.

All this technology means education packages that were once stuck in one country, and perhaps even one state, could now make their way across the world.

This summer Pearson’s Ed-Excel, which marks GCSEs and A-levels, will start testing out computer marking as a back-up to the usual human-scored checks.

When the initiative was announced, Sir John Mortimer, the dramatist and Rumpole crea-tor, described computerised essay-marking as “lunacy”. “How can a computer listen to the sound of words? How can it decide whether ideas are original or not?” he said.

Somewhat later than their pupils, schools are embracing technology. But not for its own sake, said Darlene Westbrook, Austin’s chief education officer. Before Delta and other schemes were introduced, “we had too many kids dropping out simply because they hadn’t gained the [school] credits they needed to graduate,” she said. Austin’s school district is 57% Latino, and 20% are characterised as “English language learners”.

The first step to improving education in the area was to create standards for everyone and to test for them regularly, said Westbrook. “Our preference is not for a virtual school, it is to keep them in school,” she said.

But more than that, all these initiatives must be accountable, she said. “We are in a global economy. We produced 70,000 engineers last year, China produced 90,000. We have fewer kids than the Chinese. We are losing ground. If we are going to be a world leader we need to ask ourselves how long can we continue to be a country that doesn’t learn another language?”
“The US used to be No 1 in the percentage of kids that went to college, No 1 in college graduates and so on and so on,” said Steve Dowling, president and chief executive of Pearson School Companies. “Now we are No 14 in college graduates and we’ve dropped down the list in so many other areas.”

Before the terror attacks of 2001, George Bush’s ambition seemed to be to go down in history as “the education president”. Across America, poor children lag far behind their advantaged peers in school achievement, and the former Texas governor ran his presidential campaign pledging to close that gap. Six years on it seems unlikely history will remember Bush for his education reforms, but he has had a profound impact.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 promotes testing and achievement with the promise of extra support to needy schools and students. NCLB’s effectiveness continues to be a matter of controversy, but it has brought the idea of accountability in education under the spotlight and is part of a wider movement towards measurable standards.

For Pearson the act came just in time. Dame Marjorie Scardino, Pearson’s Texan-born, London-based chief executive, has focused the British company on education in her 10-year tenure. In 1998, Pearson spent $4.6 billion to buy Simon & Schuster’s educational assets and in 2000 spent $2.5 billion on National Computer Systems (NCS). Some analysts criticised Pearson for overpaying in what was then the largest-ever UK rights issue.

Before the purchase “we weren’t a testing company”, said Scardino. “What we had was a lot of great content that we could only deliver in book form. We needed the ability to marry that content with student data to make it relevant for each child.”
The extent of Pearson’s testing ability is on show a few miles from Austin High School at NCS’s enormous test-marking site close to the airport. The facility is capable of handling 3m paper tests a day.

It is an impressive — and expensive — business. Analysts estimate Pearson’s education business will make an operating profit of £396m in 2006. In 2000, before the NCS acquisition, it made £237m and in 1998, before Pearson bought Simon & Schuster, the figure was £99m.

As American education is increasingly driven by technology and accountability, NCS’s ability to offer high-tech testing and measuring combined with Pearson’s skills in text books has proved a winning formula.

Pearson’s strategy has its risks. With all this investment, losing a big contract in Texas, Florida or California would be a serious blow. But, as many other media companies are finding, there is a greater risk in failing to embrace the future.
Educational publishers have “a stark choice: invest in technology and systems that power interaction ... or exit the business now while valuations remain attractive,” Dresdner Kleinwort analyst Usman Ghazi said recently.

This week Reed Elsevier releases its results, and its education business, Harcourt, is again expected to drag. There has been speculation that Reed may sell off its education assets. The company refused to comment.

Canadian giant Thomson is selling its higher-education business and Holland’s Wolters Klu-wer has also put its schools business on the block. And last year Dublin-based educational software maker Riverdeep bought America’s fourth-largest textbook publisher, Houghton Mifflin.

Just like the children they help to instruct, the world’s education businesses are undergoing a “teach and learn” cycle. If they can’t keep up with Alfred Mora, they may not make the grade.

2007

http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/tedd/conlob2007c.htm

Pearson Education
1 Lake Street Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

Bryan, Beth Ann (00055189)
300 West 6th Street Suite 2100 Austin, TX 78701
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: Less Than $10,000.00
Client - Start: 01/19/2007 Term Date: 12/31/2007

Carter, Janis L. (00039065)
401 Congress Avenue Suite 2100 Austin, TX 78701
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: $10,000 - $24,999.99
Client - Start: 01/10/2007 Term Date: 12/31/2007

Foster, Wendy M. (00056685)
401 Congress Ste 2100 Austin, TX 78701
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: $10,000 - $24,999.99
Client - Start: 01/22/2007 Term Date: 12/31/2007

Kress, B. Alexander (00032037)
300 West 6th Street Suite 2100 Austin, TX 78701
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: Less Than $10,000.00
Client - Start: 01/08/2007 Term Date: 12/31/2007

Valenzuela, Joe D. (00050742)
401 Congress Ste. 2100 Austin, TX
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: $10,000 - $24,999.99
Client - Start: 01/10/2007 Term Date: 12/31/2007

2007
http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/tedd/lobcon2007c.htm
Kress, B. Alexander (00032037)
(512)499-6200
300 West 6th Street Suite 2100 Austin, TX 78701

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
300 West 6th Street Suite 2100 Austin, TX 78701
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: Less Than $10,000.00
Client Start Date: 01/08/2007
Client Term Date: 12/31/2007

D.H. Texas Development L.P.
c/o Darryl Hammond 326 Calhoun Plaza Port Lavaca, TX 77979
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: Less Than $10,000.00
Client Start Date: 01/08/2007
Client Term Date: 12/31/2007

Early Care and Education Consortium
805 15th Street NW Suite 700 Washington, DC 20005
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: Less Than $10,000.00
Client Start Date: 01/08/2007
Client Term Date: 12/31/2007

Edvance Research Inc.
9901 IH-10 West Suite 700 San Antonio, TX 78257
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: Less Than $10,000.00
Client Start Date: 01/08/2007
Client Term Date: 12/31/2007

Governor's Business Council
515 Congress Avenue Suite 1780 Austin, TX 78701
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: Less Than $10,000.00
Client Start Date: 01/08/2007
Client Term Date: 02/05/2007

MGT of America Inc.
2123 Centre Point Boulevard Tallahassee, FL 32308
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: Less Than $10,000.00
Client Start Date: 01/08/2007
Client Term Date: 12/31/2007

Mobile Satellite Ventures L.P.
10802 Parkridge Boulevard Reston, VA 20191-4334
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: Less Than $10,000.00
Client Start Date: 01/08/2007
Client Term Date: 12/31/2007

Pearson Education
1 Lake Street Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: Less Than $10,000.00
Client Start Date: 01/08/2007
Client Term Date: 12/31/2007

Texans for Excellence in the Classroom
515 Congress Avenue Suite 1780 Austin, TX 78701
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: $25,000 - $49.999.99
Client Start Date: 02/05/2007
Client Term Date: 12/31/2007
2006
http://204.65.203.6/tedd/lobcon2006c.htm

Kress, B. Alexander (00032037)
(512)499-6200
300 West 6th Street Suite 2100 Austin, TX 78701

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
300 West 6th Street Suite 2100 Austin, TX 78701
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: Less Than $10,000.00
Client Start Date: 01/27/2006
Client Term Date: 12/31/2006

D.H. Texas Development L.P.
c/o Darryl Hammond 326 Calhoun Plaza Port Lavaca, TX 77979
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: Less Than $10,000.00
Client Start Date: 08/10/2006
Client Term Date: 12/31/2006

Early Care and Education Consortium
805 15th Street NW Suite 700 Washington, DC 20005
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: Less Than $10,000.00
Client Start Date: 12/11/2006
Client Term Date: 12/31/2006

Governor's Business Council
515 Congress Avenue Suite 1780 Austin, TX 78701
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: $10,000 - $24,999.99
Client Start Date: 04/07/2006
Client Term Date: 12/31/2006

Kaplan Inc.
888 7th Avenue New York, NY 10106
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: Less Than $10,000.00
Client Start Date: 01/27/2006
Client Term Date: 12/31/2006

Mobile Satellite Ventures L.P.
10802 Parkridge Boulevard Reston, VA 20191-4334
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: Less Than $10,000.00
Client Start Date: 08/10/2006
Client Term Date: 12/31/2006

Pearson Education
1 Lake Street Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Amount: $10,000 - $24,999.99
Client Start Date: 01/27/2006
Client Term Date: 12/31/2006

Labels: testing

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:36 AM 1 comments Links to this post

EDITORIAL BOARD

Click-2-Listen
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Over the years, the most common lament about the legislative and social debate over the future of Texas public education hasn't been about low performance. Neither has it been about bloated administrative salaries nor the salvation promised by vouchers, charter schools or other variations.

It has been that the "business community" — a shorthand term, and a most ambiguous one — is not fully engaged. For sure, there have been active players in the ongoing public discourse who are also business people, but none has commanded the visibility or the clout of the commission Ross Perot headed in the 1970s. The highly quotable Perot, a Dallas multi-millionaire, boldly challenged the status quo and put the state on the road to educational accountability. Since then, business leaders have been hit or miss in the education debate.

There is no doubt that the state's businesses have a direct stake in the way Texas children are educated. Today's students, after all, are tomorrow's employees. That is not to mention the direct link between levels of income and levels of education. The more education customers have, the more they have to spend. So, which business owner wouldn't welcome a fully educated, fully employed customer base?

That is why we all should welcome the entry into the discussion by high-profile business leaders, including Charles Butt, the chief executive officer of H-E-B, and the highly respected Bill Ratliff, who served as a state senator and lieutenant governor. Butt and Ratliff are part of a group of business leaders calling themselves "Raise Your Hand." Also signed on are executives from Continental Airlines, AT&T and Temple-Inland.

In announcing the formation of the group, Ratliff said accountability measures alone won't improve Texas public schools. In fact, overemphasis on performance measures may damage performance.

"Accountability only goes so far. Weighing a cow does not make it heavier. You have to feed it," Ratliff said.

Among suggestions Ratliff and "Raise Your Hand" offered are state-funded, full-day pre-kindergarten and kindergarten programs available to all 4- and 5-year-olds. That would be one way of addressing an achievement gap between low-income students and their more affluent counterparts.

Ratliff isn't really saying anything new. That concept and the idea of investing more into the public school system have been advocated on these pages and others for years. Nonetheless, there is an unbreakable link between message and messenger.

This group should be an example to Texas business owners about their stake in the public education system. What happens in Texas classroom is, literally, their business.

Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/02/15/15business_edit.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 1:40 PM 1 comments Links to this post

Read STATEMENT BY SECRETARY SPELLINGS ON ASPEN INSTITUTE REPORT TITLED
BEYOND NCLB [pdf]. -Angela

From: "U.S. Department of Education"

Date: February 13, 2007 9:14:12 AM CST

To: "U.S. Department of Education"

Subject: STATEMENT BY SECRETARY SPELLINGS ON ASPEN INSTITUTE REPORT ON NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND


U.S. Department of Education
Office of Communications & Outreach, Press Office
400 Maryland Ave., S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20202

FOR RELEASE
Feb. 13, 2006

Contacts:
Chad Colby
Katherine McLane

(202) 401-1576

STATEMENT BY SECRETARY SPELLINGS ON ASPEN INSTITUTE REPORT ON NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings today made the following statement on the release of the Aspen Institute’s Commission on No Child Left Behind “Beyond NCLB: Fulfilling the Promise to Our Nations’ Children” report:

Every child in America deserves a good education, regardless of race, income or zip code. That is why lawmakers from both sides of the aisle came together to craft the No Child Left Behind Act five years ago, shining a spotlight on our achievement gap and creating accountability for the schools that serve our students.

The Aspen Institute’s Commission on No Child Left Behind report “Beyond NCLB: Fulfilling the Promise to Our Nations’ Children” released today illustrates the broad, bipartisan commitment to improving our nation’s schools that was behind the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The Commission’s recommendations recognize the solid foundation built by NCLB and reaffirm the law’s core principles including accountability, high standards and having all students reading and doing math at grade level by 2014.

The report supports many of the key proposals advanced in President Bush's “Building on Results: A Blueprint for Strengthening the No Child Left Behind Act” that was released last month. I am encouraged that the Commission addressed embedding growth models in the law to measure student achievement over time, the pressing need for highly qualified teachers in every classroom, and more significant interventions and critical resources for schools that are chronically underperforming.

Co-chairs Secretary Tommy Thompson and Gov. Roy Barnes have my gratitude for their dedication to reauthorizing and improving the law. I welcome their help in moving the renewal process forward. I also look forward to working with them and their colleagues in the coming weeks and months as we urge Congress to reauthorize the law. There is no better time than now to recommit to educating all of America’s students.


This morning the Aspen Institute Commission on NCLB released its report on reauthorizing the law. It is quite awful. Below is FairTest's react we are just now sending to the media. The report has many, many other flaws.
- you can access the report at www.nclbcommission.org - if you don't have lots of time, look for recommendations (75 of them) down the list of chapters you can download, as well as the exec summary.
 
Here is the FT news release:
 
FairTest____________________                                            National Center for Fair & Open Testing
                                                                                                for more information:
                                                                                                Dr. Monty Neill   (617) 864-4810
                                                                                                Robert Schaeffer  (239) 395-6773
 
ASPEN COMMISSION PROPOSALS ARE “NCLB ON STEROIDS;”
SIDE-EFFECT WILL BE MORE “TEACHING TO THE TESTS”
REACTION OF MONTY NEILL, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
NATIONAL CENTER FOR FAIR & OPEN TESTING (FairTest)
 
The Aspen Commission's recommendations for reauthorizing the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, released today, amount to little more than NCLB on steroids.
 
Their predictable side-effect will be the further reduction of education to coaching for narrow exams that fail to support or assess high-quality student learning.
 
While the Commission claims that the public now accepts NCLB, numerous state and national surveys find that educators overwhelmingly reject the test-and- punish dictates of the law while parents reject the side effects of teaching to the test. The more the public knows about the law, the more they oppose it.
 
The Commission report contains numerous examples of flawed logic, unreasonable requirements and bad policy. These include:
 
- Using standardized test scores to evaluate teachers and principals. This will only intensify teaching to the test, narrowing and dumbing-down education most severely for the nation’s neediest children.
 
-  Creating multiple additional ways for schools to fail by mandating that science scores count in AYP and that subgroup scores count toward accountability when subgroup size reaches 20 – a number so small as to guarantee statistically inaccurate results.
 
-  Making assessment and accountability for students with disabilities more rigid, countering a demand by parents that their children be included in ways that are flexible and reasonable.
 
-  Encouraging uniform state tests, which will pave the way to reducing education to preparation for one national test instead of many different state tests
 
Our nation deserves a federal law that encourages a rich education for all rather than mindless test-preparation. A more rational approach is found in the Joint Organizational Statement on No Child Left Behind, now endorsed by 106 national education, civil rights, religious, disability and civic organizations. Follow-up reports with detailed recommendations will soon be released by the Forum on Educational Accountability, a working group of the Joint Statement signers.
 
The Joint Statement and other information on the failures of NCLB may be found at www.fairtest.org.
------------------

Monty Neill, Ed.D.
Executive Director
FairTest
342 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-864-4810    fax 617-497-2224
monty@fairtest.org
http://www.fairtest.org
Donate: https://secure.entango.com/servlet/donate/MnrXjT8MQqk

Labels: NCLB

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:23 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Rod Paige, former U.S. secretary of education and Houston Independent School District superintendent, speaks Monday morning at the Capitol about the need for reform in the Texas education system.

High school dropouts costing Texas big money, report claims

Joseph Boone

Posted: 2/13/07

Each year, high school dropouts in the state of Texas cost taxpayers about $337 million in lost tax revenue, increased incarceration costs and increased Medicaid costs, according to a study released Monday by the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, the National Center for Policy Analysis, and the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options.

The study, "The High Cost of Failing to Reform Public Education in Texas," found that the class of 2005 failed to graduate more than 119,000 Texas students based on U.S. Census Bureau data. Texas has a 67-percent graduation rate, the second-lowest rate in the country after Mississippi, according to the study .

Each dropout costs taxpayers about $3,168 each year after dropping out, a figure slightly higher than the $3,004 provided by the state government for each year the student is in school, according to the study.

To help combat this problem, Texas should implement a school-choice program allowing parents to choose which school their children attend, said Rod Paige, chairman of the Chartwell Education Group LLC and former U.S. Secretary of Education. School-choice programs would allow parents to choose between their zoned public school, a neighboring public school or a private school, he said. The program would increase competition between public and private schools, which have a more successful graduation rate, resulting in a decreased dropout rate, according to the study. The study claims this would save taxpayers billions of dollars.

Public schools are grossly underfunded, and school-choice programs would only take more funding away from the schools, said Linda Bridges, president of the Texas Federation of Teachers. With parents given the option of sending their children to private schools without having to pay tuition, some state funds would have to be given to these private schools, she said.

"We have been fighting this battle for many sessions," she said. "This is just another tactic to raise support for school choice."

School-choice programs would not harm public schools by decreasing their funding, Paige said. The same amount of money would still be available for educating Texas students, he said.

"The money is not for the system," he said. "The money is for the child."

School-choice programs have been successful in decreasing dropout rates in cities such as Milwaukee and Phoenix, said Rebecca Nieves-Huffman, president and CEO of the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options.

"School choice is a lifesaver for students in this program," she said.

Previous efforts in the Texas Legislature to pass bills relating to school choice programs have failed, said Toni Falbo, a UT educational psychology professor. Advocates of school choice have mostly given up because a legislative decision is unlikely, she said.

"The problem with school choice is that some parents choose and some parents don't," Falbo said. Parents may not have the money and resources to help their child into a better school system, she said.

The Texas Education Agency reported the class of 2005 graduated 84 percent of its students as opposed to the 67 percent published in the study. The study used a different method from the state to determine its 67 percent graduation rate, said Greg Forster, director of research for the Friedman Foundation and editor of the study.

A rally at the Texas Capitol last Wednesday in favor of school choice brought together about 1,000 Texas students, parents and teachers.
© Copyright 2007 The Daily Texan

Labels: Dropouts, Vouchers

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:19 PM 0 comments Links to this post

This is an important read. It illustrates how restrictive immigration policies have an over-flow effect, affecting, in particular, the Latino community, generally, since many Latinos live in mixed-status households

Angela

Labels: immigration, Latinos

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:40 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Check out this piece that came out awhile back 2002 in the HARVARD MAGAZINE. I doubt much has changed though. These statistics are rather glaring. -Angela

Labels: Diversity

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:12 PM 0 comments Links to this post

"Mead said about 170 children are confined at the detention center, and about 75 families are involved in asylum proceedings. The immigrant population typically numbers about 400 people, and about 29 nationalities are represented. Most people who are not seeking asylum are deported, usually after about 40 days, Mead said."-Angela

OTHER STORY TITLE-->

Official: Supervised release for families typically not considered
Media tour offers rare glimpse into life inside Taylor immigrant detention center

By Juan Castillo
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, February 10, 2007

TAYLOR — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials typically don't consider supervised release for people apprehended on immigration violations if they believe the immigrants are likely to be removed from the country in 20 to 50 days, a top official with the agency said Friday.

"Our basic approach is detention," said Gary Mead, assistant director for detention and removal at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "But we are using alternatives, and we've gotten increased funding to use them."

Mead led local, state and national journalists on a tour Friday of the T. Don Hutto Residential Center as federal officials sought to show that it is family friendly and not, as a growing number of critics have described, a prisonlike facility that harms the physical and mental well-being of families and children.

The 512-bed Taylor detention center, which opened in May, is one of two in the country that confines families on noncriminal immigration violations. It is at the heart of a controversy over a 2006 immigration policy allowing for detention of families, including children and infants, who are in immigration, asylum or deportation proceedings.

Critics say the practice is inhumane and have urged the agency, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, to consider alternatives. Congress called on immigration officials to strongly consider alternatives when it approved 2007 funding for homeland security.

Asked why officials don't consider alternatives, Mead said: "We don't know who's coming and going, and we don't know who will apply for asylum. Not all who apply get it."

Barbara Hines, who directs the University of Texas Law School's Immigration Clinic, called the argument untrue, saying that many detainees have passed a screening indicating that they have a credible fear of persecution or torture in their home country.

"That means they're not just leaving; it means they're going to pursue their asylum claim," Hines said.

Mead led reporters in a hurried and controlled 80-minute tour of the facility's living quarters, dining area, classroom, computer lab, medical unit and outdoor recreational area. Immigration agency officials prohibited reporters from interviewing detainees.

Mead said about 170 children are confined at the detention center, and about 75 families are involved in asylum proceedings. The immigrant population typically numbers about 400 people, and about 29 nationalities are represented. Most people who are not seeking asylum are deported, usually after about 40 days, Mead said.

In recent weeks, attorneys and advocates, citing accounts from current and former detainees, have offered complaints about the center's conditions, including inadequate health care and education, inedible food, weight loss among children and guards yelling at detainees.

In a news conference outside the detention center, Vanita Gupta, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said it is investigating allegations of human rights violations and reports of a recent hunger strike. Marc Moore, director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in San Antonio, denied that a hunger strike took place.

"We've done a number of things to soften the facility and make it family friendly," Mead said, later adding that barbed wire surrounding the center will be removed.

Mead said doors to detainees' cells are not locked, and family members are usually placed in adjoining cells, two to a cell. Guards don't carry guns or weapons, he said, and population counts are conducted four times a day for safety reasons.

Dr. Leroy Soto, the detention center's clinical director, said officials found no significant weight loss among children. He said medical staff typically see children for routine illnesses like colds. Inmates are "getting very good nutrition," Soto said.

jcastillo@statesman.com; 445-3635

http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/stories/local/02/10/10immigjail.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:28 AM 1 comments Links to this post

AMERICAN-STATESMAN EDITORIAL

Voucher plan is not best for Texas students

EDITORIAL BOARD

Thursday, February 08, 2007
Voucher proposals that spend taxpayers' money to send students to private schools would have not fared well in Texas.

A sizeable majority of Texans wants their tax money going to the local public schools, not private academies and religious schools. The huge rally at the Capitol on Wednesday to lobby the Legislature for a pilot voucher program isn't going to change that dynamic.

Legislators answer to voters in their home districts, not the organized lobby pushing a voucher project that takes money from public schools and spends it in private ones. Lawmakers have rejected voucher plans in the past and should do so with the one being proposed for this session.

San Antonio physician James Leininger has spent millions of dollars over much of the past two decades trying to launch a voucher project in Texas, so far without success. He has invested huge amounts of his own fortune in two voucher — he calls them scholarship — programs in San Antonio. He has also given millions to political campaigns aimed at electing pro-voucher candidates and defeating anti-voucher ones. He lost big on that gamble last year when five candidates he supported were defeated at the polls.

Leininger's personal philanthropy in San Antonio is admirable. And his dedication to the cause he has given so much of his life and resources to — school choice — is unquestioned. He seems to genuinely care about the education of disadvantaged, inner-city students.

But his tactics are questionable, and Leininger acknowledges that his efforts to manipulate the Legislature through large campaign donations backfired. More to the point, the school choice system he is pushing does not work for millions of Texas students.

Leininger, whose business fortune helped fund Wednesday's Capitol rally, fervently believes students trapped in failing schools should have the option of a better public school or a private one. And he just as fervently believes that the state should provide at least some of the money for those who seek a private education.

Urban districts do have problems, and far too many Texas students are trapped in failing schools. But sending tax dollars away from those schools and into private ones will not help troubled schools improve. Leininger's heart is in the right place, but the course he has chosen is wrong.

The best answer for the more than 4 million Texans in public schools is to use state and local expertise, dedication and resources to improve those schools. A voucher program that gives part of those resources to private entities will, in the long run, harm the public schools.

A vital part of the social compact we all live with is the system of public schools. Our focus, locally and nationally, should be on making that system work as well as it possibly can. Pulling the best and most motivated students from the public schools through a voucher program eventually will cripple the system, possibly beyond repair.

That may be what some of the school choice advocates would like to see. But for most Texans, that is a future too bleak to imagine, much less support.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/02/08/8vouchers_edit.html

Labels: Privatization, Vouchers

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:18 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This piece critiques not only market-based higher education, but to some extent, long-distance learning that apparently gets done rather poorly through the privately owned and managed University of Phoenix. "About 95 percent of instructors are part-time, according to federal statistics, compared with an average of 47 percent across all universities. Most have full-time day jobs. Courses are written at university headquarters, easing class preparation time for instructors." Its graduation rate, at 16%, is among the nation's lowest.

-Angela

February 11, 2007
Troubles Grow for a University Built on Profits

By SAM DILLON
PHOENIX — The University of Phoenix became the nation’s largest private university by delivering high profits to investors and a solid, albeit low-overhead, education to midcareer workers seeking college degrees.

But its reputation is fraying as prominent educators, students and some of its own former administrators say the relentless pressure for higher profits, at a university that gets more federal student financial aid than any other, has eroded academic quality.

According to federal statistics and government audits, the university relies more on part-time instructors than all but a few other postsecondary institutions, and its accelerated academic schedule races students through course work in about half the time of traditional universities. The university says that its graduation rate, using the federal standard, is 16 percent, which is among the nation’s lowest, according to Department of Education data. But the university has dozens of campuses, and at many, the rate is even lower.

In an interview, William J. Pepicello, the university’s new president, defended its academic quality and said it met the needs of working students who had been largely ignored by traditional colleges.

But many students say they have had infuriating experiences at the university before dropping out, contributing to the poor graduation rate. In recent interviews, current and former students in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington who studied at University of Phoenix campuses in those states or online complained of instructional shortcuts, unqualified professors and recruiting abuses. Many of their comments echoed experiences reported by thousands of other students on consumer Web sites.

The complaints have built through months of turmoil. The president resigned, as did the chief executive and other top officers at the Apollo Group, the university’s parent corporation. A federal court reinstated a lawsuit accusing the university of fraudulently obtaining hundreds of millions of dollars in financial aid. The university denies wrongdoing. Apollo stock fell so far that in November, CNBC featured it on a “Biggest Losers” segment. The stock has since gained back some ground. In November, the Intel Corporation excluded the university from its tuition reimbursement program, saying it lacked top-notch accreditation.

It adds up to a damaging turnaround for an institution that rocketed from makeshift origins here in 1976 to become the nation’s largest private university, with 300,000 students on campuses in 39 states and online. Its fortunes are closely watched because it is the giant of for-profit postsecondary education; it received $1.8 billion in federal student aid in 2004-5.

“Wall Street has put them under inordinate pressure to keep up the profits, and my take on it is that they succumbed to that,” said David W. Breneman, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. “They seem to have really stumbled.”

In the interview, Dr. Pepicello shrugged off the bad news. Many top corporations still pay for employees to attend the university, he said, and the exodus of top officials has resulted from a healthy search for new directions. “We are reinventing ourselves,” Dr. Pepicello said.

The government measures graduation rates as the percentage of first-time undergraduates who obtain a degree within six years. On average across all American universities, the rate is 55 percent. Dr. Pepicello said this was a poor yardstick for comparing other universities with his, which serves mostly older students who started college elsewhere. Alongside the 16 percent rate, the university Web site also publishes a 59 percent graduation rate, but that is based on nonstandard calculations and does not allow comparison with other universities, he said. The official rates at some University of Phoenix campuses are extremely low — 6 percent at the Southern California campus, 4 percent among online students — and he acknowledged extraordinary attrition among younger students.

“We have not done as good a job as we could,” he said, adding that the university was creating tutoring and other services to help keep students.

“The university takes quality in the classroom seriously,” he said. The university brings a low-overhead approach not only to its campuses, most of which are office buildings near freeways, but also to its academic model. About 95 percent of instructors are part-time, according to federal statistics, compared with an average of 47 percent across all universities. Most have full-time day jobs. Courses are written at university headquarters, easing class preparation time for instructors.

The College Board reports the university’s annual tuition and fees as $9,630, about half the average at private four-year colleges and twice that of four-year public colleges.

Students take one course at a time, online or in evening classes, which meet for four hours, once a week, for five or six weeks, depending on degree level. As a result, students spend 20 to 24 hours with an instructor during each course, compared with about 40 hours at a traditional university. The university also requires students to teach one another by working on projects for four or five hours per week in what it calls “learning teams.”

Government auditors in 2000 ruled that this schedule fell short of the minimum time required for federal aid programs, and the university paid a $6 million settlement. But in 2002, the Department of Education relaxed its requirements, and the university’s stripped-down schedule is an attractive feature for many adults eager to obtain a university degree while working. But critics say it leaves courses with little meat.

“Their business degree is an M.B.A. Lite,” said Henry M. Levin, a professor of higher education at Teachers College at Columbia University. “I’ve looked at their course materials. It’s a very low level of instruction.”

In November, the university’s reliance on part-time faculty caused a problem with Intel, hundreds of whose employees it has educated. Alan Fisher, an Intel manager, said the company had decided to pay for employees to attend only highly accredited programs. Although Phoenix is regionally accredited, it lacks approval from the most prestigious accrediting agency for business schools, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.

John J. Fernandes, the association’s president, said the university had never applied. “They’re smart enough to understand their chances of approval would be low,” Mr. Fernandes said. “They have a lot of come-and-go faculty. We like institutions where the faculty is stable and can ensure that students are being educated by somebody who knows what they’re doing.”

Dr. Pepicello defended the effectiveness of the faculty, saying instructors were carefully certified.

Most educators acknowledge that the university has helped traditional institutions recognize the needs of older students.

Some of the university’s detractors suggest that it has always relied too much on part-time faculty and raced too quickly through course material. Others say the university’s academic program was once better but has deteriorated in breakneck expansion — it has opened 50 campuses in a decade. Today, even a cursory Internet search will turn up criticism on sites like ripoffreport.com and uopexperience.com.

“Phoenix claims that 95 percent of their students are satisfied, but the reports we get indicate otherwise,” said James R. Hood, founder of a similar site, consumeraffairs.com.

Many reports follow a similar pattern. Students say they liked recruiters’ descriptions of the classes, but after enrolling concluded that they were learning too little or paying too much. Many who quit say they were left with huge debts.

Robert Wancha, 42, a former National Guard commander who is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in information technology at the university’s Detroit campus, said that in a computer course last fall his instructor, Christopher G. Stanglewicz, had boasted that he had a doctorate but did little teaching, instead assigning students to work in learning teams while he toyed with his computer.

Mr. Stanglewicz, reached at his home, acknowledged that he had covered only a fraction of the syllabus , partly, he said, because the university required him to cram too much information into too few sessions.

“Students get overwhelmed,” he said. Mr. Stanglewicz asserted in the interview that he had earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Kentucky. But the authorities there said his name was not in their records. (Dr. Pepicello said that Mr. Stanglewicz had never told the university that he had a doctorate, and that he was qualified to teach.)

Not all students are critics. Yvonne-Louise Catino, 43, of Bloomington, Minn., who is studying online for a doctorate, said she believed she was getting a rigorous education. In a week, Ms. Catino said, she might read eight journal articles and write several essays. “I love the online environment,” she said, “being able to direct where I want to go.”

But some students said their early enthusiasm had soured.

Stacey Clark, 32, an office manager in East Wenatchee, Wash., enrolled in online courses in April and was delighted to receive A’s in her first courses, she said. Later, Ms. Clark decided her instructors were too disengaged to criticize her work. One returned a 2,500-word essay on performance-enhancing drugs with an A but not one comment, she said.

“You’re not learning from an actual teacher, you’re teaching yourself,” Ms. Clark said.

Many students accuse recruiters of misleading them, and the university’s legal troubles trace back to similar accusations of recruitment abuses. In 2003, two enrollment counselors in California filed a whistle-blower lawsuit in federal court accusing the university of paying them based on how many students they enrolled, a violation of a federal rule.

After the lawsuit was filed, the Department of Education sent inspectors to California and Arizona campuses. The department’s report, which became public in 2004, concluded that the university had provided incentives to recruit unqualified students and “systematically operates in a duplicitous manner.”

The university paid $9.8 million to settle the matter, while admitting no wrongdoing. But the department’s searing portrait of academic abuse aroused skepticism among many educators.

Dr. Breneman was finishing a chapter on the university in a book he helped edit when he read the report in 2004. He said he found it “credible and compelling.”

When the book, “Earnings from Learning: the Rise of For-Profit Universities,” was published last year, it said the university’s academic model was convenient for working students, but included a “cautionary note” saying the recruiting scandal had raised “disturbing questions.”

Those questions are likely to dog the university as it defends itself in the lawsuit, which a district court had dismissed but an appellate court reinstated in September. The university could be forced to repay hundreds of millions of dollars if it loses. It asked the Supreme Court last month to review the appellate ruling, arguing that an adverse outcome in the lawsuit could expose it to “potentially bankrupting liability.”


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Labels: Privatization

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:11 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This is long over-due! -Angela

Senator wants to put physical back in education
Proposal would mandate daily physical activity daily through eighth grade

By Corrie MacLaggan
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, February 09, 2007
State Sen. Jane Nelson, a Lewisville Republican who once taught sixth grade, remembers that when her students came back from physical education, they were alert and ready to learn.

A legislative proposal Nelson filed Thursday would mandate at least 30 minutes a day of "moderate or vigorous" physical activity for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Recess wouldn't count. The plan would also require twice-a-year physical fitness assessments for students in grades K-12.

"Teachers know what happens when kids get stuck behind a desk all day," Nelson, chairwoman of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, told reporters Thursday. "They get restless, they aren't focused on learning, and, most importantly, it is downright unhealthy."

In a state where more than a third of schoolchildren are overweight, Nelson says it's critical for Texas students to have daily physical education, as they did until 1995, when lawmakers overhauled education laws to strengthen academics. Texas schools now require elementary students to have 135 minutes of weekly physical education and for middle school students to have P.E. twice a week or a total of two semesters.

Nelson's office could not immediately provide information on the proposal's cost, but a spokesman said some private companies have shown interest in investing in the project.

Diana Everett, executive director of the Texas Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, supports the proposal but worries that without money for additional physical-education teachers, schools would "cram 150 fifth-graders in a gym and call it P.E."

The proposed fitness assessment — which would measure aerobic capacity, body composition, muscle strength, endurance and flexibility — would help education officials better understand how students' physical health affects academic achievement and dropout rates, Nelson said.

Nelson's plan has 23 co-authors in the 31-member state Senate, and state Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, who is chairman of the House Public Education Committee, is sponsoring an identical version of the bill in his chamber.

As Nelson unveiled details Thursday, she and Eissler were joined by some of Texas' top health and education gurus, including Dr. Kenneth Cooper of the Cooper Institute in Dallas, Paul Carrozza of Austin's RunTex and Texas Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley.

cmaclaggan@statesman.com; 445-3548

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/02/09/9pe.html

Labels: health education policy

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:58 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Do other states have to mess with this? -Angela

Lawmaker wants to tweak state pledge
Legislation would add "under God"

By Jason Embry

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, February 02, 2007
God is on a roll at the Texas Legislature.

A Houston-area lawmaker proposed Thursday putting "under God" in the 74-year-old pledge to the Texas flag, which Texas students recite each day.

That followed earlier votes by the House and Senate — with almost no opposition from either party — to put the phrase "in God we trust" on the electronic message boards at the heads of each chamber. The Senate went an extra step and asked the State Preservation Board to install the words in gold letters on the frieze above the Senate lectern.

The pledge to the Texas flag now reads, "Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one and indivisible."

Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, proposed Thursday to change the last clause to "Texas, one state under God and indivisible." Riddle said she thought something was missing from the Texas pledge when she recited it with the national pledge, which mentions God.

"Our Judeo-Christian heritage, our religious heritage, is woven throughout the fabric of our history," she said.

The Legislature established the state pledge in 1933. It's only been changed once: The original pledge referred to "the Texas flag of 1836." That was removed in 1965 because it did not refer to the current Lone Star flag.

Since 2003, state law has required pledges to the Texas and American flags in school, as well as a moment of silence.

Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, was one of two House members who voted against displaying "in God we trust."

"I think of the House of Representatives as being a place where we should respect and honor those we represent, regardless of their religious traditions," she said. She added that the best way to show respect to constituents was to focus on the most important issues.

jembry@statesman.com

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/02/02/2pledge.html

Labels: State Pledge of Allegiance

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:05 AM 0 comments Links to this post

The state always want to get tougher and tougher on kids. I agree as expressed below that this is get-tough kind of policy does work against the state's general goal of closing the gap (though not against selective admissions which is a direction that some of our leadership wants to take us in). -Angela

Perry wants tougher academic standards for financial aid students
Part of education plan would require repayment if grant recipients don't graduate on time.

By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, February 02, 2007

Students would have to meet much tougher academic standards to qualify for state-funded financial aid under a proposed overhaul of higher education spending announced Thursday by Gov. Rick Perry.

What's more, students who do not graduate on time would have to repay their aid.

Those provisions, which would represent major changes in the state's financial aid policies, immediately stirred concern among some legislators, financial aid specialists and college officials, who worry that the college-going prospects of thousands of low-income students could be diminished.

Still, reaction to the governor's proposal was largely upbeat, and many officials described it as perhaps the most ambitious higher education plan put forward by a Texas governor in decades.

"I love the idea, first of all, of focusing more attention on higher education, and of putting more money into higher education and more money into loans and scholarships," said Mike McKinney, chancellor of the Texas A&M University System and a former Perry chief of staff. "I would think nobody could be opposed to those things. The details will get worked out."

Perry wants to boost overall state spending on higher education in the next two years by nearly 8 percent, to $9.8 billion. Financial aid programs would increase by about $363 million, or 60 percent. Public colleges and universities would receive extra funding for each student they graduate.

"I happen to think the success of the State of Texas rests firmly on this legislation and the men and women in this room," Perry said at a news conference in the Capitol, where he was flanked by higher education leaders and several lawmakers. "We are looking at an entirely new way to fund higher education."

For example, three state grant programs for low-income students would be consolidated into a new program called the Tuition Assistance Grant. To qualify, students would need at least a 3.0 grade-point average in high school. They would have to maintain at least a 3.0 in college and meet certain progress requirements to remain eligible.

If they don't graduate within five years for a four-year degree plan or within six years for a five-year plan, they would have to pay the aid back, without interest, except in cases of hardship. It's not clear whether students whose grades slip would have to repay aid.

There is no high school GPA requirement under the grants now in place, and students must maintain a 2.5 average in college to remain eligible.

In the jargon of college financial aid, a grant is widely regarded as money that does not have to be repaid. Robert Black, a spokesman for Perry, said the plan does not misuse the term.

"It's a grant upfront," Black said. "If they don't do what is required, they have to repay it."

Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, chairwoman of the Education Committee, and Rep. Geanie Morrison, R-Victoria, chairwoman of the Higher Education Committee — endorsed Perry's proposal.

Two other lawmakers with considerable influence on higher education policy — Sens. Royce West, D-Dallas, and Rodney Ellis, D-Houston — praised the governor for making higher education a top priority but expressed concern that more stringent academic requirements and a greater emphasis on loans might harm low-income and minority students.

"Many of these issues were debated at length last session, and there was a consensus in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle that we cannot add more restrictions and rely on more loans if we hope to close the gaps and open the door to college to more Texans," Ellis said in a statement.

Stephen Kinslow, president of Austin Community College, said the 3.0 requirement and repayment provision "may very well present a significant problem, but I don't have enough data to make a firm statement on it. I give the governor high marks and Senator Shapiro and Representative Morrison high marks for making higher education a priority in this term."


Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/02/02/2highed.html

Labels: financial aid

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:52 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Very thoughtful piece. -Angela

IRC Americas
americas.irc-online.org
A New World of Citizen Action, Analysis, and Policy Options

IRC Americas
A New World of Citizen Action, Analysis, and Policy Options

Packing into a van along with other New Mexico youths, Rodrigo Rodriguez and his friends headed south to Ciudad Juarez one brisk day this past fall with a serious purpose in mind: finding common ground with other young people from throughout the borderlands on immigration and other issues that affect their communities.

“The forum itself is just an awesome spot for people to come together from all over the place to net- work and work together to figure out ways, develop ways, to work together and further their caus- es,” said Rodriguez, a youth intern with the Albuquerque-based Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP). Dedicated to the empowerment of low-income populations and people of color, Rodriguez’s group played a leading roll in New Mexico in organizing last spring’s pro-immigrant protests.

Like other social forums, the Ciudad Juarez forum aimed to bring together a broad spectrum of peo- ple working in social movements to discuss, debate, and ultimately formulate an alternative political agenda under the slogan “Another World Is Possible.” Not an organization per se, or even an attempt to form yet another coalition, the BSF showcased the struggles of dozens of NGOs in the borderlands and beyond. While many of the attendees had youthful faces, their movements mark time strug- gling for racial, social, and economic justice in the region. Veteran BSF organizers cut their teeth in previous cross-border mobilizations that fought NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, battled the proposed Sierra Blanca nuclear dump, and struggled for a halt to the femicides that became public in Ciudad Juarez in 1993.
Ruben Solis, co-director of the San Antonio-based Center for Justice, and leading BSF organizer, con- sidered the BSF as representing a new stage in cross-border movements that picked up steam dur- ing the 1990s. “It’s creating a new wave, but it recuperates and brings together all that’s hap- pened before in a phase of new development,” Solis said. A key goal of the Border Social Forum was to merge often “competing” agendas of non-govern- mental organizations into a mutual solidarity front, according to Solis.
Among the numerous U.S. and Mexican groups participating in the Ciudad Juarez forum were the Southwest Public Workers Union, Center for Justice, Bracero Project, Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice, Pastoral Obrera, Labor Studies and Action Workshop, Americas Program Citizen Action Profile The Ciudad Juarez Declaration and the New Wave of Border Activism

By Kent Paterson | January 16, 2007

Nearly one thousand people gathered in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Oct. 12-15, 2006 at the first ever Border Social Forum (BSF). Modeled after the massive World Social Forum that draws tens of thousands of people every year, the Ciudad Juarez gathering featured dozens of workshops, a border “reality tour” and street demonstrations against the Bush administration’s planned series of new border walls and the North American Free Trade Agreement. At the conclusion of the BSF, delegates from U.S. and Mexican non-governmental organizations issued a 23-point declaration that calls for sweeping changes in immigration, human rights, labor, economic, and environmental policies on both sides of the U.S.- Mexico border.

Center for Research and Worker Solidarity, Grassroots Global Justice, Just Transition Alliance, Mexico Solidarity Network, and Justice for Our Daughters. Signaling a new burst of activism, the BSF figured high in several significant movement initiatives that visited the Mexico-U.S. border during 2006. Other examples included the Indigenous Summit of the Americas held just days before the BSF, the growing transnational movement against the toxic dump at La Choya proposed for the Sonora desert on sacred Tohono O’odham lands, and the Zapatistas’ Other Campaign that toured the north- ern Mexican border states of Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas.

In all the resurgent movements, mass actions including highway protests and international bridge blockades were prominent features. Organizing two partial closures of the Santa Fe Bridge between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas, to protest of the Bush Administration’s “Wall of Death,” the BSF was no exception. Cross-fertilization of the movements is evident in many aspects, reflected, for example, in across-the-board demands for immigrant rights, Native American sovereignty, and environmental justice.

Transcending regionalism, the BSF connected the struggles of African-American Hurricane Katrina victims to flood victims in northern Mexico, criti- cized border walls in both the United States and Israel/Palestine, called for the freedom of five Cuban prisoners held by the United States in maxi- mum security prisons, and expressed support for the democratic struggle in Oaxaca waged by the Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). Organized in the months following last spring’s huge pro-immigrant rallies supported by millions of people in the United States, the BSF likewise came on the heels of a backlash by conservative forces that witnessed the U.S. Congress approving a 700-mile series of new border walls, as well as the passage of local ordinances in municipalities from California to Pennsylvania that seek to deny undocumented workers housing and other services. At the same time, a number of U.S. state and local governments are enlisting state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws. Ciudad Juárez: Laboratory of the Future?
Moreover, the BSF was held at a time of increasing polarization, violence and environmental contami- nation in the Mexico-U.S. borderlands. Once dubbed the “Laboratory of Our Future” by author Charles Bowden, Ciudad Juarez was an appropriate place to convene the BSF. Marked by great con- trasts of wealth and deprivation, the city was slammed with widespread flooding in the weeks prior to the forum and many poor neighborhoods were washed out. Since the 1990s, wages in the hundreds of foreign-owned maquiladora plants have decreased, narco-violence has gone unabated, and scores of sex-related serial killings have remained unpunished. First noticed in Ciudad Juarez, the femicides have since spread to other parts of Chihuahua state and different states of Mexico.
Adriana Carmona, a lawyer for the Chihuahua City- based Justice for Our Daughters and the Women’s Human Rights Center, said national and interna- tional protests have forced the Mexican state to take new reports of disappearances of young women seriously, and also begin addressing some cases of domestic violence, but that impunity americas.irc-online.org
A New World of Citizen Action, Analysis, and Policy Options p. 2 reigns in femicides suspected to be committed by members of organized crime. “We still don’t have a systematic, permanent campaign in Ciudad Juarez directed against violence towards women,” Carmona said. Prior to the passage of NAFTA in 1993, the U.S. and Mexican governments pledged to begin clean- ing up the border environment and improving sub- standard infrastructure. Labor and environmental side agreements attached to the trinational pact were supposed to protect the environment and workers’ rights. Almost 15 years later, backsliding is everywhere. Schemes for new toxic dumps, leftover contamination from old industrial sites, and air pollution from overly-congested border crossings are just a few of the negative border realities today.
“We don’t believe the environment is getting bet- ter,” stated San Diego-Tijuana activist José Bravo, the executive director of the Just Transition Alliance. Bravo criticized both the U.S. and Mexican governments for not prioritizing environ- mental justice and not putting adequate resources into environmental protection.
As for labor rights, Bravo pointed out that corpora- tions simply threaten to move to Asia if the costs of doing business on the border are perceived as too expensive. “Maquilas will move around the world to see which country will offer the best deal,” he said. Bravo’s group provides an excellent example of binational agenda-building, working with five different networks of people of color and environmental justice in the United States, as well as with the United Steel Workers Union.

Making the Broader Connections
at the BSF

A highlight of the BSF was a “reality tour” of low- income Ciudad Juarez neighborhoods and industri- al sites. Halting on the banks of the Rio Grande in the Felipe Angeles neighborhood, reality tour guests peered directly across the river at the moth- balled Asarco copper smelter located in El Paso only a couple of miles from the southern New Mexico city of Sunland Park.
The old smelter is a rusting emblem of how envi- ronmental issues affect communities on both sides of the border. Shut down in 1999, the plant is at the center of a fight between Asarco’s owner, Grupo Mexico, and environmental groups and political leaders from Mexico and the United States over the company’s plans to renew its Texas state environmental permit and restart production. The Carlyle Group, associated with George Herbert Walker Bush, is a principal investor in Grupo Mexico.

Asarco opponents maintain that a revived smelter will degrade an already polluted binational airshed, and they blame the transnational company for americas.irc-online.org

A New World of Citizen Action, Analysis, and Policy Options p. 3
Challenges for Cross-border Movements The immigration reform policy debate has been recast by the mass media and U.S. government circles from a human rights issue to a “border security” problem.
While the Nov. 7 Democratic Congressional victory and budget shortfalls jeopardize Bush administration plans for new border walls, elite trade-offs on the border security issue are in the works that involve exchanging border walls for a virtual border of high-tech mili- tary surveillance, strict travel controls and the massive deployment of Border Patrol and National Guard troops. Prospects for immigrant legalization face watered-down proposals for lengthy citizenship eligibility requirements, narrowed eligibility pools, and temporary guest worker programs. Growing outbreaks of xenophobia and racism are reported in the United States, both on the local and national levels. Global trade and economic justice issues, which were submerged by 9-11 and the Iraq war, still rank low on the international policy agenda.
The environmental and labor deficits of NAFTAand other interna- tional trade pacts are worsening. The final lifting of tariffs on corn and other basic grains portend renewed crisis in the Mexican countryside by 2008. An increased tendency towards governmental repression is readily visible in both Mexico and the U.S., as exemplified by Washington’s continued raids on illegal immigrant workers and their families, as well the Mexican government’s implementation of a virtual state of siege in the state of Oaxaca. Official corruption, most often publicized in Mexico but also a factor in the United States, impedes environmental, social, and economic justice.

Sometimes “competing” NGO agendas hinder joint actions, requir- ing fluid but non-hegemonic, unified forms of coordination, coopera- tion, and action.

decades of lead, arsenic, and other heavy metals contamination of neighborhoods in El Paso, Ciudad Juarez, and Sunland Park. The company flatly denies any responsibility. Immediately preceding the BSF, the Sierra Club released a memo from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) it obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that reported Asarco had been illegally incinerating hazardous wastes during the 1990s. The document did not spell out exactly what Asarco burned. “I felt violated, and actually it wasn’t a surprise either that the city has covered this up and that these environmental agencies that are supposedly out there to watch out for our health aided in cov- ering up this terrible secret,” said Jacqueline Barragan of the University of Texas at El Paso group Students Against Asarco.

Leading the reality tour was former maquiladora worker Veronica Leyva, the Ciudad Juarez represen- tative of the Mexico Solidarity Network. Leyva gave outsiders a close-up look at the two faces of Ciudad Juarez: the glimmering city of shiny new boulevards and chic strip malls on one side, and the dusty, mean burg of shantytowns and low-wage factory jobs on the other. Similar to downtown redevelopment projects in El Paso, Albuquerque, and other U.S. cities, the Juarez city and Chihuahua state governments are earmarking public monies for gentrification while many other community needs remain underfunded.

“It’s important for you to see the channeling of economic resources by the government to the big industries, big capital,” Leyva told visitors. “This channeling of resources has not permitted the development of the popular colonias.” Making the connections between geography, people and issues, SWOP’s Rodriguez noted the similarities between Ciudad Juarez’s colonias and Pajarito Mesa, a windswept mesa community approximately 10 miles southwest of the Duke City’s downtown. There, approximately 1,500 people live mainly in trailers without paved roads, utility services or running water. “People don’t realize that there are people living like that in Albuquerque right now,” he added.

Following the reality tour, the BSF delegates attended an agenda-packed round for workshops and plenary sessions. Co-conducted by Kat Rodriguez of the Tucson-based Human Rights Coalition, the session on immigration painted a grim picture of death from dehydration, creeping militarization, and entrapped populations. Rodriguez detailed the human cost from tightened border controls that force would-be crossers into remote desert crossings where extremes of heat and cold leave a bigger and bigger trail of bodies. She said her group has documented the deaths of at least 689 people in the Arizona-Sonora border region during the last three years alone. Of 317 unidentified victims, 17 of the remains are so deteriorated it is impossible “to know if they were male or female,” Rodriguez said.
americas.irc-online.org A New World of Citizen Action, Analysis, and Policy Options p. 4
Proposals and Demands:

• Reject border walls and militarization, femicide and violence against women, pollution, free trade pacts, Plan Puebla Panama, attacks against the Oaxaca popular movement, and the official treatment of flood victims in both Louisiana and Ciudad Juarez.

• Adopt comprehensive immigration reform laws that legislate full rights for all immigrants, including social services and amnesty.

• Binational boycott of Kimberly Clark, a company associated with Wisconsin Congressman James Sensenbrenner, congressional sponsor of HR 4437 that paved the way for the Secure Fence Act.

• Just compensation for veterans of the 1942-64 Bracero program of Mexican guest workers in the United States.

• Oppose privatization of water resources, and support the food sov- ereignty concept promoted by the global Via Campesina movement.

• Demand a revision of the agricultural provisions of NAFTA, and a halt to the use of proprietary hybrid seed and the patenting of seed stock by multinational corporations.

• Solidarity with the families and workers of the Pasta de Conchos mine in northern Mexico’s Coahuila state, where 65 miners were killed in an explosion blamed on leaking gas in February 2006. The mine was operated by Grupo Mexico, also the owner of the old Asarco smelter in El Paso. Support the demands of workers for accountability.

• Demand the immediate release of five Cuban nationals held in U.S. prisons and accused of spying by the U.S. government.

• Uphold gender equality, support the dissemination of adequate information about sexual and reproductive rights.

• A call for international observers to monitor Lomas de Poleo, a Ciudad Juárez neighborhood that is the site of a land ownership conflict between long-time residents and members of a prominent local family.

The Arizona activist challenged the economic underpinnings for the phenomena of mass migration and community dislocation. “I think the first thing that we need is to demand a renegotiation of the free trade agreements, NAFTA, and CAFTA,” she said. “Nobody asks why people are coming here.”

After three days of neighborhood tours, speakers, small group dialogues, and plenary sessions, the BSF participants issued a 23-point statement call- ing for fundamental changes in economic, social, environmental, and immigration policies. The statement declares: “We are part of the formidable force of struggle and hope that came about throughout the world with the initial World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in 2001. The World Social Forum is part of a social movement against the neoliberal agenda, the modern form of colonialism and imperialism. We are citizens of the planet and as such we are the bearers of a set of economic, social, political, cultural, and environmental rights, which all in authority must uphold equally for all people regardless of our age, gender, social class, ethnicity or migratory status.”

Cross-Border Organizing Spreads South

Energized by the first Border Social Forum, organ- izers plan a similar gathering for the southern Mexican border. Bordering Guatemala and Belize, the region shares many of the characteristics of the Mexico-U.S. border, including human traffick- ing, drug smuggling, and gender and social vio- lence. Washington has long demanded that the Mexican government crack down on its southern border, and a new initiative launched by the Calderon administration is underway, with still unforeseen consequences.
Meanwhile, the months ahead promise to be busy ones for popular struggles that now transcend bor- ders. Activists who attended the BSF have a full plate of upcoming gatherings in the Americas and Africa.
Reaffirming their commitment to the migrant cause, the BSF delegates endorsed a call for a mass protest and national strike planned for May 1, 2007 in both the United States and Mexico. Participants of the Ciudad Juarez gathering plan to carry their cross-border spirit of solidarity to the first-ever U.S. Social Forum scheduled for June 27- July 1, 2007 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Additionally, the BSF’s veterans are involved in organizing the third “alternative people’s summit” outside the U.S.-Mexico Border Governors Conference in Nogales, Sonora, also set for next summer, where members of non-governmental organizations will draft a list of demands to be presented to the 10 Mexican and U.S. border gov- ernors.
Organizer Ruben Solis, who attended a social forum in Puerto Rico after the Ciudad Juarez event, arrived at this initial assessment of the impact of the October forum: “It carried out what we intend- ed in terms of creating an [intersection] and con- vergence between the movements,” Solis said. “It has a multiplying effect; it’s very positive.” Kent Paterson is a freelance journalist based in Albuquerque, NM, and a frequent contributor to the IRC Americas Program (online at www.americaspoli- cy.org).

RESOURCES:
Ciudad Juarez Border Social Forum Declaration of
October 15, 2006
www.forosocialfronterizo.com
United States Social Forum
www.ussf2007.org
Center for Justice
Tel: 210-222-1704
e-mail: grulla@igc.org
Southwest Organizing Project
Tel: 505-247-8832
fax: 505-247-9972
e-mail: Swop@swop.net
www.swop.net
Just Transition Alliance
Tel: 619-474-4001
e-mail: justtransition@global.net
www.jtlalliance.org
Mexico Solidarity Network
Tel: 202-544-9355
773-583-7728
www.mexicosolidarity.org
americas.irc-online.org
A New World of Citizen Action, Analysis, and Policy Options p. 5
Justice for Our Daughters
Tel: (011-52) 614-411-0960 /4 14 73 52 /4 19 34 01
e-mail: justiciapara_nuestrashijas@yahoo.com.mx
espanol.geocities.com/justhijas
Human Rights Coalition
Tel: 520-770-1373
Published by the Americas Program of the International Relations Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org). ©Creative Commons - some

Web location:
http://americas.irc-online.org/amcit/3911
http://americas.irc-online.org/amcit/3911

Labels: immigration, organizing

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:24 PM 1 comments Links to this post

Download this report (pdf) here: Executive Summary (pdf) The full report of the “Perfect Storm” can be accessed in pdf format at this link.

-Angela


Our nation is in the midst of a perfect storm, according to ETS researchers — and the forecast is grim — unless we invest in policies that will change our perilous course.

A report from ETS's Policy Information Center, America's Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing Our Nation's Future, looks at the convergence of three powerful sociological and economical forces that are changing our nation's future:

substantial disparities in skill levels (reading and math)
seismic economic changes (widening wage gaps)
sweeping demographic shifts (less education, lower skills)

There is little chance that economic opportunities will improve among key segments of our population if we follow our current path. To date, educational reform has not been sufficient to solve the problem. National test results show no evidence of improvement over the last 20 years. Scores are flat and achievement gaps persist. Hope for a better life — with decent jobs and livable wages — will vanish unless we act now.

We must raise our learning levels, increase our reading and math skills and narrow the existing achievement gaps, or these forces will turn the American Dream into an American Tragedy — putting our nation at risk.

Press Conference Highlights

(Video: February 5, 2007) — ETS President and CEO Kurt Landgraf discusses ETS's landmark report America's Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing our Nation's Future, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The report warns of three converging forces that are putting our nation at risk: inadequate literacy skills, a changing economy and a diverse population and workforce.

Watch Video — (Window's Media File, 291 kbps, 5:57 Playing Time)

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:31 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Panel discusses hot topic: undocumented immigrants - City

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:27 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Thursday, February 8, 2007

Education about much more than test scores
Timothy Leonard
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is up for renewal this year in the Congress. This may be an opportunity to genuinely help the children of the poor and disadvantaged in this country, yet when I hear U.S. senators and representatives from both parties talk about the need for school districts "to raise scores," it is difficult to be hopeful. Education is simply not about scores anymore than losing weight is about scales.

As a result of NCLB, school districts, especially those with high numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, focus intensely on achievement test scores and benchmark tests - tests which often possess items which are incorrect, or ask only for recognition of the so-called right answer.

In addition, these tests are built upon standards which have been written by persons far removed from the actual experience of the teachers and students engaged in the testing process.

Most teachers know that standards are negotiated every day between themselves and their students who will learn only what they choose to learn. The trick is to encourage them to learn far beyond what they originally intended. Turning that trick takes knowledge, persistence, ingenuity, patience, trust, active listening, toughness, kindness, humor, and a willingness to engage students in active learning. Teachers are doing this every day throughout our region, yet the only thing that seems to matter to politicians and bureaucrats are the scores.

Scores are important. But they must be viewed in the context of what teachers know about what is happening in their classrooms. Under the current regime, what is happening in the classroom, if viewed at all, is viewed in the context of the scores. This is nuts. It's like a parent saying, "If you think the baby is cute, you should see the pictures" - except in this case all you see is a number.

The renewal of NCLB needs to shift its intense focus away from test scores to the care, support and encouragement of teachers. This means more money for salaries, staff development, and programs to make sure teachers develop the skills that research tells us it takes to engage students to choose to become knowledgeable in the arts and sciences as well as reading and mathematics, and to become responsible citizens.

Timothy Leonard of Hyde Park is an adjunct professor at Xavier University working with teachers in Southwestern Ohio, Northern Kentucky and Southeastern Indiana.

PCopyright 2007, Enquirer.com
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070208/EDIT02/702080321/1090

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:25 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Voucher plan is not best for Texas students

EDITORIAL BOARD

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Voucher proposals that spend taxpayers' money to send students to private schools would have not fared well in Texas.

A sizeable majority of Texans wants their tax money going to the local public schools, not private academies and religious schools. The huge rally at the Capitol on Wednesday to lobby the Legislature for a pilot voucher program isn't going to change that dynamic.

Legislators answer to voters in their home districts, not the organized lobby pushing a voucher project that takes money from public schools and spends it in private ones. Lawmakers have rejected voucher plans in the past and should do so with the one being proposed for this session.

San Antonio physician James Leininger has spent millions of dollars over much of the past two decades trying to launch a voucher project in Texas, so far without success. He has invested huge amounts of his own fortune in two voucher — he calls them scholarship — programs in San Antonio. He has also given millions to political campaigns aimed at electing pro-voucher candidates and defeating anti-voucher ones. He lost big on that gamble last year when five candidates he supported were defeated at the polls.

Leininger's personal philanthropy in San Antonio is admirable. And his dedication to the cause he has given so much of his life and resources to — school choice — is unquestioned. He seems to genuinely care about the education of disadvantaged, inner-city students.

But his tactics are questionable, and Leininger acknowledges that his efforts to manipulate the Legislature through large campaign donations backfired. More to the point, the school choice system he is pushing does not work for millions of Texas students.

Leininger, whose business fortune helped fund Wednesday's Capitol rally, fervently believes students trapped in failing schools should have the option of a better public school or a private one. And he just as fervently believes that the state should provide at least some of the money for those who seek a private education.

Urban districts do have problems, and far too many Texas students are trapped in failing schools. But sending tax dollars away from those schools and into private ones will not help troubled schools improve. Leininger's heart is in the right place, but the course he has chosen is wrong.

The best answer for the more than 4 million Texans in public schools is to use state and local expertise, dedication and resources to improve those schools. A voucher program that gives part of those resources to private entities will, in the long run, harm the public schools.

A vital part of the social compact we all live with is the system of public schools. Our focus, locally and nationally, should be on making that system work as well as it possibly can. Pulling the best and most motivated students from the public schools through a voucher program eventually will cripple the system, possibly beyond repair.

That may be what some of the school choice advocates would like to see. But for most Texans, that is a future too bleak to imagine, much less support.

Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/02/08/8vouchers_edit.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:22 PM 0 comments Links to this post

In study, bilingual brains stay sharp longer
Benefits for older people may include greater ability to focus amid distractions.

By Carrie Peyton Dahlberg - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PST Wednesday, February 7, 2007

After school, Carlos and Carmen Nguyen shuttle between two sets of grandparents in happy bursts of English, Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese.

Their parents love the way languages open their children's eyes to the family's heritage and to other cultures.

Yet when they began their multilingual journey, they never imagined that Carlos and Carmen, now 6 and 9, also might be developing brains especially good at ignoring distractions and better able to withstand aging.

"This is incredible," said the children's mother, Irene Bersola-Nguyen, a child development lecturer at California State University, Sacramento, who has been trading delighted e-mails with friends and colleagues about the latest study on the bilingual brain.

A team of Canadian researchers who studied people being treated for dementia found that those who regularly used two languages reported their first symptoms of a fading mind about four years later than those who used only one language.

That work, published in February's edition of the journal Neuropsychologia, follows a 2004 study that found older bilingual people were better at paying close attention despite distractions.

"Language pays off big time," said Ellen Bialystok, lead researcher on both studies and a scientist with the Baycrest Research Centre for Aging and the Brain in Toronto.

Bialystok and others cautioned that so many factors contribute to healthy aging, it would be premature to say language skills definitely delay dementia. Still, growing indications that bilingualism may deliver lifelong benefits in cognition have captured the attention of educators and researchers.

"Ellen Bialystok is a pioneer in this field, and she's generating quite a buzz," said Tamar Gollan, a University of California, San Diego, psychiatry professor who studies bilingualism. "People all over the world are replicating her findings for some of her earlier work."

Few places in the United States have more at stake in understanding the bilingual brain than California, where a staggering 42 percent of people age 5 and older speak a language other than English at home. In Sacramento County, it's 29 percent. With the immigrant population and the proportion of those who are fully bilingual both expected to grow, California could be a living laboratory for examining the impact of what we gain -- and lose -- from speaking more than one language.

There are clearly losses as well as gains, said Gollan, whose own research probes the subtle deficits of bilinguals. Yet when she weighed them, she came down soundly on the side of raising her own small children with two languages.

Bialystok, who began studying bilingual kids decades ago, believes one key to their special brainpower lies in the way they must constantly decide which language to use and which to suppress. For people who use two languages daily, "every time you want to speak one language, the other language is activated" in the brain as well, she said.

"That means you need a mechanism so that you're only drawing from the right pool (of words). It's going be a mechanism that works extremely fast ... while you're producing sentences. It's way below your radar for detecting what's happening."

So bilinguals get far more practice than monolinguals in using the part of the brain that focuses our attention, helping us sort through conflicting information and ignore distractions. Using two languages seems to bolster rapid decision-making, multi-tasking and perhaps memory.

To measure the effect in older adults, Bialystok used one of the many psychological tests designed to confound us, because we have to respond to information with conflicting cues. It may be a picture that requires you to move your left hand, which shows up on the right side of a computer screen. Or it may be the word "green," written in red letters. In such tests, bilingual people in their 70s did noticeably better than monolingual people. With lots of practice, the one-language speakers eventually caught up.

Fergus Craik, a senior scientist at Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute who collaborates with Bialystok, said ongoing research seems to point to memory advantages. Bilingualism may bolster the kind of memory that lets us recall specific things that happened to us or recognize a person out of context, Craik said.

Both researchers suspect that bilingualism may delay dementia in the same way that other intense mental activity is believed to, whether it's playing an instrument or solving puzzles.

Not everyone is convinced the "use it or lose it" strategy for maintaining a healthy brain has been proven, but it's something "we're all thinking about," said Dr. Charles DeCarli, a UC Davis neurology professor who heads the UCD Alzheimer's Disease Research Center.

"To the authors' credit, they're not saying that learning a language at age 50 is going to help you. In that regard, they're very cautious," DeCarli said.

While he wouldn't discourage anyone from studying a language, he recommends exercise, eating right and controlling blood pressure and cholesterol as surer bets for adults who want to delay dementia, based on what is known today.

DeCarli suspects further research may eventually trace the greatest brain-boosting advantages of bilingualism to childhood, between birth and ages 14 to 18, when crucial connections in the brain are being forged. When kids grow up speaking multiple languages, the same word juggling that helps them fend off distraction also exacts a price -- on vocabulary and on speed.

"For every single object or concept, if you're bilingual, you have two labels, and it takes additional time to learn twice as many words," UC San Diego researcher Gollan said. "It doesn't come for free."

Using their strongest language, bilingual people take just the tiniest bit longer -- about 8/100th of a second more -- to name an object when they're shown its picture, Gollan said.

When they're asked to rattle off lists, such as all the words you can think of in one minute that start with "S" or all the animals you can think of, they can't list as many. The difficulties that bilinguals have in their best language follow the same pattern as the difficulties that monolingual people with Alzheimer's have on such tests -- somewhat weaker with letter lists and more impaired with categories such as animals, Gollan said. Most of the effects are so slight a bilingual person would probably never notice, she said, but they're still important to understand.

"In the world, it's probable that bilinguals outnumber monolinguals," Gollan said, yet most of the research into language processing, cognitive skills and aging is done on monolingual subjects.

One cognitive problem that bilingual people might notice, Gollan added, is that they're likelier to struggle with that "tip of the tongue" sensation, when they know a word but for a fleeting moment can't produce it.

So far, that hasn't bothered Carlos and Carmen Nguyen of Sacramento, although both admit they fumble the most in Vietnamese. Their best language is English, their mother said, with Spanish a close second because they attend a dual-language immersion school.

The kids like the way languages let them reach out to cousins, grandparents and friends. And Carmen, who just took third place in a national essay contest about bilingualism, isn't ready to stop at four.

Next, she plans to learn French.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:17 PM 0 comments Links to this post

February 4, 2007
Heads Up | Hidalgo, Mexico
Run! Hide! The Illegal Border Crossing Experience

By PATRICK O’GILFOIL HEALY
CLAD in black clothes and moonlight, our guide Poncho adjusted his ski mask and faced us to speak. The desert has claimed many lives, he said, but tonight we would make it across the border.

The night was crisp and clear in the central Mexican highlands, the moon illuminating mesquite trees, cactus and pastures. Our group of 13 was about to set out on one of Mexico’s more bizarre tourist attractions: a make-believe trip illegally crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico into the United States.

“Where are you going to, my friends?” Poncho asked the people clustered around him.

“To Texas,” a skinny Mexican teenager replied.

“And you?” he asked another man.

“California.”

The four-hour caminata nocturna — nighttime hike — traverses desert, hills, brambles and riverbeds in the Parque EcoAlberto, an eco-park communally owned by the Hñahñu Indians who live on some 3,000 acres of land in the state of Hidalgo, about three hours northwest of Mexico City (and roughly 700 miles from the border).

Organizers say they opened the park about two and a half years ago, with financing from the Mexican government, and began the caminata as a way to offer tourists a taste of life as an illegal immigrant.

The Hñahñus are people who know something about that life. Of the approximately 2,200 Hñahñus from this area, 700 live in Mexico and 1,500 live “on the other side” — mostly in Las Vegas and other parts of Nevada, where they install drywall, drive trucks or work on farms, residents say. Many of the tour guides here have crossed the real border several times.

“Being an immigrant isn’t a source of pride,” said Poncho, whose real name is Alfonso Martinez. “We abandon the family, the language, the earth. We lose our sense of community. The idea here is to raise people’s consciousness about what immigrants go through.”

Of course, compared with actually crossing the border, the caminata is as watered down as an airport cocktail. The guides don’t desert their groups, and the most danger visitors face is twisting an ankle or walking into a low-hanging tree branch.

The idea of tourists’ aping illegal immigrants can seem crass, like Marie Antoinette playing peasant on the grounds of Versailles. But the guides describe the caminata as an homage to the path immigrants have beaten across the border. And the park’s approach to consciousness-raising is novel, but not completely unique. In 2000, the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders set up a camp of tents, medical stations and latrines in Central Park to recreate the setting of a refugee camp. Last year, the refugee-camp project returned to New York and also traveled to Atlanta and Nashville.

Park guides say about 3,000 tourists — mostly Mexican — have hiked the caminata since it began in July 2004. It costs 200 pesos (about $18 at 11 pesos to the dollar), and tourists who want to stick around at the park can also go river-rafting, rappel down a cliff and sleep in cabins with roofs of maguey leaves. But guides say the mock border-crossing is the park’s main draw.

“Of course it’s just a game, where you’re always safe and where there are no real fights,” said Antonio Flores, a sociology professor from Querétaro, in central Mexico, who hiked the caminata in November with a group of students. “It was very interesting, very important. Often, immigration is a subject so far away. This gave us a chance to experience it through our own steps.”

My group’s hike began outside a white stucco church, where we huddled around Poncho and another masked guide, Luís Santiago. About 10 Hñahñus accompanied us on the walk, playing the role of fellow immigrants. The men explained they were heading north to look for work. A woman carrying a 2-year-old girl slung in a shawl said she was seeking her boyfriend.

After unfurling the Mexican flag and singing the national anthem, the guides organized us, telling us to walk in a file, strongest in back, weakest and slowest in front.

“In the night, everyone is equal,” Poncho said. “Here, everyone wins, not just the fastest or smartest. If we make it, we all make it; if they catch one, they catch us all.”

They advised us to be brave, to remember our ancestors and to hit the ground if we heard gunshots.

We’d been walking down a gravel road for 10 minutes when people started shouting and tearing off into the dark. “Vamos rápido!” they shouted. “Vamos corriendo! Hasta el puente! Apúrense!” (“Let’s get moving! To the bridge! Get going!”) Behind us, headlights and the police drew nearer.

“Run!” Mr. Santiago shouted, frantically directing us toward a concrete bridge at the bottom of the sloping road. “Shut off that light, they’re coming. Fast, fast. Damn it, shut off that light!”

Sirens whooped. We scrambled down a hill of loose dirt, tripping and stumbling over rocks and gouges in the ground. We ended up in a mire along the Tula River, ankle-deep in mud and water.

A 5-year-old boy known as El Relleno showed up and guided us through the brush.

“Come on, this way,” he said, jumping around moonlit puddles.

Poncho shooed us into a thicket of bush. We’d nearly been discovered by the Border Patrol. We hid as men with flashlights roamed the field in front of us, taunting us in Spanish and accented English.

“Come here, guys,” they said. “Ya sé que están escondidos. We know you’re hiding. We’re going to send you back to Mexico.”

“Escuchen!” said another, telling us to listen up. “No van a cruzar el rio. You’re not going to get across the river.”

Suddenly, someone from our group darted from the bushes and past the guards.

“Stop! Stop!” yelled the guards, and fired a half-dozen shots (blanks, of course). “Where you running, huh?”

About 70 Hñahñus make part of their living as guides, guards or fellow immigrants on the hike. One of them, Purificación Álvarez, said that visitors often walked away stunned.

“They learn to value the liberty they have in their own countries, that they don’t have to run and be chased in their own lives,” she said.

When the smell of gunfire dissipated, we sneaked away, crossing cornfields, passing drowsy mules and slipping under barbed-wire fences. Brown moths darted in and out of the flashlight beams, and the guides philosophized about the significance of the hike, the empathy it aims to teach.

At one point, we paused at the river’s edge, where Mr. Santiago told us to cast a stone into the water to symbolically expel evil spirits. We did, and then Poncho pointed up at the night sky.

“Look up,” he said. “A rain of stars. This is a magical place.”

Parque EcoAlberto, (52-75) 9727-7016; www.parqueecoalberto.com.mx.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 6:54 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Voucher advocate wants state to take over private program
San Antonio businessman warns his $50 million, 10-year effort is due to end next year.

By Jason Embry
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
James Leininger, who has spent millions of dollars on Texas political campaigns, said Tuesday that the 2,000 students in the private school voucher programs he personally bankrolls will be "out on the street" if the Legislature does not approve a publicly funded voucher plan this year.

The San Antonio physician and businessman said his 10-year, $50 million commitment to fund a program for students in San Antonio's Edgewood school district is set to expire next year.

He wants the Legislature to step in and provide public money for those students — and other low-income students around the state — to attend private schools or transfer to other public schools.

"If the Legislature doesn't act, those kids are going to be out on the street," he said.

Leininger has been a quiet political force in recent years, shying away from public comment while giving pro-voucher candidates millions.

He spent about $5 million in the 2006 election cycle, according to Texans for Public Justice, which tracks campaign spending and advocates limits on campaign donations.

He is now shifting tactics by talking more openly about voucher programs, which he has said should be reserved for low-income students, and his own political activity.

In a lengthy interview Tuesday with the American-Statesman editorial board, he said one reason he's showing his face more is because his private program is almost out of money.

In response, Kathy Miller of the anti-voucher Texas Freedom Network said: "Private schools may be willing to put those kids out on the street, but the great thing about our neighborhood public schools is that they would never do that."

There appears to be little momentum at the Capitol this year for a publicly funded voucher program. The House could not pass a pilot voucher plan last year, and, by Leininger's count, he's lost five allies in the 150-member body since then.

House Speaker Tom Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst support limited voucher programs, but neither sounded ready to make a hard sell for the issue when asked about it this week.

"I think we need to do a better job of being able to explain what it is that we're trying to accomplish to help at-risk kids and not undo public education," Dewhurst said.

Though the Senate avoided a public voucher debate last year, House members on both sides of the issue caught flak for their votes.

"A lot of House members feel like, at this point, it needs to come from the Senate to see if there's support for it before they get involved," Craddick said.

Gov. Rick Perry, a longtime voucher proponent, did not mention them in his 55-minute State of the State speech Tuesday.

Leininger credited public school employees with defeating repeated voucher proposals.

"A lot of these (legislators) know there will be a price to pay if they embrace it," he said.

But the issue is by no means dead. Thousands of Texans, many of them families from private schools, are expected to rally for vouchers outside the Capitol today.

Leininger brought to the editorial board meeting Aimee Cantu, whose 10-year-old son uses a Leininger voucher.

Cantu said she wanted to shield her son from the violence and drugs that she remembers from public schools.

"I didn't want him pigeonholed in the same schools that I went to, the same schools that failed me, failed my sisters, failed my parents," she said.

Leininger said he wants the Legislature to approve a voucher program in nine big-city districts, including Austin's. The voucher would be worth up to 90 percent of the per-student operating cost in the local district, with the district keeping the remaining 10 percent.

Schools that choose to take the voucher would have to follow federal and state nondiscrimination rules but would not have to change their admissions standards, Leininger said.

Some voucher opponents fear that private schools will accept only high-achieving students, but Leininger said his programs have proven otherwise.

"It's the kids who are having the worst time that choose," he said. "The ones that are doing great and they're in the National Honor Society aren't leaving."

Up to 20,000 students could get vouchers in the first year under Leininger's program, which has no legislative sponsor so far.

Leininger made a particularly big splash in last year's Republican primary, when he funded five challengers to anti-voucher GOP incumbents almost exclusively. Two of the challengers won. He indicated that he will continue to write checks to pro-voucher candidates.

But Miller, of the Freedom Network, didn't sound scared.

"The Legislature has rejected vouchers for more than a decade because Texans don't want vouchers," she said. "Nothing has changed about that."

jembry@statesman.com


Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/02/07/7vouchers.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:43 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Read about President Bush's support for vouchers. -Angela

Sun, Feb. 04, 2007 / Star-Telegram
We'll wait and see

In the more than 5,500 words of his Jan. 23 State of the Union address, President Bush devoted fewer than 200 words to education. But all of them were aimed at what since the beginning of his administration clearly has been one of his strongest domestic policy initiatives: the No Child Left Behind Act.

No matter the brevity of those remarks. The 5-year-old NCLB is before Congress again this year for its scheduled reauthorization, and the Bush administration is pushing hard for it. The day after the State of the Union speech, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings released a 15-page document outlining the continued programs and NCLB enhancements that Bush and his team want.

Some of the initiatives hinted at in the State of the Union address the now-majority Democrats in Congress have declared dead on arrival.

Bush said:

That local leaders should have "flexibility to turn around failing schools." The next day, Spellings' document showed the bizarre meaning of that line. In states -- not Texas -- where teachers are members of unions and have collective bargaining contracts, Bush wants school administrators to have the power to ignore those contracts in order to reassign teachers while restructuring failing schools. He also wants to allow school leaders to ignore state limits on the number of charter schools and reopen failed schools as charters if necessary.

Yes, the president and Congress are powerful, but nothing in the Constitution gives them the power to interfere with state public education policy in this way.

That the new NCLB should give "families with children stuck in failing schools the right to choose someplace better." By that, we now know that he meant federal vouchers of up to $4,000 for children to attend private schools and grants to states for voucher programs that would pay all private school tuition, fees and costs, as well as transportation expenses for low-income children who have been assigned to failing public schools.

Bush couldn't get vouchers in the original NCLB, and Democrats say he won't get them this time, either.

Nevertheless, Congress is likely to reauthorize No Child Left Behind in some form this year.

For now, the ball is still in the president's court. His budget proposals, scheduled for release this week, will show how much money Bush is willing to put behind his proposed NCLB enhancements. Education advocates all along have complained that the promises of NCLB have not been matched with necessary funding.

Among other things, Bush says he wants to give states more money to help low-income high school students, money to reward teachers and principals who raise student achievement or who work in the neediest schools, money to strengthen math teaching in elementary and middle schools, money for "Striving Readers" programs in grades six through 12, and money to help schools implement improvement plans.

That's a lot of money -- or a lot of empty promises. We'll see which.

The document released by Spellings ("Building on Results: A Blueprint for Strengthening the No Child Left Behind Act") makes it clear that Bush will not retreat from the law's primary tenets:

Annual testing in reading and math, with results broken down by student groups in a effort to close achievement gaps.

A goal of having all students reading and doing math at or above grade level by 2014. (Only four states -- Delaware, Kansas, North Carolina and Oklahoma -- are on track to meet that goal.)

Qualified teachers in core academic subjects in every classroom.

Timely information on school performance, as well as information on education options, supplied to parents or guardians of all students.

All cynicism aside, there are several good parts to Bush's proposals. For one, he acknowledges the increasingly competitive nature of today's technological world and would add science to school testing requirements, with grade-level proficiency required by the 2019-20 school year.

Under NCLB, student tests have been designed and graded by the states, and states also determine what constitutes a passing score. Education experts have cited what they call a "race to the bottom," in which some states have set achievement requirements exceedingly low to avoid any NCLB sanctions. Bush would counteract that by requiring states to participate in a nationwide testing program, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and to report those results to parents.

And Bush would allow states with adequate data collection systems to show that they are on their way to meeting NCLB goals by measuring growth in individual student achievement, not just raw pass-or-fail test results.

Bush can point to some improvements in educational results since the law went into effect, but there is a long way to go. If nothing else, maybe the coming debate will demonstrate that, on both sides of the political aisle, education is important.

© 2007 Star-Telegram and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.dfw.com

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 6:35 PM 0 comments Links to this post

This is a very important read for folks in Texas and folks across the U.S. We saw this coming a few years back. Now, mandatory standardized testing for graduating seniors is closer to becoming a reality. To give colleges money on the basis of test scores promises to punish diversity and reward the already privileged as suggested herein.

As with TAKS testing, this will clearly crowd out college curricula related to service learning and community engagement activities. This sterilization of the curricula is ultimately a form of social control that uses a cost-efficiency rationale in order to reduce the very complex enterprise of higher education to economistic goals. In so doing, prevalent concerns pertaining to the deep divisions and unequal access in our society based on class, race, national origin, and gender get eclipsed. This, in my opinion, should be vigorously protested.

-Angela

Feb. 2, 2007
Texans and Their Tests

When the Education Secretary’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education started meeting, many professors and college leaders feared it would push for some sort of mandatory standardized testing of graduating college seniors — a prospect they saw as inconsistent with the values of liberal education. In the end, the Spellings Commission didn’t make such a recommendation. But in Texas — home to the education secretary and the panel’s chair — mandatory standardized testing for graduating seniors may now be on the way.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, on Thursday proposed a major expansion of state support for public higher education and for student aid. He also proposed one of the broadest testing requirements for graduating college students to date. Seniors would be required to take either licensure exams in their fields or Education Testing Service exams for various college majors. While students would not be required to pass the exams to graduate, colleges’ state funds would be linked to students’ scores, so institutions where many students did well on the standardized exams would get more money.

Perry says that the exit exams are needed “to protect integrity” in higher education and the tax support going to colleges. Many higher education leaders in the state are thrilled with the attention he’s paying to their institutions, and his willingness to provide real increases in financial support.

But faculty groups and advocates for Latino students are concerned about the testing requirement. Many fear that the exams will encourage a “teaching to the test” approach that’s not appropriate in higher education, that colleges will have incentives to place more emphasis in admissions on standardized tests, and that the new system will encourage uniformity and discourage creativity in undergraduate education.

Other critics said that the system was set up in a way that would reward places like the University of Texas at Austin — where graduates are likely to perform well on standardized tests. As a result, these critics fear, money will flow to the wealthiest universities and not to the institutions in south Texas that serve Latino students who are less likely to have attended competitive high schools.

“I’d give a flunking grade to the testing proposal,” said Charles Zucker, executive director of the Texas Faculty Association. “There is now a widespread consensus in Texas that all of the K-12 standardized testing that we have done has not really worked. We’ve had massive amounts of teaching to the test going on, and now that there’s a consensus that that has failed, the governor wants to institute the same plan for higher education.”

Many details of the testing plan are unclear. ETS, which stands to gain a lot of business, was unaware that the governor had proposed using its testing system until called for this article (although officials acknowledged that it was possible that someone at ETS was aware or had briefed Texas officials).

The Major Field Tests that Texas plans to use are currently offered for 15 undergraduate majors and also for M.B.A. programs. All of the tests are multiple choice and they are purchased by the institution giving them (at a rate of $25 per student), which in turn can schedule administration of the tests when it wishes. ETS officials said that one of the purposes of the test was to help with accountability and that, to date, no statewide initiative was in use on par with what Perry is proposing.

A spokesman for Perry said that the tests would give parents and students “a simple and understandable way to compare the quality of degree programs offered at different schools, and academic departments would be able to better assess and refine curricula.”

Bill Wynne, a solutions implementation specialist at ETS, said that the tests were developed based on surveys of experts in the field about what items are important. Compared to the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a tool many colleges are embracing in response to accountability pressures, the major tests “are more discipline-specific,” Wynne said. Sample questions on the history test touch on the Black Death, Hegel, colonialism, Confucianism, ancient Rome and the civil rights movement.

As to the format of the tests, which do not feature writing, he said that psychometricians have determined “that to measure knowledge, multiple choice is the best way to go.”

While Wynne said he was surprised by the news about Texas on Thursday, he said he expected to see the test adopted soon in other broad programs like the one Perry proposed. “I think you are going to see these accountability initiatives coming out of the Margaret Spellings initiative,” he said.

Raymund Paredes, commissioner of higher education in Texas, said he viewed the governor’s plan as a “broad outline” that would be refined in the weeks ahead. He said that standardized testing “is needed to guard against grade inflation or other ways of getting artificial results,” but he also acknowledged the “tremendous variability across institutions and across disciplines.”

For starters, there are plenty of majors that don’t lead to licensure exams and that ETS doesn’t include in its major tests. ETS tests history but not philosophy, music but not art, sociology but not anthropology, and literature in English but not literature in other languages. Paredes said that other tests would need to be identified, or perhaps students might take other admissions tests, such as the Graduate Record Exam or the Law School Admission Test.

Paredes acknowledged that those tests were not comparable to the major tests endorsed by the governor, but Perry’s spokesman said that the coordinating board would be given some flexibility to come up with tests that aren’t provided in the ETS program. Paredes said that details would be worked out in discussions with campus leaders, legislators and the governor.

Paredes said that he realized that some academics distrust standardized testing, but he said that it was essential to “confirm that the students who have graduated have actually acquired the necessary knowledge and skills.” He added: “My concern is not over-testing, but how do you develop effective measurements of learning outcomes?” He said that academic programs need “to have a certain integrity, and you have to have minimal standards.” Asked if many Texas programs lacked such standards, he said: “It’s not clear by and large anywhere. We haven’t had measurable learning outcomes.”

Critics of testing said that the governor’s plan would create the wrong incentives for Texas colleges. “Under Governor Perry’s misguided proposal, an easy way for a Texas institution to ensure that it will get a high rating accompanied by monetary awards is to limit admission to students who already score high on the standardized tests that will be used to determine the cash bonuses,” said Bob Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing. “Alternatively, they can narrow their curriculum to test preparation for the exit exam. In either case, test scores may soar but educational quality will be undermined — the end result will be another phony ‘Texas miracle.’ “

He added that the proposal was “not surprising given the test-fixated Texas dominance of the U.S. Department of Education and, especially, its commission on higher education led by Charles Miller. All are true believers in the notion that more tests magically lead to more learning, despite mounds of data to the contrary.”

David Hinojosa, a lawyer on education issues for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said that he was very pleased to see the governor propose large increases in higher education budgets, but very concerned about linking new money to standardized testing. Not only will the beneficiaries probably be the research universities that tend to be the wealthiest institutions already, but the institutions that stand to gain the least are those that educate large numbers of students who graduated from poor high schools and who “perhaps by some coincidence educate a substantially higher number of minority students.”

MALDEF and other groups have been involved in a sustained effort over the last 20 years to help colleges in predominantly Latino south Texas gain more programs and more funds — and the institutions in that region have experienced significant growth as a result. “There doesn’t seem to have been any study on the effects that this testing would have with the universities that serve south Texas and all along the border,” Hinojosa said. “After years of having to fight for funding of those programs, we remain quite fearful that there will be a reversal of the dollars.”

Zucker, of the Texas Faculty Association, said that his members were just starting to study the governor’s plan, and that they appreciated Perry putting higher education “on the front burner.”

But he said that multiple parts of the plan create problems for professors. One part would award some funds based on graduation rates. While Zucker said that professors want to help students graduate on time, he also said that many students lack sufficient preparation to do well — and take a long time to graduate for all kinds of reasons, many of them valid. “If you are trying to maintain academic standards, how do you do that when a college’s funding depends on head count for graduation? It doesn’t take much of an imagination to see a dean calling in professors — many of them adjuncts — and telling them to start passing a lot more students.”

And Zucker said that the testing proposal would lead to “a cookie-cutter approach” to higher education. “One of the great wonders of higher education is the unique perspectives and approaches professors bring to classes,” he said. They won’t be able to do so if they are facing pressure “to just teach students so they get a high score on an exit exam.”

Zucker acknowledged that colleges need to think hard about how to “bring everyone up to a certain level,” but he said that when you focus on standardized tests, you end up with minimal standards. “You can teach to the test and have everyone have minimal standards, but what do you give up to get that?”

— Scott Jaschik

The original story and user comments can be viewed online at http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/02/02/texas.

© Copyright 2006 Inside Higher Ed

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:25 PM 0 comments Links to this post

This is a highly significant and definitive report on global warming in case you haven’t seen it. Wonder whether global warming or global responsibilities will appear on the proposed Texas mandatory college exit exam?

FYI, today (Feb. 2) is also the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. That somehow seems significant.

-Angela

NY TIMES

Panel Issues Bleak Report on Climate Change

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL and ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: February 2, 2007
PARIS, Feb. 2 ­ In a bleak and powerful assessment of the future of
the planet, the leading international network of climate change
scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming is
"unequivocal" and that human activity is the main driver, "very
likely" causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950.
In its fourth assessment of global warming, released Friday, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used its strongest language
yet in drawing a link between human activity and recent warming.

They said the world is already committed to centuries of warming,
shifting weather patterns and rising seas, resulting from the buildup
of gases in the atmosphere that trap heat. But the warming can be
substantially blunted by prompt action, the panel of scientists said
in a report released here today.

The report summarized the fourth assessment since 1990 by the group,
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations,
sizing up the causes and consequences of climate change. But it is the
first in which the group asserts with near certainty ­ more than 90
percent confidence ­ that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping
greenhouse gases from human activities have been the main causes of
warming since 1950.

In its last report, in 2001, the panel, consisting of hundreds of
scientists and reviewers, put the confidence level at between 66 and
90 percent. Both reports are online at http://www.ipcc.ch .

If carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere reach twice their
pre-industrial levels, the report said, the global climate will
probably warm by 3.5 to 8 degrees. But there would be more than a
1-in-10 chance of much greater warming, a situation many earth
scientists say poses an unacceptable risk.

Many energy and environment experts see such a doubling as a foregone
conclusion sometime after midcentury unless there is a prompt and
sustained shift away from the 20th-century pattern of unfettered
burning of coal and oil, the main sources of carbon dioxide, and an
aggressive quest for expanded and improved nonpolluting energy options.

Even an increased level of warming that falls in the middle of the
group’s range of projections would likely cause significant stress to
ecosystems and alter longstanding climate patterns that shape water
supplies and agricultural production, according to many climate
experts and biologists.

While the new report projected a modest rise in seas by 2100 ­ between
7 and 23 inches ­ it also concluded that seas would continue to rise,
and crowded coasts retreat, for at least 1,000 years to come. By
comparison, seas rose about 6 to 9 inches in the 20th century.

John P. Holdren, an energy and climate expert at Harvard University,
said that the “report powerfully underscores the need for a massive
effort to slow the pace of global climatic disruption before
intolerable consequences become inevitable.” [Read a report by Mr.
Holdren. (PDF format)]

“Since 2001 there has been a torrent of new scientific evidence on the
magnitude, human origins and growing impacts of the climatic changes
that are underway,” said Mr. Holdren, who is the president of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. “In overwhelming
proportions, this evidence has been in the direction of showing faster
change, more danger and greater confidence about the dominant role of
fossil fuel burning and tropical deforestation in causing the changes
that are being observed.”

The conclusions came after a three-year review of hundreds of studies
of clues illuminating past climate shifts, observations of retreating
ice, warming and rising seas, and other shifts around the planet, and
a greatly expanded suite of supercomputer simulations used to test how
earth will respond to a building blanket of gases that hold heat in
the atmosphere.

The section released today was a 20-page summary for policymakers,
which was approved early this morning by teams of officials from more
than 100 countries after three days and nights of wrangling over
wording with the lead authors, all of whom are scientists.

It described far-flung ramifications for both humans and nature.

“It is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy
precipitation events will continue to become more frequent,” said the summary.

Generally, the scientists said, more precipitation will fall at higher
latitudes, which are likely also to see lengthened growing seasons,
while semi-arid, subtropical regions already chronically beset by
drought could see a further 20-percent drop in rainfall under the
midrange scenario for increases in the greenhouse gases.

The summary added a new chemical consequence of the buildup of carbon
dioxide to the list of mainly climatic and biological impacts foreseen
in its previous reports: a drop in the pH of seawater as oceans absorb
billions of tons of carbon dioxide, which forms carbonic acid when
partly dissolved. Marine biologists have said that could imperil some
kinds of corals and plankton.

A vast improvement in the science of climatology ­ including “larges
amounts of new and more comprehensive data” ­ has allowed the group to
become far more confident and specific in its predictions, compared
with its previous assessment in 2001, the authors said.

The report essentially caps a half-century-long effort to discern
whether humans, through the buildup of carbon dioxide and other gases
released mainly by burning fuels and forests, could influence the
earth’s climate system in potentially momentous ways.

The group operates under the aegis of the United Nations and was
chartered in 1988 ­ a year of record heat, burning forests, and the
first big headlines about global warming ­ to provide regular reviews
of climate science to governments to inform policy choices.

Government officials are involved in shaping the summary of each
report, but the scientist-authors, who are unpaid, have the final say
over the thousands of pages in four underlying technical reports that
will be completed and published later this year.

Big questions remain about the speed and extent of some impending
changes, both because of uncertainty about future population and
pollution trends and the complex interrelationships of the greenhouse
emissions, clouds, dusty kinds of pollution, the oceans and earth’s
veneer of life, which both emits and soaks up carbon dioxide and other
such gases.

But a broad array of scientists, including authors of the report and
independent experts, said the latest analysis was the most sobering
view yet of a century of transition ­ after thousands of years of
relatively stable climate conditions ­ to a new norm of continual change.

Should greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere at
even a moderate pace, average temperatures by the end of the century
could match those last seen 125,000 years ago, in the previous warm
spell between ice ages, the report said.

At that time, the panel said, sea levels were 12 to 20 feet higher
than they are now. Muych of that extra water is now trapped in the ice
sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, which are eroding in some places.

The panel said there was no solid scientific understanding of how
rapidly the vast stores of ice in polar regions will melt, so their
estimates on new sea levels were based mainly on how much the warmed
oceans will expand, and not on contributions from the melting of ice
now on land.

Other scientists have recently reported evidence that the glaciers and
ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctic could flow seaward far more
quickly than estimated in the past, and they have proposed that the
risks to coastal areas could be much more imminent. But the I.P.C.C.
is proscribed by its charter from entering into speculation, and so
could not include such possible instabilities in its assessment.

Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the United Nations World
Meteorological Organization, said the lack of clarity should offer no
one comfort. “The speed with which melting ice sheets are raising sea
levels is uncertain, but the report makes clear that sea levels will
rise inexorably over the coming centuries,” he said. “It is a question
of when and how much, and not if,” he said, adding: “While the
conclusions are disturbing, decision makers are now armed with the
latest facts and will be better able to respond to these realities.”

Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations
Environment Program, which oversees the I.P.C.C. along with the
meteorological group, said society now had plenty of information on
which to act.

“The implications of global warming over the coming decades for our
industrial economy, water supplies, agriculture, biological diversity
and even geopolitics are massive,” he said. “This new report should
spur policymakers to get off the fence and put strong and effective
policies in place to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.”

The warming and other climate shifts will be highly variable around
the world, with the Arctic particularly seeing much higher
temperatures, said Susan Solomon, the co-leader of the team writing
the summary and the section of the I.P.C.C. report on basic science.
She is an atmospheric scientist for the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration.

The kinds of vulnerabilities are very much dependent on where you are,
Dr. Solomon said in a telephone interview. “If you’re living in parts
of tropics and they’re getting drier and you’re a farmer there are
some very acute issues associated with even small changes in rainfall
­ changes we’re already seeing are significant,” she said. “If you are
an Inuit and you’re seeing your sea ice retreating already that’s
affecting your lifestyle and culture.”

The 20-page summary is a sketch of the findings that are most germane
to the public and world leaders.

The full I.P.C.C. report, thousands of pages of technical background,
will be released in four sections through the year ­ the first on
basic science, then sections on impacts and options for limiting
emissions and limiting inevitable harms, and finally a synthesis of
all of the findings near year’s end.

In a news conference in Paris, Dr. Solomon declined to provide her own
views on how society should respond to the momentous changes projected
in the study.

“I honestly believe that it would be a much better service for me to
keep my personal opinions separate than what I can actually offer the
world as a scientist,” she said. “My stepson, who is 29, has an
utterly different view of risks than I do. People are going to have to
make their own judgments.”

Some authors of the report said that no one could honestly point to
any remaining uncertainties as justification for further delay.

“Policy makers paid us to do good science, and now we have high very
scientific confidence in this work ­ this is real, this is real, this
is real,” said Richard B. Alley, one of the lead authors and a
professor at Penn State University. “So now act, the ball’s back in
your court.”

Elisabeth Rosenthal reported from Paris, and Andrew C. Revkin from New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/science/earth/02cnd-climate.html?ei=5070&en=42d7bc3a1f47c588&ex=1171083600&emc=eta1&pagewanted=all

NY TIMES

Even Before Its Release, World Climate Report Is Criticized as Too Optimistic

By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: February 2, 2007

In its 2001 assessment, its third, the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change estimated that in the next hundred years sea level
would rise globally by at least a few inches and perhaps as much as
three feet, a catastrophe for low-lying coastal areas and island nations.

In Paris today the panel will issue its fourth assessment, and people
familiar with its deliberations say it will moderate its gloom on sea
level rise, lowering its worst-case estimate.

In theory that is good news, because rising seas bring erosion and
flooding to coastal areas. But a lower estimate has not been uniformly
cheered.

In letters to and conversations with panel members, and in scientific
journals, several climate experts said the estimate was almost
certainly wrong because the panel was leaving out a growing body of
data on melting glaciers and inland ice sheets, which are major
contributors to sea level rise.

Those experts say that unless the finding is modified, the panel ­
widely cited as an authoritative voice on climate change ­ risks
condemning itself to irrelevance.

Climate experts have “a great deal of confidence” in observations that
sea level rise is accelerating, said Laury Miller, an oceanographer at
the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration who was a
reviewer for part of the coming report.

Good satellite measurements date only from the last decade or so, he
said, so it is hard to draw firm long-term conclusions from them.
Also, he said, computer models of how glaciers and ice sheets melt
cannot account for much of the observed melting, even though
“presumably it is going into the ocean.”

But so far at least, he said, “the observed sea level rise has been
tracking the upper range” of the 2001 estimate. “It’s pretty
unequivocal,” he said.

Michael C. MacCracken, who led the Office of Climate Change in the
Clinton administration and who was also a reviewer for some of the new
assessment, said he could understand why scientists on the panel might
be uneasy about relying too much on models. But in that event, he
said, they should make it known that their estimates did not include
factors like ice sheet movement and collapse, which appear to be accelerating.

In a letter to panel members on Jan. 21, Dr. MacCracken said lowering
the worst-case sea level estimate would “result in a serious
misimpression being conveyed to policy makers and the public.” In
fact, he said, most American experts have felt that the estimate was
already too optimistic.

Other experts said the panel might have missed some important new
developments, because it set a December 2005 cutoff date for
submission of scientific papers and other data.

Since then, researchers have reported that Greenland’s ice sheet is
melting faster than had been thought, that Antarctica is feeding more
melt water into the oceans than had been predicted and that the
melting of glaciers around the world is accelerating rapidly.

In a brief report in today’s issue of the journal Science, an array of
leading climate researchers said recent findings “raise concern that
the climate system, in particular sea level, may be responding

more quickly than climate models indicate.”

But in an interview last week, Susan Solomon, a climate expert at the
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and a leader of
one of the climate panel’s working groups, said researchers were
invited several times last year to comment on the group’s work. It
received thousands of comments, she said.

Drew Shindell, a climate expert at the NASA Goddard Institute for
Space Studies, said at a House of Representatives hearing on climate
science on Tuesday that part of the problem was the difficulty of
making firm scientific statements about a field in which research was
moving fast.

Dr. Shindell, who emphasized that he was speaking as an individual,
said, “The melting of Greenland has been accelerating so incredibly
rapidly that the I.P.C.C. report will already be out of date in
predicting sea level rise, which will probably be much worse than is
predicted in the I.P.C.C. report.”

James McCarthy, a climate expert at Harvard who was a leader in the
2001 assessment, noted in an e-mail message that the panel’s report
could be changed until the moment it was made public. Nevertheless, he
said he worried that unless its discussion of sea level rise was
altered, the panel would so underestimate the problem that it would
look “foolishly cautious and maybe even irrelevant” on the issue.

But one prominent critic of mainstream climate science, S. Fred
Singer, a retired physicist, is already seizing on the report as
evidence that people like former Vice President Al Gore who argue that
human activity is changing the earth’s climate are now the contrarians.

Andrew C. Revkin contributed reporting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/science/earth/02cnd-climate.html?ei =
5070&en=42d7bc3a1f47c588&ex=1171083600&emc=eta1&pagewanted=all

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